took my breath away, knocked me flat on my back

Emotions get heavy from time to time. Our fears, our worries, general anxieties over our situations, our relationships, employment, the world...It can take a toll not just on us, but on those that care for us. That heavy weight, dragging down everything we do...

Welcome to the Vineyard Terrace.



This is not going to be the typical review (I mean, do I give typical reviews? But I digress); even so, the "Typhon" horns have earned their descriptives--they are very adorned, and they are monstrously oversized.



Straight out of the box, unmodified in any way, they barely fit me. This is not to say only men can wear them--anyone can, if they're drawn to these. After all, find a way, or make one--so make sure yours are modifiable.

Everything Vae Victis sells is, after all. But it does present a challenge--because they have crystal gems depending from rope drops, so that seems to point in a direction for 'gravity'. And yes, this is SL, there is no gravity when not dealing with physical prims, but even there, it's just programming that causes the drop.



Apparently, some of the information boards will give notecards! That's a nifty feature.

I mean...you know, I really had a point when I started out on this. The heavy weight of emotions, of hearts, of even unattached things, because things have their own unique dragging weight (as anyone who still has a storage room filled with boxes well knows). But...

I mean, the information boards. Solid info on swamps, and swamp ecosystems, how they act as water filtration, trapping many chemicals and metals before the water runs clean again...and they had another feature, which I may return to and make another entry--because as I walked past, the info boards rezzed into visibility. I clicked for the card, read through it, and moved on down the path...and the board faded back into invisibility.

As I said, very nifty feature.

And as it turns out, I thought this dark navy was a dark green, for the current avatar tones--but, hey, navy still works.



Before the third picture, by the way, I reduced the horns down by -20. They are still huge, but I think they fit a bit better. (On me, mind.) But I should also point out something else--the colors are...not the expected ones, let's say, on the tinting HUD.

Some are the colors we expect--smooth, even tones layered over the mesh. Some...arent', showing up as ombre tones, or lightly burned tones, or something else entirely from what we've come to expect. This is not at all a complaint--far from it. There's so many color variations to play with.



I am loving PBR Materials, while we're shooting through the window of this little swamp shack--the patterns you see on the inside of the metal bars? Those move when the light source changes--so, clouds drifting by, birds passing between the 'sun' obscure in their own way...



Neat, innit?

[[Yeah, no, I was WAY off on this one. PBR hadn't been implemented yet, this was just Advanced Materials lighting. That's my bad. Still cool, but PBR is an entirely different animal.]]



And say hi to the trio of HUDs for all the options. With a codicil (which, rats, I forgot to show): the slide panel on the bottom of the far-right HUD. That one controls, if I'm remembering correctly, the settings around each gem, the cuffs, the metal accents that link up the ropes--then, simply click that little sliding buckle, and there you are with all the settings for the gems.

(I freely admit, I didn't take the most careful notes. I was too enchanted wandering the sim, so my initial mordant reflection on trials and tribulations never had a chance. I had forgotten how...it's going to sound odd, but...serene swampland is. And this sim may do the best job of capturing it in SL--the slow lap of water against piers, the brief splash of a fish (or a gator, depending) farther from shore. The little chorus of tree peepers calling out to each other through the brack.)

The one thing I do know is you should check out the picture of Grim wearing them. And looking perfectly unbowed. You can find them in the /Vae Victis\ booth at Abnormality's current round. I'll update this when I traipse over at my next opportunity!

[[As I'm putting this together to publish, something about the structure of the horns, the bases, with the planes of Grim's skull...likely nothing but a fancy, but--that reminded me pwerfully of Lord Darkness, from 1985's Legend. So, y'know, if anyone feels like striding out on human--skull sized hooves to seduce a lady into killing a unicorn...These may be your horns.]]