I’d know the handiwork of my old SL-mate anywhere!
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Category Archives: SL Building
Good Lord! Someone’s stolen my house!
Well now! I know I’ve been out-of-world for as while, but this is just rude!
A re-post: Salazar Jack and The Great Erase.
Aeons ago, I had the idea of cataloguing the various creation tales of SL. This never came off and a page on this blog I created for that purpose remained unedited for several years. Well today I’m deleting it, but not without copying across the information on Salazar Jack’s Great Erase. This information, or rather the links within it, can not be gaurenteed but I’m loathe to lose any nuggets and slivers of his tale and so I’m copying it across to this post. Enjoy and then head over to his blog and twitter feeds to find out more.
- Blog (it seems to have undergone a [further] shrinkage of its own and is now just one page
) - Sal’s Twitter
- Kahruvel’s Twitter
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The Creation Files
Where did this world come from? What existed before the Lindens flicked the switch and opened the doors? Nothing? Void? Or another world entirely? A few people, I am one of them, are asking these questions and seeking their answers. Here’s your handy cut out and keep guide to the creation beliefs I’ve come across.
Salazar Jack and The Great Erase.
Salazar is actually a true resident of this world having been born in the one that existed before SL but was lost in 1969 (that’s by our calendar, I’m not sure what that would have been in the pre-SL world of Sal’s family) in what came to be known as The Great Erase.
The world of Salazar’s family, called Urtahra, was a bustling, populated one that was wiped almost entirely from the face of existence by a massive energy wave that deleted all in it’s path and erased the whole world. Only a few people survived and led by Salazar’s great grandma they escaped to Earth where they made lives for themselves never suspecting that they would ever be able to return to their home-world.
That was until Linden Lab opened up Second Life in 2003. Salazar and the other survivors have slowly made their way back and found in it ghostly echoes of their former world. From the re-built city of Nova Albion to the replanted forest of Kahruvel, Salazar has dedicated himself to exploring and reclaiming as much of the old world as he can find.
Even now, five and a half years down the line, finds are still being made such asMagallen Linden’s discovery of the Nautilus landmass that Sal’s great gran remembers tales of from centuries before her own time.
So the world we know as Second Life is built on the reclaimed ruins of an earlier world destroyed in some still-unexplained disaster. Given that the Linden’s have admitted they don’t know how they missed Nautilus and have never found a cause for The Great Erase, we must all worry that this new world is not as secure as we would like to imagine…
RESPONSES
Re: The Great Erase (From Salazar Jack)
“Only a few people survived and led by Salazar’s great grandma they escaped to Earth where they made lives for themselves never suspecting that they would ever be able to return to their home-world.”
In truth, more than a few survived. Quite a few. Acording to my mom and grandparents, over 70 people arrived with us in Kansas State on Earth, out of the hundreds that went through our portal that day. We never learned where the remaining souls went. And those that arrived with us eventually dispersed. Contact with them gradually diminished over the years. Life was quite difficult actually as the United States government was naturally very interested in our group whose sudden arrival was accompanied with little explanation. Most of us went into hiding to avoid scrutiny. A few, if the stories are correct, were apprehended and not heard from again. It was fortunate that the location we ported into was so rural and remote. It allowed some time for us to make plans before authorities became aware of the situation.
After returning here there were some stories that surfaced of others who had escaped. Like this one…
http://forums.secondlife.com/showpost.php?p=406300&postcount=42
I’m not sure if the portal they used was they same one we did. There may have been more than my folks were aware of.
Bryce Carter’s Office… take 1
I’ve been working on and off to recreate a Marlowe-esque office for my Bay City PI, Bryce Carter. This is it so far (although the av’s look and AO have changed now)
This it the old Bryce look:
This is the new (the one above looked very odd in profile):
I’ll keep tinkering and posting 
Ghosts in the deep…
Note: This post was first written in July 10 but not posted until February 11 and as such I can’t promise the area is still haunted – pop over and see
My mate Nish first alerted me to ghosts in SL a couple of years ago – she was hunting them back then, looking for dots on the map where there were no people or finding avs that were trapped between planes. Over the years I’d forgotten about her quest until a few weeks ago when I happened to notice an odd collection of dots in a strange, old mainland sim called Cyclops.
Cyclops lies at the very top of the north west corner of Sansara, the first continent, and is the start of a short run of single-width sims that links Sansara with the second continent of Heterocera (formed by a meteor strike and discovered by Magellan, dontcyaknow). There is nothing there – it’s just sea, ocean without islands or ships or anything. Hell, there’s not even any mole built ‘stuff’ in the sea (the Moles and LDPW always sem to bring the seas they work in to life, like they did in Murray) so what the hell were the dots all about? LittleLostLinden has an interesting theory about Linden Lab tolerating bots as they pump the ‘online now’ numbers up… could these be bots like the ones I found near the Valley of The Burros in Nutsedge? Or could they be poor, lost souls condemned to wander (or rather stand stock still on) the bottom of the ocean forever? You decide…
Something odd is going on here – look at this flying yacht!
Loki Eliot’s New Babbage RP – The Black Heart
Loki Eliot’s been a busy lad of late – he’s rebuilt his Goonie Island and started up a new Babbage-based RP called The Black Heart. Like his previous Shadow of 13, The Black Heart has its own website (http://babbagechronicles.co.uk/) and it was during my search for this site I found a posting on his personal blog I’d missed and boy does it give a great run down of his previous stories. Oddly enough, given my love of shared RP in SL, I’ve never taken part in one of his – despite stumbling across them all in one way or another(1). I don’t know why this is, but I put it down to three things:
1) I’ve always wanted to do my own thing – at the times I’ve come across Loki’s RP I’ve been busy doing my own stuff and that brings me to…
2) I simply don’t have enough time! I never have had enough online time to do what I want to – not just in-world, but externally as well. This blog is as important to me as my stuff in-world. Some of you might not see why and that’s fine because to me it is and that’s all that matters. I can be in-world more but write less, or write more and be in-world less – the line has to be drawn and quite often writing and blogging win out. But under all that lies the fact that…
3) I’ve never felt part of the Babbage community. I tried back in late 2007, but it’s always seen like the preserve of builders and creators and so I just have never followed its development much. Same goes for Caledon really. In fact all steampunk. In truth I don’t much care for Steampunk – it just doesn’t interest me in the same way Star Trek/Wars doesn’t (2).
Anyhoo because I didn’t follow Babbage and because I had ideas to do my own stuff and because I have never been in-world as much as I feel I need to be I tended to miss the stuff that went on in the telling of the tales and that sense of ‘going it alone’ doesn’t do it for me (see my recent rant about Call of Duty Black Ops). This is why in the recent Steelhead RP I wanted to collect all the posts from everyone and make a “Story In Full” list so the whole thing felt like a collaborative effort.
Yet my personal foibles aside (3) I really want to get involved in this one, partly because I know some folks already involved (Myrtil and Miss Chernov) and partly because I want to learn more about multiparticipatory RP (as opposed to the other type of multiparticipatory activity this blog is famed for) and who better to learn from than the master (4). I’m sure that in a year from now Steelhead will be putting on this kind of RP – I have, you’ll be unsurprised to hear, several good ideas I’ve already pitched to the bosses ;-D
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(1) This post (https://headburroantfarm.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/in-other-news-murder-most-foul/) is from 3 years ago and shows how even then I was looking for a RP experience (as well as being quite keen on eldrich horror, a fact that hasn’t – and I doubt ever will – change).
(2) I still haven’t found my perfect world in SL, but when I do it’s going to be horror and/or 1940s LA detective noir based
(3) None of which have anything to do with Loki, who I’ve never met, or his excellent work, which I love.
(4) Although his building, texturing & scripting skills will always be beyond me – Loki is the perfect package for RP!
p.s. You can read more of my RP waffle posts here.
Ilia’s old place…
Way back in June I visited my mate Ilia’s place in Kishijoten – at the time she and a friend were tending to some rather charming ruins they had found of the old Forest of Lochraven (as well as to some equally charming sheep). At the time I meant to post the following pictures with a SLURL so you could pop over and see, but one thing lead to another and I didn’t get around to it, but hey! that would be OK I reasoned, after all Ilia was older than me (in SL – in RL she’s a mere babe-in-arms) and the ruins would be there for ages – the post could wait until after Steelhead.
Then she flippin’ went and deleted it as she left SL! Well I felt a right plonker then didn’t I! Anyhoo, never let it be said I’ll let a good post go to waste (and as Ilia is thankfully back in the warm embrace of her virtual mates I feel justified in reminding her of the gorgeousness she created! Hey Ilia – head over to Steelhead Nevermoor and take a look – you’ll love it!) I present you with the three pictures I took in my all to brief visit…
Baaaaaaa!
Why not head over and ask whoever you find if they’ve seen the old ruins of Lochraven – confuse the buggers, go on! 
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kishijoten/40/190/33
Come visit Steal Head’s Lair (before I delete it!)
Hi all – I don’t know how many of you managed to see the Lair I set up in Gia’s fallen rail car, but as I’ll be deleting the content in a week or so I thought you might like to visit – maybe even post your pictures over on the Ning in my “I’ve Seen Steal Head’s Lair!” thread?
Anyhoo, here’s the SLURL (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Steelhead%20Shanghai/163/86/28) so get your Sunday best on, polish off your box brownie and head on over to Shangahi – watch out for all the gory heads when you swim through the submerged entrance!
p.s. A HUGE thanks to Gia for allowing it to stay this long and for her kind help ‘destroying’ her gorgeous rail car just for the storyline.
Come see Nevermoor…
Steelhead is expanding again and the seventh sim (the third since I arrived 18 months ago) has just opened! Nevermoor is a dark gothic forest full of forgotten ruins, over-grown grottos and majestic elven statues – and it’s renting now! Pop in-world here to explore and drop TotalLunar Eclipse an IM to find out more about renting (or read about it here on the Ning).
Now follow me and Frank as we braved the dark, creepy ruins of Nevermoor…
And here’s the man behind it all – Lunar
New Library & Rail Tunnel in Steelhead
A week or more ago I took one of my early morning rides out of St Helens and into Steelhead proper (I was looking for a store to rent, but more of that another time) when I happened across some exciting additions to the city. First off I was very excited to see that work has started on the ambitious under sea railway tunnel to link the old 17 to the steamlands.
I don’t know what the captain of the Clockhaven Queen thinks about it, but I can’t imagine he’s pleased… Still, the tunnel is an architectural marvel!
And speaking of architectural marvels I note that work has finished on the new public library.
It’s a grand old affair and real feather in out city’s cap, but I will miss the old library and its gardens…
Pop over to Steelhead and take a look for yourself: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Steelhead/122/184/25
p.s. I found this photo of the old train station area from December 2007 – shows how much Lunar & Tensai have developed it in three years (hat tip to Krystine Qinan and her brilliant photostream):
