Otherworldly

She came to Bassett Town at dusk, driving a trader’s cart pulled by a piebald mare. There was a raven sitting on her shoulder and she held her rifle in a loving way, but she was dressed like a respectable woman, with a large cross around her neck.

Verdandi is the “middle sister” of the Norns in Norse mythology, her domain is the present and her name essentially means “that which is happening/becoming”. It is also the name of the beautiful makeup set from Seydr for the Fantasy Faire that I am wearing for this post. There’s no Norse-inspired Faireland this year, but between that makeup and the Norse Warrior tack set from Cheval D’or, a Vikingesque post was inevitable. Fortunately, I have a beautiful snowy landscape all of my own. By no means as spectacular as a Faireland, but I think it served these photos well.

I’ve come down with quite a fever, so I hope you will pardon the brevity of this post as I overestimated my remaining energy. Be My Mannequin? put out a more adult pose than they usually do for the XXX Event and of course I had tackle that challenge! It also gave me an excellent opportunity to show off the latest stockings by Luxuria (and nothing else!).

The faerie leads you through a flowering field towards a secret door beneath a hill. Will you dare to follow her? If you do, will you ever emerge into the world again and will a hundred years have passed in a day?

We Love Role-Play is open for another round and I love how the releases from deviousMind and lassitude & ennui go together (you’ll see the latter in the second photo) for a dryad/faerie look. To find the perfect spot to photo this, I paid a long overdue visit to Ode and found it as lovely as I remembered.

deviousMind’s April outfit is a bikini made up of flowers, butterflies and bees. You can choose between three levels of coverage for both top and bottom. The Dryad shoes from lassitude & ennui are low, lace-up boots that look as if they’re made from leaves. Both the bikini and the shoes are for Maitreya Lara only.

Both poses used are from Be My Mannequin? The first is Pandora (includes the key prop) from the Pandora’s Box fatpack and the second is Vastness from the Star Gazer fatpack.

Need those perfect pants for layering under coats and corsets or tucking into boots? Then these striped pants by lassitude & ennui, available as appliers or as BOM, have you covered. Well, half of you, anyway. They come in 7 colour versions for 120L$ per pair or a mere 360L$ for the fatpack and you can find them at the Engine Room together with other cool Steampunk-inspired items.

The sleek, elegant hair is Wasabi’s latest release, Delaney, which is out at Uber. It represent a (trial) return to offering single colour packs. You can get this hair in just one shade range (about 60 colors) for 275L$ or you can get the Absolute Pack for 400L$ as usual. This hair offers four style options.

I don’t often impulse buy skins, but a charming face and a good cause sold me on Zlata by Leronso, a Ukranian creator, at the Skin Fair. The creator will be using all profits from selected products (such as the Zlata skin) to support help organisations in Ukraine and that is of course something I am more than happy to contribute to in the current situation. Zlata is a pretty, subtly freckled skin that comes with red brows or without brows. Since I rather like red hair, I kept her as a redhead, but these brows are the new ones from alaskametro. I also went over to their main store to pick up a body skin; these come in fatpacks of all the tones and there’s a few different variants to choose from depending on the type of shading you prefer.

Wasabi’s new Coconut hair is cuter than my usual style, but I really love it with this face. Coconut comes in two variants and with optional, unrigged bangs.

The saucy, inviting pose is the latest from Be My Mannequin and it is out for the Limited event, which means only 120 copies will be sold. Also available at the event and limited to 120 copies are two special fatpacks: The Boss Is On A Roll and The Fall Of A Rebel Angel.

Be My Mannequin has released three single poses meant for gazing up at the sky; a stand, a sit and a lay. I loved the mood of them but struggled with finding the right setting. That is, until I recalled the Utaraa set from deviousMind for We Love Role-Play. These faceted crystals made me think of reflections and so I went and setup the lay pose, Vastness, in the water and started playing around with the EEP settings for both the sky and the water.  I am very happy with the final result, I think it conveys the sense of Vastness very well, almost letting water and sky merge into one.

Zaara is participating in the current round of We Love Role-Play with the beautiful Umrao ensemble consisting of anarkali (dress), churidar (pants) and dupatta (scarf). For the first time, she’s offering both Maitreya and Legacy fits, including Petite and Perky versions. The colours and textures are impeccable (just look at the embroidery on the chest, such exquisite detail) and with the fatpack you are able to mix and match all the pieces in a variety of ways.

The Estrella skin by alaskametro is not new, but an updated version that also uses her updated skin tones will be available at the Skin Fair when it starts on the 11th (click here to learn how to get early access today). If you have already bought the skin, you can of course redeliver it to get the new version, you don’t have to buy it again. I really like the nose and the lips on this skin, they’re very nicely shaped. The Gel eyebrows are also from alaskametro and these are a Skin Fair exclusive. They include six colours (plus they are tintable) and both regular and EvoX fits.

Speaking of Skin Fair, I was hoping there’d be some interesting skins for the SLUV, but when I looked through the booths it was all EvoX among the new releases. I will need to give it a closer look, but it does seem like the market has become completely EvoX dominated. As someone who likes to use a variety of heads, its disheartening.

The lonely outpost was guarded by a single warrior, but one of surpassing bravery and ferocity. When the skies turned red like blood and the seas froze, making the outpost reachable across the ice, she knew it was time to set out for war.

Sigrun the Winter Valkyrie is a new creation from deviusMind, available at the current round of Epiphany, which now means a regular release rather than a gacha (or any of its replacements).  Be a fashionable Valkyrie in fur, leather and dragon scales, including heels tall enough to use as a weapon if need be.

The build is yet another part of the Laketown set from Del-ka Aedilis, a smaller house with just an open platform at the lower level and a single room on the second floor. I liked the idea of using it as a lookout because of the focus being on the second floor and the fact that there’s a walkway that goes all around the upper area.

For the poses I used Nantra’s Brynhildr set, though I switched out the included horse for my Teeglepet Pegasus (in a wingless makeover).

I am not sure which is the cosiest and laziest day of the year for me, Christmas Day or New Year’s Day. Probably Christmas Day given all the leftovers available and the lingering food coma. Poking around in SL and taking some pretty pictures is about as intensive as things have gotten today. I wish I had a fireplace IRL to curl up in front, but I had to settle for enjoying it through my avatar. And while the Mangiafuoco Fireplace from Fantavatar & Moonstruck is pretty cool, I am not quite sure it would fit in my living room. ;)

HollyDays is a new release from deviousMind that you can pick up for L$50 per colour for Wanderlust Weekend. Very festive and with two options for the holly pasties, a covered and a peekabo version. The thigh highs from Luxuria match it nicely in colour and theme; these are available at the Arcade and also come as tights. The classic updo is the latest style from Wasabi, an unrigged alpha hair with options for bangs and streaks.

Snow is still on my mind and while it likely will disappear in a few days, it is still snowing outside my window tonight. So, I made it snow in SL as well, using the Shimmering Snow from Dysfunctionality as the final touch on this scene. It started with the “It Pours” pose from Be my Mannequin, part of a set of dynamic poses for The Grid event. I placed it in front of the dramatic Ice Portal from RatzCatz, another item from the SL Christmas Expo and left myself staring up at the thick snowfall. The very cute and Christmassy outfit is Dancer from deviousMind, available in the new NextUp “gacha” format.

The 11th edition of the SL Christmas Expo has opened its doors today and you don’t want to miss out on visiting this event between the 3rd and the 14th of December. There’s a total of 15 regions filled with merchants, breedables and entertainment such as auctions, music and other special events, offering visitors many ways to help raise money for the American Cancer Society with a special focus on helping children with cancer. You can find the list of participating merchants, a schedule of events and much more at the official website. For my part, I will do my best to entice to you to visit by giving you some looks at a few of the things you can buy at the Expo!

The Fantasy Room is a new event focusing on fantasy-inspired items, from accessories to buildings and everything in-between. For the first round, I am showing one of two releases from Del-ka Aedilis. The baker’s table, part of their series of medieval kitchen furnishings, features a nice setup of ingredients for baking and an in-progress dough. There are no animations loaded into the table but I used one from another kitchen set to give the appearance of kneading the dough.

My dress is from Tres and I love the little details on this style, such as the wrinkling of the bodice at the clasps and the fine embroidery along the neckline and at the cuffs. It is both rustic and pretty, something for a reasonably well-off farmer or a merchant. The bodies supported are Kups, Legacy and Maitreya (including Petite), but with the right alphas it should work on Slink too.  The dress was available at the previous round of We Love Role-Play, but should hopefully be in the mainstore for Tres soon if it isn’t already there.

It is high time for some seasonally appropriate witchery. The Come, Behold Me! pose from Be My Mannequin? is suitably dramatic and here it is embellished with little flames in each hand and a magical aura swirling up from the ground. The altar behind me is from ContraptioN and was acquired for a mere L$50 last Friday, quite the bargain, and it features several texture options for the altar cloth as well as on/off switches for the lights. The build is from a previous Nomad gacha, a stone building with tall windows that works great as a small chapel.

The striking Morticia hair from Magika got even better when I realised it offers the option of a separate colour on a small section of the hair. By picking the multitone white and black texture for that section I was able to get this effect of white streaks at the front of the hair, which I absolutely love and really wish that more styles had. In this particular case, it also sets off the Herne Crown from Bliensen + MaiTai beautifully. You will find this lovely piece at the Narrative even and it offers several metal options via a HUD.

Old Treasures makes beautiful, historically-inspired pieces, at first accessories and furniture and now also clothing. The jewellery is of course particularly appealing to me, as I love to hoard shiny things. The Kleos Necklace and Earrings may be my favourites from Old Treasures so far, especially as jewellery inspired by Ancient Greece is not exactly common in Second Life. Gemstones polished into beads rather than cut and precious metals decorated with fine etchings and little metal beads fit well with the kind of work done in the ancient Mediterranean. I am showing the set in gold with red gems, but the texture change HUD offers a choice of five metals and, for the necklace, five gemstones. You can get the necklace at the current round of We Love Role-Play. The earrings were at the Warehouse Sale but since that ended on the 18th they should either be in the mainstore or on their way to the mainstore.