Otherworldly

A lonely keep sits deep in the woods, hard to reach in the summer and nigh impossible during the winter when, as now, the snow blankets everything. Within, a solitary occupant who seems to prefer the isolation that his home provides.

We Love Role-Play usually has quite a few finds for male as well as female avatars. For this round, Stitched has released a nice outfit with a tunic and pants. There are two versions of both: a regular fit and a sash-fit of the tunic and a regular fit and a boot-fit of the pants. You can also turn off parts of the tunic, such as collar and sleeves. The supported bodies are Belleza Jake and Legacy Male.

The keep itself, of which you’re just seeing part of the interior, is from Nocturna Deed. It is built on quite a large scale, so I feel a little small next to the windows. However, the fireplace from Angelicus fits in quite well. The mirror from Constraint looks a little small viewed right next to the windows, but its all about the angles you choose to use for photos.

Oh, and the head and the skin? From LeLutka’s 12 Days of Christmas giveaway, which has become quite the thing to look forward to each December.

The inn was situated far out on a remote peninsula, with vast woods to travel through before one reached it. However, it was said to serve the best ale in the kingdom to the lonely travellers who would make their way there. How and why that had come to be, no one knew for sure.

Well, I needed some little explanation for why the tavern by NeonSheep—one of several related releases for the November round of We Love Role-Play—seems to be situated out in the middle of nowhere. ;) The tavern building comes in three different versions, with different layouts, and the other releases from NeonSheep provide furnishings and food props such as the oven, the various chairs and the barrels, mugs and plates of food. There are many, many more furnishings and props that I am showing here.

My lonely traveller is wearing two other WLRP releases. First, the Herleif outfit from Rakshasa, consisting of tunic, belt and breeches. As always very customisable in the fatpack, with tons of texture options. Over this outfit he is wearing the Noa cape from Stitched, which comes in two sizes for each body so it can be worn over clothing or over nothing but the body. I love how well these two items went together.

Oh, and look at the Chesnut hair from the Truth Collective, it works on a male avatar too.

I love the new dress from Tres for We Love Role-Play. Nephi is a scripted gown available for Inithium Khara, Legacy and Maitreya Lara that offers various states of undress through a Touch-menu. My favourite is this version, with the bodice pulled down to reveal one breast. However, the top only and bottom only versions have an added benefit—you can wear two dresses and get the top and bottom in different colours! I am wearing the Khara size and don’t forget that We Love Role-Play has a raffle for 5 Khara bodies that you can join by wearing the group tag and clicking one of the raffle boards at the event.

Also from We Love Role-Play is the Helvi forehead chain by NeonSheep, a very delicate and pretty piece of jewellery that I have included a close-up of below. It comes with a HUD for texture changes.

Even Ran picked up some new clothing from We Love Role-Play, after I pointed him to the Colorblock Doublet from Stitched. For male RP clothing, Stitched is definitely one of the best sources and this is a really nicely made doublet. I just wish someone was making this kind of clothing in female fits too. ;)

And though you don’t see too much of it, the interior is from Tirrany Designs Stylized Medieval Tavern. I really like the look of this build, but it is quite large and a little difficult for me to get good use of given my attempts at more realistic avatar sizes.

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.

I picked up this couple pose from Serendipity some weeks ago, but I didn’t have a clear idea in mind for it. Then Ran went shopping for hair and came back with No.Sand from No.Match while I got my hands on the Dynasty avatar set from Fallen Gods, this year’s Fortune Teller prize. I dressed up in part of the Dynasty outfit, though instead of wearing the (very cool) skin included I added the Temptation tattoo that is a free gift at Fallen Gods booth at the Halloween Shop & Hop. For the rest of Ran’s outfit, we looked to Stitched, and for the decor I used Dreaming Thicket and Paper Moon.

Journeying alone, she keeps to the less known roads, always with her bow and arrows within easy reach on her horse. The slight, elegant mare is a little too fine to pass as a common traveller’s horse and her own garb might also arouse too much interest. On this evening, she passes near the eastern shore of the peninsula. Some distance out into the water, a pair of houses on tall stilts are visible, their lights beckoning in an inviting fashion.

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.

It is only November, but I am starting to crave snow—especially instead of rain, rain and more rain! Right now, I have to settle for the virtual kind, however, so when Del-ka Aedilis sent out a blogger package with a wintry theme, I changed over one of my sky landscapes to match. Fortunately, Studio Skye recently released a 4 Season Bolt-On for the Woodland Path, which came in handy for this scene. The gown from Senzafine may not quite be warm enough on its own, but I rather like it in combination with this cape, an older release from Stitched.

Yesterday, the inaugural round of Hullabazoo opened. I think they have done an excellent job of describing their event on their page, so I am going to quote them:

“HullabaZoo is all about animals and creatures.  It’s more than a shopping event and will have classes, a quest, contests, photo ops, parties, and more.  Best of all we’re raising money for a great cause!  HullabaZoo is an annual event and we would love it to become the BIGGEST creature event of the year - one that you look forward to, get excited about and look forward to it’s return each year!

HullabaZoo isn’t a mainstream fashion event with an “animals” theme so you won’t find zebra-print nails, or paw print T’shirts for human avatars.  You will find creature avatars, pets, rideables, props and mods as well as accessories and mods for those creatures.”

The chosen charity for the 2020 event is the Jane Goodall Institute. I’ve only had time for a quick visit so far, but it looks like a great setup and I am really interested in checking some of the things they are planning before the event ends on March 31st. During that quick visit, however, I had time to check out the new Dressage System from Mythril and that is what this post (and, more importantly, video) is all about.

La vie en pose, the naughty edition, is now open. Infiniti is taking part with a set of single poses and a couple pose using a riding crop, and this time I elected to focus on the couple pose. It is called Behave and I love the dynamic it creates between the characters—just who is in charge here?

For the outfits as well as the decor, both Ran and I dug into our inventories. Ran is wearing Stitched and I am wearing Roawenwood, whereas the decor is a mix of Roawenwood and Senzafine.

This weekend, Dutchie released four collar styles (plus a freebie leash handle that works with them), each packed with a carefully curated selection of bento animations. There’s 42 solo collar animations and 6 couple animations. The collars also include a bound walk, crawl walk, ankle lock and neck lock. Each style costs L$798. The best way to show the collars was with a video, so of course I brought Ran on to hold the leash and help me demonstrate the functionality of these collars. Hope you enjoy!

Old Treasures is a fairly newly launched brand which already has released a small but very well-made collection of pieces inspired by history and/or fantasy. For this post, Ran and I selected three pieces to showcase; a wearable for each of us and a piece of furniture. The easiest choice was definitely the throne, released for the GoT-inspired round of Enchantment a while back. It is called the Archon of the Fourteen Flames Throne and well…the company we formed a couple of years ago happens to be called Fourteen Flames. We definitely appreciate it when someone makes pieces inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones but uses more subtle naming schemes like this.

ContraptioN and Hotdog have a fanastic collaboration out at The Men’s Department, a set of fencing swords & poses as well as a set of fencing attire (not shown). This was definitely an excellent reason to do another video; even the poses are static it allowed me to show a much wider variety than I could in a couple of images. But of course I needed to take some cool shots as well, so you will find those after the video together with the full credits for all items worn and used. This post also features new outfits from the Dreaming Thicket and Stitched.

While I don’t roleplay in Second Life (instead, you’ll find me on Blood of Dragons MUSH), I am most definitely a roleplayer. I also like capturing what you might call “roleplay situations” in my fantasy blogging and I often find myself frustrated by the lack of poses for such scenarios. Enter the Roleplay HUD from Mythril, which offers a wonderful variety of poses and animations for roleplayers and photographers looking for something different.

In addition to the HUD, I also showcase Wasabi’s two new hairs for the Fantasy Faire as well as a neat outfit from Stitched.

While many of you are celebrating Christmas, the 25th of December is the second laziest day of the year in Sweden, with most everyone recovering from food-induced coma after eating way too much Christmas food on the 24th as we celebrate on the eve rather than the day. This left me with plenty of time free today (leftovers for dinner, yay) and after visiting the stables where I ride I decided to continue with the horse theme in Second Life to review three of the five new full body mods for the Teegle Bento Horse Avatar; the Baroque Horse mod, the Light Horse mod and the Pony mod. Please note that you do need to own the base avatar to use these body mods.

I had also planned to review the Spanish Walk and Spanish Trot from Teegle, but I wasn’t able to get these working with the riding system, only with the horse moving on its own. I just haven’t messed around enough with the AO to know whether this is something you can work around or not, but since the horse is more geared towards being used as a stand-alone avatar as opposed to a riding horse, some things don’t work when it is being ridden.