if you're gonna get involved with her, then tread with care, 'cause that girl is trouble, take it from me

I am so completely confused.

[17:30] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: [Exxxx Rxxxxx] are you stupid or you are born with

That's how a chat group popped open for many of us this afternoon.

[17:31] [Nxxx Rxxxxxx]: O.o
[17:31] [Ixxxxxxxx Sxxxxxxx] blinks
[17:31] [Mxxxxxxx Gxxxxxx]: huh?
[17:31] [Fxxx Mxxxxxxxx]: excuse me
[17:31] [Mxxxxxxx Fxxxxxxx]: born with what?

And it went on that way for a while, because we were all confused.

[17:31] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: never you can eject me for nothing
[17:31] [Mxxxxxxx Fxxxxxxx]: really
[17:32] [Sxxxxxxxxxx Pxxxxxxx]: O.O???
[17:32] [Sxxxxx Nxxxxxxxx]: Good for you, sparky? xD
[17:32] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: you think you are the king of world
[17:32] [Mxxxxx Ixxxxx]: BORN WITH WHAT?!?!?!

Still a good question. Of course, what with the server updates this week, group chat is fried right now, so chat lag is transposing a lot of things.

[17:32] Emilly Orr: Whoa, whoa, whoa, this is the first line of chat I saw. What's going on?

Hence, my seeming entry into the conversation two minutes in.

[17:32] [kxxx Kxxxxx]: O.O
[17:32] [Fxxx Mxxxxxxxx]: [Jiffy]
[17:32] [Mxxxxxxx Gxxxxxx]: that's not very nice
[17:32] Emilly Orr: [Jiffy], calm it down, we don't know what's going on here
[17:32] [Mxxxxxx Dxxxx]: ...We never said anything about ejecting. You have the wrong IM you're pushing enter into

Which many other people pointed out, after. She apparently would have none of it, and kept protesting.

[17:33] [Ixxxxx Rxxxxx]: i think he or she accidently put in wrong chat
[17:33] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: you are so stupid for hear me im here for play not for war stay at home
[17:33] Emilly Orr: [Jiffy], calm DOWN.
[17:33] [cxxxxxx Cxxxxxx]: dude its a troll i am pretty sure

So at this point, we were all pretty sure she were mistaking the group chat for main chat.

[17:33] Sakito Nakamichi: And you're still tryping into the wrong chatbox, sparky. x3

Some of us even told her so.

[17:33] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: yes sorry im up set so sorry
[17:33] Emilly Orr: Just remember, [Jiffy]--group chat here.
[17:33] Emilly Orr: Not main chat.
[17:34] Emilly Orr: Which makes me wonder--what's going on at the store, people?

I still don't know, but I did feel the urge to try and talk to her directly:

[17:35] Emilly Orr: Seriously--what's going on at the store?
[17:36] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: sorry just i think eecho hera that now i use this media
[17:36] Emilly Orr: No, there's a difference between main chat, and group chat
[17:37] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: yes i know lol but if im mute i cant lol
[17:39] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: im drow and one time i visit drow castle and im ban and now ejected

And here's where my head began to seriously tilt. Unless you're dealing with a psychopathic store owner, there is no earthly reason why a polite visit once will get anyone banned.

(And if anyone's thinking I mean the lass behind Grumble, I don't--I bitched about her fashion sense, she banned me, THAT part I have no disagreement with. And I'm not saying she's a psychopath.)

But while I was trying to figure that out, she said this:

[17:39] Emilly Orr: What happened the day you were banned?
[17:40] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: from taure ru and now drow groupp
[17:40] Emilly Orr: Alia doesn't have anything to do with Taure Ru, I don't think
[17:40] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: im for the justice eecho not king of world

So...if I'm processing this properly...Alia Baroque runs Fallen Gods. (Obviously). Someone else runs the Taure Ru sim (plus their nine thousand RP groups, and that's also obvious). Why is she thinking that Alia = Taure Ru?

[17:41] Emilly Orr: Fine, but you do realize you're trying to communicate that through the Fallen Gods store group, right? Which isn't a specifically Drow group, or an RP group
[17:41] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: i lost access and many friends
[17:41] Emilly Orr sighs
[17:42] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: yes its neccessary because this shop is very good and many drow buy there

Yeah, no, it's NOT necessary, UNLESS you've actually been banned from there--and if you were banned, why aren't you out of the store group? Most people with half a brain (and Alia is very far from stupid) ban troublesome avatars from their groups AND their stores, so...?

Still very confused.

[17:42] Emilly Orr: Okay. Breaking this down.
[17:42] Emilly Orr: Alia =/= Taure Ru
[17:42] Emilly Orr: Taure Ru is its own sim and guild
[17:42] Emilly Orr: Now, you were banned from the Fallen Gods store?

And half a minute went by with no reply. Then this:

[17:42] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: but its ok now have fun all huggz and kiss
[17:43] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: you can ban me i buy other place
[17:44] [Jiffy Wonderlube]: i want only justice

Okay, HEADS UP for the slow kids in the audience, which apparently includes the Drow princess [Jiffy]: I DO NOT RUN FALLEN GODS. Who the hell did she think she was talking to?? I'm a vaguely interested bystander, at best.

I mean, look, wrong windows can be forgiven, it happens a lot--I still shake my head at the woman who openly kicked someone's chained lady bits in Rag Dollz, and it took her half an hour to figure out why her chained submissive wasn't responding!

(Not that that wasn't an amusing half hour.)

But even so, this was profoundly not a wrong window. This was someone, essentially, protesting McDonald's and doing so standing in Outback Steakhouse. The wrong place, the wrong platform, the wrong concept--and to this very moment, I don't entirely think she's smart enough to figure out what happened.

Other than she has a complaint damn it and she will be heard for justice. From someone. Who most definitely isn't me.

You know, she puts me in mind of another Drow princess I met once, long ago...who happened to be blonde, blue-eyed and have tan skin...Now, I'm not saying that Miss [Jiffy] is a fake, per se...just a complete flake.

I'd also note that if anyone's banned for something, in general, they know what it was. Even I figure out the reasons why, most of the time, even when they're ancillary reasons like "you were mean to my friend so I'm banning you from my store because you're mean, nyaaah!"

This girl? Seems to have no clue why she was banned both from an entire sim, and then from a Drow RP group. Plus that mention of her losing "many friends".

No, [Jiffy], you know why. And if you don't, then you're just too stupid to breathe anyway, so it's not anyone's problem but yours.

(But seriously--people like her give Drow a bad name.)

he's the bafflement of Scotland yard, the flying squad's despair

((RP MODE))

Yestereve, I attended the wake of one I'd known briefly, but I thought, moderately well, for all of that. A mage of great skill, a Drow of honor that the Winter Court esteemed highly. One to whom I turned, in time of distress, for the healing and affectation of a warrior woman who had, alas, grown gravid with child.

Mine, for all that she was female, and I was. Being a shapeshifter of such diverse skill is not, always, the greatest comfort.

She had grown hysterical with the need not to bear what I had, all unknowing, placed within. Amongst her people, such children were abominations, and she would not see past but that I was evil, and she would be, would she allow this babe birth.

I had left the matter in her hands, to decide. I have a woman's heart, and in most respects, always a woman's form, and I could not take the choice of her own heart from her hands. And she chose to end the life within.

Though this grieved me dire, I let her words stand, and sought one who could help with such a thing. And found the mage, the Drow, who was stern, as he should have been, but ultimately, understanding. And in a rite of no small terror and great confusion, he took the babe from her in a burning orb of green balefire while she screamed that she was dying, and I was killing her.

I bowed my head and let it happen. She had asked for this. I had allowed it. My child--my neverborn girl child--never drew air in this realm and perished.

Weeks later, when the woman finally fled Lumindor, and my touch, never to be found again, she left the husk of the babe at the base of my tree, and I dug the bones deep and enspelled myself to forget where they rested.

Lo, these many weeks, months, years later--longer by my memory, of course, than by the world's--I heard of his passing. But not as Drow.

It seems his secret life was led amongst more mortal lives, and he was a guardian of Caledon's skies. Something untoward had felled him; the wreckage of his flying craft was found beneath the waves; I never ascertained precisely what, and truly, it is not my place to know.

It was my place to travel to the site where his widow grieved his loss, and pay the respects of the Unseelie, both the Winter Court's and my own.

I do not know how all attendants viewed my presence; I do know many had never seen me invested in Unseelie flesh, they had never seen my tricolor eyes, my Sidhe scarlet hair; I make no bones about being shapeshifter, being occasionally fae, but in Caledon, at least, I am not generally seen as such.

But it was worth such revelation; it was a necessary thing, for me, to wish the passing of this one be held with honor, and wish all life's blessings to come on his widow.

The Wheel spins, and life goes on; we call and count our honored dead. Let this memory lessen grieving; and fell light shine again when it may.

dance with me, pretty one, tonight

So, some may know of my long-standing love affair with Evocative, the home of Paul Lapointe and Bastchild Lotus, designers of drop-dead gothic couture for both sexes through LaPointe Designs.

Well, they've finally opened Evocative Magick, the second sim, and they've got a neko shop there.

There's good and bad in this.



First, they do have a couple of non-neko offerings here, one Drow, and looks like one demoness. (They also have male nekos, I didn't check on other offerings.) The Drow they nearly get *completely* right: white eyebrows and white hair lower, which for nearly *all* Drow skins out there? Just *isn't seen*. Also, these skins are *dark* without being *stern*--that's another very good thing, because I am sick until death of seeing pale blue skins offered up as Drow.

I'm not sold on the dark red nipples and lips. They seem jarring somehow.



I do like that their neko skins, while they come in packs of four, come in three face variants--'plain', then striped or spotted, then full-on neko, with the cleft upper lip and the *much* more obvious kitten features. I do like that, it's a selling point. And Miss Lotus, she's not picking up and running with neko 'standard' shades--blue, pink, green, et cetera. She has two strong whites, a strong red, a really interesting gold tone in stripes and spots, a grey, a black, and at least one completely unspotted/striped blue.

[Late insert: Actually--as seen in the comments--it's Paul LaPointe doing the skins here. Well, I've already said they're both phenomenal, they are. Now I can point out Paul's the lead designer for their neko line.]



Now the down side--for me, at least. I think the little touch on the white tiger, of the pawprint on the lower belly? Unnecessarily twee. And the fact that *all* these skins have dinner-plate nipples--yes, I *know*, some women have 'em, but *not* everyone, and *certainly* not all cats!

It bugs me on freebie skins, it bugs me even more seeing them as the default on otherwise really *gorgeous* skins for L$1100 to L$1200 a set!

Still. Worth checking out. And most of 'em have demos. Which you really should use, more than usual, because...well. First of all, if you've never dealt with actual cat-face nekos, they can be startling. These are the best I've seen, very realistic, very realistic dark around the eyes, start to finish--if they get more than the few bare colors I see in the stripes, I might well be tempted to convert from Temenos.

However, the blue "Ice Queen" is, as far as I can tell, not neko in the least, and the pink leopard "Ice Queen" is almost saccharine in its twee--bright pink skin, abstract pale rose shapes over it, with glittery pink seventies-style flowers scattered across face, limbs and torso.

Shoot me now. (The blue "Ice Leopard" skin? Same thing as the pink. Only in baby blue. Shoot me twice.)

The red "Neko Flame" also seems neko only by virtue of the name, but it's a precious conceit--a smoothly red skin, with 'devil girl' fifties-style flames on limbs and torso. Some poses cut across the flames oddly, but it's something I can put up with without clothes, and with 'em, few will notice.

By contrast, the "Red Lust" leopard looks like a skin made of exploded blood cells. But then, to be fair, Nomine's Aether "Red Constellation" skin has always looked like that to me, too. Could be my graphics card.

Then there was the pink leopard...and my brain cringing up and DYING for the night. Pale bubblegum pink, with DEEP pink spots ringed in black. Make the hurting stop...

Thankfully, the White Tiger more than made up for things. This one--all of them, actually--seem much less 'furry' than I usually wear neko, in fact the White Tiger in particular seems *very* smooth-skinned with heavy dark stripes tattooed on. But it's cute as hell, and I'm tempted to pick that one up if none of the rest.

On all of them, the faces are exquisite--detailed, definitely made up and stylized, but gorgeously so, beautiful to look at.

If the color choices improve beyond the white, and the rich gold? I'll be very tempted to invest. Smooth skin or not.

in the dark of night, those small hours

((RP MODE))

Once, long ago, in distant memory, the Drow dwelt on the surface, with the other races of elves. At that point, they dwelt in places rich in overgrowth--old forests, jungle spaces, places with overhanging trees and branches thick with moss--and even then, they were known as 'dark elves', for the color of their skin.

Because they prospered in their places, and were highly skilled with magics, over the talents of their hands, the lighter-skinned elves called them lazy, excessive, and decadent. Because they believed punishment should be dealt quickly, rather than stretched out into the endless time the 'light elves' would allot...the other elves named them vicious and cruel.

The other elves banded together--light elves, grey elves, High elves of the ruling councils, small brown elves of the forest lands. Through superior numbers--and because at that point, the dark elves feared no treachery from other elven hands--they were forced away from their homes, away from the surface world, their numbers depleted.

They ended up underground, in vast echoing spaces lit by oddly glowing crystals, radiant waters, populated by beasts the surface world could never understand. There they made their stand, formed soaring cities lit by new illuminations, and met their Demon Queen, the goddess Lloth.



Welcome to the Underdark.

One of my friends has recently become involved with Avilion Isle. He loves it there. I have to agree--beyond the long-lost Tusk, it's the most impressive build I've ever seen on the grid. And he found a passage to chambers below the ground, and wanted me to see them.



The passageway down, long and steep, is littered with torn wings--demifae swirled sets, majestic angel feathers, butterflies' best adornments--making it very clear that going down is more dangerous than departing. Making it clearer was noting, about halfway down the passage, the corridor-filling spiderwebs, glistening with dew and artistry.



Once we reached the bottom, the source for the dim violet illumination became plain--large, freestanding crystals, giving off their own subtle radiation, their own illumined glow. The main space was huge; I couldn't see to the top of the overarching ceiling.



I can only assume some giant creature died, at some point, or was killed by the denizens here, and the skull dragged into position over this small pool. It's very large.

We met up with a resident of the Underdark, a Drow male, who challenged us. As I was in the pose of a Drowess, I challenged him back. Whereupon he laughed at me, and said that sometimes, our true faces shine through any disguise.

Turns out he also shares space with the surface Drow of Lumindor. And he knew of little Em the shifter's ways.

That turned to our advantage, though--he was so tickled by my attempt to conform to Drow appearance he gave us the freedom to wander, for a night, assuming we did not run into any acid-tempered drowesses about. We bade him travel safely, and we were off.



We still do not know what this structure was. Formed partially of the same ultraviolet crystals, part of natural stone, it was linked to the main land on which we stood by an arching bridge, over another of those radiant streams. We carefully walked over the bridge, keeping very quiet.



In the large space inside, were three thrones. One was obviously the throne of the Matron Mother, or perhaps the highest priestess of Lloth this particular Underdark city had. Another was simpler, but cut from the same dark stone as the hall. This one, though...

Why would Drow have something so obviously of the surface world? White marble...white stone...is it ancient, that they have kept from their time above? Was it a gift from the rulers of Avilion Isle?

We didn't know, and we didn't want to wait there to see. We watched the spider fire bowl, looked at each other, and carefully walked out.



My friend showed me another way out, an arching stone path winding around the main cavern space, that led through more cobwebs to the surface. Oddly, we never saw any spiders--barring the ones I brought in--though we would have been careful, had we. Killing a spider in Drow lands generally results in death, and in particular, painful, excruciating death. Spiders--as living avatars of Lloth, the Spider Goddess--are sacred.



Several more giant cobwebs stretched across the path. Most we were able to gently phase through, the act of a small moment of concentration, before we continued on. It took some time. And always, the pervasive silence of the deep, soothing and unsettling at the same time.



The passageway opened up past spiderwebs and curving stone corners into a cavern behind a waterfall, marked with the arching tree of Avilion Isle. Sparkling crystals inset into the walls gently chimed, dancing lights within swirling, as we arrived from the Underdark. As magical as the lands below were, and are, I think we honestly appreciated the return of vibrant colors.



Walking through the waterfall led us to a garden; the garden led us to a torch-lined path; and on the other side of the torch-lined path, the gentle slope of giant flowers I'd first seen when he'd first brought me to Avilion Isle. Oh, my. Come full circle, indeed.



Then I took him to E's, and showed him Eeron Kilian's Drow skins. While there are many Drow skins on the grid, I truly believe that Eeron's and Nomine's are the best-looking. And Munchflower Zaius, the mind behind Nomine, doesn't offer demo skins for the Drow.

If you're going to visit the Underdark...tread lightly, offer no one disrespect, travel armed, and travel in stealth. Try very hard not to be seen. And you may escape with a night of wonders behind your eyes...instead of wondering why there's a Drowess debating between the heated tongs and the thumb clamps...