Category: Reviews

“Pey!”

The familiar bellow had me on my feet and in the Editor’s office before it had finished reverberating across the office.

“Chief?” I enquired from the doorway of his inner sanctum. He tossed a folder across his desk at me. I crossed the room to look at the cover, then at him, puzzled. “The new prim allowances? I’ve covered them, Chief…”

“Yeah? Well it seems some are concerned about the supply, given those changes. I want 500 words on my desk about prim production before the end of the day!”

I opened the folder and saw a ticket for one to Heterocera and details of a charter helicopter which would get me to the ANWR Channel. I looked up at the Editor, “You want me to visit the Prim Rig?” The look I got in reply told me all I needed to know. Pausing only to grab my camera and notepad from my desk, I headed for the elevator…

ANWR – named in respect of the to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – forms part of the body of water connecting the continents of Heterocera (Cercopia region) and Sansara (Cyclops and Purple regions) to the south. It is the home of the Prim Rig, a massive drilling rig sitting in the midst of the water which – as legend has it – is where all the prims in Second Life come from.

The idea for the rig is actually a part of an initiative to add some “back story” to Second Life through the character of Magellan Linden. However, it has gained a life of its own as the place where “primoleum” is drilled, pressed into the prims we need, and then funnelled to dry land via a pipeline.

I opted to take a trip out to the rig and blog about it when Patch brought it to mind in discussing the new region prim allocations, joking that he had been out to the rig to ensure production had been increased to meet the demand brought about by the new allocations.

Easily reached via water – and hard to miss when boating / sailing – the rig can also be reached via hot air balloon, SLGI tour trains (which fly out to the rig when they come to the end of their ground lines) or the regular sailings of the resupply vessels to / from the rig. Those wishing to fly to it via helicopter can do so from any of the airfields near the coasts of the two continents (as I did from the , travelling from the Calleta City Airport, Cecropia, where the prim pipeline comes ashore. When flying to the rig, do be aware that the helipad can be used by other vehicles as well and that auto return is set to 10 minutes, with no rezzing on the rig.

It’s a very industrial place, as you might expect; the tall central drilling derrick rises into the sky like a latter-day spire, the square bulk of the rig surrounding it, waste stacks angling outwards over the water, burning off unwanted gases safely away from the massive structure. Cranes, containers and the Helipad occupy the upper deck, but it’s the deck below that offers the main attraction; that’s where the prims first appear, ready for onward transfer for use by residents!

There’s a lot of history bound up with the ANWR drilling rig – the fable of the prim, the legend of Magellan Linden, his discovery of Heterocera – all of it so much a staple part of Second Life’s history and back story mythology. All of which makes it a “must see” stopover for any SL explorer serious about discovering the grid 🙂 . Should you choose to do so, you might also want to check-out the Valda Experimental Wave Energy Hub to the south and west of the rig; but for me, that’s the subject of a future blog post – maybe!

SLurl Details

• The ANWR Channel (ANWR, rated: Moderate)

Everwinter – click any image for full size

I make no secret of being a fan of Lauren Bentham’s region designs. I’ve covered several of them in these pages; they are always beautifully conceived and wonderfully executed – even when the theme might be a little on the dark side – making them a joy to visit and explore.

Take Everwinter. It is a dark design, and might easily be taken to be in keeping with the time of year. However, its roots go far deeper than Halloween or any “traditional” apocalyptic setting. As Lauren notes in her introduction to the region, Everwinter takes its inspiration from a place in the physical world, and centre of a very specific event.

Everwinter

Located in northern Ukraine, close to the border with the Republic of Belarus in 1970, Pripyat City was the ninth nuclear city (a kind of closed city) dedicated to supporting the Soviet Union’s burgeoning nuclear power industry. By early 1986, its population was over 49,000 – but by the end of April that year,  it lay a ghost town. It has remained that way ever since; and while most of us might not know its name first-hand, few of us are unfamiliar with the name that brought about Pripyat’s desertion: Chernobyl.

Pripyat’s sole purpose was to house all those involved in running and maintaining the Chernobyl nuclear plant, giving those workers and their families all the necessities of life: housing, shops, schools, public amenities including a public swimming pool and an amusement park. But when a systems test at the power station went disastrously wrong, the entire city was evacuated on the afternoon of April 27th, 1986, leaving the great Ferris wheel of its amusement park as one of the most enduring photographic images of the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident.

Everwinter

It is the amusement park which forms the centre of Lauren’s build at Everwinter – but as she points out, this is not intended to be a recreation of either Pripyat park, or a reflection of the Chernobyl disaster itself, although she provide some starting statistics about both in her introductory notes, and they make sobering reading.

From all of this, you can probably guess expect, Everwinter is an atmospheric build; one which should be visited with local sounds enabled. By doing so, arriving visitors can hear the actual evacuation message just as it was broadcast that chilling afternoon in April 27th, 1986.

A ruined, broken road leads away from the landing point, neon signs  – in English, a further demonstration that Everwinter is not intended to be a historical recreation of Pripyat – glow faintly, competing with a lowering Sun which lights the old amusement park in the distance. Along this cracked road, tumbleweeds roll in the wind, vehicles lie rusting and broken, and locals stand, heads encased in gas masks.

Everwinter

The amusement park stands deserted, the Ferris wheel rising into a cloudy sky, its cars broken and arms rusting, caught in flickers of lightning. Mist – or what appears to be mist – drifts across the ground beneath and wraps itself around trees and the remains of the park. But is it really mist? Look again and none the flickers of pigment within it, like tiny particles suspending in the air – a symbol, perhaps of the deadly nuclear poisons which sparkles and shifted through the air over the city in the wake of Chernobyl’s meltdown.

Dark, with the shells of concrete apartment buildings blurring with rugged hills to form the region’s edge, broken only by the route to a small area of coastline, Everwinter is a foreboding place. The home of dangerous mists and even stranger, haunting clowns and creatures. Yet one nevertheless photogenic and encouraging exploration. A masterpiece of design; the ideal destination for those seeking an engaging and very different kind of haunting visit.

SLurl Details

• Everwinter (Elven Mist, rated Moderate)