Home Improvement

As much as I love having land in Caledon, building here can be tricky. Victorian design tends to be detailed, with lots of curves. It’s not like modern, where you could technically get away with a 2-prim couch. A simple dining room chair can easily end up 17 prims before even adding a pose to it.

The average lot in Caledon Mayfair seems to be a 2048 m2, which gives you 400-odd prims to work with. However, a perusal of victorian designs on SL exchange shows few below 250 prims.

My initial plan was to build an underground base for a submersible airship. I terraformed down to the very bottom and built it, then used oversize prims to cover it with a lawn. There was an undersea tunnel and a roof hatch. Then I found Chance Takashi’s build. Sigh.

Here are pictures of what I did, before I pulled it out.

Undersea tunnel entrance.

Scripted hatch for aerial vehicles, and the tiny cottage. All the grass shown here was prims over the underground structure.

Control Room with airlock to submersible airship (you can see it though the porthole)

Finally, the Parlor.

Unfortunately, this was it– pushed right up against the prim limit, and then I saw it done somewhere else much better. So I went back to the drawing board.

Then I got lucky. My next door neighbor decided to go in a different direction in SL and I got the opportunity to buy him out. That brought me up to 4096 m2 and the opportunity to do some serious prim damage!

I realized that the undersea base could not grow into what I needed it to be without radical terraforming, and I had no desire to do that to my neighbors. But I still wanted the property to develop into more than another house in a sim. I wanted it to contribute beauty, and character, and atmosphere, and story to Caldeon. I eventually came upon the idea of “Performance role-play”– involving others in acting out vignettes that add to the immersion factor in Caledon. For example, when I simply log on to organize inventory, I sometimes do it in an airship floating leisurely over Victoria City, just to add to the steampunk feel. The concept of the house, then, became that of a headquarters for a secret organization– the Order of the Iron Rose– dedicated to protecting the realm against external and internal threats, scientific, magical or supernatural in nature. I have some fun items, such as 20 meter steam steam-powered robotic avatars, that could be fun to play with. Or perhaps we could chase werewolves through the streets of Caledon. Small things, nothing overly involved or requiring heavy commitment.

So I have done what I think is a nice, comfortable, stately house, with a garden that has an authentic victorian feel. It’s a wonderfully relaxing spot.

Overview of the property. For the moment, the Caledon rail ends here, making it easy for people to hop the train from Victoria City.

Street-level view.

Main Parlor.

Piano, with a great view of the ocean.

More pictures to come in future posts.