and every road I walked would take me down to the sea

I go nowhere high
Go nowhere warm
Until I see your smile and feel your calm

Always happens on hunts. Always. But I'd forgotten, I suppose, sleep-deprived October, so was unprepared for the surge of must-finish that seized us all.

To be fair, the hunt at FallnAngel Designs will only be active until the 17th at three ayem. And we thought we had two days yet, and I only gone one of those days. So we had to play hurry-up-hunt.

But it still took us five and a half hours to finish this quest, and part of it was--no clues! Honestly, if we hadn't had the help of a lovely fellow at the start, who told us each one was about palm-size, maybe hand-size...we wouldn't have had any information!

And I lick a dime
I crave for you, boy
You're like a parachute, descending from the sky



Let me digress briefly, though, since I didn't get any pictures of the actual hunt--and explain why I have this dislike for sculpted objects.

On any average--I hesitate to say "normal", but that works too--prim, the surfaces are textured, and it takes a bit, sometimes, for those textures to rez in across the surface of each one.

This is basic, this is known.

But for sculpts, the texture is the shape. And if it's a high-detail texture...I'm left with a field of insect eggs, as you see here. They are supposed to be mushrooms.

And I'm sure you're on your way
Yes I'm sure you're on the road



Not convinced? Okay, let's talk trees. Once these rez in--which, as busy as these two sims of the hunt were, never happened--they will be strong, tree-shaped trunks and branches.

As it is now, though? More hovering barked insect eggs. It takes me, on average, between five and fifteen minutes on good days to load in sculpts. So people with sculpted attire, buildings with sculpted additions, or worse, people with actual sculpted bits of their avatars? Walking round objects.

With sculpts, the sphere is apparent, *because* it's predominant. Sculpts can be anything, absolutely anything, within the skill of the programmer, but they are based on the single sphere for form. All of them. Every single sculpted prim.

So, until the texture rezzes in, that's what I'm stuck with. Rounds with surface texturing.

I go nowhere high
Go nowhere warm
Until you're by my side

Back to the hunt. There may be no time for anyone to catch it, but if you go to the main Falln location, and click the notecard giver next to the dais, you can get a general description of the hunt, and the two sims it's going to be held in. We're pretty sure it's not ten in one sim, ten in the other; we think it's nine at Falln and eleven at Tor--but the hunt 'prizes' are fairly cool and worth all the aggravation: everything from nifty eyes, to a skin, to jewels and other baubles, and gods, have I gone into the clothes yet?

Your hand in mine
And I've always known
You're like a feather
You go where wind and fire melt together

In other words, Mr. Azriel Demain--designer and titular elven god of Falln--and the other designers who retail there put a lot of effort into this. Moreover, each individual ornament--they're all individual--is a small sculpted object, from snowflakes and icicles to snowmen and bells. And, once emptied of prize goodness, they can be kept and used as ornaments.

And I'm sure you're on your way
Yes I'm sure you're on the road
And I'm sure you're faster than before

The search took us everywhere on both sims and accomplished at least one thing: I want to revisit Tor when I have the time just to wander. One of the places we found an ornament was a fully equipped Elven music hall--the complete drum set, a rain stick, a harp, and all of it playable. You could have concerts as the sun warmed the leaf-scented air, those who didn't want to play sitting by the outside of the drum circle, or dancing on the balconies of the round hall.

Yes I know you're somewhere on the road
I reckon there is nothing more to say

There was a very frustrating aspect to this hunt--in addition to the lack of clues--and this happened more than once--we would search a place we knew had an ornament, just had to have. We would search it thoroughly. And nothing.

And then later, flying past looking for something else...there we would see an ornament. Hanging from a lintel, hanging from a bird's beak, hanging from a tree branch...and all of us knew it hadn't been there before, because we'd searched there.

It wasn't just tiredness, at times, the ornaments simply didn't appear. Which may again be, because they were all sculpted objects, and at times, just didn't rez in until they rezzed in all at once.



I was wrong, I did have one picture from the hunt. This was the wee small ghost ship next to the much larger pirate ship. And it's absolutely fascinating--that smoke-streak, fog-wisp texture? Is animated on all surfaces. So there it sits, in the water, shimmering as if it's about to fade out of existence entirely.

Small, and just a detail, afterthought, really...but very, very impressive.

[7:01] Neome Graves: We get and then we sleep?
[7:01] You: Yesplz?
[7:01] Neome Graves nodsnodsnods

Towards the end of the hunt all of us were talking in lolcat. I have to own up and say I started it. But I was very tired, and tending towards the silly and euphoric, and using full sentences with correct spelling? All apologies to the Library Militant, who will probably wince for no coherent reason even at me typing this, but it grew wearisome, and I stopped.

At any rate, we completed the hunt, and staggered off homeward, where we cuddled together, blinking at the walls for another few minutes before we parted and fell off the grid. All in all, worthwhile for the hunt prizes, I can't wait to see the outfits--save for...yet another...set of silks...*rolls her eyes*

But hey, being Falln? They will at least be interesting ones.

(Brief final insert: Harborside is on its way.)

(Song is Kate Havnevik's "Nowhere Warm".)