Full Erupt Mode!: Part I. Pele at Forsaken

The Caldera of the Volcano Pele at Whimsy: Active Mode

Pele, the Polynesian goddess of fire and rebirth, resides, at least in her virtual virtual form, in the volcano on my Whimsy sim. She manifests from time to time, throwing hot rocks and lava and sending thick clouds of black smoke into the air, but usually she burbles along happily, tossing the occasional boulder and making contented little puffs of smoke.

I first made Pele's acquaintance back in 2006. She looked like this:

I found Pele in a little volcano on Ahshe Chung's Forsaken sim. Her mountain was split into three parcels.

My 4096 square meter parcel encompassed the caldera of the volcano and the west (bottom) and north (left) flanks of the mountain. Idiots of different stripes owned the west and south sides of the mountain. Eventually I acquired their parcels, and more besides.

There wasn't enough flat land to place an ordinary house, so I had a design commissioned. I paid Sweetie $500L to build a house no more than ten meters wide. She was practically blind because she was using an ancient MacBook, but still managed to deliver something extraordinary.

It didn't help that I not only had requirements about size, but design. I wanted a blend of Asian and Island elements.

If the three photos above seem washed out, well, that's the way Second Life skies looked before Windlight arrived.

As you can see, Sweetie's house sat catty-cornered on the edge of the sim, with the volcano rising just behind the building.

The inside was especially beautiful.

I absolutely loved-- and still love-- these window elements.

I had no idea how to build, but before long I had managed to make a pretty good lava pool in the volcano. Pele liked that.

Then I added a temple...

... and a lava flow...

... and a path that ran from sea level to the caldera.

Next, I created a beautiful pool in the hollow interior of the volcano. If you found juuuust the perfect spot in the lava you would fall through into the room.

There was even a room below this one!

Finally, I created an erupt mode. I could turn Pele's eruption on by asking her to pop. Her displays were awesome.

When we moved from Forsaken to our new sim Whimsy in April, 2008, we asked Pele if she would like to come along. She said she would, and we obligingly built a volcano for her.

Next: Whimsy Arrives