Black Kite

After my visit to 2304 Rain last week I was in the mood for a sunnier destination next. I saw a picture taken at Black Kite and decided to hop over to have a look for myself. I could keep on my wellies, because Black Kite is another flooded sim.
However, maybe walking on bare feet is a better option, because the place breathes the atmosphere of a tropical beach. Which is quite an achievement if you realise that there's not one palm tree or sand beach on the whole sim.





As you can learn from the note that you receive on arrival, Black Kite is a residential sim, owned by theblackcloud Oh. Long bleached wooden piers take you to all corners. And who wouldn't want to live in a house like this:





I love the clear design of Black Kite and the well chosen objects that decorate the landscape. It is a nice mixture of realistic buildings and not-possible-in-real-life objects, like fluorescent plants, giant bottles or seat bubbles. The whole makes the sim a haven of tranquility.

Photographers are explicitly invited by the owner to use the sim for their work. It's possible to rez own objects (auto return in 30 minutes) and the place is scattered with objects to sit on. The water and sky with the well chosen buildings make a great background indeed.



And yes, the kite from the sim's name is there too. It only doesn't look black when you see it through a bubble.

Two times happy

Last week I coincidentally teleported to Happy Mood and my jaw dropped: what an amazing sim! I'd not been there for maybe three years and it's completely different from what I remember.
Main shop and biggest part of the sim are set up as a forest area. Many great forests have appeared in SL past years, but this one's superb by its light and colours.



The soft tones and dots of light make you feel like walking through an impressionist painting.



It's not just sweet pastels, though. Some spots have dark foliage or ground surface, which is good for great contrasts with the lush planting. 



The Happy Mood sim is truly worth its name: walking there made me feel very happy indeed.
But there's more to discover.

From the shopping area I saw a bright shimmering in the distance.  The neighbouring sim, called Cadanza,  appears to be good for a second portion of happiness. In the middle of the water arises a nearly sim sized, shiny tree. You may have to turn up draw distance to get a full view of it.



Between the roots you will find a wonderful scenery, mostly in black and white tones, that you can enjoy from a tiny leaf-shaped boat.
I could spend hours in these two happy mood sims without getting bored.

Coastal Waterways - from West to East

A couple of months ago the time had come to move house again. Ugly building in my old neighbourhood had increased to an unbearable level and besides that, eventually the wish was born to be able to moor a boat and sail to Blake Sea.

After ample investigation I found a mainland spot that satisfied all my requirements: not too big and not too small, waterfront, relatively affordable, protected coastline and possibility to sail to Blake. That is... in theory. In practice I crash before I'm halfway.

But who cares, when the Coastal Waterways have their own attractions, as I discovered lately?
I'm living on the far West end, on a sim called Wildspitze,  and on my struggle to sail against the default East wind into the direction of Blake, I've found some small but pretty islands, apparently built by the Linden Moles.

You can reach them with your own boat, but unfortunately there are only few rez zones. As an alternative, there's a 'guided tour',  a tiny pod that automatically sails along the islands. The first spot where it starts once in a while (I think every 30 minutes), is on Duna.

First stop after Duna is Redoubtable, with a lovely lighthouse on a rock.



The journey continues to a cluster of islands on Intrepide, called the 'Tiny Isle of Mist". Who ever played the game Myst, will find some familiar objects here. And indeed, there is a small quest on this mysterious island!



It won't take much time to solve the mystery and then you can sail on to Brillant and have a peek at the Fairy Cove that's hidden there.



Last stop before heading North is an island on Genereux, with a very particular village, where tilted vases seem to be the houses for some tiny folk.

Expecto Advocato

Visit the Expecto sim as long as you can. The latest rage in SL is bound to be sued off the grid soon enough. 

"Mischief Managed SL are a non for profit Roleplaying group inspired by the Harry Potter books by J K Rowling, played within the metaverse of Second Life." 

Despite this disclaimer, I am pessimistic about the future of this truly fantastic sim. HP-licenses are harder to get than audiences with the pope and the US president on the same day. And - let's not beat around the bush - the truly magnificent castle build is a clear copy of what we know from the movies.

That said, the sim itself and the castle is among the best you will see in SL. Constructed almost entirely from mesh components, the quality of detail and texturing is amazing. The sim - if it survives - will act as roleplay environment for a post-Potter curriculum of wizardry. Right now it is on "public beta" - rumor says it will be closed to the public once regular roleplay starts.

Good luck, girls and boys.

Knights Templar Fortress

Hoovering above the shops on the Dream of Passion sim, you can find a beautiful castle. There are many castles in Second Life, and some of them may be bigger, more fantastic or more alive that this Knights Templar Fortress, yet this one has a few things that make it worth to visit.

The landing point is very well chosen. Immediately after arriving you get an impressive view on the castle, its many towers rising up high above you. The position on a hill top and the half-timbered house remind of some typical German castles in the atomic world.



The gate at the end of the bridge opens with a loud rattling of chains and you'll enter a cosy court. From there many squeaking doors invite you to explore the castle. The doors are not the only sounds in the building: when you climb to the higher parts of the fortress, you can hear the wind howl around the crenels.



The rooms inside are scarcely furnitured; just enough to give an impression of their use. There's a King's Hall and an office. Next to the defence walls are rooms for the guards with a table to play the dice. The cellars are not hiding a BDSM dungeon - as too common in SL - but filled with stock.





The best thing of this castle however, is that you can go everywhere. The towers and buildings  are not just massive prims, but real buildings that you can enter with doors and stairways. One easily gets lost in the many corridors. All the windows - also the observation-holes in the walls and towers - are real: not just textures on the wall, but actual holes that you can look through.
Besides that, most corridors and stairways are built with enough headspace to cam around easily. The camera seldom gets stuck. Nonetheless the fortress has realistic dimensions. Someone's done a very good job here.


SLURL: Knights Templar Fortress