Category: Reviews

Hestium (Flickr) – click any image for full size

I’m fortunate to be able to count Boudicca Amat and her SL partner Anthony Wesburn as friends. Both are extremely talented, Anthony as a music lover and DJ with a focus on blues, jazz and rock, and Boudicca as both a storyteller and a gifted artist, as demonstrated by her Flickr stream.

As a storyteller, Boudicca presents readings in voice at Hestium, the home she shares with Anthony, and it was to Hestium that I found myself once again drawn after seeing it featured in the Lab’s Destination Guide Highlights.

Hestium (Flickr) – click any image for full size

A visit to Hestium begins on the steps leading up to a small terrace café overlooking a beach of golden sand and the wide open sea. A chalk board offers a warm greeting to new arrivals and provides a note card with further information about the land – and it is well worth a read. The terrace offers the opportunity to sit and enjoy the view as well as providing access to both Hestium and to the neighbouring parcel, Willow’s Oasis, which is held by Patti Peregrine, aka Willow Amat, one of Boudicca’s oldest and closest friends. Like Hestium, it is open for visitors to explore.

Follow the sign welcoming you to Hestium, and you’ll find yourself on a board walk along which a slightly harried-looking server is hurrying towards the café terrace, laden with cake and refreshments. At the end of the board walk and a short walk along a grassy path, sits a little cottage surrounded by trees. This is the kitchen for the café, and within it an even more harried-looking baker is hard at work.

Hestium (Flickr) – click any image for full size

The path continues onwards through the woods on the far side of the cottage, and will bring you by turn and bridge to Hestium itself, where there is much to discover.

This little township, sitting between high cliffs and split by a channel of water, suggests a place snuggled into the Mediterranean coastline somewhere. However, the mischievous raccoons running riot in places suggest an altogether different climatic location; thus we are free to imagine where – and when – Hestium might lie.

All the buildings here are open to visitors to explore, with the exception of the little cottage up on the hill just outside the township proper. This is Boudicca and Anthony’s home, and visitors are requested to respect their privacy. Also, note that in order to explore the library within the town, you’ll need to use the teleport system, otherwise the buildings are accessible on foot.

Hestium (Flickr) – click any image for full size

A place of invisible inhabitants, Hestium offers clues as to who they might be, but it is up to visitors to discover these clues, some of which might be hidden away somewhere in the houses while some might be in plain sight. There are also clues to be found in the Hestium stories Flickr group.

However, why (and how) they have come to Hestium is something for visitors to decide: there is an open invitation for people to write their own stories about the various characters, and to add a photo of themselves as that character, together with a link to their story in the description, to the Flickr group.

For those who enjoy landscape photography, there is a second Flickr group where photos can be submitted, and these may include avatars as well as being landscape studies.

Willow’s Oasis (Flickr) – click any image for full size

With cuddle spots and places to sit scattered around, and Willow’s Oasis garden next door also awaiting exploration, a visit to Hestium is well worth the time. There are numerous places to sit and relax while exploring, be they on the beach, on the water, or amidst the trees. And there’s also that opportunity to add to the history of Hestium through the stories Flickr group; or you can join Boudicca for a storytelling session in voice every Monday and Wednesday at 15:30 SLT.

SLurl Details and Links

• Hestium (Region rated: Adult; venue regarded as PG)
• Hestium stories Flickr group
• Hestium pictures Flickr group

Ironwood Hills (Flickr) – click any image for full size

While it draws its inspiration from further afield than Halloween, a visit to Ironwood Hills is nevertheless in keeping with the time of the year, offering as it does a suitably dark and atmospheric place for exploration and investigation.

The work of Cyrus Knight (josman2088) and Jestyr Knight (Zeke Jestyr), the region offers a range of environments, all linked by a common post-apocalyptic theme, with plenty of photographic opportunities (with rezzing available), all of which is loosely based on Silent Hill.

Ironwood Hills (Flickr)

This is a forever twilight place, where the sky is leaden, the streets wreathed in shadow and subject to the encroachments of nature. It is a town that has seen better days, still held thrall to whatever has befallen it. Quite what that might be is hard to determine, but the wailing of sirens tends to suggest something destructive, as does the ruined state of some of the buildings. similarly, the distant sounds of fairground music tends to suggest most of the locals departed in a hurry.

Or perhaps some remained. Certainly, when walking the cracked, darkened streets under the few still-working lamps, it is possible to come across echoes of childish laughter, which is not entirely comforting in its tone. Turn a corner here or there, and you may even come across a youngster, perhaps playing hopscotch and strangely indifferent to your presence…

Ironwood Hills (Flickr)

Signs of what seems to have been a panicked exodus (or some other upheaval) can be found elsewhere as well: a police car smashed into a fire hydrant, a taxi lying in the local river the local river, the wreck of a truck on the edge of town, victim of an altercation with a tree.

Just when all this occurred is hard to assess. On the one hand, that power still flows through part of the town, allowing street lights to offer some illumination and signs to flicker weakly, offers a suggestion that the calamity is only recently passed. On the other, however, the state of the local vegetation and the way it is encroaching on roads, buildings and vehicles, suggests a fair amount of time has passed since whatever transpired here.

Beyond the town, with its church and drive-in theatre, baseball court and the rest, lay much more to explore. Cross the bridge, for example, and you’ll come to a partially flooded fairground. Perhaps the water here is the result of some natural disaster. Travel further afield, and other things might be brought to light – but I’ll leave these for you to discover.

Ironwood Hills (Flickr)

This is a design which makes excellent use of the space available at ground level within a region to present an environment rich in content. So much so that given the ambient lighting and the care put into the design, it is possible to miss things if limiting yourself to just a casual visit. So be sure yo take your time and that your follow all the footpaths, roads, tracks and trails you come across, or you’ll never know where they might lead or what might await discovery.

SLurl Details

• Ironwood Hills (Rated:  Moderate)