Category: Exploring Second Life

Courtesy of a suggestion from Shawn Shakespeare, I recently has cause to take a visit to Ireland – or more precisely, to Carrowmore, a little town located somewhere on the Emerald Isle, as imagined by Pleasure Ò Raigàin (vVEdanaVv).

This is a place to stay, chill, celebrate, perform, talk, chat, drink tea or eat some Shepherds Pie and listen to great Irish music and to taste our original Carrowmore Whiskey 🙂

– Carrowmore About Land description

Occupying a Homestead region held by Pleasure together with Evee Sturtevant and Mark Taylor (Mark42929), Carrowmore is a place where extraordinary care has been taken with its design (in fact, Pleasure is still tweaking parts of it), so preparation and care with a visit is essential to appreciating everything. As such, I’ve included some additional notes at the end of this article.

Offering something of west-to-east orientation, visits start at the proscribed landing point, located within the town of Carrowmore and in the shadow of a tall tower that once formed a part of the local castle (in fact, the square around it is all that remains of the rest of the castle, itself long since turned into a cobbled square with the exception of a sliver of curtain wall). It is here that Sir Taylor Eveerness is waiting to greet new arrivals, presenting them with a note card rich with details about the setting and its history, including its association with the production of whiskey.

It was in the year of our Lord 1150 AD, when a primal, primal, primal… we better leave that 😉 … when a great-grandfather of my family spotted this beautiful piece of land. He immediately saw the possibility of growing grain, vegetables and all nutritious things in this soil. And that was partly the start of our wonderful whiskey. You will have plenty of time to taste it later.

In the beginning, the original whiskey was not what we know now. We called it “Poitin” and I still have a bottle here in my Castle. And no, it’s not to be tasted. You understand, it’s an old family heirloom.

– Sir Taylor Eveerness, introducing Carrowmore

Beyond the castle’s tower sits the rest of the town. This is marked by a harbour on its west side, its wharves and fishing boats indicating the Carrowmore is as much a working town rather as it is a place relying solely on tourist dropping in and staying – although as Sir Taylor’s guide notes make clear, there are places in town where the traveller can rest up should they so wish! Town town itself stands as close-knit community of small businesses (the bakery and the pub understandably proving to be the most popular!) with living spaces in the form of flats and apartments above them.

The rest of the land is set apart from the town by a channel of water that gives the region its east-west orientation. A broad stone bridge spans the water to link the town with the rest of the region – although no road continues from it; instead, the eastern reach of the region is given over to pastoral countryside with many attractions within it.

This is a place where sheep may safely graze in the shadow of the local chapel while the local farmhouse sits on a ridge to the south, a place where the farmer can keep watch over his flock and care for his horses. Between the chapel and farmhouse, laying claim to a stretch of the channel’s edge sit a little tavern and the watermill that doubtless played (plays?) a role in the production of the local poitín and whiskey!

Also awaiting discovery are the ruins of the old monastery as described in the notes from Sir Taylor. Sitting on the east side of the region, they are reached by a small bridge as they sit on a misty isle of their own.

Keen eyes may also spot two towers – one to the north, the other to the south – poking their heads over tree tops. One, not far from the chapel, is in fact a circular cottage sitting in the embrace of surrounding trees and rocks. It’s a place of romance, a cobbled path leading to its door by way of a garden of wildflowers lit by lanterns floating overhead, and with outdoor seating in the form of a stone bench and little rowing boat moored at the water’s edge. Nearby, stone steps climb a grassy slope to the island’s wooded northern end, where another retreat, rich in pagan and ancient spiritual symbolism, awaits.

Off to the south, the second tower also sits within a circle of rock and trees that help form a natural courtyard before it. It lies behind a great iron gate with mist clinging to and writhing over the stones shrubs before it, giving it an air of menace. And indeed, beyond the iron gate, the door will open to reveal a pair of ghostly figures; but rather than meaning harm, they prefer to indicate the teleport disk that provides access to the tower’s upper floors.

Carrowmore is a genuinely immersive setting which has to be explored gently on foot in order to be properly appreciated. If you simply cam or move swiftly from point-to-point and rely only on the note card provided by Sir Taylor, you risk missing a lot; but it does help introduce you to some of the local character in town who – together with the static visitors to the bakery, etc. – help bring a sense of life to the setting. But there is far more that awaits visitors – such as the tower cottage described above, or the ring of standing stones overlooking the chapel and another little cosy corner can be found tucked into the ruins of an old waterside shack.

Within the pastoral side of the region, deer can be found wandering and owls keep a wise eye on things. There’s even the chance to come across one or two of Ireland’s famed leprechauns who are willing to offer you a mug of beer – but whether it is enchanted or not, I couldn’t really say! Nor are things limited to just the ground. A teleport near the landing point (look around, you’ll find it!) will carry you up to a slightly macabre location in the sky, whilst the return teleport will deliver you back to one of the two towers in the region, helping to encourage exploration on foot with a walk back towards the town.

As noted towards the top of this article, Pleasure has gone to additional lengths to add to the immersive atmosphere of Carrowmore, and as such, you should take some steps in preparation of a visit:

• Make sure your viewer is set to Use Shared Environment (World → Environment sub-menu) – the region has a dedicated EEP Day Cycle, and it worth viewing the region under it (not the first two illustrations within this article).
• Enable local sounds (if not on already) so you can appreciate the ambient sound scape as you explore.
• Very important! – enable Media for the region (click on the camera icon on the right of the viewer’s top bar, and disable the music stream (if playing). Throughout the region are multiple points where media is used to add aural depth. Such media point may be triggered automatically, others by touch. To give a couple of examples:
  • Those entering the ruined monastery building will hear music and sounds in keeping with the location
  • Touching the central stone within the ring on e hill overlooking chapel will offer a rendition of (and admittedly Scottish in origin) folk song.

With live music provided by Mark Taylor in the square by the landing point (join the local group for details of events, the L$150 fee provides rezzing rights and goes towards the region’s tier), and put together with a huge amount of care and an eye for detail by Pleasure, Carrowmore is a richly engaging and highly enjoyable visit, one which – you can tell from the length of this piece – I thoroughly enjoyed!

SLurl Details

• Carrowmore (Greener Hills, rated Adult)

Bambi (NorahBrent) is the owner of the Oh Deer brand and is also is well-regarded among Second Life bloggers for her Missing Melody region designs – I’ve reviewed several iterations of that region myself in these pages. However, in 2021, she launched a new region setting – Longing Melody – which I finally managed to visit at the start of 2022.

Utilising a Full region rather than a Homestead as seen with Missing Melody, Longing Melody presents three different but interconnected seasons / settings that offer little hints of England and the British Isles and plenty to see and appreciate.

Visits start at the Longing Town train station, where a train with a decidedly continental lean sits at the platform to form the landing point. Exiting the train places new arrival on the platform (no surprises there), where two maps on the London underground are mounted on the platform walls. One of these is likely to be very familiar to users of the Tube, the other somewhat older and offers a more “natural” look to how London’s underground lines actually sit under the city’s roads and reaches. On a second wall is what might appear to be a further Tube map but is in fact a stylised map of the region that offers clues to a form of homage Bambi presents in the design. Alongside of this map in an information giver for the Second Life Nature Collective club.

Beyond the turnstiles for the station sits Longing Town itself, there the homage mentioned above is largely located, taken the form of links to Liverpool’s Fab Four. The road leading from / to the station for example, is called Abbey Road, home of a certain recording studio and also the title of the group’s eleventh album with its iconic (and much imitated) cover photo – which is also reproduced in the forms of silhouettes of John, Ringo, Paul and George filing across the road.

Before reaching the silhouettes, the road also passes Penny Lane, an alley leading in to courtyard behind the houses lining the road. Beyond the four silhouettes, the road makes a 90º turn to the right continuing to to a waterside promenade called The Globe. This in turn might be a reference to The Globe Theatre, Stockton on Tees in the north-east of England, famous for being the venue for two Beatles concerts that effectively bracketed their “breaking into” the US market after a lot of resistance from US record moguls (and the first of which took place shortly after John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas).

Outside of the town proper, and reached via an arched passage, is a further reference to the Beatles, in the the form of Strawberry Fields, a broad concrete path runs north to reach the second element of the region. Here, beyond the gardens of some of the houses is a more rural setting, a place of meadows, sheep, a bubbling stream, rough footpaths and ruins. And where the town might be thought of as being caught  in a late summer, this northern rural area sits more in autumn, a place where the trees are turning a golden brown and sheep and deer roam free.

A canal cuts through this rural area; deeper than the local stream, it is crossed by a single hump backed bridge. The path beyond this continues eastwards, passing between more farm buildings and a large field guarded by drystone walls and home to sheep and cows. Once past these, the path starts a gentle climb to where a high brick wall bars the way, except for the open wooden door set within it.

This wall marks the point where the third of the region’s seasons commences, the hills beyond the wall being blanketed in winter. Snow cover the land, a narrow path winding up between the hills. Here the trees are either fir or denuded of there leaves, all equally frosted by the snow.

Cottages and more can be found on the shoulder and crown of the hill; one of the former cosily furnished, the other a shell. Watched over by foxes, snowmen and polar bears, this winter area offers further places to sit and pass the time and further opportunities for photography.

All of the above just scratches the surface of things. In the town, many of the buildings are simple façades, other have interiors that can be viewed through windows or entered and explored. Similarly, the gardens, the promenade, the rural spaces, all offer places to sit and relax. and needles to say, the region in rich in opportunities for photography.

Sharing a spiritual design with many of the settings that have surfaced within Missing Melody, Bambi’s Longing Melody offers visitors its own richness and diversity that should be savoured during a visit.

SLurl Details

• Longing Melody (Celestine, rated Moderate)

It was back to JimGarand’s Homestead region of Grauland for me to mark the start of the year. As regulars to this blog know, I’ve tended to drop into the region two or three times a year to witness Jim’s designs and work. In fact, my last came in October 2021, a couple of months after Jim had decided to move things away from Mobile – leaving it as the home of his SL business – and give his region designs a little more room in terms of land capacity.

That design for Grauland was something of a departure from the designs we have tended to associate with Grauland, offering as it did an examination of lighting in Second Life using an urban setting. However, with this current iteration, Jim returns to his more familiar island themes in which he folds art and landscape into a unified whole.

The landing point sits to the north-west of the island, tucked into the cover of a large concrete-and-wood structure of the kind that can so often be a feature of of the region. This faces a line of jet skis sitting on the water across the beach that are available for riding around the island’s shallows. But if you opt to do so, take note that these waters form a narrow ribbon along the north and west sides of the island, so careful navigation is required to avoid bouncing off the region boundary (there’s more room to the south and east).

Those who prefer can walk around the beach to the west side of the island, passing by one of Jim’s little touches that always make visits interesting: a telephone kiosk that sits on the sands under the single light of a street lamp.

The southern end of the beach provides access to the island’s most prominent natural feature: a sandstone headland. This is a place where time has allowed the sea to sculpt it into a series of large caverns, the eroded rocks in turn ground down to form a broad expanse of sand below that that now helps prevent the sea from washing way the narrow towers and walls of rock that support the high ceilings of most of the cavern spaces – although a part of these have actually collapsed to form an open ring of stone.

Follow the sand through the caverns and it is clear the sea is still shaping them on their east side, where a table of rock extends out into a large bay, leaving their top supported by broad legs of rock, although a blow-hole has been blasted through a part of the table, forming another ring of stone.

The easiest way to see this high ground is to climb the steps at the back of the landing point structure or take the stone steps rising from the beach close by to reach a cutting and path through the rock. Both of these routes offer their own attractions, with the staircase in the building allowing visitors to climb to the roof and thence to a path the heads south over the top of the west cliffs to where a zen garden awaits – something that helps link this design with past iterations of Grauland.

Alternatively, prior to climbing all the way to the roof of the landing point, visitors can opt to walk along a roofless corridor  that offers an echo of the previous version of Grauland, lit as it is by a series of coloured lighting strips. Beyond this sits a an artificial depression that forms part of an artistic statement, the second part of which is to be found beyond the zen garden, itself connected to the depression by a set of steps.  Beyond the zen garden a further path winds to where concrete columns rise from the grass and rock over the top of the southern caverns.

To the east of the island, paths run between its uneven surface, one from the stone steps and path running up from the beach, the other from the concrete depression. Both point the way to the island’s main house as it overlooks the sweep of the island’s southern bay and eastern and southern beaches – the later of which forms a broad finger of sand.  With its deck and pool and split-level nature, the house is open to the public and offers a cosy retreat. To the north of it, along a loosely paved footpath sits a further little hideaway for those seeking a little privacy

As a personal note, I’ll admit that I did find the sound scape – designed to represent the echoing sound of the sea within the caverns – a little overwhelming whilst wandering. Nevertheless, with places to sit throughout, including out on the water to the south (brave souls, given what lies beneath!) – so jet ski users be aware that others might be relaxing on the water – Grauland again offers an engaging and rich environment in which to spend time, together with (need it be said?) plenty of opportunities for photography.

SLurl Details

• Grauland (Liberia Isle, rated Adult)

In this palace he erected very high walks, supported by stone pillars; and by planting what was called a pensile paradise, and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact resemblance of a mountainous country. This he did to gratify his queen, because she had been brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous situation.

– Berossus, priest of Bel Marduk, 4BCE, quoted by Flavius Josephus

The above words  – admittedly quoted almost 300 years after they were said to have been written – are the earliest mention of the fabled Hanging Gardens  of Babylon.

Listed as one of the  Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by Hellenic culture, the gardens were said to have been constructed close to the city of Babylon and alongside the grand palace built by the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II (642-562 BCE). As the quote from Berossus notes, they were said to have been a remarkable feat of engineering; an ascending series of tiered gardens containing a wide variety of trees, shrubs, and vines resembling a large green mountain constructed of mud bricks, which he ordered built in order to help his queen, Amytis of Media to overcome her homesickness for her native lands.

Whether or not Berossus was writing literally or figuratively is unclear: a lot is known about Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign and works – and there is no mention of fabulous gardens built for Amytis (or any of his other queens) isn’t listed amongst them, nor do any other ancient Babylonian texts from the times around the period in which the Gardens were said to have existed make any mention of them; further, of all the ancient Seven Wonders, the Hanging Gardens alone are the one for which the location has not been definitively established.

This has led some scholars to believe that the texts quoting descriptions of the Hanging Gardens are actually describing palace gardens that were known to exist, such those that Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BCE) had built in his capital city of Nineveh (close to the modern city of Mosul in Iraq), and Berossus attributed them to Nebuchadnezzar for purely romantic / political reasons; others lean more the the belief the Hanging Gardens were simply the result of romantic imaginings.

However, whether real or not, the legend has given rise the many descriptions of the Hanging Gardens, together with a plethora of illustrations and paintings, such that it is possible to (re)create how they may have appeared through 3D modelling – or to use the basic descriptions to offer an interpretation of how the Hanging Gardens may have appeared, complete with personal expressions and twists.

This is precisely what Patch Thibaud has done within Second Life, with his utterly fabulous Hanging Garden of Babylon, a Full region design (utilising the private Full region land capacity bonus), and which is currently highlighted in the Destination Guide. Patch is a long-time Second life resident who has, down the years created some outstanding builds in-world. In fact, I recently wrote (in part) about one of his most famous – The Cathedral – which has become both an outstanding statement of art in its own right and a venue in which art can be presented, courtesy of it being located within Chuck Clip’s Sinful Retreat arts estate (see: A Cathedral and Silent Beauties in Second Life).

With this build, Patch (with the assistance of Cristabella Loon and Lιlly Hawk (NatalieRives)) brings together a genuinely stunning interpretation of  the Hanging Gardens that mixes into it elements that are not from the period in which the Gardens were said to exist but also from periods a lot more recent, including touches that might be seen has echoing the Greco-Romano period in which the legends of the Hanging Gardens began to gain wider circulation within the (then) Known World.

The centrepiece of the design is the great “mountain” of the gardens, here presented as a towering palace, tiered without and with multiple levels within, the structure rises from the waters and surrounding gardens to offer a place of rooms, stairs, walkways, rooms, outlying tiers where trees and shrubs grow as per the classic descriptions of the Gardens. Routes window up through the interior of the building and via outside stairways and ramps connect the various levels and eventually reach the “rooftop” gardens.

The latter is a formal garden, richly laid out around a water feature, and of a kind that would look at home in the gardens of any grand European home or palace of the 18th or 19th centuries. Surrounded by building elements with the Greco-Roman lean, this “rooftop” garden also sits within rooms that have a distinctly Renaissance styling. Taken on its own, this rooftop area, complete with terraces and infinity pool, would be eye-catching enough, but it is just the jewel in a stunning crown of the design.

However, I’m not going to ramble on about the build here – I hope the photos I’m including here will encourage you to visit – what I will say is that this a genuinely engaging build, from the outlying gardens through the lower levels of the palace to the rooftop gardens. Throughout all there are numerous places to sit, paths to explore and – obviously – multiple opportunities for photography, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is one of the Seven Wonders of our Digital World. And don’t miss the boat ride around and under the palace!

SLurl Details

• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Antiquorum, rated Moderate)

It’s been three years since I last visited Cathy Vathiany’s (zaziaa) ever-evolving region design Lost Dreams (which started life as Les Reves Perdus (“Dreams Lost”), which has itself hopped around the grid a few times. So when I learned it had re-opened in a new location and with a new design in November 2021, I added it to my list of places to visit – although after initially dropping in in December, I had a couple of issues getting back to it in order to take photos.

Cathy has always had an eye for engaging, rural-themed region settings; places where Nature tends to stake a centre seat and where there is always a richness of detail waiting to be found and appreciated. Sometimes these looks have had a distinctly European / North American lean, although it has also taken us to the orient and to Scandinavia. With this iteration, we slip to somewhere that presents something of a sense of both Arctic and Antarctic climes.

The current Lost Dreams might be mentally split into five areas: three on the main landmass, and the remaining two formed by a pair of outrigger islands. One of the latter is where the landing point can be found, a rocky plug of an island to the west of the region. Small, and dominated by two large trees, this island at first appears to offer little beyond the landing point itself. However, below the cliffs, a stone outthrust heavy with fallen snow has been taken over by penguins that lend that suggestion of the southern hemisphere to the region.

A bridge sitting upon high stilts connects the landing point’s island with the largest landmass in the region: a large, rugged space that can, as noted, be mentally / visually split into three. First, there are the rugged westerlands, sitting on the far side of the bridge, a hulking shoulder of rock splitting the path from the bridge into two. The left branch descends downwards close to the cold-looking waters of the bay in which the landing point island sits, passing through a narrow defile before rising once more to the uplands of the island.

The second arm of the path twists around the rocky shoulder to reach a second bridge spanning a smaller cove formed by the outflow from waterfalls that mark the terminus of a fast-flowing stream. Here the path splits again, one arm twisting by to descend the down to the shingle shoreline that huddles around the feet of sheer curtain wall cliffs.

The other arm of the path passes across the second bridge before winding upwards, and doubling back on itself as it reaches the bank of the stream, itself fed from a further set of falls that drop from the highest peaks in the region. Crossing this is possible by way of a pair of tree trunks trimmed into a rough bridge to re-join the path rising up through the defile mentioned above.

Once joined, the path lead up to the centre part of this large island and a large stone lodge sitting on an outstretched table of rock that is home to a skating rink, a children’s play area, a carousel and other outdoor points of interest. It is here that a more northern hemisphere aspect to the setting can be found in the form of deer wandering the grounds.

Paths wind around the grounds here, with one curling back down to the low-lying eastern end of the land, and the rest of the main landmass. This is home to a a cosy hideaway and, a little further away, a little folly. from here, a final bridge – this one made of stone – reaches the final aspect to the setting: a small, low island that is home to a pool of water and a little camp site.

Such is the nature and aspect of this little island, that is it possible to image that once upon a time it many have formed a headland reaching outwards from the rest of the main island, but time and tide have intervened, creating a channel of cold water to separate the two and necessitate the stone bridge.

Within all of this, there are lots of additional elements and details: water birds stand along the coastal areas, there are outdoor sit points and places to dance awaiting discovery, and further wildlife give the setting additional depth, as does the local soundscape. All of which leaves us with another thoroughly engaging place to explore and photograph and not to be missed before a seasonal change comes along!

SLurl Details

• Lost Dreams (Lagoona, rated Adult)

Update: November 2022: WQNC has relocated – see me December 2022 article for more.

Back in September 2021, I visited Wo Qui Non Coin, a Homestead region design by Maasya, and which appeared to have drawn its name from Cowboy Bebop, an animated Japanese franchise covering television, movies and assorted media cantered on the adventures of a gang of bounty hunters in space. However, not long after I wrote about the setting (see: Wo Qui Non Coin in Second Life), the setting apparently vanished from Second Life – or it may have simply moved.

Courtesy of a recent tweet by Rig Torok, I discovered Maasya has greatly expanded the setting thanks to her now having a Full region utilising the additional private island Land Capacity bonus. Now simply called WQNC, the setting provides an extensive setting for exploration and discovery, mixing a number of environments together in a near-seamless whole, one with (again) a decidedly Japanese lean.

The main landing point is located on the ground level of the region, on the sidewalk of what might be a main road leading into a town. To one side the road is braced by a local railway line; on the other the town rises, grey concrete blocks of businesses and apartment buildings awash with illuminated billboards and crowned by advertising hoardings. Steps wind up between some of the buildings, offering a way into the town, crossing a second railway line as they climb the stepped slopes.

Further narrow streets run parallel with the slopes, offering different routes of exploration, with many of the buildings they pass being complete with interiors and fixtures to give them life.

Sitting towards the middle of the land, and behind the core of the town, a large torii gate provides access to a temple where, it would appear, a cat is central to worship (and quite rightly, as well; as the saying goes: dogs have owners, cats have … staff (or in this case, worshippers!)). Steps from this temple wind down the side of sheer-sided canyon through which a stream rushes, the steps providing a path that follows the stream’s bank.

Overlooking the town and the temple from an eastern hilltop is a large house. It is reached via a separate path, but is – so far as I can tell – also open to the public.

Throughout all this are numerous opportunities for photography, but the ground level of the town is not all the region has to offer.

Across the road from the landing point is a telephone box. It provides access to a sky platform, delivering visitors to the heart of a city  – and possibly a time removed from the ground level.  Once again there is a main street, this one with narrow side streets opening off of one side of it. However, this street is surrounded by high-rise buildings, billboards a mass of glowing signs and neon staring out from above doorways and shop windows.

However, this city is very different to the town on the ground, as a glance into the sky overhead will reveal. At either end of the main street float two giant portals – gateways to elsewhere, available for flying vehicles, as evidence by the flying vans, one of which is emerging from one of them, and the second that looks to be descending from the second gateway in preparation to refuel from a rooftop gas station.  Nor is this all, a platform is also floating close the the gas station, home to a couple of jet-engined sky bikes.

As with the streets of the ground-level tone, the side-streets here offer their own touches of detail, making a wake through and around them worthwhile, while posts and advertising on walls offer a further sense of life and depth to the setting.

I’ve still no idea if the region’s name is directly inspired by the song sung by Radical Edward (aka Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivruski IV as she likes to call herself) in Cowboy Bebop or indeed, whether any part of the setting is inspired by the show – although a sign visible on within the sky platform suggests that it is; but in its expanded location, WQNC still offers an engaging, photogenic visit – although do note, FPS can be low if running on a mid-range or lower system with bells and whistles enabled).

SLurl Details

• WQNC (Bohemian Rhapsody, Moderate)