Otherworldly

With a little (okay, a lot) of help from Del-ka Aedilis, I have started piecing together a little Renaissance-inspired household. The building used is the Townhouse Isabella from the Medici series, an elegant two-story house with beautiful stonework on the outside and different wall colours and floor textures for the various rooms. In one of the rooms, I placed the Atticus closet, the Agrippa storage chest and the Livia cabinet. There are several versions of each piece—plain, Roman ornaments and Medieval ornaments—as well as several wood colour options. Additionally, the storage chest (which can be either open or closed) comes in one empty and two filled versions, with different folded outfits in each.

To fit into the scene, I picked the Raphaelle Gown from Senzafine and the elegant Costanza d’Altavilla hair from F&M Oblivion. The necklace was a gift from Old Treasures at the last Shop & Hop.

A little while ago, Fanatik released a wonderful collection of Roman buildings. With these, you can build your very own Roman town, with houses, warehouses, temples and a forum. There was also a package of Roman roads and a gorgeous villa Rustica, for the country lord living in style outside of the town. The textures for these sets are fantastic and they are easily resized if you find the defaults a bit too large. I am showing just a few shots here, to give a sense of the overall look of the pieces, but I am thinking of doing a video walk through of a build as well.

Another piece of Roman-inspired decor is the well bearing the SPQR inscription seen in the first two shots. It is from Del-ka Aedilis and also nicely resizable for when you’re rather short by SL standards. It looks great in the forum!

The hair is from F&M Oblivion, an elaborate updo that I don’t think was intended as Roman in style but sort of could pass for some of the braided arrangements we see on busts. My dress is from TRES for We Love Role-Play, a sleek fantasy gown with a nice ornate belt detail and a lovely back. For this release, TRES has added sizes for three new bodies, Belleza Gen X and Prima Femme Busty & Petite. I am actually wearing Prima Femme Petite for this post, together with a few of the very nice body deformers that add extra versatility to the shapes you can achieve. I will be digging into this body with a full review shortly! In the meantime, check it out at FaMESHed!

A market had sprung up in front of the castle, with colourful stalls selling all sorts of wares; fruits of all kinds, large wheels of cheese, fine fabrics, and so on. There was also a space set aside where horses for sale were hitched, waiting for buyers. One of them caught her eye, a pony with a golden coat. She had bought an apple from the fruit seller for herself, but now she held it out to the pony, who took it carefully. Later, she returned with a second apple, untied the pony from the post and asked if it would come with her. Together, they walked away from the market, pausing only to eye the cheese on the way out.

The 2022 Horse Show, with everything you could possibly need for your Teeglepets and Teegle Avatars, is here. Expect more than a few posts featuring new releases from the Horse Show from now until October 2nd, when it ends. In this post, you’ve got the simple but useful apple from Multifarious (it includes a hand animation for the human avatar) as well as the beautiful Sunny coat from artMEfashion.

But I do like trying to mix it up a bit, so in this post I am also featuring new(ish) releases from F&M Oblivion and Del-ka Aedilis for We Love Role-Play and the Fantasy Room.

Under a red sky cut through by lightning, the dark priestess sought to learn the future, calling up eldritch magic to do her bidding.

I love this EEP setting (Daves HD Thunderstorms 9), it is just the kind of dark drama that this scene needed. The centerpiece is the Silver Scrying Bowl from HEXtraordinary, with the magic effects coming from Dreaming Thicket. The hair from F&M Oblivion was first out at the Hair Fair and is now available at the Fantasy Room. And my outfit? Who else could it be from but Chandra Meehan of deviousMind. Its dark, sexy and full of attitude.

They were not ready for what answered them…

F&M Oblivion has two cool fantasy hair styles at the Hair Fair with this one, called Selene, being the most spectacular. As it reminded me of horns as well as the curve of the moon, something magical seemed an obvious choice. Fortunately, I had just won a Discord giveaway from Petrichor for the very cool Kelstreia outfit (which consists of many more pieces than what I am showing) and I think it goes really well with the hair to sell the idea of perhaps a succubi or other demonic creature having been summoned. The summoning circle is from Roawenwood and includes animations both for a central figure and for people praying and summoning in the outer circle. Placing it deep within the cave system from Fanatik added an underworldly touch to the proceedings.

Be My Mannequin has a set of poses inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas out at Enchantment’s Burton-esque round. A strange choice for this summery scene, one might think, especially as I picked the pose with the snowflake prop. But I love the incongruity of this combination and the reminder that no season—or anything else—lasts forever. As usual the fatpack (called Weary King) of all three poses is event-exclusive and offers a 10% discount. Also available at Enchantment is the Helena hair by F&M Oblivion, a large and quirky updo very well suited to the theme. Here I went for a light colour and a more whimsical feel.

The lovely butterfly swarm is by deviousMind and available at We Love Role-Play in a range of colours. These can be worn with most bodies and include an optional particle effect of additional butterflies. I matched it with the butterfly and bee decorated April bikini by deviousMind.

The Engine Room is open again and it may be even more amazing than usual, posing a serious danger to any virtual wallet. I’ve been by there a few times already and I expect a few more trips as I agonize over colour choices.

My first choice for what to feature was easy, however. Chandra Meehan of deviousMind has released the Agnes clock harness and leather top which works together with a number of her other releases. I opted for combining it with the Avery set as it included both hotpants and a pair of seriously cool boots. The end result might be called boudoir steampunk?

Dreaming Thicket has a wonderful set of Venetian carnival masks available in a NextUp vendor at the Secret Garden event, in a variety of styles and colours and all for a very low price. I opted for a classic Columbina from my blogger set and managed to grab a Volto off the vendor for Ran. A bit of digging into our inventories produced some suitable Renaissance-inspired pieces from the Muses and Stitched, as well as hair for me by F&M Oblivion and boots for Ran by lassitude & ennui. The couple poses come from Nanta and Be My Mannequin and represent a couple of rare entries into the category of couple poses suitable for scenes of courtly love. More of these, please.

With a touch of magic from Enchantment’s Nutcracker round a winter saga of a beautiful princess and a dashing prince comes to life. The fairytale gown in luscious holiday-red is Louise from R3D Studio, with lovely rose ornaments anda lace drape over the arms and down the back. The hairstyle is from F&M Oblivion, an ornate updo called Star Empress. The prince wears the elegant Marquis outfit from Last Ride and his pose is one of the offerings from Be My Mannequin for the event.

When you blog events it sometimes leads to you discovering creators you have never come across before. My personal find at the SL Renaissance Festival is Wythburn Fine Furniture. The two pieces I am showing here are both nicely modelled, with good choices of textures (and you get a lot of options, too) that look extra nice with advanced lighting on and, on top of that, a selection of animations that for the most part fit historical or fantasy roleplay very well. The sits for women, for example, work well with gowns and skirts. Such as the lovely Carnation gown from the Dreaming Thicket, another release for the SL Renaissance Festival. The building is Fanatik’s imposing Stalker Castle, which has a great grand hall lined with torches on the first floor.

Remember that the SL Renaissance Festival is a charity event, raising money for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. All proceeds from the furniture is donated and the gown varies between 50% and 100% depending on colour.

Inspired by the Roman Strategy Table from Del-ka Aedilis, I created this scene of a Roman noblewoman seeing the plans laid out by her husband and then praying to their ancestors, perhaps on the eve before he goes into battle. All the decor pieces as well as the house itself are from Del-ka Aedilis Civitas series, which does a wonderful job of capturing various aspects of Roman life. Note that I did size down the house as well as the decor for this photo since my avatar is small by SL standards.

My hairstyle from F&M Oblivion is not Roman, but I thought it could pass well enough for a the style of a Roman matron, at least during some periods. And the robe from the Dreaming Thicket is more Greek than Roman, but one makes do with what one has!

I’ve tried doing portrait series before, but I always get too ambitious and too caught up in making them feel similar. So, we’ll see where I end up with this one. The genesis of the idea was to do some nice portraits for our game to spruce up the website a bit. Here, I am trying to portray Melissa “Missy” Blackwood, one of King Aegon IV’s mistresses.

To create her look, I am using LeLutka’s Erin head with alaskametro’s Ingrid skin (using the flat chest add-on since Missy was supposed to be quite slim and flat chested), which I think gives her a sweet sort of beauty that suits the description of the character. The hair is one of F&M Oblivion’s releases for Hair Fair, a style inspired by Giulia Farnese, also a famous mistress. It is a very elegant, ladylike style with a silk cap at the back. The raven jewellery is a nod to the arms of House Blackwood and I thought that the Heloise gown from Junbug could fit into Westeros well enough.

The countryside inn is rustic but reasonably clean, with a more pleasant odour than its city cousins. Even so, the woman in fine linen of bright colours and with her hennaed hair elaborately dressed looks out of place. A high class meretrix, perhaps, meeting with a man where neither of them will be known?

The Civitas series of buildings and decor from Del-ka Aedilis are fantastic for creating Roman or Romanesque locations, whether just for photos or for roleplay. For these photos I have used the Tavern and the Stable, plus the Tavern Table and various decor pieces from the Culina series to fill out the first floor of the tavern further. There’s also a second floor with rooms for travellers wishing to stay. The Stable can accommodate two horses in stalls and a couple tied outside. The build includes three horse props but if you want to use your own horses you could unlink and remove these.

The dress is from the Dreaming Thicket and the hair from F&M Oblivion. It is actually a Game of Thrones-inspired hairstyle but looks remarkably close to some Roman styles; I had never really reflected over the fact that some of the styles featured in GoT drew inspiration from what a Roman woman might wear. But given their (odd) decision to make King’s Landing Mediterranean, I suppose it fits.

Alia Baroque went all out with Renaissance decadence for the Ice & Fire event, bringing three gorgeous pieces from this Libertine that go beautifully together; the Optimo Dierum Throne, Gianicolo bench (free-standing and wall version) and Tales of Might divider. I cleared out one of the grand rooms in Fanatik’s Dungan Castle to make room for this setup and then Ran and I dressed in some of our favourite pieces from the Muses. Though not from the Ice & Fire event, I thought F&M Oblivion’s Sansa Stark-inspired hair was a suitable choice to go with my Lucrezia gown and my Fair Lady jewellery from Old Treasures.

Both the throne and the two versions of the bench offer several texture options for the seat, including marble and stone versions for the benches which allow them to be used in a garden as well. There are solo as well as couple animations and the latter include both cuddles and adult animations. The only thing I would have liked to see as far as the animations go are some more sits that work with long dresses, apart from that it is a fun selection. I particularly like the couple pose I used for the bench, which portrays them arguing.

For the current round of Redeux (which ends tomorrow), Del-ka Aedilis has released the first building in their new Medici series. As the name suggests, this series will have a Renaissance feel but it will also suit various types of fantasy roleplay. The Townhouse Cosimo is perhaps primarily intended for city builds, but I liked the idea of setting it up as a secluded manor house. Ideally, I would have wanted matching stone walls and a more elaborate garden, but that will have to be for later on. As it is, I think it turned out very romantic, a perfect place for a secret rendezvous.