Gor and More

This week two destinations, both fun and at the same time quite serious, in that they deeply connect with the real world beliefs, creativity, and endeavors of their creators. HG Addresses as usual at the end of the post.

          Despite some craziness in hypergridding which slowed down our arrival on Destination one, Counter-Earth grid, pretty soon about 15 of us were at the arrival area at Sardar Mountain, which in the books is a marketplace where it seems anything can happen, from the dangerous to the delightful. There are community evenings on Counter-Earth Grid, at 8pm Pacific Time, and there are organized games of Gorean soccer, and they are working on getting combat events - the arena is ready, just some scripting left to do. For those in the Antipodes, you may like to join the New Zealand cohort on this grid, so there's something for everyone.
If you visit the grid, be sure to leave some feedback on the OpenSimWorld page

kindra Turian: nice to meet you all, thank you for coming to visit us and learn about Gor :)
George.Equus @hg.osgrid.org: Hi.
Praline B: Hello Kindra, thank you for your welcome! ;)
Havoc Rau: Welcome to the Counter Earth Grid. I am Havoc Rau, third commander of the great city of Turia. Gor is a world in the same orbit around the sun as earth, but 180 degrees out, hence the name “counter earth”, and is based on the Counter Earth Series, a series of over 29 books so far. Science fiction, but with a twist. It is both primitive, and advanced, in many ways, stuck in Greco-Roman times, in others more advanced then earth. For instance, the only weapons are swords, spears, bows, things like that, but their medicine is so advanced, they even decided to treat age as a disease and conquered it. The philosophy of Gor is very much based on cultural naturalism, which is a theory espoused by professor Lange of Queens Collage in New York, who by the way, writes under the name of John Norman. And of course is the author of the 29 plus books of Gor. On Gor the people are human and pretty much like you and me, except no old folks to speak of, and they can live forever. However, sadly that usually does not happen as it is a violent world filled with war and savage beasts.

Havoc Rau: Gor is a casted world, each free person is a member of some caste or other. Warrior, Physician, baker, what have you. However there are also a great number of slaves. The slavery on Gor is similar to that of Rome. Except female slaves are highly valued on Gor. Can be very expensive and are prized for their beauty and service to men. This sim is the Sardar and Sardar fair, the Sardar mountains is where the priest kings live, an alien race which rules Gor secretly. The Sardar fair is a neutral territory where people can meet and trade both goods and knowledge each year at the fair.
Here in our gird it is the place for folks to satisfy their shopping demons, with all kinds of shops from many different people all over the metaverse we have gorean and even some non gorean specific items which you are most welcome to take. Of course we have no economy here, everything is free.

Thirza Ember: why choose to go with free items, and not have a money system?
Cherry Manga: because winter is coming Thirza
Havoc Rau: it is the spirit of open sim to us. I for one like the idea of all free that can be, sure we charge for sims, but even that is very low, everything else is free.
kindra Turian: and it's just to pay for electricity on the servers we use
PatriciaAnne Daviau: I like your spirit!
Jnix.Fallon: free is always popular
RSVP Turian: Well, most of the items we have gotten are free. To me it seems the sense of community on open sims is great, so we want to perpetuate that.
          We took a turn around the Market sim and saw tarns and bosks, the most famous animals connected with Gor, as well as many other shops and taverns that illustrate the way of life of the Wagon People.
Then we jumped to the City of Turia itself.
You will see the palace, and the yellow pool in the  House of Sapher. which will digest you alive if you're foolish enough to go swimming in it.

            If you are seriously interested in getting a better understanding of the Gorean culture, either so you can better participate in role play, or else simply to widen your knowledge, then visit the University, which features buildings that detail the traditions and expected behavior of warriors, slaves, and other members of society.

          This love of the game, and a deep commitment to it, even in real life, is at the heart of the groups's longevity. It does though inevitably raise the question of slavery and what might be termed as human rights..
Thirza Ember: People often accuse gorean people of not respecting women... how do you see that ?
RSVP Turian: I disagree completely
Havoc Rau: and in the codes of the rarii (warriors) which i live by is the axiom: Be strong, and do as you will. The swords of others will set your limits."
Kindra Turian feels highly respected, but she does defer to the Men of our community as that's the way of this philosophy

Havoc Rau: i consider police guns swords in this sense :)
RSVP Turian: people think that Goreans do not care about women, when in fact, a man usually trasures his kajira, which is akin to a slave
Havoc Rau: and as the the disresepct thing, I find modern western culture to be truely disrespectful, not only to women but to all living things. On gor men are all armed, and as Robert Heinlien once said, an armed society is a polite society
RSVP Turian: Gor is very much steeped in codes of conduct. Honor is very important. In fact, I started reading the Gor books because I had already read the Authurian legend extensively
Havoc Rau: and codes of honor and a rudimentary form of chivalry
Havoc Rau: for sure thirza we see it all the time in the regular world as well do we not?
 but you dont hear people talk about goraphobia ;)
PatriciaAnne.Daviau: it is all around us
Havoc Rau: and there are definite similarities between them.

          Our ninety minutes were quickly up, and we hadn't seen everything... giving us a good excuse to return, shop, and explore more.
George Equus: Very interesting place. I will definitely come back later and explore more!
PatriciaAnne Daviau: me too!
James Atlloud: This really is a world - so much.
Praline B: a lot of work here, thank you for all these new things to know! Very interesting culture!
PatriciaAnne Daviau: thanks again Havoc and Kindra, I'll be back

         Off we sped to Metropolis Grid to see the Surreal Cube by Art Blue.

          Once again, the gridjumping gremlins didn't make life easy, but once again, the many intrepid Safarians found a way to get over to Metro - going back to your home grid is often the cure for hg difficulties. Here we all are on the giant chair, where we were greeted by Art and Juliette.

Juliette SurrealDreaming: Welcome HG Safari hypergridders. You see here a part of the online showing in the Santorini Biennale 2016 at which from the first Biennale offered a category for virtual art.The name of the category: IMMERSIVIA – Immersive Interactive Art. Curators are Kyriakos Papadopulos (head curator), Gregory Frangos and Reiner Schneeberger (known in virtual as Art Blue). The 3rd edition of the Biennale has the motto “Alice in Wonderland: Who is Alice, where is Wonderland and what is the Wonder?”

Jessie.Campbell: cute
Juliette SurrealDreaming: A list of participating artists can be found at.
http://santorinibiennale.gr/2016/participating-artists-of-the-3rd-santorini-biennale-2016.html Last year and this year, Art Blue offered conceptual ideas to Artists on virtual art , pointing their focus, their imagination on a subject. That subject was Surreal Tower and Surreal Cube. We will see a selection of both today. if there is time.

Juliette SurrealDreaming: The Surreal Cube is just next at South Horizon where we start with a MetaHarpers flight. A premiere in Opensim, made available by Arrehn MetaHarper (in SL Arrehn Oberlander) for Art Blue's projects. In a moment we will fly to that blue diamond behind me to your left. For those interested in the backstory on The Surreal Cube, I would encourage you to visit the blog by Inara Pey at: https://modemworld.me/2016/09/02/a-surreal-cube-lands-in-second-life/ Some of you may not know that Art Blue has a personal mission of conserving art here in Opensim. This is also his message to creators in SL... to bring their art to both world: SL and Opensim. Before we fly to the MetaHarper.... Art do you have anything you wish to add?
Art Blue: Yes, I shall add at Santorini we have an offline server running on MOSES opensim edition under Oracle VM, so here you see just the online part that is worldwide available.
James.Atlloud: Oh MOSES.  interesting

         So off we flew to the giant cube, and sat down to enjoy a camera tour of the exhibit.
 Praline.B: wow aamazing tool!

PatriciaAnne Daviau: very cool!

Juliette SurrealDreaming: it is nice as we all go together and see the same thing

Thirza.Ember: yes, well worth waiting a couple of minutes

Francisco Koolhoven: very nice feature
Jessie.Campbell: oh nice, this is some neat camera work
Here is a tiny taste of the show, you should definitely drop in on sim South Horizon on Metropolis and see it for yourself, and why not take a look at WizardOz Crome's machinima too

          After we had watched the controlled camera tour - twice, there is so much to see one virtual trip is note enough - it was time to get up and go take a look for ourselves.

           But first, we went to look under the cube, where there's a nice tribute to the Fest'Avi avatars. That's a nice cross-grid representation!

          Walking round the various environments, from lush garden settings to watery scenes, to interior scenes, it's clear a lot of work has cone into tying all these details together.

             It's almost too much, perhaps, to take in on a single visit, so you should be sure to take a LM and go again and again.

HG Addresses
Sardar Faire on Counter-Earth   jand.dyndns:7002
Art Blue's Surreal Cube             hypergrid.org:8002:futurelab