All at See

Redwood Bay is a relatively new region on Neverworld grid, and it's home to The Rocking the Seas cruise, which was launched on 4 May this year. The event was a big success, so another is planned for some time during the July 4 weekend, so keep an eye on the Neverworld grid events to check times and dates. There's so much to see!

Put together by Gundahar Bravin, the cruise build has a contemporary East-West coast feel to it, and the ship sits alongside the Opensim Coast Guard boat, an essential piece of kit if you think about the vastness of the virtual sea! Neverworld owner Govega Sachertorte was very happy with the May event.

Govega Sachertorte: Gundahar did a magnificent guided tour, with DJs. We had 25 people on the initial tour and were thinking in the future to have you guys come visit us for a hg safari tour ... its really amazing,  the whole cruise is scripted on a 4x4 region, gift shop, undersea submarine tours, and views of the bridge.

Gundahar Bravin: I decided to build a cruise ship because, well, the idea came from wanting to provide new and dynamic event venues for our Residents and visitors. Not just a club, but a truly memorable experience! I first thought of a cruise ship, because I wanted a moving platform, with entertainment, drinks and many beautiful sights to see while enjoying dancing and interacting with others. I owe many thanks to our Assistant Event Manager Amanda Greenthumb, she deserves a great deal of credit for much of the modification work and countless hours helping me put all of this together.

Small Screen

Erwan is a pretty uncommon name native to Brittany, that anciently romantic and windswept peninsula in Northern France, full of legends and stone monuments like the Carnac Stones that are fabulous cousins of Stonehenge. Breton is a Celtic language, like Cornish or Welsh, and the name Erwan corresponds to 'Yves' in French, the closest we come to it in English is the girl's name Yvonne. 

An etymologist's delight, the progression from Erwan to Yves to 'if' - modern French name for the yew tree, that most mysterious evergreen with its bright winter berries and deadly needles, something mysterious and after-lifey going on there. Golly, so Chateau d'If is Yew Tree Castle! Who knew? Well, Frenchies everywhere did, obviously. I'd always thought of it in terms of the English 'if'... "if ever I escape from here, I'll get my revenge", that kind of thing. Anyway, enough Montecristoing... 

The talented Erwan, now in the ava-iteration Roman Fox, has set up a successor of sorts to Serenity Grid, and it has a definite flavor of the rugged Breton land and seascape. Some of you may remember a couple of glorious regions on Serenity that I blogged about a while back, the Monet house and garden, and Mont Saint Michel both unbeatable for the instinctive realism of familiarity and just good old building chops. It was a small miracle of a grid, and it was very sad to learn that it had gone offline. When I learnt about this new grid, also quite minute, I had to come see.

Dangazi Win-Win

Our very last stop this season was on a small but riotously lovely grid called Shipyards, the HG Address is as always at the end of the post. You may remember our epic tour of another sim here, the Dew Drop Islands. Today instead, it was the turn of The Dangazi Forest, we were on a walking tour in countryside with an interesting origin story. Owned by Danger Lytton and Azi Az, who were both on hand to welcome us at the small island in the stream.

Danger Lytton: Hello and Welcome.  Please be sure to set your ENVIRONMENT to shared and set MEDIA to automatic.  Take a copy of the umbrella by mousing over it and clicking. We are in a rain forest so you will want it.  And finally touch the TP board to the sea shell beach and wait for all of us there. You can go beachcombing there and find the 20 or so beautiful sea shells while you wait for the others to arrive.

Azi waiting for us on the seashore

Tina Bey: jeje veo a todos desnudos lol

Tosha Tyran: yes, Tina, me too ah, I was too much time in the sun my ass is all burned

Azi Az: here you can hunt for shells. If you enjoy beach combing there are nice shells to collect on this beach :)))

Nara Nook: I got a seashell

Yes We Candoranien

Willkommen in Candoranien: whispers:   You are greeted!

 It has been determined that I will meet you right here.

 Thus i would like to correspond to my destiny and tell you: Welcome!

  Welcome to the fantastic world of middle ages roleplaying.

Arrival point on Candoranien

This Safari finale began on a stunning playground for anyone who loves adventure, gallantry, and enjoys their chivalry with just a little taste of vampirism and piratical good humor thrown in. It's a 'yes we can' kind of place. That's CandorsRPWorld - and specifically the big region called Candoranien, the HG Address is of course at the end of the post. There's loads to see on this grid, you may remember this post about it from last year. When Scarlett Von Candors said she would be willing to host us, we jumped at the chance to go!

A bit like last week when lots of Frenchies from all over opensim were there to welcome us to Vulcano Stirpe region on Bloodmoon grid, there were lots of residents and friends of Candanien on hand to help Scarlett welcome the Safari group; - Butschi, Marlis, Rufus, Cosa, Briana, Calvin, Isabelle, Doris, Thalion, Theodor, Muna, Trawell, Udo,Willi, Calvin, Karsten, and Loru, although I may have missed a few names. How great it is to have such support and intergrid friendships. That's the spirit. 

Belze Cherub: Hallo-Hello-Salut-Γειά σου-Ciao-Привет-¡Hola-Merhaba-

Theodor Schildhauer[de→en]: Be enjoyed valued ​​guests

Star Ravenhurst: Hello Everyone!

Karsten Runningbear[de→en]: Greetings to you, Sir Theodor. Hello everyone and cheers :)

Whirli Placebo: waving

Cosa Wiefel: Greetings travelers

Scarlett vonCandors[de→en]: First of all, welcome to our medieval role -playing play in Candoranien. We are going to make a little excursion today about our Sim, we normal citizens, nobility, knights, beggars to Vikings, vampires, magicians and a lot more.

Romance and the 'Rose

Weddings - they're so romantic! At the beginning of this month Chrissy Coage of Moonrose Grid and Dark Wolf of Adult Life grid got married inworld. 

Weddings aren't uncommon in virtual worlds, and they come in all shapes and sizes, from those who renew their vows every year, to those who barely get through the honeymoon before the whole whirlwind is over.  There was, however, something about this wedding that made it clear that this was not just an excuse for a good party,

Dark Wolf and Chrissy Coage

In this case the good party was on Moonrose Grid, Chrissy's home. In fact it was thanks to this grid that they met! It is a relationship based on a close friendship, a creative partnership, and some serious talent.

Chrissy Coage: I was looking for a manager for Moonrose grid. We were introduced in Teamspeak because Dark was a software guy, it was a good match for the task I needed. We are together every day We talk a lot about opensim, we do everything together and have been doing so for 3 years now.

Dark Wolf: I've been running my grid for about eight years. I like to "animate" dead objects. Showing other users what's possible with scripts is also a great thing.

Chrissy Coage: We are only a couple in Opensim but we also know each other in RL where we are very good friends. why we got married I think we are so close with each other. That we express it that way.To show that you belong, to show the bond to the outside world - that's what a wedding in a virtual world is all about. I think we were 25 people at the wedding, the wedding itself was not open to the public, with planning and building it took us 1 month and healthy nerves.

Chrissy and father of the bride, Silver Mare (Photo by Icelady Pearl)

Dark Wolf: For my part, I really like Chrissy. I love her direct, tough, but not pushy manner. Over time, we've gotten to know and appreciate each other better. As many of you know, I'm a gay man, so we want to show others that love and affection don't always have to involve sex and eroticism.

Moonrose Arrival

You get the feeling that love is in the air the moment you alight on the Moonrose Welcome area, it's full of blue sky and fluffy clouds, cherry blossom and cute umbrellas, and of course lots of moon and lots of roses, naturally. 

Romance and beauty are strong symbols, but there's an undercurrent of tenuousness - all that stormy weather kept just on the edges of this world; perhaps a reminder that changeableness is a constant in the virtual as in real life, so we need to hold close the things and above all the people we love and value, and never take them for granted. 

Wyld Ride

 Fitheach Eun and Tessa Lacombe were on Wyldwood Bayou Grid to welcome us for the second stop of our Safari this week. Wyldwood is well known for its Rockin' the Blues events, its roleplay groups, and its lovely New Orleans build, a popular stop off during carnival season in particular. Today though we were heading for another sim entirely, Wyld Thangs, a region of rides and relaxation.

Fitheach Eun

Neo Cortex: Safari incoming! Take cover!

Contessa Lacombe: runs into the barn... Hey Star! Hi Mal! Hey Forest! Hi Alex!

Thirza Ember: lots of body bits!

Star Ravenhurst: We have a crowd.

Malburns Craftster: Fear and Loadings in the metaverse - has a certain ring to it

Fitheach Eun: Welcome to Wyldwood Bayou’s Wyld Thangs Ride Park. Kith Whitehawk, Contessa Lacombe, Harmony Beningborough and I (Fitheach Eun) built this region as a play-ground for the Wyldwood Bayou Grid. It has always been open to Hypergridders looking for fun. We have an awesome and scary motocross, a skate park with an obstacle course, a beach area, an outdoor cinema and some really beautiful scenery along with 2 music venues where we occasionally offer events.

Star Ravenhurst and Contessa Lacombe consider their options

Fitheach Eun: It’s a great region to tour on horseback, 4-wheeler, or motorcycle. You can bring your own vehicles and rez them in the designated areas. We will take you on a brief tour and then you can choose where you want to play. We also have freebie shops at the Water Park, Skate Park and Vehicle Barn. There is even a Food Court next to the Skate Park. The sign in front of the barn has folders of information on how to fix a number of common Opensim issues. We spent a lot of time re-searching and testing to create those for our music club audiences. Please grab any that interest you.

Safari Visits Vulcano

Our first stop this week was on Bloodmoon grid, run by Vlad and Vanessa Van Helsing, previously owners of Virtual Dreams grid, and before that, the beautiful Les Carpathes grid, among other iterations. Largely a francophone grid, today on Bloodmoon we met up with the Spanish-speaking  Arponera Vulcano  together with her beautiful and creative family - Jaina and Desiree Vulcano. 

Lots of people showed up in solidarity with the Vulcanos, so there were already about 12 people at the arrival point before the Safari group headed over there at exactly 12 noon SLT - yeah, we try to be good guests and not show up early when the hostess is still putting on her lipstick and setting out the canapes!

Jaina, Arponera, and Desiree Vulcano [l to r] wait on the castle steps for their guests

A big group inevitably leads to some arrival lag but we did pretty well this time. A lot of that is thanks to the fact that Safari goers try not to wear super complex avies (in other words, less than 300k complexity) and they also mostly try to keep their MySuitcase as empty as possible, just to give the grid a chance to absorb our arrival. Keeping draw distance down to something around half the maximum possible setting is also a good move. Why? Your Viewer, when you arrive in a new place, communicates with the new sim (and 'child' or adjacent sims) and grabs info on every object, script, texture etc within draw distance. Exhausting! But we did really well and soon Arpo was able to begin her introduction.