Category: Exploring Second Life

Beautiful Suicide – click any image for full size

Beautiful Suicide is an enigmatic region designed by Jaidens Rancid (Jaidens) which has been featured in the Destination Guide for the last couple of weeks, thus attracting my attention.

“Embrace yourself,” the Destination Guide entry reads, “for something has happened here.”  Quite what that something might be, is left to our imaginations to conjure: and there is certainly enough here to get the thoughts ticking over. Cast into a perpetual dusk under the default windlight, this is a place of dark mystery, offering some interesting photo opportunities.

Beautiful Suicide

Everything seems normal enough on arrival; there is even a hint of romance about the landing point. This is a bridge on the west side of the largest of three main islands, softly light by lanterns and fairy lights draped over the branches of the tree on either side of the water it spans. There’s even a hint of mist to add to the atmosphere. But look again, and see how the posts from which the lanterns hang have a hint of the gallows about them; the first sign that things here aren’t always as they appear.

That this is the case can further be found under the bridge, where a great troll stands knee-deep in water. And here too, is something of a conflict: on the one hand, we tend to associate trolls with dark and bad things; but this one holds a gem within its cupped hands, as if offering it to us in friendship.

Beautiful Suicide

This juxtaposition of the safe and friendly with the dark and dangerous echoes throughout the region. On the east side of the main island, for example, sits a private house. within it sit all the signs of a  comfortable home; in the conservatory, a table is laid for a dinner party. It all seems so normal – until one looks up on the roof.

And whilst the nearby ruin of another house might suggest an opportunity for snuggles or a quiet escape from the world, A look behind the stairs or a glance up on to the upper floor reveals this place also has a certain macabre edge, reminding us of the question posed by the region’s Destination Guide entry Where did all the people go?

Beautiful Suicide

But it is not all darkness; the region is, as I’ve noted, quite photogenic, and there are places to be found where time can be spent in idle thought on in the company of a loved one: down on the pier of the inlet, or sitting at the pool terrace alongside the main house, etc. There are even opportunities for a little fun in the form of flying saucer and boat rezzers, allowing visitors to zip through the sky or across the water surrounding the islands.

If you like your visits and / or romance edged with a darker touch, tinted with a drop of the macabre and a drizzled suggestion of black magic, Beautiful Suicide offers a more unusual destination you might enjoy taking a look at. Should you enjoy your visit, as I did, please consider making a donation towards the region’s upkeep so that other might also enjoy it.

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• Beautiful Suicide (Rated: Adult)

{Ville Par La Mer} / Royaume de Versailles – click any image for full size

{Ville Par La Mer} / Royaume de Versailles (literally “city by the sea” and ” Kingdom of Versailles”) caught my attention whilst browsing the Destination Guide. Both a private home (this being located in the north-east corner of the region), and a public destination,the region is the work of Dolly Everleigh Versailles (Dolly Morrisey), on behalf of the Versailles Family. And it is another picturesque region that is a genuine pleasure to visit.

The landing point is a little terrace area in the south-west of the region, where sit little boutique shops – a hairdresser, an ice-cream parlour and a delightful café bar. A pier runs along the south side of the island from here, crossing an inlet to reach the local beach, presenting one of two ways a visitor can start their explorations of the island.

{Ville Par La Mer} / Royaume de Versailles

The other is to climb the steps to one side of the terrace and follow a road as it winds around the island heading west, then north and then back east. This will eventually bring you to the house in the north-east corner, which as noted, is a private residence. However, it is possible to walk around the extended grounds below the house proper, where there are several vantage points and places to sit and / or snuggle.

A vineyard and barn occupy the low-lying centre of the island to the north-west, a dirt track offering a path past them from the foot of the steps leading down from the big house. meandering by both vineyard and barn, the track leads to another series of stone steps which climb up to the broad top of a gorge which cuts from north to south through the region, revealing a hidden treasure below and across the narrow channel of water: a tropical-like hideaway, reached from the main beach by a rocky arch.

{Ville Par La Mer} / Royaume de Versailles – click any image for full size

Follow the grassy walk along the lip of the gorge eastwards, and a natural stone bridge offers access to a picturesque plateau where there are places to set and play Greedy, Greedy, all watched over by the tall sentinel of a wooden lighthouse. A switch back path from here offers a way back down the the beach below.

This is a charming region, with plenty of opportunities for photography and a fair few places to sit and relax, have a cuddle and enjoy the ambient sound scape. If you do take photos of your visit, you are invited to add them to the Royaume De Versailles Flickr group.

{Ville Par La Mer} / Royaume de Versailles – click any image for full size

All told, a lovely design that’s well worth a visit.

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{Ville Par La Mer} / Royaume de Versailles (Rated: Moderate)

 

Frisland – click any image for full size

The time has finally come to bid farewell Frisland’s golden reign…

We have shared two amazing years since opening Frisland back in March 2014, and have been blessed with so many precious moments shared with all of you, which we shall carry with us as treasured and priceless memories in our hearts and minds.

So reads, in part, a note from Charlie Namiboo, Anna (Annabell Barzane) and Frislanda Ferraris announcing the forthcoming closure of their photogenic and popular region, Frisland.

Frisland

I first visited the island on March 23rd, 2014, shortly before its public opening. An invitation had been extended to me to do so by Charlie, something I was more than happy to accept. And like many who have visited the region, I instantly fell in love with it – and with the fact the over the intervening two years, other than marking the passing of the seasons in the northern hemisphere, it has changed little over time, presenting itself as a familiar and welcoming place with each visit.

The region came into being as a result of happenstance. . “A few weeks ago,” Charlie explained back when the region was about to open for the first time, “Frislanda did a search on Google about the origin of his name and found an article about a phantom island called “Frisland” in the North Atlantic. He just asked us what we would think of creating a region in Second Life based upon the idea of that phantom island.  We were all for it! And so we started the project with the working title Frisland’s rebirth …”

Frisland

As I noted at the time, the “original” Frisland first started to appear on maps of the North Atlantic from about the 1550s, and continued to do so for at least the next 100 years, although its position was prone to movement, travelling as it did from south of Iceland to close to the British Isles then back across the Atlantic, where it was imagined as a southern spur of Greenland, separated from the rest by an ocean strait.

How it came to be on maps in the first place is a mystery – although one romantic notion had it as a last remnant of Atlantis. However, for Fris, Charlie and Ana, it offered the opportunity to present a part of the island as it might look today, sitting in the Atlantic and quietly settled.

Frisland

The result – as noted – has been a beautifully imagined and much photographed and loved region, one that will be missed when it finally follows its namesake and vanishes from maps. However, there is still time to visit, either for the first time, or to say a fond farewell. The region will remain open until Saturday, June 4th. And then? Well, as Ana, Fris and Charlie remind us, “when one door closes, another one opens … who knows what fabulous adventure will be coming next!”

I hope to get back to Frisland before it closes and film there. However, just in case time conspires against me, here’s a video I made back in December 2014. It’s a little long in the tooth, but I hope it serves as a reminder of a winter’s Frisland.

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• Frisland (Rated: Moderate)

Regency Buckingham – click any image for full size

Jacon Cortes recently invited me to visit a project on which he has been working on for the last several years, and which finally opened its doors to the public in late 2015: an exquisite reproduction of Buckingham Palace. Intrigued, I hopped over to take a look, and Jacon and KarenKate Sands were kind enough to join me.

“We call it Regency Buckingham,  Jacon, a period role-player known in-world as  Jacon Cortes de Béxar (the historians might note his surname being indicative of another of his interests) told me. “Altogether, it’s been three-and-a-half years in development. and we’re still  building project, and it is still a work in progress; we still have some rooms we are working on. But we have reproduced twelve of the staterooms, which people can tour.”

Regency Buckingham – The Grand Entry

Those more familiar with the modern-day Buckingham Palace might be a little surprised on their arrival. The familiar East Wing of the Palace, which stands before the Mall and is home to the famous Royal Balcony, is entirely absent; its place taken by Marble Arch. This isn’t an error in the design or imaginative thinking; rather it is the first indication that this is not Buckingham Palace as it is, but rather Buckingham Palace as it was, during its construction; hence the name Regency Buckingham.

The Palace was essentially built on the orders of King George IV, after his father had initially purchased the older Buckingham House for conversion into a private retreat for Queen Charlotte. Inheriting the house on his ascension to the throne in 1820, George IV originally envisioned expanding it into a comfortable home, only to have it grow into a design for a Palace, which John Nash designed along classical cour d’honneur lines, with Marble Arch serving as the triumphal entrance to courtyard.

Regency Buckingham – The King’s Gallery

This has been a labour of love for Jacon and co-builders Crotian and Twelfthnight Cortes de Béxar, and is also something of a visualisation of what the Palace might have been like, had George IV had lived to see it finished  (in fact, neither George IV nor is younger brother and successor, William IV lived to see the Palace completed).  “We’ve tried to stay true to the building,” Jacon informed me.

The result is a build which exhibits an incredible level of detail and attention to detail, Jacon, Twelfthnight and Crotian drawing on numerous sources, including the National Trust, the Royal Collection Trust and the Buckingham Palace pages of the Royal website, in order to ensure the build is as historically representative and accurate as possible. For example, in keeping with the Palace’s period of construction through the reigns of George IV and William IV, none of the works of art reproduced within it date from later than the end of the 1830s. In fact, many of the reproduced pieces are drawn from the collections of George III and George IV.

Regency Buckingham

On offer at the landing point at the Marble Arch, is an information note card written by Tiamat Windstorm which is a must read. Not only does it present the Palace in is historical context as shown by the build, it provides detailed notes on the 12 available staterooms which can be explored, and provides a tour map for finding your way around them.

In addition, many of the staterooms offer images of their physical world counterparts, while hovering your mouse over portraits and paintings will often provide a short description of their subjects. All of this adds immeasurably to the experience of exploring the Palace.

Regency Buckingham – The Bow Room

Whether viewed as a historical reproduction, potential educational destination, role-play environment or labour of love, Regency Buckingham makes for an excellent visit, and is genuinely a must see.

My thanks once again to Jacon and Karenkate for taking the time to chat with me during my visit, and for providing me with some insight into Antiquity Estate – a subject and place to which I will be returning in future Exploring articles!

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• Regency Buckingham (Rated: Moderate)

I first visited Alki, the music and scenic region designed by Zoidyn (Zoidyn Kytori) and Alana Onyett, far back in 2013, which is Second Life terms, is almost a lifetime ago. Back then, it was described as an “evolving project inspired by the Pacific Northwest”, so I was curious to know what might have changed in the intervening years.

The overall answer might at first appear to be “not a lot”: the landscape is still the same, there’s the same mix of venues, the paths are familiar, and so on. However, the region has changed in subtle ways – but that’s the point of evolution; things don’t happen overnight, they happen over time.

The high plateau dominating the north side of the island is still there, but the Z&A coffee-house, one of several music venues in the region, and the neighbouring art studio both occupy different buildings when compared to my original visit. These now sit to one side of a slightly redesigned plateau, complete with sidewalk, street lamps and a large paved area on which sits a model of the original coffee-house and art studio.

Getting up to the plateau is a case of either following the tree-lined path which curls its way between cliffs and trees up to the heights, or via a steeper climb up the wooden stairs clinging determinedly to the east side of the plateau’s cliff. Getting down, however, is an easier affair: just grab the zip line that will take you across the landscape below to the rugged hills to the south of the region.

Well, easier to a point – it’s still a bit of a scramble to get down to ground level again, but when you do, the rest of the region is yours to explore – and there is a lot of it, whether it’s the west-facing beach, looking out over the bay with plenty of snuggle spots and under the watchful gaze of the Dragonfly Inn, or around the lake eastwards, through the woodlands to the camp-site and an activity area offering sailing, Greedy, Greedy, a children’s playground and a water slide; or northwards around the lake, under the lee of the platea, and along the path to the open-air music venues.

To the east sits a small island, reached by pedalo, with a contemplative oriental garden for Tai Chi followed by tea, and with caves to be explored below. Northwards of this, rising on sturdy wooden legs from the water, is the Z&A Fun Factory, where an assortment of table games, arcade games and other distractions can be found, including an annoyingly addictive game of rock, paper, scissors!

When regions seem to come and go, sometimes with barely a blink between arrival and departure, it’s good to see places like Alki continuing over the years, offering a place both familiar and new to visit and re-visit and enjoy. Should you decide to hop over and take a look, do please consider a donation at the landing point to help ensure it remains a place to be shared in the coming months and years.

SLurl Details

• Alki (Rated: Moderate)