Exploring SL: Romenna

On logging in the other day, I received a landmark from one of my groups for Romenna, a two-sim build which is a work in progress.  The sim is owned by Nick Lassard, based on the work of J.R.R. Tolkein, but I believe the period setting predates the Lord of the Rings period of Middle Earth.

In fact, since my first visit,  boards have gone up to explain that the sims are strict roleplaying sims, set in the third age of the world in the year 1947 in the seaside Numenorian citadel of Dol Amroth. visitors are requested to be human, with the only furries allowed being realistic animals or pets. There is a social structure in which people of higher station - which isn’t explained - have power over you.

The build varies in quality of building and texturing, but is very imaginative and in some places the building style works really strongly to make it look old and realistic.  It is coherent, definitely looks as though it all forms part of a whole, and has logic for why things are where they are.

Things I didn’t understand on my first visit, like the odd build I was originally teleported into by the landmark, have already been resolved.  Where once it was bare and difficult to know where to go, now it is enclosed and includes explanatory boards and a variety of teleport balls.  The effect is very interesting, as the teleport hub is now enclosed, with trees and building beyond the enclosed section looking tantalisingly interesting, but, being as high as they are, unreachable.

I am a bit concerned by the fact that the builders of the sim have consistently pushed prims over the edges of the sims into the water beyond.  I experienced heavy lag in some places, although SL is behaving weirdly for me in general, and so it isn’t necessarily the fault of the build.  They have certainly stretched the possibilities to the limit, with prims high in the sky and pushed off-sim into the water, and under the ground.  I shall watch with interest the effect of this when the sim has more prims and people in it.

Currently many of the buildings are simply shells, but I am assuming this will change as the build develops, and it is a pretty amazing build already.  In the gap between my two visits, things had developed, and so it will be interesting to watch.  There are some nice acoustic effects from Hastur Pierterson, and it’s definitely worth some time exploring in and around the two sims.