Back to Zen City/Nowtown… August 6, 2009

A nighttime mediation moment for Baker Bloch on “Bill Hill”. Very nice.

Then after a couple of other stops, it’s on to the Zen City/Nowtown area again. I don’t think I’ve included a picture of Zen City yet on this blog so here’s one for ya. Very deserted. What you see here is about what you get. To remind: this is the “city” Little Robert Plant Variant supposed destroyed, maybe several times, and, alternately, with his own, bare raging hands, or, moving to the other extreme, with atomics — think Hiroshima on a very miniature scale. This is just north by northeast of Nowtown, where the Plant Plantation was supposedly located. Apparently there was some intense rivalry going on between the two communities during Plant’s childhood, with Zen City being the more modern and urban of the two, and considering Nowtown and its residents backwards and hick in comparison. Perhaps this is sorta like the rivalry between Pixley (“urban”) and Hooterville (“rural”) in the Green Acres sitcom from the mid to late 60s.

Baker Bloch also notices that the asphalt road connecting the two communities has been mostly pulled up, perhaps another aspect of the ongoing rivalry — just a guess; may have nothing to do with the rivalry, especially since Zen City seems completely abandoned anyhow.

Baker revisits the stream supposedly marking the southern boundary of the Plant Plantation in Nowtown. Does this now have something to do with Unnasty Branch in Bluedrake on a completely different continent? We may find out soon enough.

Baker now above the Fyre Maven Temple at dawn, where Robert Plant Variant attended cultish religious ceremonies while growing up in Nowtown. In fact, the ceremonies were compulsory attendance for community members, with death by dismemberment a possible punishment. Plant said this would not be accomplished by the community itself but the huge Fyre Maven bird. Plant also adds that the bird may just have been an old wizard named Maven in disguise. But Plant also did not see anyone dismembered by the bird. Nor did he ever see the giant Maven bird itself, nor the supposed wizard behind the guise.

“We just took it on faith that it was there on top of the mountain somewhere and never went to that place. We also took it on faith that we could be killed, torn limb to limb even, if we did not attend regular worship service in its temple, supposedly built by its own wings, er, hands. What-ever. So I knew that if I ever stopped attending services that I’d have to leave Nowtown forever, which is what happened. Now I didn’t go to Zen City — that wasn’t an option since I’d destroyed it and all. I’m not saying how many times this happened but I will admit it happened once at least. And I won’t say how it happened — you’ll have to speculate amongst yourselves, Bakers, for that.”

Interesting fellow this Robert Plant Variant is. So he supposedly left for Sternberg and with the tube which may be the same as the atomics. But let’s save that for another time.

I think I’ve already outlined the basic division of Jeogeot continent region that Baker and Karoz have forged for the purposes of future explorations. The Big E or, looking from the opposite direction, the Big Schwa sitting on the northeast corner of the Noru properties now, helped the two define this boundary. Basically Karoz’s territory is found on the “Schwa” side, or 13 of the 14 southern sims of the Korean Channel that the letter, overall, represents. Baker’s territory covers the northern 12 sims of the same channel picture on the “E” side. In-between sits a square of 4 sims (Redazillion, Lemongrass, Bestimax, Qui Quon) which is so called “Neutral Territory”. These are pictured on the front of the letter, and technically not a part of either side, “E” or “Schwa”.

However, very close to this neutral territory, just south of Bestimax, is also found the island pictured below, which is technically in Karoz’s realm but, well, let’s save that for later as well. But anyways, Baker Bloch decides to visit this smaller, green rectanguly island near the middle of the Korean Channel this same night, and surprisingly finds it inhabited, and by none other than Head Mole Michael Linden himself. according to the Land description.

And here’s a picture of the same island on the very top of Big E/Big Schwa, completely bereft of objects apparently. And the texture was only created about a month ago. I also noticed today that the Moles are building a huge bridge across the southern expanse of the Korean Channel. More on that soon as well!

“E” Exhibit, 03 July 6, 2009

Moving up to floor 3 of Big E, we now run into more pictures from the Korean Channel, like this nice dawn shot from the quite green, rolling hills of Xilted again.

And then of Karoz in Kenfield on floor 4, beside the keyhole shaped bay, its most prominent feature.

Then on the next floor up (5th, overall) Karoz curiously yields to Baker Bloch in further Jeogeot related pictures, which is explained in the titles/descriptions of the pictures themselves (once again, just move your mouse pointer over the pictures in the exhibit to see this text). Essentially, we’ve now moved beyond Karoz’s Pink Floyd album related “magic circle” defined by the yellow circles on the Jeogeot maps to the left of Baker Bloch here. One important switchover point can be identified with the Korean Channel: Karoz’s circular influence includes to the lower 1/2 of the protected land around this channel but not the upper 1/2.

Last current picture within Big E, a woodcut showing Little Robert Plant running with the “Zeppelin Tube” from Nowtown to Sternberg.

An additional feature of the big E are these phantom openings that allow visitors to walk onto the outer surfaces of this giant letter. One such opening allows Baker Bloch here to walk over the map of the Fernstar sim, and gaze up at part of the volcano centered island (Ichelus half) that also acts as a telehub for the region.

The other half of this volcanic island appears on the surface just around the corner from Baker Bloch.

Opposite direction.

And then Big E from the top, depicting another interesting island near the volcanic one that actually hasn’t been visited yet by Karoz, I don’t believe. I’ll have to remedy that soon.

“E” Exhibit, 02 July 6, 2009

Baker Bloch activates the teleporter and heads on up to Big E, 400 meters high.

Big E, as already described a bit from this early June post. As determined by Karoz at the time of the find in the Blue Feather Sea outlined in this post, all but 1 of the 30 sims of the Korean Channel are depicted on the 29 separate square surfaces of this E, with the completely water sim Ustermann being the lone omission.

Big E as seen from the north, with the sims from the lower part of the Korean Channel adorning the individual square surfaces on this side, 1 per square again. These would be the sims Karoz is most familiar with, starting with Xilted at the right hand bottom, closest to his Noru home. A broad strip of land extends from Xilted northward through Glasso, which Karoz has run a number of times now in its entirety.

On the south side of the Big E, then, are Channel sims from its upper part, which include another long strip of land but on the west side of the Channel this time, and considerably more narrow than the one on the lower, east side of the Channel from the snapshot above.

Looking up from the south side of the E again, starting with Xilted just in front of Baker Bloch here.

Then the same with the north side.

Baker spies some kind of face staring back at him from the doorway into the Big E. Ah yes, he remembers now. That’s one of the 2 Chilbolton crop circles from 2001, the ones his user baker b. think are intimately connected with Chilbo from the southern continent.

Baker Bloch moves inside the E, then. All of these pictures were originally found, for several weeks, in Noru’s House of Truth mini-gallery, but have since been deleted there to avoid duplication with the Chro gallery material. Again, I’ll let the descriptions of the pictures tell their tale in person to curious visitors.

2nd floor of E, again a 20 x 10 meter room as is the first.

Baker Bloch daydreams, once again, about the mysteries of Chilbo/Chilbol/Chilbolton while staring at one of its names on a map from this floor.

Zen City (Beyond the Korean Channel) June 23, 2009

For this visit to the Korean Channel, Karoz finally decides to officially investigate the largest islands of the sea, both Linden owned and created at the same time as the channel itself. Starting from Kyat Lun (careful, Karoz, that’s one of those forewarned “K” sims Hucka D. was talking about!), he dives underwater and heads east into Ichelus, soon to encounter the lower end of the larger of the 2 islands. So large, in fact, that it spans 3 sims south to north, or, in order, Ichelus, Zebrasil, and with a tiny bit of the northern tip of the island in Shamon.

As I’m now reminded, the part of the island in Zebrasil is the site of a Linden infohub, such as the one in Hanja very near my Noru home. Actually in checking, Hanja is one of four conjoined infohubs in the 4 sim area near Noru, all what are called first generation infohubs. Zebrasil, in contrast, is called a second generation infohub on the Second Life wiki page on the subject.

A quite large and active volcano dominates the southern part or Ichelus half of the island, which Karoz almost totally remains within this particular night of exploring.

Diving board? No, Karoz stays clear of that. He doesn’t even want to step into the lava pouring off the side of the mountain and instead moves around the back (east) of the mountain to proceed upward through the island to quickly reach…

… this collection of (4) small “tiki huts”, some palm trees and rocks, and not much more.

A flower trellis fills a gap in the mountain range of the island, allowing Karoz easy passage to its east side and away from the tiki hut collection. It’s dominated by what appears to be an atoll which Karoz is walking on the far edge of below. More rocks and palms to be seen there… he didn’t find it incredibly exciting to be honest with the reader.

Karoz did a lot of further exploring that night, but as you can tell from the above photos, he mistakenly left the “show interface in snapshot” option checked, essentially ruining the whole batch. I went ahead and posted the ones dealing directly with the volcano island in the middle of the Korean Channel because I felt those were the most important of the group. And then I decided to insert one more “spoiled” snapshot, showing Karoz’s discovery of what might turn out to be a quite important find on the west coast of the continent — yes, Karoz managed to actually cross the Korean Channel tonight to explore Jeogeot’s western areas. The find here would be what Hucka D. is now calling Nowtown, with a companion cluster of buildings called Zen City not far away to the north. I’ll deal with this subject more in a set of posts coming up.

LMI; Korean Channel (Top) June 18, 2009

Karoz visits the Linden Memorial Island for the first time, and is impressed (!)

A cardinal in the Rookwood sim. Nice to see a number of birds flying around in the trees here…

… and the profusion of wildflowers.

Meanwhile, Baker Bloch is exploring the upper reaches of the 30 sim Korean Channel Karoz seems to have lost a bit of interest in lately.

Here Blochs is in Sacrelle at the very northwest corner of the channel, with its interesting cluster of elogated islands. Baker Bloch stands on the largest of these below, which also happens to be the one closest to the southeast corner of the sim.

Baker Bloch is counting about 7 total islands in the cluster, with a number of other peaks whose tops lie just underneath the water’s surface as well.

E! (A Dramatic Re-creation) June 5, 2009

On a tip from Hucka Doobie, Karoz went to the Blue Feather Sea sim closest to the warped Crabwoo (Blehorn) to find this large, 50 meter long “E” wedged between two ridges on its western side. Hucka D. told him to take plenty of snapshots, and called it a “dramatic re-creation”, as in the title of this post.

Karoz realized that each exposed side of the 8 cubes making up the “E” contained a fuzzy map of a single sim, although he didn’t immediately recognize any of the names. He noticed most were water sims. He thought about his Inland Sea/Korean Channel, but none of the names rang a bell — Lemongrass, Redazillion (he thought — names were a bit unreadable at times as well).

Ahhh… now that he’s looked at the top he did recognize that sim furtherest to the right and back, not by name but because it is dotted all over with snake-like tiny islands. He then realizes he is staring at an edited version of the top part of the Korean channel, an area he is more unfamiliar with since it does not lie as close to his Noru home as the lower section.

You can see some of the darker patterns on the sea floor from this view higher up.

Karoz explores around the base until accidentally coming across this phantom prim with a map of the Demien sim on the front.

Walking through it, he is able to access the empty interior of the giant letter. A considerable amount of oddly placed windows were found, but nothing else.

Karoz uses the handy “disable camera” option to view underneath the letter. Although rather dark, he was instantly able to make out the lower part of the Korean channel on the exposed sides. This helped verify his developing theory that all 30 sims were mapped out on the “E”.

Snapshots showing the remaining, exposed sides from the front of the the giant letter.

Moving around the back now, Karoz finds only a blurred green texture, with no names of sims indicated on any of what he knows are the exposed sides of 5 cube prims. He doesn’t know what to make of this quite yet.

A look at the “E” on the likewise handy mini-map available on the SL viewer.

While I was staring at this, the “E” suddenly vanished.

Karoz then checked to find that objects were automatically returned to their owner in this sim after 15 minutes. Thinking back, he realizes he must have showed up just after the “E” was rezzed in this spot. But how? He attempts to rez a cube on the floor bottom but finds that he can’t. It must have been carted in from another location, he then realizes. Hmmmmm…. why would Hucka D. make this kind of effort? Perhaps the blog would provide immediate future answers: baker b. and Hucka chat on it regularly, almost nightly in fact. He’d check this weekend.

Did this giant *capital* “E” have something to do with the smaller *lower case* “e” he had just found in Chilbo, and which he understood now had something to do with a land before Chilbo? He knew it did, in all likelihood.

Inland Sea: Reaching the Northern Edge June 5, 2009

Karoz takes another hike from his Noru home to the Inland Sea or Korean Channel, intending to go even further than he had the last time up the channel. Below is Xilted again, whose green, rolling hills should be familiar to regular readers of this blog by now. But I especially thought this dusk shot captured the beauty of the sim at its fullest.

Another great dusk shot of Karoz running northward into the more beige colored landscape of Xilted and out of the quite emerald green, lower part of this sim.

Karoz still running north along the (east side of the) channel, this time through a sparse grove of palm trees in Glasso. The sim’s noted round and green knoll at its northern border lies just ahead of Karoz here. Beyond this the remaining Korean Channel sims are almost all water up to its northern border, still some 9 sims (1 1/2 miles) away.

Some dice found on the eastern edge of the channel. Baker Bloch, checking behind Karoz again, is unable to refind the location of these objects. But they rolled themselves when touched, and it crossed Karoz’s mind at the time to use them for oracle purposes.

The northern reach of the bit of land protruding into Pleabio from the east. Karoz has made it to the general limit of his last Korean Channel trip, and is about to literally dive into unknown, personally unexplored water. Actually, it is just north of this point where Karoz inexplicably — to him at the time — transported into the Blue Feather Sea of the Mãebaleia continent, as discussed in this earlier post.

Traversing this water and retaining local time/space coordinates this time, a relieved Karoz shortly reaches the northern edge of the land in this direction, complete with a working lighthouse. This would be in Ensel.

Also in Ensel is found the northern edge of the channel as a whole. Beyond this to the north lies the great Void separating the great continents of Jeogeot and Sansara, a considerable number of miles apart.

To The Inland Sea Once More, 2 June 1, 2009

Karoz found the water gets shallower and the hills rollier in the next water sim up, Pleiablo. He’s about 2/3rds up the Korean Channel now, further than he’s ever reached before thanks to almost nonstop running this night.

A strip of dry land protrudes into Pleiablo from the west, the first land in a Korean Channel sim he’s crossed since Glass 5 sims to the south. Karoz has had to hold his breath for a long time!

Turning to his right he sees this green, flat, and — he realizes — probably quite artificial land just over the border in Haebyon. Karoz wants to explore the parcel anyway, but finds he can’t because of ban lines. He’s really starting to hate those things.

It was somewhere in the still shallow water above Pleiablo, perhaps Wylder immediately to the north or perhaps Fernstar to the north of that, where Karoz suddenly found himself yanked off of this continent and onto another continent completely: Mãebaleia.

I, Karoz’s user, was quite conscious of the reason for his sudden transport. Frankly I was getting bored of the monotonous, one tone, essentially plant-less sea bottom Karoz had been running over for some time now, and desired a different underwater setting with at least one additional element of excitement. I already knew the sea floor of what I now call the Blue Feather Sea, although it also didn’t contain a plethora of plants, had the added benefit of mixing different color textures and not just the one texture of the Korean Channel sims, somewhat in the manner of the Okinu sim glyphs but without the sharp edges. So I just had Karoz teleport over to that sea instead, a spur of the moment decision. But in studying subsequent events, I realized that this was no accidental decision. Although I wasn’t really consciously aware of it at the time, I later understood that there was a very intimate psychic connection between the 2 groups of water sims, the 30 Korean Channel sims and the 6 Blue Feather Sea sims, that is. And this link seems only to be expanding since I took these pictures over 1 week ago now — I’m late with generating my accompanying text, as is quite common.

So this is where I took Karoz, much to his shock and surprise. He instantly knew that he had suddenly popped into somewhere totally different from where he had been because of dark patterns surrounding him now.

I don’t remember exactly which of the 6 water sims this occurred, but at any rate he soon came upon a slouched over female avatar whose stance indicated that she was “away” at the time; not “physically” there. Karoz briefly thought about talking to her, thinking it might be fate that he met the woman in this location so soon after arriving. But then he thought better of it — as Baker Bloch advised him, it’s best to not talk to other avatars unless absolutely necessary. Not that most wish you harm, but just that it’s usually a basic waste of the time which could be spent doing more productive things — like exploring!

Now I do know where this shot is from: it’s a smallish bit of steep land on the east side of Guiler (1 of the 6 Blue Feather Sea sims), perhaps representing less than the area of a 4096 parcel. Karoz looks down into the water from this height, and the interesting darker patterns visible further within the Gulier sim.

Karoz explores the shoreline of the sea for a spell, eventually coming across this nice gallery on the eastern shore, in Neverov. Appropriately, the gallery’s name is the Neverov Art Gallery. Karoz finds no Sasun Steinbeck designed art gallery kiosk present, though, unusual for such a nice, large gallery.

And then this seems to be another weird thing, for Karoz clicks something within the gallery to teleport into this room with what appears to be the surface of a different world altogether beneath him. The continent he stands directly above, as in space, reminds him of South America, but there are enough differences to convince him that it may not be. Turned the opposite way, and it looks, actually, just as much or more like Jeogeot, he realizes — the place where he just came from!

Another aspect of this weirdness is that even after several tries from both avatars, neither Baker Bloch nor Karoz have been able to rediscover this room within the gallery. Hucka D. has some theories about that as well.

e hill

To The Inland Sea Once More, 1 June 1, 2009

OK, this is where this continually refined route starts to become really interesting, trust me. Let’s start with the waterfall below, directly west of the now quite important fuchsia colored building discussed before. Karoz has now discovered that the nice waterfall is copyable, which is rather usual in this profit driven virtual world. He’s also discovered that this indeed is a twin to the waterfall next to the house containing a vendor offering the parrot product discussed in this post from several days before, and which Baker Bloch has already bought for a quite reasonable 10 lindens. If you wish to check, here’s the SLurl to the waterfall pictured below, and here’s the one to the waterfall next to the studio house, also in Noguri. The 2 falls lies about 100 meters away from each other, but the mystery is not that the two are rather proximate to each other (that’s explainable due to the fact that the owner of each is one and the same), but that they figure into this whole complex of synchronicities first discussed in detail here.

Snapshot showing the nearness of the fuchia building to this waterfall.

Another, quite differently shaped small waterfall in the immediate area. This also has a duplicate in Noguri, and very near the duplicate of the waterfall now to the left of Karoz below. All four waterfalls, coming in 2 pairs now, belong to the same owner, one Peony Sweetwater.

In fact, as soon as I can I’ll just provide a map of all 4 of these waterfalls within the Noguri sim as even the locations relative to each other might mean something in the larger scheme of things. Another written down mental note here, then.

We must proceed forward with Karoz beyond Noguri for now, though, because on this particular day he’s detemined to head further north up the Korean Channel than he’s ever accomplished before. Below is a snapshot of a bay in Kyat Lun above Orgamast, one of its 2 most prominent topographical feature. We’ll get to the second one in a moment.

A second winded Karoz sprinting north along the sandy beach in Kyat Lun.

Here’s the second, prominent feature promised before: an approximately 80 meter long gulch running from the beach to the eastern edge of the sim, easily spotted on the SL map.

Karoz looks up at the structures bunched on top of each other at this eastern end.

Karoz perched on the most pronounced knoll of Glasso, 1 sim up from Kyat Lun. For the record, this is now 4 sims up from Xilted forming the east, lower end of the Korean channel. But many more sims to go above this!

Karoz sits on a structure Baker Bloch can’t find the location of now, but between the locations of snapshots immediately before and after in this post. Karoz, if I remember correctly, found the structure to be empty.

In Locksey now, Karoz spies this interesting pile of square and round rock columns to the east in Kang Nae, but finds he lacks permission to enter the parcel and examine further.

Toward the Inland Sea Again… May 29, 2009

Thought I’d start with snapshot of the window that greets Karoz immediately after he walks through the phantom wall to the west of the Noru galleries, which represents his standard way for heading to both Chilbo and the Inland Sea area. It’s literally about 4 meters from the wall, and forms part of a house belonging to the Kiten Rental group that owns much of the neighboring sim of Megi.

Here’s the top (north) of the cobblestone path leading past that windmill, in front of Karoz here, to the open pool above the cave just chronicled in the former Inland Sea related post. All of this is part of “Caro and Mylene Land”, actually, another large holding.

Another structure within Caro and Mylene land, in a small group of shops also located directly above the caves and beside the large, open pool. This appears to be a dining facility of some kind, perhaps a French restaurant. Nice flower garden occupies the center, in front of Karoz below.

Moving along Karoz’s roughly trace “best route” to the Inland Sea (from the Noru galleries, again), he also uncovers this underground chamber inside the hill cradling the lookout tower first talked about here, and on the edge of the Xilted sim forming the lower east corner of the Korean Channel. Nothing within, though.

Into the green, rolling hills of Xilted again.

Interesting grassy wall at the southwest corner of Lordshore. Appears to be 60 meters high and 80 meters wide.

To its north is found the eastern end of another protected Linden route. Karoz decides that since this lies beyond the southern end of the Korean Channel sims, that he’ll mark this as his tentative western line of exploration in this direction. He doesn’t want to take too much focus away from the Inland Sea, Chilbo, and other interesting areas closer to his home in Noru.