Saturday, March 5, 2011

Mystara

I've been spending my Caturday looking for freebies and such for the Lucky Kitty Crew (Web) and exploring a beautiful Fantasy Role Play (RP) sim, Mystara (SLurl). Unlike other RP places I've visited lately, this one seems to be robust and thriving despite being but one region.

When you arrive you'll find a well-organized introduction in a beautiful setting. There are freebies such as clothes and then some to help you get started in RP, information for first time players, and copious details about Mystara's back story and residents. Residents of the region were always around whenever I popped in throughout the day (very crashy today) and were helpful. While it took me some reading to figure out that pixies would belong to the Mystfolk group, I was rather more interested in the Merfolk group.

The reason being that the Mer areas are spectacular. For some reason I can't figure out, I had a landmark for one part of the extensive Mer waters so when I first visited Mystara I started there, not knowing that the region was for RP. This picture is from the courtyard section and it only begins to do justice to the Mer experience. All the waterways are connected via tunnels so surface dwellers have only a hint as to the extensive realm our finned friends have. Not only are the waters beautiful, but details are abundant even in parts that could have been left bare to save prims. I even found an opening to a tavern in a cave. Clearly the Merfolk are an important part of the Mystara society.

By the looks of this castle, there is a royalty class, too. I haven't looked inside the castle yet but this picture shows that the surface area is also beautifully landscaped. Some fantasy foliage dots the landscape, but the gardeners wisely stuck with mostly "normal" flora, providing continuity across the region and keeping people grounded (pun intended) in the relatively familiar. Looking at a view like this makes me wonder how such fullness was crammed into the standard number of allowed prims. The landscape is lush while the structures are detailed inside and out.

The Western view is one of my favorites. One of my pixy alts did most of the non-Mermaid exploring today and she kept coming back to this view. The bridge you see is just a small part of an intricate and well-planned infrastructure to negotiate around the region. Also included are some very, very nice caves, tunnels, and other adapted "natural" formations. This is not the natural color of the sky, though. I fiddled with the Windlight presets for this shot and the previous picture of the castle, changing the clouds, water, and general brightness levels, too.

I plan on visiting on a weekday to see if the lag is still as bad as I found it today. Typically weekends are bad across The Grid so this might not have been the best of days to visit. And I'd also like to observe some of the RP. This is the first such place that I've visited in a long time that actually had people in playing roles. Most of what I've seen in any Role Play group has been people standing around chatting Out of Character, being (Away), or effectively being statues.

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