Fantasy Faire: Ravenshold

Ravenshold is sponsored by OtherSkin, Plastik, Junbug, Spyralle, The Forge, Death Row Designs, The White Armory, Safe Waters Foundation, The Muses, and the Dark Unicorns of Lovelace and it was created by Rynn Verwood.

It's the basis for the second half of the Fantasy Faire Hunt, also known as "Princesses just don't like stairs, ok?"

This is a land locked in winter - for good reason, the hunt tells us. The princess has been stolen by the Unweaver, and a barrier stands between her and her mother, the Bard Queen, in the Fairelands Junction. The Princess is being held by a Lord of Winter, hence the icy clime, and forbidding approach! The path up to the tower is a lonely one, past many sentinels whose beady eyes follow you in silence. Briefly I feel like Ida, the Princess of Monument Valley, watched by the Crow People as she goes about her business, but here I'm to rescue a princess, not be one!

The tower itself is sweetly decorated if a little bare, and I enjoyed revisiting the princess - who was humming a song to herself as I went by snapping pictures! I revisited other areas as well: the sheep pen and accompanying building for the shepherd, the long bridges over the falls and the surrounding treads of branches, and the deep caves to the secret spring with the nearby waters. Without the pressure of a hunt and the focus on destinations, I found myself lingering as I examined how the light fell across the craggy heights, and how water fell from great heights to far depths. The sim is split in two, and bridging the gap is always a blast.

Of all of the sims, this is the simplest - three main areas of activity with long, curving roads between them and simple archways that serve as perches for dark eyed birds. The purely utilitarian goal of the sim still allows for small spots of brilliance - a crystalline fall of water under a stone bridge, the narrow curves of a stone pathway along a cliff edge, and the freezing reflections of everything far below. I love lingering here in the warmth of a single tower, listening to the wind blow the snowflakes around and wishing the Fairelands could remain for longer.

( More pictures here. )

Credits: 

Light Settings: Sim Default
Water Settings: Sim Default

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping