ROLE Magazine Replay: The Great Alliance

A few years ago, I was travel editor for ROLE Magazine. I concentrated on Role Play sims, talking to owner/designers, touring the sims, and taking pictures which were glommed into half-page, postage-stamp treatments. I was never particularly happy with that. Now that ROLE is no longer in digital print, I feel very free to republish my articles, either as nostalgia for bygone times or to re-introduce the sims that are still active. Either way, the pics get better treatment and you get to see how vibrant the RP scene of 2009  was. I promise to follow up with what are they doing four years later.

I need to pull away a bit from merely doing Lolas Tango or mesh clothing posts and return to my roots! I intend to explore and report on RP sims and other creative places in SL and maybe having a backlog of articles will help me not feel so pressed to race through a store, capture some vendor textures, toss on a gift or sample outfit, and so on for the admittedly self-imposed deadline.

First up, what was a cover story for ROLE:

Vendui us’jalil  from the Alliance!

Tired of reading about cyberpunk palaces of angst? Space opera starting to sound the same? Okay, this month, we’re exploring a land of dragons and mages, of fairy queens and noble councils: The Great Alliance! The title of this article is in Drow, the language of Dark Elves, and anyone with a Drow Translatascan would be able to understand that it says “Greetings everyone!” These translators can be found for free in the realms of the Alliance, a remarkable collection of sims united in original fantasy roleplaying.

This is what it was 4 years ago, from a very quick drive-by, I got the impression that they’ve expanded!

My dear friend* Archangel Singer introduced me to her roleplaying home and my jaw dropped at the scale of the roleplaying opportunities for more than 800 residents of SL! Spanning nearly 16 sims, the Alliance is quite amazing. I can only report on and provide photos of the five islands of the Elven realm of Sylvhara with this article, but urge you to investigate the other worlds connected with this mature RPG enviroment where Elves, Fae, Drow, Human, Dragons, Gnomes, Treants, and other races carve out their lives. In the words of Lord Malikith Virtanen: “This world is a harbinger of emotions and lives far beyond what we can see with mere pixels.”

Here’s a very brief summary of what you can find in this enormous United States of Fantasy realm: two Drow sims of Zenith, where among many enchantments is a three-level mall filled with armor, appropriate clothing and jewelry, avatars, boots, and more;  Lumindor/Lomendor, comprised of 4 sims dedicated to Fantasy roleplay and represented on the Council of the Alliance; Durohn where the Silver Legion, which serves the Alliance, makes its home;  Asgard, a Viking-based fantasy sim;  Vindarkis, hosting medieval-themed  RP; Wings of Eagles, Medieval RP; Wayrest, an outpost of the Silver Legion; Er Ooma, two sims for Elven RP; Fayandria, five sims dedicated to fantasy RP and “home of dragons;” Imrath Tir, two sims for fantasy RP, tinged with Steampunk themes if the Selene airship I saw is any indication; The Last White Knights realm for fantasy RP; Salvation, also for fantasy RP; and Sylvhara, of course, five sims of Elven-based RP.

Queen Comet Quijote, Elven queen of Sylvhara, and Lord Malikith Virtanen, the leader of the Great Alliance.

But we’re not done! Sims have been set up for what Angel advises me are the “conflict groups” (I guess they don’t think of themselves as the Bad Guys!) opposing the Alliance. They are called as a whole, the Shadow Crusade, Enemies of the Alliance RP group and consist of:  the Sisters of Neval; Aryador, which is contiguous with Sylvhara in terms of location; Lunema; and the Undead Fighters, a vampire group and home to H&S Weapons & other stores serving the Shadow Crusade. (OK, technically, they call themselves the Shadow Legion but because the name wasn’t available as an SL Group, they are the Shadow Crusade.) It should be obvious by now that not all of the islands making up the Alliance are contiguous, with the largest clusters being Sylvhara, Fayandria, and Lumidor. They all carry out separate RP storylines within their boundaries as well as adhere to an overarching storyline for all realms, good and evil.

Yes, that’s me on the left in my old Princess Galacia costume. I threw on the eyepatch for grins. We were in prime positions to watch a weekly tournament among dragons and warriors.

Within these groups is The Academy- Power of the Light, with schools of White, Black, and Red Robes, the latter being a sect of mages and clerics who are neutral: aiding and healing both sides after battles. (Angel is a member and teacher in the Academy of the Red Robes). These academies train in the practical use of the SpellFire (SF) combat system, which is freely available to all visitors and players. The SF system, designed by Aaron Cerveau, has been deemed the best system for handling spellcasting and magic in Second Life. He is involved in the Alliance, which provides a vast testing ground for improvements to the system. Spinning off from this system, of course, is a multitude of wondrous magic-based weapons and armor, made available by a wide variety of merchants who operate stores on Alliance sims.

That’s Angel in the foreground in her small, purple dragon avatar.

A measure of just how serious and inspired these players are by working out an original fantasy realm, consider that The Sylvan Legends by Darius Mesmer runs nearly 80 pages when transferred from notecard to Word document! And that is only for one realm among the near dozen that make up the Alliance, most of which also have elaborate histories. The roleplay is organic as well as organized, and what I mean by that is that the serious roleplayers among the 800 live their parts very likely having no other life in SL but being their character. From that “life” springs what we call “organic” RP. This can take the shape of weekly lessons in spellcasting at the academies which are likely paralleled by classes in weapons and fighting. Clubs and taverns provide outlets for socializing IC and OOC. On one forest sim, the Bard Circle has storytelling, poetry and song sharing on a weekly basis. Rangers take part in quests, searching for scrolls that may lead to treasure or other adventures. Merchants may also have some role in stories—I cannot be sure but it’s always possible.

Organized RP takes shape in at least two ways: the playing out of the history of each separate realm as organized by leaders within each sim and in the larger story arcs involving all the realms. This story arc is coordinated by each realm leader via a council that meets monthly to guide how they interweave their organic RP together into a grand story. The Alliance formed and has stayed intact since November 11, 2007. According to Queen Comet Quixote, the various people who rule these realms get along remarkably well in order for that to be true, and credits Lord Milikith Virtanen with the diplomatic moxie to make it happen. In most of these realms, the owners pay tier simply out of love for the joy of the RP and the creative processes that successful RP requires.

My first visit to Sylvhara was astounding: castles, mountains, gorgeous trees and magnificent waterfalls while overhead, dragons and flying mages battled in a tournament! The dragons were large avatars that have incredibly expressive movement, pretty much controlled by same means you control your avatar but with help via HUD. Despite the lush detailed setting, there were at least a dozen participants flying about blasting each other fairly smoothly. The dragons appeared in various sizes. Archangel Singer has several dragon avatars from which to choose, but most often uses a purple dragon that  is about eye to eye with me when she stands on her hind legs. Other dragons are quite large, with legs the size of my avatar, who fly majestically above the sim.

On the ground, a gallery of colorful characters joked among themselves among themselves, awarding oohs and aahs to the various participants. The good-natured camaraderie was evident, which to me means these people are living very comfortably in their roles and with each other. My hosts for my tours of the sim were Queen Comet Quijote, Elven queen of Sylvhara, and Lord Malikith Virtanen, the leader of the Great Alliance. When we visited the central plaza of the capitol city of Sylvhara, I saw a city fit for the movers and shakers of Sylvhara lived among these beautiful palaces. Yes:  “ambassador, Vienna Beaumont is in the white building at the back left, the Dragon Regent, Malakyte Thorne lives in the front right white building, and Bard, Surazeus Thor lives in the tower toward the back. There is the Mage Hall, there is Elven Hall …”  my guides recounted as we walked a the lovely plaza.

Upon visiting the Bard Circle of Sylvhara Anar, I was soon lost in the foliage of massive trees and a great forest. Caves are cunningly hidden in the gentle roll of green hills. In one cave, we discovered mushroom seats and a scroll that was left as part of the Ranger quest. Farther on down the path we found the Tavern and the Knights Hall.

These pictures aren’t quite enough to capture the true scale of the battlefield and the incredible detail of these sims.

Sylvhara Isil had as its center the Sylvan Temple of the Moon. In the distance, you can hear the crashing of the sea and smell the salt in the rarefied air. This magnificent tribute to Greek columns is where Knightings and blessings are held. Changes of the seasons are celebrated and it is a fit place for any kind of large gathering of the Elven people of Queen Comet. (Psst, there’s also a swank nightclub below it for letting down one’s hair out of character!) To the south is Fae Glen, more temple-like structures on small islands. There is a tree castle that belongs to the queen as well.

On Sylvhara Tari, we came to the gateway for the Council Chambers, where the various leaders of the realms of the Great Alliance meet to discuss matters of state (ie, roleplay, rules, mercantile business, meters, combat, etc.). At each corner of the great room, tall Egyptian-styled statues stand watch over a large square table where these leaders are assigned seats. This hardly touches the surface of the sights to be taken in on these four of the five islands of Sylvhara, of the dozen realms, and sixteen sims that make up the Great Alliance.

I cannot emphasize enough how these gloriously detailed settings create an atmosphere conducive to acting out one’s role, albeit small or large. Add to this the incredible amount of merchandise available for this kind of roleplay, from projectile and melee weapons to myriad forms of armor, training devices, and then the fabulous clothes from gowns to silks, slippers to barb-encrusted boots, and you have a D&D roleplayer’s idea of Pixel Heaven! With such a huge canvas, one can merely live out a fantasy of being a Drow or Faery, Dragon or powerful magician, merchant or soldier and be content and make a mark in the community of a single realm. That alone can be quite fulfilling in Second Life but add to that the arc of greater stories tying together so many realms and you become part of a larger-than-life epic.

*Euphenism for someone I friended back when SL took Wednesday’s off for maintenance! (All my friends are dear in the normal sense of the word.)

It Still Exists: The Great Alliance