Where Eagles Dare

 Our second stop on this final Safari of the season was on Kitely, to see a build by Karima Hoisan and Dale Innes. A few problems, because Kitely blocks a whole lot of the smaller grids, which is a shame. It's also a shame that Karima's regions are some of the few on Kitely that are readily accessible to hypergrid art-lovers and explorers, but we make the most of the Hoisan-Innes generosity, talent, and style.

Karima Hoisan and Dale Innis

Star Ravenhurst: Hi Karima and Dale. Finally rezzed
James Atlloud: Hello
Karima Hoisan: Welcome to The Mountain, please take a nc, it has LMs of some places here

The group gradually arriving on Kitely

Thirza Ember: Karima we just need time to arrive and rez, we are not all here yet, and one or two of us are never all there... like myself
James Atlloud: some are signing the Kitely waiver... lol
Karima Hoisan: ohh boy haha
Dale Innis: haha no rush
Star Ravenhurst: I often have to go to the Welcome Center first on Kitely. Then I can go to where I want to go
Nara Nook: Neo tried welcome, think he is trying a different avatar on another grid now
Thirza Ember: on Kitely, it's a pain in the butt... if there is nobody on the sim, then you have to begin on Welcome, but if there are people on the region and the sim is spooled up, you can jump direct
Star Ravenhurst: There have been a few issues getting here lately
Nara Nook: Neo made it
Neo Nook: Weird, looks like Kitely does not like my home grid
Dale Innis: Glad you made it!
Star Ravenhurst: YAY!

Safari Gets Steamy

Lampi, Marlon, Tutz and Karsten

Mys Tigerpaw: thank you for all the clothes Lampi... it is all thanks to Lampi :0)

Marlon Wayne -> en: only karsten looks looooool as always 

Karsten Runningbear: oh i can change :)

Lampithaler Artist -> en: A warm welcome everyone, it’s great to see you. 

Karsten Runningbear: Hello all are welcome

Francisco Koolhoven: Hi everyone

Dings Digital: steampunk insects

Tutz Zabelin: Welcome everyone to  Steampunk sim at Pangea grid. I am always very happy when Safari comes to Pangea . The last time we met was on my The Waterfall Swamp sim. I am happy about the comments I received then, and I am grateful for them.

Dings Digital: it was a great sim

Super Bloom

Ten giant gameboys, sitting in a row... 

it's a blast from the past for anyone who remembers these iconic plastic boxes offering endless fun. It's located on Arcade Plaza, on winxtropia grid, you'll find the HG Address at the end of the post. The region is online 24/7 unless it's briefly off for maintenance reasons.

The vintage console is to die for, and will bring back memories of schoolyards and long car trips, but it's also modded for our hyperverse... look round the back and you can see the game cartridge: this is Primmy's Adventure, brought to you by 'GameGirl', of course... 

Bloom Peters: Primmy is a cube prim scripted by me but, in the game's backstory,  I am long gone. Primmy's task in the game is to destroy the bad code blocks - the 'enemies'. Basically, she has to defend Opensim from bad coders. Every level is a grid that she visits.  She has to correct all the errors in the region. When she dies, the whole sim crashes with syntax errors all over the screen.

Dolma's Garden

 Our second stop this week, after the traditional Halloween hunt with Ange and Nani, we headed off to a small grid by Dolma Dollinger. Dressed in red and looking a little like a superheroine, Dolma  were on hand to meet us, with friend Kiriko Kiama.

Dolma and Kiriko

Dolma Dollinger: Welcome everyone!
Nara Nook: Thirza is rounding everyone up

Kiriko Kiama: herding cats
Thirza Ember: i have bad internet tonight, apologies when I'm slow, about 4 more were still coming when I left osgrid

Lavia LLavine: I love these swans!!! They're beautiful
Forest Azure : /me wonders if these swans are as protective as rl swans
Dolma Dollinger: You get very wet if you try the swans. They are from Zweet Zurroundingz
Kiriko Kiama: that's probably the dutchiest name ever

Yamato

 Ange Menges: Welcome to Yamato and Happy Halloween everyone! Take your time to visit the region. Note that it has two levels: a ground level where you are currently located and an underwater level. The two deserve that you go for a ride. As usual, We have prepared a quest for you. If you want to do it, get a hud by clicking on the character next to me and wear it. Then follow the instructions.

This statue in the main plaza is where you get the HUD which you may want to edit depending on the screen you're using, so that the photo it shows are big enough to see, but don't blot out too much of your screen. Find the place in the photo, go real close (10m close) and that will set off the script which will give you your next clue and a new place to search for. 

The transition from underwater to the land made the game even more challenging and rich, and it's quite hard to not get distracted by all the lovely mesh to be found here. 

At Home with the Hopsons

Taarna Welles: now we get to the fun part

Taarna Welles

Most people in Opensim have heard of the Dutch creator of inworld goodies, Taarna Welles. Her home grid, Bubblesz, is one of those special places where original content, freebies and art come together in a harmonious whole. If you haven't been to LaBaronnie and Savvy, you're missing a little bit of OS heaven and history. 

The Hogwarts-inspired landing point on Bubblesz grid

Beyond making clothes and accessories for men and women, Taarna has always enjoyed creating landscapes. wander into the woods of Savvy and you'll see that - visit close by Hidden Leaves and the adventure continues. More recently, in the past year or two, Taarna has been working on a new region, Domadun. It's inspired by Harry Potter, the films and also the video game. You can tell how much Taarna is intrigued by the HP look when you get to the Bubblesz Welcome sim, where the portals that take you to the grid's different sims are themed around the game of Quidditch. 

Fashion Show

Belze and Chubby Cherub have their own grid called Chubelz. The grid name combines their two first names  and yes, it did take me like 2 years to figure that one out. 

Belze and Chubby at the Halloween themed Chubelz Modenschau region

Part of Opensim's vast and highly creative archipelago of fairly small, semi-private grids, Chubelz is one of those places that is already on your HG asset-searching radar for a while, and if not - then about time! On their grid's welcome area you can find everything from tattoos to eyes, shoes, jewels, and formal wear, making it a 'must LM' for anyone looking to get some great content for free. They regularly advertise their latest releases on Opensimworld - it's often stuff that will bring a smile to your face, and outfits and accessories themed for the time of year or special holidays.

It's Halloween season, which is the perfect time to have a Fashion Show or Modenschau with a Gothic theme. It's been brewing for a while...

Belze Cherub: We had the idea for a long time and have now implemented it

The fashion show will be on Saturday October 25 and it starts at 7pm Berlin time (that translates to 10am SLT) has its own dedicated sim which will be open to the public from 8am SLT so we'll all have plenty of time to get there before the fun begins, and completely rez. 

Remember that these events always get a crazy number of avatars, so being fashionably late is probably not a great idea - the early bird gets to see the outfits.

Dr Snow and the Water

 Long before "You know nothing, Jon Snow" became a meme, there was another John Snow, a doctor, whose battle against ignorance and mere lore has changed the way we see the world.

Throughout history, the predominating belief has been that sickness and plague were either sent from God as a punishment, or caused by something in the atmosphere. 'Malaria' is Italian for 'bad air' and the same term in Greek 'miasma' was the explanation given to contagious disease by Galen around the year 200 AD. 

Keep reading, we get to Opensim if you're patient.

It may seem unbelievable, but for almost 2000 years, right up into the Victorian era, people continued to put their faith in the miasma theory of how sickness spreads. Not everyone thought so, of course; pioneering physicians and early scientists  propounded 'germ theory' (germ is the the Greek word for seed or spore) first in the 1500s and later in the 1700s, but it never got much traction. 'Miasma' made more sense as the explanation for the diseases that hit hard in places where the poor lived in stuffy, stinky, cramped conditions. It was just bad air that was at fault.

NPC John Snow on Epidemiology, Avacon grid, and a couple of RL photos of the man.

John Snow set out to prove this wrong. In 1844, when he was 31 years old, Dr. Snow set up practice in London's Soho district, a melting pot of breweries, brothels, slaughterhouses, theater people, refugees, and penurious local tradesmen and women. Most people got water in buckets and bottles from the nearest public pump, which served for drinking, washing, and any other uses.  A few could afford to have fresh water piped to into their homes by a private firm, but everyone almost certainly had a cess pit for sewage and other household waste.

One For the Road

SIWAS S: Hallo zusammen

Wyldewen Veil: You’ve crossed the unseen threshold — through cloud and current, past memory and time — and now the Veil parts for you. Before you lies Wyldewen Veil: a hidden realm adrift at the edge of wild nature and ancient magic. Beyond the open door of your plane, a new world awakens. Here, the air hums with mystery. Roads wind through forgotten forests. Waters whisper stories to those who listen.  Choose your path — by motorcycle or vintage auto, sailboat or hoverboard. Explore beaches kissed by twin suns, caverns where echoes remember your name, and towns that never show up on maps.  Stay as long as the Veil allows. Breathe deep. Let go. And let the Wyld remember you.

Star Ravenhurst: Welcome to Wyldewen Veil!  It will take a bit to rez. 

James Atlloud: How do we pronounce Wyldewen?

Tosha Tyran: Now that is a change :)

Petlove Petshop: also stunning!

Dings Digital: oh another moon, this is the real thing

Kimm Starr: It looks amazing!

Star Ravenhurst: The region is still under construction, so pardon anything you see unfinished. Enough is done to have a tour, so I hope you will enjoy.  Eventually I will have Lore and stories in place, but for now, we will tour it as it is.

Dings Digital: when is a piece of art finished?

Tina Bey: nunca jajajaj

Star Ravenhurst: This is a 6x6 region with two airports and many modes of transportation. Today we will be taking a plane tour, F-222. As we move along, if you drop your camera below, and behind the plane, you will get a good view as we go along. We can thank Kimm for the moon

Nara Nook: see the airplane taking off, so cool

Star Ravenhurst: We are going to board the plane grounded F-222. This box has a map HUD

Tina Bey: y nuestros billetes ?

Tosha Tyran: te olvidaste el tuyo, Tina? que desastre!!!

Dings Digital: will they serve food?

eva Nowicka: This is going to be worse than the bus incident :D

NWG Hits the Decade

Neverworld Grid turns ten this week, with great fanfare, on the Expo region which features a glorious golden sky and lots of great exhibits including a picture gallery with avatars transformed into photos of real people. 

The party was still on when I stepped away to write this, with a great set by Zoree Jupiter. I asked a few Neverworlders about their life here, beginning with Nexus Storm, and grid owner Gov herself.

Govega Sachertorte, and Nexus Storm

Nexus Storm: NWG is friendly , we like to be a joined collection of sims and people working together to create and have fun. For myself I just like the easy going environment ..we have a some great places to build and people always help out when asked... I'm just a Neverworlder through and through.

Govega Sachertorte: I decided to come to opensim after about two years active in SL, I had a store, but I wanted to do more than that. I bought land but it was getting expensive. I was looking for a better option, something similar to this but less expensive... I ended up in a grid called Free Open Sim, run by Mattie McBride and Tim Huxley. They were so nice.  And then we moved to osgrid, we were there a few years, and then I decided I wanted my own region, and after a month of renting I learned how to self host a region.  Soon a friend offered to build me a grid. That was Randall Flagg from osgrid, and that's how Neverworld Grid began. Today, we have a little over 2000 residents.

Role Models

 Our second destination this week was to Wyldwood Bayou Grid, which is celebrating its 5th anniversary this month. Wyldwood is best known for two activities, the music events at venues like Hot Daddy's, and for its Roleplay, and it was the latter that we went to see. 

The RP hub region is a very beautiful place to visit, and full of information about how the groups here work, the backstories and rules, times and types of activities they do here. We arrived in our usual raggedy piecemeal manner.

Petlove Petshop: ty whoever tp'd me!

Forest Azure: pet, you have clothes!

Nara Nook: skin would be nice but I am happy just to have clothes

Dorena Bree: me too Nara

Forest Azure: well, nara, you were nothing but skin in the caves

The welcoming committee. Our guides were Fitheach, left, and Tessa, center.

Thirza Ember: That green tea diet seems to be working, Xenon

Xenon Darrow: It is! Of course...all those tannins are making me a bit rusty...

Contessa Lacombe: Hi everyone!  The WWB Roleplay Hub was formed to give the Wyldwood Bayou Grid roleplayers a venue to exchange information and set up roleplaying between their groups and other roleplayers on Open Sim grids. Crossgrid roleplay offers the opportunity for roleplayers to connect their stories to those of other groups and gives all of us the whole Hypergrid as a playground.

Tunnel Vision

In 2005, a group of firm friends along with a couple of newcomers, all intrepid explorers armed with basic spelunking equipment and an intermittent instinct for survival, entered a vast system of caves, only to encounter an alarming... oh wait, that's the plot of The Descent, sorry it's the flu talking. 

This week a group of firm friends and a couple of newcomers went on Safari to an OSGrid region, owned and created by Victorious Oppewall, called Caves.

Now before you say, been there done that, don't get 'Caves' confused with 'The Caves' the build by Pasha Theas on Neverworld. This is a whole other cavern system, on Vic's home server which usually hosts about 50 sims. 

Last week, we were on a home server connected to OSGrid, at the Stregasea forest. These events put a lot of strain on a server, so serious preparations are needed.  There is, as you know, on this blog a whole page for Hosts with practical suggestions on how to have a successful Safari visit. Most people agree it's worth the effort when you can show off your work to a crowd to its best advantage. And we appreciate their hard work! Victorious arranged for our Safari tour many weeks in advance, and he turned off all other regions for the occasion of our visit to try to give the best boost possible. 

Petlove Petshop: I lost myself lol

victorious oppewall: everybody here??

Forest Azure: oh, now i'm just my thong

Tosha Tyran: but I do want my hair!

Thirza Ember: your hair just arrived Tosha, special delivery

Tosha Tyran: lol, but now the rest is gone - except for the heart - heart and hair, but no brain

Forest Azure: the heart is the most important... a hairy heart especially

Sven Ingersoll: for the tin man

Taarna Welles: Tosha the bodyless :)

Victorious Oppewall

victorious oppewall: Welcome everybody , I am happy that i may be your host , I will guide you around. On the plan you can see where we are.. the route starts here...we will walk , run or fly because then tunnels re not easy to move in. We will go into tunnel 1 and take the outer tunnels that connect the various caves. Follow me, I will not hurry and if we come in shortage of time you can plan a second visit and finish the excursion.

James Atlloud: Glad to be here

Inworld Review Returns

 As many of you know, this summer we lost Mal Burns, the creator and host of Inworld Review, the talk show on his Metaworld Youtube channel. His death was a blow to his friends and to the many people who knew and admired him through his projects, all aimed at helping Opensim to be better known and appreciated.

Mal explaining something technical on Inworld Review

For the past months, Inworld Review has been offline, and this was a decision by the team who helped Mal keep the show on the road over many years. This was out of respect for Mal and his family, and also to give some time for reflection to those who had helped Mal make the show over the years. 

Interviewing Lampi, Marlon and Tutz from Pangea Grid

In the end, the team felt that the real way to respect Mal's legacy is by continuing to let people know about all creators and innovators who call Opensim home, and the great places and projects they have brought to life here.

Spooktober

 I can't lie, and anyway what would be the point, if you've read this blog before in Octobers past, you know I don't care at all for Halloween. This one day event has become, in the real world, six weeks of solid commercialized nastiness. People who like to think they're anti crime invite their children to play at extorting the neighbors with threats. Bloodshed, loss, and torture are trivialized. It appeals to nobody's better nature. The whole sense of Samhain is engulfed by ghoulish goofiness.

That said, Halloween is a really big deal in Opensim. From September onward, builds begin to spring up online and freebie shops abound with special items to mark the month-long 'one day event' of Halloween. However, unlike the real world, thank goodness, the spirit here is not one of selling as much candy as you can. It's about generosity, and the ingenuity and creative fantasy of outfit builders, scripters, meshers, sim dressers, performers, and huntsmen and women, and good for them.

Would it be better if Halloween (and Xmas too, the other end-of-the-year juggernaut) didn't engulf such a long time span, if there were a little bit more originality in what people chose to come up with in the winter months, rather than all leaping lemming-like into the same pumpkin-scented abyss? 

Sure. 

But in light of the fact that, as you pick up your 57th different version of a dancing skeleton, you really don't care what I think, here are a few interesting Halloween builds you might enjoy. HG addresses as always at the end of the post.

Arte and Montmartre

Minord Loup: bienvenue aux arrivants

Francisco Koolhoven: hi everyone!

Lavia Lavine: Hi everybody!!! :D :D :D

Alex Salamander: <bonsoir

SoA BAD: hello all

Tristan Dehaie [fr→en]: Good evening everyone :)

Draghan Marksman: Glenn is here !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The gradual rez of the crowd, outside the SV3D Louvre

It was a typical day in the neighborhood of Opensim, yet another HG Safari tour, this time a return visit to SV3D, a mostly Francophone grid, run by the terrific Minord Loup. Not a huge place, and the region we were due to land on LeVieuxParis (HG address as always at the end of the post) is abundant with textures, so it was reasonable to think that it might be a while before anybody really saw anything. There were upwards of twenty people on the sim, quite a few had to relog, but the overall effect was excellent. A golden hour in the gilded age of old Paris, in company with several SV3D friends, in particular our host the builder Glenn Dayafter.

Glenn Dayafter

Glenn Dayafter:  Welcome to Le Vieux Paris !  Paris at the turn of the century — where art, imagination, and nostalgia meet. Le Vieux Paris recreates the city between the late 1800s and early 1900s, a time when creativity and curiosity filled every street and café.

Tosha Tyran: sounds great

Alexey Kazarovic: /me claps

Glenn Dayafter: The idea was born two years ago, and since then, the sim has slowly taken shape — a labour of love, inspired by research, art, and the spirit of old Paris. Today, it is almost complete, waiting for us to explore.

Dings Digital: wonderful... it must have been hard but fulfilling work

Cherry Manga: textures are insane! ♥

Pierre Segrov: Bonsoir toutes et tous !

Thirza Ember: how many regions have you built, Glenn?

A Witching Hour

Our second stop this week was to a forest on Stregasea, in OSGrid. This build was a gift to Clairwil Oh from the late Pasha Theas, who made it as a place of serenity,  a splitscreen forest between sumer lush and winter snowscape, where you can immerse yourself in nature and leave behind the oppressive worries and fears of RL for a while, and recharge your batteries. 

It's far from the first Pasha Theas build that the Safari has visited. Pasha's close friend, builder, DJ, artist and tech-friendly  Andron Rae was our erudite and amusing guide on two previous builds, Brigadoon and The Caves, and he joined us for this trip too.

Clairwil Oh

Clairwil Oh: oh, here's comes "everyone" yay!

Star Ravenhurst: Hello!
Tosha Tyran: oh shucks! Naked again
Clairwil Oh: Naked is always the best outfit for the day
Ary Ravenshires: woot! nakies party!
andron rae: its a moderate rated sim so nakies is permissible, I have shorts on under my kilt, because you know, distractions

Dancing on Counterearth

 Counter Earth Grid puts on a Holiday Show each year, with a big Christmas dancing extravaganza. The next 90 minute event is on November 21, 2025, the time hasn't been fixed just yet, but it will be somewhere between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM Grid Time, depending on majority preference. 

Sardar Fair

Over eleven years old and probably best known for the freebie region Sardar Fair, CounterEarth is the oldest Gorean grid in Opensim, and has a wealth of beautiful sims you can visit, even if you're not a gor by nature. If you're not familiar with the Counter Earth dance event, here's a peep at what they did in 2022, just to get you in the mood to participate. 

Wyld Five

This month, Wyldwood Bayou grid turns five years old, but to know that is only to have the very edges of the story of this vibrant corner of our hyperverse. Best known for its dancing events and roleplay, WWB grew out of a group of friends who had all had experience in Second Life before coming over to Opensim; their story of grid changes probably resonates with most of us, the best bit of it being that they were able to remain together as a tribe, no matter the vagaries of grid shutdowns, lost assets, and the usual craziness of opensimulator.

Kith Whitehawk 

Kith Whitehawk: Our first OS grid was InWorldz. Kira and I build Wyldwood Bayou on Kitley, then once we had to move, due to IW grid removal, settled in Discovery as a spot for the club. Picked Discovery, mainly due to Jay and Ten-Bears. We met Harmony in IW, was a boon that she was in between hosting gigs. Was the best snag ever!

Contessa Lacombe: I met Fit in Inworldz, which was my first OS grid. I picked it because it was all I knew about, but our open OS is so much better! When I first checked out OS, I thought it was very primitive so I stayed in SL, but on a later visit it had grown and I could envision the possibilities. I could have plenty of space to build!

It's a natural part of life that times change, and with experience, confidence and abilities grow. We all yearn for a bit more independence, which is what happened to the WWD group.

Kith Whitehawk: We wanted a place of our own, an independent grid. One where we had control over the ethos and values. We also had an extraordinary opportunity, due to Durham and Fits computer abilities, to have grid stability and a place to call "Our Own Dayum Swamp". We called it Wyldwood Bayou, since even though we lost Kira in 2019, her spirit is ever with us. She started the club on a parcel called WWB in IW back in 2011, and there was never a question of what we were to call our new home.

A Life in Review

 Earlier this summer, the virtual world community was saddened to learn that Mal Burns had died. News aggregator, creator and presenter of Inworld Review, co-founder of the Hypergrid International Expo and extraordinary contributor to the Opensim Community Conference, Mal was a well known face and voice around Opensim and in Second Life too. 

He was also a much loved member of the HG Safari tour group so we wanted to celebrate his virtual life with a gathering of the kind he would have approved of - an opportunity to dance, hear some Jazz, and also hear the comments of a few of those who knew him well, whether they had been guests on his show, fellow tourists on Safari, or colleagues from other projects.
About 40 of us gathered - some were friends who rarely get into Opensim these days , like Fuschia Nightfire and Wizardoz Chrome, names anyone who knows the Safari from way back will recognize immediately, just to mention two out of a really exceptional list of attendees. Good thing James filmed it!

The region where this party was held was built by Mal to be his new home for Inworld Review, but also a park and place for him to experiment with the various treasures that he found when out and about on the hypergrid. 

Wonders of Washago

Our first stop this week was on Pangea grid, predominantly but not totally German language, we were there to see a build by Lilly Topas, who has been resident on a number of grids before finding her home among friends. Due to a last minute situation, the tour was led by grid owner Marlon Wayne,  together with the gorgeous Tutz Zabelin, a talented builder herself.

Tutz Zabelin and Marlon Wayne. Nice gloves.

Sven Ingersoll: hello avatars... ah...now everyone is materialising

Marlon Wayne -> en: Good evening everyone, I would like to welcome you all to Washago. The owner Lilly Topas is unfortunately in bed with a fever. In order not to cancel the event I will show you something from Washago today. Lilly says that she will be happy to answer questions at the medieval festival in November that I can't answer today,  I'll send you the date again tomorrow. I have known Lilly since 2009

Thirza Ember: wow Marlon, a long time!

Marlon Wayne -> en: In 2009, washago was still an Indian sim. Hence the sim name. Washago means clear water in Native American. In 2010, Lilly discovered her love of the Middle Ages, she redesigned her sim... unfortunately 1 hour is not enough to discover everything but you are always welcome, so let's Start!

Thirza Ember: yay we are ready to go!

Marlon Wayne -> en: we now enter the castle of washago

Tosha Tyran: hail to the king

Forest Azure: /me curtsies