Eyeballing

I thought today that I ought to introduce you to my usual (if I am active enough in SL to have a "usual") virtual haunt - the space colony of Necronom VI. The sim is owned/built by someone named Oni Horan, whom I've never met, but it's a pretty interesting place. I have introduced it to you informally already, as that is where I found the pose balls labelled "fucked" and "sucking" (if you need refreshing on that subject, clicking here will open the post in a separate window).

Essentially, the sim is a place primarily for role-playing on the themes of sci-fi horror, mind-wiping, and tentacle rape porn. Even with my low graphic settings, it's pretty creepy, and if you wander around long enough, you come across an infestation of eyeballs that would give Monna Lisa a run for her money in a staring contest. Unfortunately, I'm having problems with my SL viewer, and couldn't get on tonight to take some screenshots of these, so you're going to have to put up with Google Images finest representation:

It's times like these that I really question what I'm doing with my life.

As I write, I am reinstalling the viewer. If I manage to get it up and running, maybe I'll add a screenshot of them later. I'm kind of surprised to find out that I don't already have one.

Alongside the tentacle pose balls (suddenly "fucked" and "sucking" makes sense, huh?), there is a pretty spacey looking bar, and the remains of a docking facility to explore. Beyond Necronom VI, there would appear to be a kind of lobby area leading to other sims, but they are blocked off, and this one is so big by itself that I got kind of lost anyway and ended up just heading back towards the orange flashing lights.

The bar. The orange lights dance, and it's always happy hour!

I got told! - pretty clearly.

As you can see in the first screenshot, I was armed with a pretty hefty gun. There's a story behind that gun and - surprise surprise! - I'm about to tell it.

I think I have already detailed that I was taken to the Necronom during my first visit to SL. My friend and guide Laertes thought it might be fun for me to try out the role-playing scene there (not with the tentacles and the rape, thank you). Once we got to the bar, I sat down on a stool. Laertes approached me, and we began to write out a little conversation as if it was our first meeting. Before we really got going, however, a couple of mercenary-types entered the bar and dived into action, claiming to be holding me hostage. When I tried to protest, the lady shoved a grenade in my mouth. Unfortunately for the couple, Laertes had a couple of friends nearby who came by with big shiny guns to stop them from carrying me away to their ship. The mercenaries ran away, and I was unofficially baptised into Laertes' gang. I was also told off for walking into a bar such as that unarmed. I have not made that mistake since. 

The most disturbing, and the most humorous, thing about this little tale is what happened next. I received a private message from the grenade lady, telling me that it was "such a shame" that they had stopped them from taking me away, because I was "so good for selling". This, on my first day in SL - that I was going to have to report back to my class about!

Since then, I've been part of a couple of successful role-plays based solely in the tentacle-free Necronom VI bar, one of which even spanned the course of a few days, which would appear to be a rare occurrence. But I shall write about that in a later post.

Role-playing in SL is a pretty complex matter and despite the 3D nature of the program, most of the "action" is carried out via text, just like in a forum RP, or those games you used to play when you were little and you'd write a couple of lines, fold the paper over, and pass it along for your friends to carry on. SL has a pretty clever function where, if I type /me in the chat bar before I begin to write, it will italise the text and paste my name at the beginning, instantly placing me in the third tense. I'm really rubbish at explaining this, but, since my viewer is now working, I can demonstrate with a couple of screenies:

Type the action, starting with "/me"

Hit enter - and ta-dah

 You can thusly do almost anything:

and screenshot it with terrible quality - yay!

The point I'm trying to get at is this - there was no grenade. No hostage situation. I could have got up and left the bar any time I chose. If I had, the mercenaries/slavers would have been completely scuppered! And I guess that tickles my sense of humour slightly. 

Anyway - welcome to Necronom VI:

The pose ball here said "hiding". From what..?

Just hanging out...geddit..?...guys..?

Anti-gravity poles...interesting

Not a clue what this is, but it's pretty

Did I upload this already?

Again - not a clue what it is, but it's pretty

And finally:

The eyeballs!

 There is a blogspot run for Necronom VI by Oni Horan, which can be found here. Horan also posted a video to Youtube about the sim, though its focus appears to be on the kind of avatars people create for use on the sim:

Thanks to Laertes for helping me with the "/me" demonstration and the capturing of the eyeballs.