Fantasy Faire: Echtra

Sim Sponsor: The Lost Unicorn Gallery by Natalie Montagne (Interview)
Builder: Loki Eliot

Event Sponsor: Safe Waters Foundation by GraceSWF Wrigglesworth (Interview)

Sunday, April 24 at 5:30SLT - LitFest  Region Tour: Echtra
Monday, April 25 at 10AM SLT - LitFest  Region Tour: Echtra

["The Gloom of Echtra"]

The Rickety Weasels and their Guardians of the Elemental stones are returning to the fair in the gloom ridden town of Echtra. The land has been eclipsed in a grey season-less gloom and the parents have disappeared with that same curse. The Children must search the realm for clues to their plight and restore time back to their realm.

Read More About Echtra’s Story here
Read more about the roleplayers behind the story here
Read Daily Updates here

[ The Echtra Experience Hunt ]

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The road falls to pieces almost as soon as the boarder into Echtra is crossed, sinking into icy mud that shines in the dim light. It's treacherous ground, slippery and sharp all at once, and shining gold footprints stand out brightly against all of the gloom. The first of the residents, a hedgehog that seems to be too small to be believed, stands and greets the few who sneak across this boarder into the icy air, directing each one into a wall of ice itself. It's a rough-carved entrance, the floor offering texture to walk on only where previous feet have slid and caught. The pathway curves down with equally slick walls offering no safe purchase until the full depths are achieved, when they grow mottled from the lack of hands gripping with fear.  Ahead in the ice, a head large enough to swallow anyone who can fit in this passage is almost completely concealed under layers of frozen water, only the purity of that liquid allowing anything beyond the first few feet to be seen.

The pathway upward is equally challenging; only the last twenty feet offer wooden steps as an aid.

In contrast, the mead hall is full of suffocating warmth. Enormous braziers and fireplaces line the middle of the room, sending heat off in waves around them through air thick with smock and the scent of roasting meat. A large cauldron froths over the center of the fire's length, whole potatoes joining the melange of meats and root vegetables cooking down for the evening meal. On the long tables are bowls of apples still fresh from cold storage available for travellers to pick up a quick snack while waiting for the main meal to cook and the village to assemble for the evening meal. The rest of that village lies beyond, soaking under dim and dismal rain while the ground sucks stones into it's viscous depths. Smaller halls thatched with branches hug the side of the hill downward, wetly hanging cloths draped over peaked roofs. Large dormer windows are open to the weather, letting out smoke and letting in air.

Open flames gutter in the driving rain, somehow remaining alight as they warm the pock-marked ground in narrow ovals. Beside the hedgehogs, their fut proof against the miserable weather, people don't linger in the harsh weather; instead they rush from spot to spot, wrapped in wool that never seems to be able to dry. Animals cluck and baa with indifference to the conditions, feathers and fur working their magic; those who break free of their fencing drift down the hill like stones, seeking out the faint green of grass clinging to life around the gate. The weather is even harsher here, wind funneled into a punishing blast, and the flat, unprotected moorland is wiped bare of almost everything except for stone monuments to the past, resistant even to winter storms. It's only across the river, across the bridge, where a hint of peace from the dank misery of winter can be found - a god weeping within the memory of his lost sister.

( More Echtra images here. )

Credits:

Location: Echtra
Windlight Settings: Sim Default
Water Settings: Sim Default

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping