Category: Reviews

Alia Baroque is one of Second Life’s foremost fantasy designers. His avatars, clothing, and accessories for fantasy role-play in SL are legendary – as are his region builds for each year’s Fantasy Faire. His base of operations in-world has been – and remains-  a set of regions focused on his in-world store at Selidor, which had additionally been places for exploration and photography.

I mention this because Annie Brightstar brought to my attention the fact that Alia has decided to retire Annon, one of his regions and a well-known setting in Second Life, and will be doing so at the end of Sunday, November, 17th 2019; so I decided to hop across to take a last look.

Annon, a homestead region, is the home of The Tower Gate of Annon and Flowing Monastery. It’s a place I’ve visited on numerous occasions – although I’ve only actually blogged about once, far back in 2012. It’s also a place with a long history, dating back to 2010.

The Tower Gate originated as a build for the 2010 RFL of SL weekend, and was constructed in just 7 days. A prim build, it is has been standing guard over the Fallen Gods regions largely unchanged since being relocated. Alongside of it, just across the water, sit the Flowing Monastery, another prim build sitting atop a rugged knuckle of and island. But for a single blossoming tree in the cloister, the monastery is an empty building, lending a haunting beauty to it and the island on which it sits. The Tower Gate, however, offers multiple points of interest for those exploring its halls.

As Alia notes, both builds have stood for almost a decade, almost unchanged through the years – and certainly untouched by Alia for around half of that time. Thus, while they are in some ways monuments to Second Life’s history, they are also something that now sit outside of his Second Life vision. So, he plans to retire the builds to inventory before returning the regions to Linden Lab on November 20th, 2019.

In retiring the region, Alia has emphasised hie is doing so not because of issues with tier or anything like it, nor does he wish to have donations made towards their possible upkeep or enquiries about purchasing them, noting:

They need to go to allow Selidor and Athan to flourish and be reborn … I am not interested in selling them or any contribution for their extended existence, the tip jar was always there so it won’t make a difference as I take this choice happily and without regrets. So please, if anyone has a sudden moment of making a fund-raiser thinking I am doing this because of a dire need, don’t.

I hope you enjoyed it until now and will remember the region with fondness, happy memories and longing, but I also hope you will be excited to see the new rebuild and update of the rest of the Archipelagos of Fallen Gods that I plan, hopefully soon.

– Alia Baroque, November 13th, 2019

Those who wish to pay a last visit to Annon are encouraged to do so before the end of November 17th, 2019 (SLT). In addition, those who can are invited to join a Fantasy Faire LitFest tour of the region that will start at 14:00 SLT on Sunday.

SLurl Details

• Annon – The Gate (Annon (rated Moderate)

We first visited Frogmore in August 2019, when it was located on a Homestead region. It has now relocated to a Full region that includes the full region land capacity bonus, and we were invited back to take a further look at the expanded setting by Bengta’s SL partner, Atze Boucher.

In the original build, Frogmore offered a focused interpretation of a childhood in Öregrund, Sweden. with the new Full region installation, that focus is broadened somewhat, with Bengta and Atza noting, ” we share with you a touch of life in Sweden and the magic that is Scandinavia”.  This has resulted in a location that blends much of what will likely be familiar to those who visited the original Frogmore with much that is new, thus presenting a setting that carries with it a sense of returning to a familiar place in life, whilst also offer more opportunities for exploration and discovery.

For those who have visited previously, that sense of familiarity is imbued on arrival: the cinder road is still there, forming the landing point and pointing the way between wooden buildings sitting on a narrow waterfront with the sea on one side and rugged steps of hills on the other. The ocean-facing wharves are still there as well, but a walk along the road will reveal that the buildings fronting them have been a little thinned out, before the road arrives not at a rocky headland, but at a large harbour market that may well be past its prime.

I say “past its prime”, because the main pier looks to be in need of repair, and the waters next to it don’t appear that welcoming to fishing boats (there’s even a poor piano caught in the detritus floating there), while the buildings on the headland look tired, with a couple now given over to entertainment, rather than serving market buyers with fish and produce. Even what might have been a large, solid warehouse looks to be in the process of being re-purposed as a art gallery.

Elsewhere, other familiar sites await discovery. The rocky stream bubbling its way through one of the original setting’s two main islands, and which drew my attention during or first visit is still waiting to be found – although I don’t recall it being blocked off at both ends.

Other familiar elements include the need to scramble over rocks to get from place to place in some part of the region, which can give a sense of being on a hike when exploring, while the oyster bar still stills above that main cinder-topped road.

The move to a Full region has also allowed for expansion, with several new areas appearing in the new design. There are coastal camping cabins, inland paths switch-backing through the landscape between rocky spines and hills, leaping narrow brooks with the aid of bridges and fallen tree trunks. An old cable-car system runs somewhat diagonally across the largest island, while the two smaller island to the north and east show signs of more occupation that I recall from our August visit.

All of this makes the “new” Frogmore – or as Atze termed it to me, “Frogmore 2.0” – well worth exploration, as there is so much that is new – including multiple new spaces to sit on your own, share with friends or experience a little intimacy with a lover. However, it does come with a caveat: perhaps a little too much has been packed into the region in terms of unique textures and volume of mesh, as a visit can really impact viewer performance if you have options such as shadows enabled or have a mid-to-high draw distance (e.g. 120m or more).

I also found the issue of the region surround taking time to render to be apparent here (an issue I experienced and other commented on with the original Frogmore). In my case it took some 70-80 minutes for the surround to pop into view, hence why it is absent in the majority of images here – all of which were taken in that time period. I’ve no idea how common this issue might be with this build – but a lack of the surround doesn’t unduly spoil the region’s looks.

However, those points noted (both of which can be dealt with by either ignoring the surround, or by making some adjustments to the viewer), the new Frogmore is as photogenic as the original. Those who do take photos are invited to submit them to the Frogmore Flickr group.

SLurl Details

• Frogmore (Frogmore, rated: Adult)

For the third time in 2019, I dropped into Drune, this time on the recommendation of reader Robin Lobo, although it is a place that has been getting a lot of attention of late due to a photographic competition that is running through until November 27th, 2019.

Designed by Zee9, we visited the region at the start of 2019 and then during the summer (see: Time at 2019-XS in Second Life, January 2019 and Drune IV: an Aftermath in Second Life, August, 2019), although Zee9’s designs go back beyond either of these dates. Throughout all of their iterations, Zee9’s builds have focused on a sci-fi / cyberpunk feel that incorporates certain key motifs drawn  – as the About Land description notes  – from the likes of Blade Runner and The Fifth Element, Neuromancer, and Altered Carbon.

This latest iteration of the design is called Drune: East of Eden. Whether or not the title is a reflection of Steinbeck and the underpinning themes of his novel I’ve no idea, but given the dystopian state of human civilisation seen particularly within Blade Runner, and the novel’s examination of humanity’s capacity for self-destruction, the link would seem to perhaps be apparent.

Focused on a single, neon-lit street, complete with Spinner-style police cars buzzing and hovering around, the build perhaps leans more towards Blade Runner than the past two builds offered – although equally, there is less of a feel of the multi-level nature in the setting than previous builds that also move it a little away from that film. However, there are numerous nods and touches to a range of influences beyond the films named in the region description (one of the more obvious being Sulaco Corporation – a name that would seem to draw on the Alien franchise).

There are familiar elements from earlier builds to be found as well – notably the subway that serves as the landing point, some of the vehicles, the little hovering robots, the night club and the bar. These help to give a sense of continuity to the setting that eases those familiar with some of Drune’s past iterations (such as 2019-XS) into this one, such that the feeling is not so much that this is not so much a new build, but another part of that city.

For me, the enclosing region surround give this iteration of Drune a depth perhaps lacking in some previous versions – and it is clear that Zee9 has taken a huge amount of care to ensure the the edges of the region break up the surround such that the high-rise buildings of the latter feel like a genuine continuance of the setting, adding to that feeling of depth noted above. It is as if one could walk through one of the road tunnels, the canyons between those skyscrapers would indeed lead to some of those past Drune designs, sitting as further outliers of the city.

Always evocative, wonderfully thematic and rich in colour, Drune always offers a setting worth visiting and appreciating – and for photographers, the photo contest mentioned above gives an added incentive for visiting. Details can be found on an ad board in the landing point subway.

Recommended – and thanks to Zee9 for the chat.

SLurl Details

• Drune: East of Eden (Sensual Moments, rated: Adult)