The Cathedral of Our Lady

Server: Antonia Bayle
Homeowner: Jazabelle
City: Freeport
Address: Secluded Sanctum
Leaderboard: Massive Homes
Name: The Cathedral of Our Lady


To begin with, yes, I built a cathedral to my character. No, I'm not that conceited. However, my character sees nothing wrong with people wanting to build a cathedral to worship her. After all, in roleplay, please remember that you are not your character! I play a vampire. That doesn't mean I'm going to run around drinking human blood. By the same token, things that my character finds normal, I find really creepy. If someone built a cathedral to me, I'd be outta there! Besides, the cathedral isn't a physical place in Norrath, according to the roleplay.

Anyway, back to the cathedral.

The view from the organ loft.

Three years ago, on March 30, 2012, I posted about the cathedral I built for Dolthaic in EQ2 on the Antonia Bayle server. It's still on the Leaderboards, under the Hall of Fame, though it's drifted a few pages back.

The build was a ton of fun (and took me over a year to complete, since I paused right after starting, to wait for building blocks to come out, though it only took me 5 days to build), but there were a lot of things I'd wished I could do differently.

For one, because of load times and the zone that Dolthaic chose, the Cathedral of Innoruuk could not be any longer than it was--any longer, and visitors would have to wait for the ground around them to load.

Second, I wasn't able to put in all of the details I'd originally envisioned, because at that point, building blocks counted towards the house item count, rather than having their own item count.

Third, this was my first ever home built with building blocks. I made it up as I went along, and hadn't learned a lot of the tricks that I've since discovered or been taught.

Finally, this was a cathedral owned by someone else. It wasn't my home, so the final opinion on things went to Dolthaic. If I liked one style, and he liked another, I went with what he preferred, since I was building to his tastes.

Fast forward three years. I have three years of experience working with building blocks. We have a whole new bunch of zones to choose from to decorate in. We have three years of new items. And for the past four years, I've been roleplaying that a cathedral is beneath Jazabelle's rose bush in her garden, and have been itching to build the zone that I see in my head every time I RP it.

"Beneath" is perhaps too simple a term to describe it. Jazabelle is a vampire. She inspires lavish devotion in her household via a combination of vampiric magic and pure coercion (yes, she's a coercer). Her household's cult-like worship of her has created a sort of mass hallucination centered around the rose bush, and the supposed cathedral beneath it.

This book at the entrance describes how you got here. ...you think. Maybe.

The vestibule, with the stoup in the left corner. A very simple room. Be sure to read the book!

The Cathedral of Our Lady is the result of that mass hallucination. When members of her household "visit the Cathedral," this zone is what they see.

Of course, it isn't just a mass hallucination. There's a magical component. Because of the years Jazabelle has spent feeding this one particular rose bush a rather ...interesting... diet...

The book of readings on the lectern. Yes, they're all this creepy.

...the rose bush is now a semi-sentient entity that craves blood. Also, it has thorns. Did I mention it has thorns? Be careful around the vines in the cathedral...

Since building blocks and items now have a separate count, I figured that I could go crazy in my cathedral, satisfying my desire to build things the way I envisioned them the first time.

As I said before, Dolthaic's cathedral was limited by how far away from the entrance point of the zone the teleport pad could be. Because this cathedral was built directly in the zone of the Secluded Sanctum, I didn't have to worry about teleport pads and loading times. Plus teleport pads annoy me. I know they're useful sometimes, but if I can create a zone that doesn't need to use them, I'd rather do that.

So I chose a zone where I wouldn't have to have a teleport pad.

Lefthand aisle with climbing vines. The rose bush has influence even here!

The sound of the fireplaces that I used for the base of the windows in Dolthaic's cathedral always irritated me. However, I couldn't think of anything else to use at that time, and I liked how they looked. So I left them.

When I built my cathedral, I tried to use fireplaces. Unfortunately, while I'd used 12 in Dolthaic's cathedral, I wound up using 44 in mine. 12 was bad. 44 was enough to send me to a mental institute. So I switched 'em to something else.

View of the altar and high altar.

The window frames were a touch of genius on Iosabella's part. I commissioned her to do a baptistery for the cathedral after seeing the wonderful job she did on Dolthaic's baptistery. (In fact, I commissioned her even before she'd finished his, because I liked it so much!) She's been working on the baptistery while I've been working on the cathedral, trying to match my style of build.

I ran in to visit the baptistery while she was working on it, and saw that she'd created an awesome gold frame around the windows she was working on. That meant that I immediately ran back to the cathedral to add gold frames to all of my windows. It took 76 copies of Rallos' Blessing and 135 copies of Conquering the Wastes to make those lovely borders.

Closeup view of the high altar, with a strangely familiar icon.

When it came time to do the interior decor, from the high altar, to the lectern, to the pipe organ, I was stumped. In Dolthaic's cathedral, I'd used building blocks almost exclusively on all of those items, and they were nice, but not ornate enough for what I wanted with this cathedral. We'd had all sorts of new items added, and so many of them were ornate, I knew I could find something to build things out of!

Which is when I remembered the High Keep furniture. Two ornate chests, four bookcases, five chests, and an ornate chair later (plus an emerald stained glass window, a house actor of Jaz, a rose, six eucalyptus candle sticks, and six candles ringed by roses), I had a high altar to be proud of!

View from the altar, looking back at the choir and organ loft.

The first time I saw the High Keep Long Bench, I knew I wanted to use it in whatever cathedral I built. However, the cream seating didn't go with the predominantly red-and-stone look of the cathedral. So I covered the cushions with burgundy spuncloth throw cushions. Better!

The pipe organ and choir.

And the pipe organ. Oh, the pipe organ. I spent longer on the pipe organ than I did on any other piece in the zone. It took me 16 hours (2 8 hour days) to build the pipe organ. In contrast, it took me FIVE days to build the entire zone, and five days to fill in all the zone details. One sixth of my entire decorating time was spent on the pipe organ!

Dolthaic's cathedral took me five days total to do.

This one took me 12 days, spread out over a month.

Dolthaic's cathedral will always have a place in my heart, because it was the first cathedral I built (and possibly the first player built cathedral in EQ2, I'm not sure). However, this cathedral is uniquely mine in a way that his never was. My voice had the final say over every detail (well, and the first say, the second say, and every other say in between).

This wasn't my second cathedral build, though! I tried two other times to build the cathedral. The first time was just a few months after I finished Dolthaic's. The second time was mid-2013, and I tried to build the Crimson Cathedral. It didn't work out.

Here, have a Facebook album of all of the iterations of The Cathedral of Our Lady, starting on April 22nd, 2015.

And the full manifest of what it took to make the cathedral (minus the prestige housing portals):

a long stone corner counter	35
a repaired piano	2
Black Marble Stair	5
Black Marble Tile	28
Block of Fancy Fulginate	152
Book of Hate	1
burgundy spuncloth throw cushion	184
Candle Ringed by Red Roses	50
Captive Audience	1
Cerulean Calm Bottle	1
Chalice of the Spurned	1
Chipped Freeport Celebration Cup	1
Coin of Winning	8
Conquering the Wastes	135
Crawling Captive	3
Crimson Stained Glass Square	60
Dangling Skull Collection	5
Decorative Vines	89
Doomed Ettin Skull	10
emerald stained glass oval	1
erudin screen	78
eucalyptus candlestick	6
Golden Wash Basin	1
Half Block of Adamantine	10
Half Dozen Roses in a Smooth Vase	49
Hedge Seeds	6
Hewn Stone Counter	17
High Keep Bar Stool	2
High Keep Bookcase	3
High Keep Chest	47
High Keep Dining Chair	15
High Keep End Table	3
High Keep Long Bench	24
High Keep Long Chandelier	10
High Keep Low Bookcase	4
High Keep Ornate Chair	5
High Keep Ornate Chest	7
High Keep Settle	1
House Actor	21
Large Circular High Keep Rug	1
Long High Keep Runner	2
Magic Door to the Guild Hall	1
Narrow Divider of Fancy Fulginate	246
Navigated Travels	1
Ornate Shadowed Stone Bookcase	170
Pile of Coin Square	8
Plain Gorowyn Door	2
plain sumac tile	8
Qeynos Sign	1
Quel'ule Notebook	3
Rack of Love Potions	25
Railing of Sumac	1
Rallos' Blessing	76
Red Roses Blooming with Love	18
Sacrificial Dagger of Fear	1
Seeping Shadow	1
Shackled Elf Skeleton	1
Shackled Human Skeleton	2
Shards of the Scorned	1
Short Column of Adamantine	91
Simple Antonican-Style Guild Tapestry	2
Single Red Rose	10
Single Red Rose	37
Square Cage	1
Stair of Fancy Fulginate	3
Stair of Redwood	3
Stair of Sumac	4
Stony Lichen Square	3
Strewn Scarlet Petals	12
Tall Column of Adamantine	390
Tall Divider of Fancy Fulginate	166
Trophy: Fang of Ichor	1
Wicker Demijohn	1
Woven Reed Bowl	2
Zlandicar's Heart	1

This cathedral has been a labor of love, and something I couldn't have finished without the help of my guild mates. Thank you to everyone who stopped by to help me error check, to give me ideas when I was stuck, and to the Creepy Crew who hung around for several hours, watching me decorate (you know who you are!). Also, to Iosabella for scaring the hell out of me by logging in on top of me more than once, and for those gorgeous, gorgeous window frames. And Blazewolf, thank you for pushing me to add those final finishing touches to the choir risers. I like them 1000x better now.

Danyella of Freeport was the first person I ever saw to use the High Keep chairs as door frames. Thank you for letting me use that lovely idea. It's perfect!

Of course, this entire cathedral wouldn't exist if Dolthaic hadn't commissioned me to make the first one back in 2011. Thanks, Dolthaic!

How to Build a Straight Staircase (Without the Layout Editor)

Building staircases is often the bane of homeowners. The common instinct is to either start building from your bottom floor or your top floor, and to simply try your best to meet up with the other floor in the right number of steps.

With that method, you have no control over where your top step (or bottom step, depending on where you start) winds up. Some people get around this by building the bottom floor, the stairs, and then putting in the top floor, so that at least the top floor lines up with the stairs.

Another problem is that you often wind up with steps oddly spaced, or not aligned properly.

That's a pain in the butt.

There's an easier way to set up your stairs, so that they fit nicely in the room you're building, you know exactly where the top step and bottom step will be, and they line up perfectly with the upper floor.

It doesn't matter whether the staircase you want to build is along the cardinal axes, or whether it's at an angle--as long as you set the stairs straight to each other, this staircase tutorial will work.

To begin with, you're going to want to take your step item and size it appropriately so that it fits in the location where your top step will wind up. Use whatever material you like for your steps. Some ideas include:

• Stair building block
• Block building block
• Divider tops (or bottoms)
• Table
• Shelf
• Columns
• Rocks

For this tutorial, I went with white marble stairs. Remember, size it to fit your upper floor's opening!

Next, you'll want to lower the first step down to the bottom floor.

Once your stair is positioned properly, take more of your step items and line them up in a straight line, each step item touching the one before it.

When you have your bottom step where you want it to be, stop adding steps. I advise that you have at least 9 steps between the bottom floor and upper floor. The larger the distance between the upper floor and the lower floor, the more steps you're going to need.

I find it easiest to have an odd number of steps. In this example, I have 9--the minimum that I feel is a good number for stairs.

Now that you have all of your steps lined up, you're going to want to raise the first step you placed. We'll call that step 1.

This next bit is going to seem strange until you really think about it--in a staircase of 9 steps, I want to raise step 5 next--the middle step. This is because it's easy to divide spaces in half visually, but much harder to accurately guess what 1/9th of the space looks like. If I were to raise step 2, I would need to divide the remaining space into 9. By raising step 5 and using it to divide the distance between the lower floor and the upper floor, I know for a fact that step 5 is exactly where it needs to go. It's the middle step, and it goes midway up.

Next, we're going to divide the space between step 1 and step 5. That would be step 3, the middle step of the remaining steps.

Now we get to divide the space between step 1 and step 3. Logically, that means we're raising step 2, as that's the step between 1 and 3.

There's a large gap between steps 3 and 5. We should probably fix that by raising step 4.

We now have half our stairway complete. It looks nice, and it didn't take any camera swiveling or multiple raises and lowerings of the steps to get them spaced properly. Which means that since we have half complete, we should probably think about the other half. We do the same thing, raising step 7 to split the space between the bottom floor and step 5.

Then we raise step 6 to split the space between 5 and 7.

Next, we raise step 8 to split the space between 7 and the bottom floor.

Finally, we raise step 9 a bit to make sure step 8 can be reached from the bottom floor. You may have to adjust the spacings of steps 8 and 9 to get their distances to match the rest of the steps.

In just a few minutes, you've produced a nice, even staircase with a minimum of hassle.

Here's a video showing the building of a staircase in action:

And here's the slideshow I presented at SOE Live 2014's Hardcore Decorating player panel.

Hardcore Decorating 2014--How to Build A Straight Staircase

The Chapel Maze to Anashti Sul 2013

Somewhere hidden amongst Freeport's streets
A temple to the Forgotten sleeps.
Every Nights of the Dead it awakes,
Mortal life it forever forsakes.
If for prizes death you would cheat,
Proceed to Jazabelle's to partake!


When: October 14 - November 22, 2013

Where: Jazabelle's Lavastorm home in Freeport on the Antonia Bayle server. Alternatively, you may visit The Chapel to Anashti Sul on the Leaderboards, under Massive homes.

Why?: Because Nights of the Dead is awesome, but sometimes you need to take a break from grinding for the house items! So instead you can run a maze and answer a riddle for prizes (I know, I know, not that different...).

Prizes?: Yep! Prizes will be awarded on the 23rd of November. Details can be found in the book inside the chapel.

Other servers offering prizes:
Possibly! It depends on whether other people are willing to hand out prizes on other servers.

Other NotD fun:
The MazeMansion from 2011 is open again, and offering prizes to anyone who completes it!

The Peaceful Crypt from 2012 is open again and offering prizes to anyone who completes it!

This year's maze is The Restless Crypt.

Yes, the Restless Crypt does look rather similar to the Peaceful Crypt. However, the route to run and the riddle at the end are quite different. Happy mazerunning!
You are welcome to run whichever of the three mazes you wish, but if you have run mazes in prior years, be warned that you will only receive token prizes for running a maze you have already run. You will receive a full prize for running a maze you have not yet run.

(For those interested in seeing a photo album of the construction of the zones, click here. Don't worry, there are no spoilers.)


Riddlemasters:

1. Kiosha
2. Tiercen
3. Senya
4. Lealani
5. Malicce

H&T Tile Inlay

I'm not the one who came up with the tile inlay in the Homes and Tomes hall. That was Pizazz. But it's one of the most asked-about features of our hall. On the old forum, Pizazz was kind enough to post the instructions in the thread about the Corporate Headquarters of Homes and Tomes. However, since we don't know how long the old forums will continue to exist, I've copied his instructions here. Enjoy!

4 white tiles, 4 red tiles, and 1 gold coin tile in 3 layers. Everything is at the same X, Y coordinate but the layers are at different Z coordinates
Layer 1:

• 2 white, 2 red - scale as desired.
• Rotate the red tiles 45
• Rotate the white tiles -45 
• Roll 1 red and 1 white tile 179.25 and roll the other 1 red and 1 white tile -179.25

Layer 2:

• 2 white, 2 red - scale to 1/2 of layer 1. 

• Rotate the white tiles 45

• Rotate the red tiles -45

• Roll 1 red and 1 white tile 179.25 and roll the other 1 red and 1 white tile -179.25

• raise the layer 0.010 - I might be off on how far to raise it 

Layer 3:

• 1 gold coin tile

• scale to layer 1 scale + small amount - I think in the case of this example the gold is 0.10 larger than layer 1

• Rotate the gold coin tile 45 degrees.

• raise or lower the tile to get the desired border effect.

The Chapel Maze to Anashti Sul (Prizes October 6 - November 17)

Somewhere hidden amongst Freeport's streets
A temple to the Forgotten sleeps.
Every Nights of the Dead it awakes,
Mortal life it forever forsakes.
If for prizes death you would cheat,
Proceed to Jazabelle's to partake!



Apologies for the horrible poetry, but last year's maze set a precedent, and I didn't have anyone to write the poetry for me this year.


Important information: This was originally set to run from October 6 - November 10th. Unfortunately, I fell ill in the weeks prior to November 10th, and was unable to promote the maze. In the interest of fairness, I've extended the event for a week. Those 24 individuals who completed the maze prior to November 10th will still receive their prizes on November 11th. Anyone else is welcome to run the maze and answer the riddle. If you do so, your prize will be mailed to you on November 18th.


When: October 6 - November 17, 2012

Where: Jazabelle's Lavastorm home in Freeport on the Antonia Bayle server. Alternatively, you may visit The Chapel to Anashti Sul on the Leaderboards, under the Hall of Fame.

Why?: Because Nights of the Dead is awesome, but sometimes you need to take a break from grinding for the house items! So instead you can run a maze and answer a riddle for prizes (I know, I know, not that different...).

Prizes?: Yep! Prizes will be awarded through the 18th of November. Details can be found in the book inside the chapel.

Other servers offering prizes:
All other servers are eligible for prizes, as we have one kind person on Freeport taking care of prizes there, and a kind person from AB offering SC prizes to those who complete the maze and riddle. If you'd like to offer prizes for your server, please do feel free to contact me (I'm blown away by your generosity, guys!). You still have to travel to Antonia Bayle to run the maze and see the riddle, but you can receive awards on your main character.




Other NotD fun:
The MazeMansion from 2011 is open again, and offering token prizes to anyone who completes it!

(For those interested in seeing a photo album of the construction of the zones, click here. Don't worry, there are no spoilers.)


Riddlemasters:

1. Lunshea (of Freeport)
2. Liily (of Freeport)
3. Qaia
4. Kiosha
5. Ashinor
6. Nihke
7. Sedeck (of Oasis)
8. Facemeats
9. Immauri
10. Lealani
11. Atmu
12. Blazewolf
13. Savriel
14. Teoh
15. Chikkin
16. Senya (of Crushbone)
17. Kaian
18. Melago
19. Kiuf
20. Locomotive
21. Lowgan
22. Zazoo
23. Kasumie
24. Ughucork (of Freeport)

Jazabelle's Everfrost Office

The old arched windows of the Everfrost portal hub.

From the moment I understood how prestige housing portals would work--and I admit it took me a few days and a bit of research before I was positive I understood it properly--I was determined to put together a portal hub.

My first attempt at a portal hub took the arched windows I'd constructed for Dolthaic back in April of 2011, and turned them into "windows" into the different homes. I liked the idea, but there wasn't enough room for expansion.

The round portal/transport room.

And ringing a room with ten windows meant over 100 items for the "windows" alone. With the low item count of the Everfrost house, that didn't leave me much room for decorating the rest of the house.

Regretfully, I put my office on hold and worked on other projects. I just couldn't seem to figure out a setup for my portal hub that would work for me. I accumulated portals in the meantime, tossing them into the Everfrost house wherever the mood struck me.

Framed portal "painting" at H&T.

Then in early June of 2012, I revamped the guild hall. Afista had used tiles frame the portals in her portal hub. I used the same idea for the portals in my guild's hall, but tweaked the design a little bit--I included paintings to frame the tile and give it a more finished look, much as she framed tiles in her portal hub to showcase them. The result was a framed "painting" of a portal hub that received quite a few compliments from guildmates and visitors alike.

Not long after that, sometime in mid-June, Hopsalong built her portal hub. She took the idea Afista came up with that I tweaked, and also tweaked it. The result was an elegant portal hub with plenty of room for lots of portals, and a very easy method of expansion.

Hopsalong's portal hub.

I admit that Hops' portal hub made me insanely jealous. It was gorgeous! And if I were the sort of person who bought layouts from other people, I would have snapped up her hub in an instant. But I'm not. Besides, I don't own a Felwithe house, which is what her portal hub is in.

Hopsalong's hub spurred me to start working on my own again. I went through several attempts to build a suitable layout. The first was very similar to both my original hub and Hopsalongs--a hallway that terminated in a round room, then branched off into other rooms. While it was nice, I felt too much like I was copying Hopsalong rather than being inspired by her. It also didn't help that I went exclusively sumac, without the trim and color Hopsalong has in her hub to cut back on the "sumac poisoning."

A baseboard and some crown molding would do a lot to cut back on the overwhelming sumac feel.

I struggled with the hub for several days, popping back and forth between Hopsalong's hub and my own. No matter what I did, I didn't like it.

It was while I was running circles around Hopsalong's hub, trying to think of materials other than black marble building blocks (which I didn't have, and refused to spend SC on) that I really looked at the paintings lining her walls. Gold and sumac, opulent, easily sized--the paintings would make a perfect baseboard!

I immediately crafted several and popped into my portal hub. But no matter how I tried, the shape of the rooms and the paintings meant that they just wouldn't work as baseboards. I couldn't sink the paintings low enough to act as a baseboard. If I angled the painting and hid most of it in the wall, by the time the sides of the painting stopped poking through, the bottom did, too.

The first time I actually liked where the hub was going.

Eventually, I realized I was trying to stay too close to Hopsalong's work. Her work was "safe"--I'd already seen how it turned out, and really liked it. If I wanted the paintings to work with my house, I'd have to do something different.

Luckily, it turned out I didn't have to do too much different. I could keep the front hall that opened up into a large room. However, I went with a square room because of the patterns I wanted for the paintings. I kept the sumac walls, but ditched the sumac floors. And I definitely wasn't going to go with a stained glass ceiling--while I adore Hops' hub, I'm not a rainbow person. I'm also not big on stained glass. I feel that it should be used to accent. With Hops' hub, it works. All that sumac means that the stained glass isn't overwhelming, especially since it's a focal point. That wouldn't work in my house. So I went with a plain white ceiling, and jazzed it up with more gold.

The front hall opening up into the center room.

Confession time: I'm not really a gold person, either. If I were to see something like what I built for my Everfrost hub in real life, I'd look at it and think it's pretty, but much too ornate for me. But in-game, this works. Part of why I enjoy decorating in-game is it allows me to step outside my comfort zone with furnishings and architecture.

Back to my portal hub! I left the hub pretty much undone for the rest of July and August. I'd done the front hall, but was stuck on how I wanted it to transition into the large center room. Plus I was out of town in July, and by the time I came home in August, I'd lost my drive to work on the hub.

But on September 1st, I went back to working on it, and I worked hard. It was like a mental block had cleared, and I had more ideas than I could build! There were some rough patches, and plenty of ideas that I worked on for hours, then scrapped completely. I moved my teleportation objects around the hub several times a day, trying to find a good spot for them.

Eventually I had the layout set up how I wanted it. And then I moved my office from my guild hall to the Everfrost hub. I decided it wasn't fair that my office used over a hundred items, while everyone else was limited to 20. With my office in my Everfrost hub, people would be able to expand their customization of their offices in the guild hall.

Seating!

Because it was an extension of the guild hall in my mind, I included some similar items, like the circular seating in the center of the large room. I went with a different color scheme, but kept the idea of seats arranged around a planter.

I actually spent the least amount of time decorating my office in the hub, although it probably looks like I spent a really long time working on it. For the most part, I just transported the layout from the guild hall to the Everfrost hub.

The office desk, transported from the guild hall.

Everything on the blue carpet is exactly as it was in the guild hall. The changes were made to the sides of the room and the fishtank--where in my old office I had a single bookshelf and a small set of shelves on the wall for trophies, I wanted more space in the Everfrost office. I also wanted to make sure that my portal objects didn't look odd displayed around the room. That meant building a set of shelving units to house any portal objects that didn't hang on the walls. I also needed space to display random other items--like the Community Cushion, and the prize for submitting a home to the NotD contest (I'm still sad I didn't win, but not too sad. I got my present and my scare "crow," and that's really the only reason I entered in the first place!).

Shelving unit and portal paintings.

While it's a little bit annoying to not have the portal objects right in the front room when I zone in, it's not bad enough that I'd move them back there. The portal objects being at the front are nice, but this way I get more use out of my office. I have to run back there each time I want to teleport to one of the DoV zones.

The biggest difference between this office and the one in my guild hall is the aquarium.

Yes, I like to do the stereotypical aquarium. There seem to be two types of people--those who like them, and those who don't. In real life, I'm not a fan. The wet, fishy smell irritates me. But I enjoy looking at fish, and I enjoy the artwork that people turn their aquariums into.

Shark tank! Don't go swimming in there...

So in-game, I build them. This one was partially inspired by my own shark tank in my Kelethin home, and partially inspired by Tock's tank in The Spider. I liked how the water in the back with a misty tile turned out for Tock. It's an idea I'd been playing with using since the first time I saw the misty tiles. However, I hadn't had a chance to build an aquarium since they came out. When I saw what Tock had done, and how well it turned out, I decided it was time to put my own attempt into play.

Jazabelle has a thing for sharks. She loves them. It has absolutely nothing to do with an easy way to dispose of evidence, I swear! So that meant another shark tank. But when I put together the tank, I realized that sharks alone are a little bland. So I tossed in a sea turtle and some slugs. Then I added in a few other items to add motion, such as the seafarer's float net, the doomed prisoner, and the new crafted Withering Lands flowers. The spores from the flowers float slowly, and really give the impression of being under water. The tank looks much better in person, with the swaying, the rippling, and the flickering blue light (Thanks for reminding me to put those in, Tock!).

If you'd like to visit, feel free to stop by Jazabelle's Everfrost Summer Home in Qeynos, on the Antonia Bayle server.

For more screenshots of the home that weren't included in the blog, as well as expanded captions on most screenshots, click here to visit the Facebook photo album.

Zhadowsee's Birthday Stables

Yes, I'm still around. Life just caught up with me (I took a trip out to visit Z, and coming home has been an adjustment. Then migraines and other facets of life hit, and gaming took a backburner to everything else). But I'm here now.

Just in time for Zhadowsee's birthday, in fact.

I bought Zhadowsee a mount for his birthday. Meet Compass, the drake. However, it seemed a little cheap of me just to get Z a mount for his birthday. Your birthday is only once a year, and unlike the grandfather clock and sweet note he gave me, I couldn't be sure that he'd like the drake. After all, I'd raved about how much I adore grandfather clocks, and built several in-game before they came out with the station cash one. Plus, the station cash one has a dragon on it! Anyone who's spent a bit of time with me knows that I'm dragon crazy.

Then I decided that I would build him some stables to go with the mount. I've never actually decorated a full house for Z. I've done rooms, partial homes, partially completed homes, but I've never finished anything for him. Part of it is that he likes to decorate on his own. Part of it is that out of the two of us, he's the storyteller. Decorating is telling stories with scenery, but it's a very slow method of storytelling, and I'm better at vingettes than telling a full story. His decorating is more organic--he once did an RP scene for me, in which objects in the house kept moving. He had several layouts, plus what he moved by hand. Depending on what I noticed, what happened next changed. So I've never done a house for him, leaving him to set them up himself.

The first thing I did was to sneak onto his account. Unlike me, Z doesn't have a ton of empty houses waiting for use. He had exactly three houses, and all three of them are already in use.

Well, that was no good for my purposes. I immediately tabbed back to Jazabelle and started touring prestige houses. I knew I wanted the house to be a prestige house, for the portals. The stable was going to connect to his home in Neriak, whether he wanted it to or not!

It was as I was browsing houses that I realized that the Secluded Sanctum has an item count of 800, and costs only 1000 SC! All other 800 item count houses cost 1350 or so. Plus the Secluded Sanctum has a very wide open front room, which was perfect for my purposes.

I added the Secluded Sanctum to Zhadowsee's gift, tabbed back to Zhadowsee, and claimed the house. Then I snagged the mount out of the mail, dumped it in the house, and set Jazabelle trustee. Carefully, I positioned Zhadowsee exactly back where I found him, and logged him out.

Then I feverishly set to work.

The front doors, minus the door frames. Those came later.

I had seven hours to complete the house, not counting the time off I would have to take for food and housework, if I wanted to finish it up before Zhadowsee got home and logged on.

The first step was to build the walls of the stable. The Secluded Sanctum is rotated 22.5 degrees off of the cardinal directions, so I had to figure out how I was going to cover the existing ground in the Sanctum, while keeping to the shape of the stables that I wanted. Luckily, it wasn't too hard. The center pathway of the Sanctum is 12 units wide--exactly the width I wanted the stable's main hallway to be. And with the rotate group around point tool, it was a simple matter to build the stable on a straight East/West axis, then rotate everything around the first tile to line it up to the house. With that figured out, I really got down to business.

Unfortunately, I didn't reach my self-imposed goal of finishing before Zhadowsee got home.

I gave him some very firm instructions. I'd done my best to ensure that he wouldn't be able to find the house, except that I'd gone ahead and dropped a portal into his Neriak house, so that I wouldn't have to do it later. He was very good about not sneaking into the work in progress.

The final view of the stable doors.

Happily, he had plans away from the keyboard (I know you're not supposed to say that about your significant other, but sometimes you just need that privacy to get things done! I didn't want to feel like I was ignoring him in order to finish up his present, so the fact that he had things to do was perfect). So, given another couple of hours to get things done, I went to work even harder!

Originally, I'd set up the stable with 8 stalls. I had five mounts on me that I wouldn't mind missing or were easy to replace (The Gorowyn, Neriak, and Kelethin destriers, the quested Gryphon from DoV, and the Winter Wolf mount). That left two empty stalls--stalls which Zhadowsee could put any of his own spare mounts into.

View from the front of the stable.

I divided the stalls up into meat eaters on one side, grain eaters on the other. Yes, normally that would be a bad idea. Having the poor horses face predators would probably stress the animals unduly. However, this is a fantasy game, and horses stand around calmly next to predators all the time. (I really do put that much thought into layout and position.)

The stable itself was very easy to build, once I'd decided on how I wanted to do it. The stall doors are taller than I'd like, but we don't have any half dividers. If we ever do get half dividers, I'll switch them out and make things a bit more realistic in there. As it is, Zhadowsee's stable has really tall walls.

I built one stall, then duplicated it three times. I'd made sure that the stall was 7.5 units long, so it was a simple matter of moving each new stall 7.5 units further down the line than the stall before it.

Then I took everything I'd made so far, and I mirrored it around the E/W axis. That gave me all eight stalls with minimal work.

Zhadowsee meeting Compass. I'm not sure they like each other.

Unlike my usual method of construction, where I build the structure first, then go through and add in major structural details, then go through for minor structural details, and finally end with putting in decorative details, I built this stable in phases.

I could have allowed Zhadowsee to peek the minute he got home. The structure was up, the mounts were in their stalls, and it looked vaguely stable-like. But for the most part, it was a bunch of empty boxes with mounts standing in them. Not exactly an awesome birthday present. However, I continued that method of decorating, putting in waves of details, both decorative and structural alike (mounts count as decorative. The rails for the doors to slide on are structural details. The rails showed up in phase three or four of decorating. The stops at the ends of the rails showed up in phase six or seven). I didn't know when he'd be getting home--I had an approximate idea of how many hours I'd have, but not a definite one--so I wanted to be sure that the stable would be ready for viewing the instant he got home. I could go in later and add more details. The idea was to give the appropriate impression of a stable, no matter when he walked in.

Compass in his stall. This was before the rail stops were added in.

Zhadowsee showed up after I'd gotten most of the details down that I wanted to. I still hadn't added flavor (like muck in the muck cart), but I had a lot of the little bits in, like the hay for the animals, the food and water bins, and nests for the drake and gryphon. I'd put in a couple of hay bales in the hay bin, but hadn't yet put in the number I wanted. But once again, it gave the impression that I wanted it to.

The tour of the stables started in Zhadowsee's Neriak house. When he logged in, I demanded that he head directly to the house. There, I'd left a book under three roses. Roses are a thing with Jazabelle--stereotypical, I know, but I personally adore roses, and when roleplay took Jazabelle in that direction, I ran with it. I'm the one playing her, after all.

Click it to read it.

So Zhadowsee found a note in his house. In my head, I'd constructed a story for the appearance of the stables and the mount, and I wanted to share it with Zhadowsee. My idea at first had been that I'd do all of this the night before his birthday, and he'd wake up and log in to find himself standing on the note and flowers. That didn't happen--I fell asleep at the computer while planning what I was going to do. But I liked the idea of the note and flowers.

The idea then changed that he'd get home from work, log in, and find the note and flowers. That didn't happen either. But I really wanted that note and those flowers in there! So when he logged in in the evening after doing his AFK things, I'd set down the note and flowers, tweaking the story I was telling him just a tad to fit the series of events better.

The warg's stall. Z dropped this one himself.

It's not really a long scene, and I didn't even need to be there for it. But sometimes it's fun to see what people do when they look at what you've built. So I followed him through the doors and watched him wander around. He had a fun time avoiding the stall with the drake--at the time, the drake's stall was the only stall with an open door, so it was pretty easy to tell which stall was the focus. He stopped at the stall beside the drake's, and pretended that it was the one he was supposed to be looking at. He really is very silly.

But eventually he did walk over to Compass' stall, and we hung out and chatted for a bit. He was happy with what I'd done for him, and had some story ideas already for the space. He seemed especially pleased by the fact that he could fill it with whatever mounts he chose, and that I could easily extend the space by several more stalls if he wanted.

Yep, I really did put muck in the muck cart.

After he went to bed, I did another two phases of decorating. I added another pair of stalls (mostly to test how easy it actually would be to do--quite easy, as it turns out) and fleshed out the details in the rest of the stable. Muck in the muck cart, for example!

The rail stops were also added in at this point, as were the hitching rings for the halters.

We don't have a large selection of rope, so I wound up using the Othmir Hanging Lamp in order to have some sort of rope hanging from the hitching rings.

Hitching rings with rope hanging, waiting to be tied onto a halter or bridle.

Someone needs to clean this horse's stall.

Finally, right before I went to bed, I popped into Zhadowsee's Neriak house and built a connecting door to the stable. Then I moved the note and roses to the step in front of the stable door, and crashed in bed.

The door to the stable. Don't bring mounts into the house!

I'll probably continue to add details as I think of them, and tweak things until they make me happy. Right now, I'm going to go and fix some of the ropes so that they hang better.

Over all, the stables took me under eight hours of decorating to complete, and most of that time was spent crafting items. The decorating itself went incredibly fast. This is, to date, my fastest project ever. Details will change as I think of them, but for now it's good!

If you'd like to see any updated or added screenshots, or any screenshots that I didn't post in this blog, please click here. This will take you to my Facebook album, which has all of the images.

Iosabella's Apartment -- Collaboration

In early March, Hopsalong posted an awesome apartment on the Leaderboards. She didn't advertise it much, but she did mention it to me in guild.

Morive's Ruby Sunset Apartment by Hopsalong.

I visited, and immediately demanded that the only other person on my friend's list who was online at the time come see. So Iosabella popped into the apartment with me, and we wandered around, praising the house to each other.

Then Iosabella said, "I could so see Iosabella living here. Maybe not in these colors, but I can see it. Blue, I think. Neriak marble."

So I said to Hopsalong, "My friend really likes your apartment. Would you be willing to let me build an apartment for her, inspired by yours? I would give you credit, of course."

To which Hopsalong replied, "Do you want me to send you the layout?"

I said yes. I figured that since Iosabella just wanted the apartment but in blue, having the layout would make this a 1-2 day job. Have Iosabella gather the materials, replace the red marble with blue in the layout, and load.

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. While the blue was pretty, it was even darker than the red apartment. A "Sapphire Apartment" sounded neat, but the Neriak marble just didn't work. The two of us looked around. We tapped our fingers and chewed on our lips as we tried material after material for the ceiling, walls, and floor. At this point, I was doing most of the work, with Iosa giving her opinion. She didn't have much experience with housing, and had no experience with the layout editor at all.

Iosabella's Apartment.

Finally, after several days of testing out materials, we decided on the default wood for the wainscoting (just like Hops) and ceiling (not like Hops) in the living room, and the various Drunder tiles as wallpaper throughout. I wound up completely redoing the walls, since Hopsalong had used various scaled tiles to do the walls in the Ruby Sunset, which wouldn't work with the Drunder tiles. The Drunder tiles all had to be the same scale.

I set up the walls in the living room, the stained glass windows in all of the windows, and some of the walls in the kitchen/dining room/bedroom/bathroom. I set up the bathtub in the bathroom, based on Hopsalong's, but with a few tweaks of my own. Then I stopped working on the apartment. I had other projects to do, and because I was doing this "for fun," it wasn't high on my priority list. Iosabella had said that whenever I got it done would be fine with her, since she wasn't expecting it at all. This was my gift to her.

View from the door to the left of Iosabella's apartment.

Of course, she turned around and bought me something off of the Marketplace as a "thank you," so it was sort of a commission, too...

After a while, Iosabella started working on another house of hers. She asked me for some lessons in the layout editor, and I taught her how to panel with tiles. She picked it up quick. A few lessons involving tricks of the trade, and she was tiling floors and walls like a pro. She already has a good eye for arranging furniture.

Art nook and door in Iosabella's Apartment.

Once she'd spent some time on this other house, she came back to the Apartment. She looked around. I'd done barely any work in a month. She asked me if I'd be offended if she moved some things around, since she didn't want to mess up what I'd done. I pointed out that it's her apartment, and she's free to do what she wants with it. If this were a commission, I might be upset that she was touching things when I wasn't done. But this was "just" a house for a friend. So she started moving things around. She looked at how I'd tiled the walls in the living room. She went into the kitchen, with its mostly bare walls. She went back to the living room. She asked me where the Drunder tiles come from. I explained the quest to her. She logged on a level 90 crafter and ran the DoV crafting quests so that she could craft the tiles. She churned out the tiles I'd need for the kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and bathroom, and stuck them in the crate.

Iosabella's kitchen, done by Iosabella. Based on Morive's Apartment.

Then she waited a week.

I didn't do anything.

She waited a few more days.

I didn't do anything.

She went into the kitchen and dining room, and tried to tile them herself. She succeeded. So she went to the bathroom and the bedroom, and did those, too. Then she looked at the half-done kitchen counters, and tried her hand at those. She asked me for advice on counters and colors. She tried out my suggestions and liked them. I came to take a look, and was impressed by what she'd done. I was also a little ashamed, because I'd neglected to continue working on her home. She waved it off, but I insisted on putting in some crown molding in the kitchen and dining room area, to make it look more "finished."

Iosabella's version of Norrathian recessed lighting.

She asked for my help on the ceiling over the window in the kitchen. I tried a few things, but couldn't come up with something we liked. I took a break on it, and went to work on another project. A day later, I received a tell. "I figured it out! I put up a recessed ceiling, and it looks nice! And oooooh, I came up with some really cool recessed lighting! I'm so excited!"

I immediately popped over to take a look. Yep, she'd come up with some really cool recessed lighting. Not only that, but it only took two items per light! You can't beat that for custom built lights. I'm definitely stealing the lighting if I ever need recessed lighting.

I tweaked the wainscoting to match her current ceiling configuration, and helped her fix a few alignment errors. I moved the doors into their door frames for her. She was having trouble with the dining area in the kitchen. The space is small, which makes it difficult to have a dining area and still have space to move around easily. I suggested a dining nook, since that can be shoved into a corner. Plus it's custom built, so roleplayers can sit at the table and roleplay.

Don't mind the angry Iosa on the couch. I asked her to pose!

We decided on a dining nook based on my Tudor Farmhouse's nook, but with leather stitched cushions insead of damask. It came out rather nice, I think.

Then I wandered off to work on my own projects and commissions.

She went to the bathroom and started working on that. She took the tub that I'd modified from Hopsalong, and modified it further. I came to take a look. I loved it. I made a suggestion or two, and helped her to align a few items better, then left her at it again.

Iosabella's tub.

The rest of it is all Iosa. She did the bedroom, and put in the little pieces of furniture. She arranged the knicknacks in the kitchen, and several of the items on the shelves. She's the one who looked around and said, "Yes, my home is finally complete!"

Congratulations, Iosabella, on a home well done. Based on Hopsalong's design it might have been, but you've turned it into your own space. Bravo!

Another view of the bathroom.

Iosa came up with the taps and the drain. I'm definitely stealing those.

What home is complete without a bedroom?
Especially one that has girlish stars pasted on the ceiling!