Since it is just a bit more than a year since when I have found Winterfell and I decided to set my home there, this event has made me think of the last 12 month lived in this wonderful region.
When I first found Winterfell (as I have described in the PS of this previous post) the region was made by four sims : Winterfell, Haven, Sancturay and Reverie. Ebonshire would have been created just around those days. The village was a loop of cottages with nice shops and a few palaces around it. I have some memories of a Winterfell Palace but I was to shy too visit it. I also remember a circle of stones with a dancing pad where I ofter saw a lady dancing a daily ritual, but again, I was to shy to say hello :) It was possible to walk to Reverie from the village along a waterway and there were a few poseballs along the stream. I remember stargazing poseballs very well. It was the place where I took Mykyl the first time I took her to visit Winterfell :)
I was still homeless those days and I often used to sit by the water on the way from Winterfell to Reverie.
After a couple of weeks I noticed a group for cottages for rent just outside the village. I was tempted ... the cottage was cute, the rent fee affordable so, and after a couple of days of pondering, I contacted the person mentioned of the ad signs and so I met this dark - always in a hurry - lady : Miss Serra Anansi
I was very nervous to talk to her. Her profile indicated that she was born in 2004 ! But she was nice and, at the end, after some fight with a door that did not want to behave, we closed the deal and I had my first home.
The cottage lovely and I felt at home there. I regret that I have no longer idea where its position was. So much the sim has changed. I roughly remember that when I went out, going left I met a tent and after that what I later learned to be the Fillion/James estate.
After a couple of weeks the cottages around mine disappeared and mine was the only one left, then ... one morning ...
I have the habit to TP home before logging off and I was doing so even in those first days. One morning I found in my email a message from Serra. She needed to discuss something. I quickly logged in and I found my cottage, the day before alone in grassland, surrounded by buildings. Winterfell was growing and so was the village and the cottage was in the costruction area.
So Serra had to move me to a new location but she needed a few days to get a new sim ready. For a few days I was homeless again, and I started looking for a temporary accomodation. And it was in those days that I found Aurora Town. But that is another story and shall be told another time. :)
Those were the same days Winterfell increased its expansion rate, favoured by the availability of void sims: Breakwater, Fathom, Harbor and Undertow were born those days.
After a few days Serra came back with a new cottage for me placed on an island in Breakwater and she also started dropping suggestions about "deal that screams" and all the advantages of getting a plot for me rather than rent :)
The island was nice : beautiful seaview (and that had a lot of influence in my later tastes) and a lot of privacy. But I missed not to be at walking distance from the village, which, by the way, had become bigger and more beautiful, with some great shops tham made it interesting just to walk among them.
And there was that cute 1024 sqm riverside plot in Ebonshire ... :)
By then I was addicted, so, after a couple of weeks, I took the big step and I got the land. I was officially a Winterfell resident !
After a few weeks Serra gave me the opportunity to upgdade to a 2048 sqm plot, on the southern side of Ebonshire, bordering Winterfell and the village. I loved the idea to border the village and I took the opportunity. The addiction was worsening :)
The Winter and the end of the year came. Winterfell kept growing. The dark victorian Abisinthe was created in the south and, after a few weeks Caledon Cape Wrath. Winterfell was connected to Caledon. The Realm of the Roses was born.
A few weeks before that Miss Serra had built a new wonderful Winterfell Palace, overlooking and embedding the shopping village. The winter ball, held in the palace, was great fun, expecially when, under the weight of all the people there, the Winterfell server blew up and left a big hole. I remember finding myself, together with many people, in Ebonshire, on the edge of nothing, looking where the sim was :)
The excitment was high and I forgot to take pictures of that monent, and I still regret it :)
The evening nevertheless ended happily dancing in a still undeveloped Cape Wrath :)
A few weeks into the new year, my neighbours and friends Cas and Yez decided to move to create their own land and I acquired the little island in the middle of Ebonshire. New voids had been created at that time, Libris among them which was bordering Ebonshire on the west side and gave me access to the sea. It was possible to sail from home to Caledon and back !!! :)
Miss Serra helped me terraforming, creating a beautiful lagoon and a couple of weeks after I got the island I had my little harbor, Star Port, built.
Those beautiful Winter days were also peculiar because Winterefell was covered with snow.
Maybe it was not totally consistent with the dark Winterfell theme, but it was totally consistent with the Winterfell name and I loved those days, with the white land and the light and Christmas decorations. It was a unique period of beauty.
I particularly loved what Miss Silver did in the plots west of my cottage. Aren't those images stunning ? :)
The Winter was also the period when Aianna and Magnus used to live in Winterfell Haven. They had a beautiful home there and many nights were spent around the fire there or on the top of their palace but eventually their dream of their own sim was filfilled and and they moved in the beautiful Alurel.
After they left it was a difficult period in Winterfell, with many plot left unrented. Miss Serra redesigned the structure of the sims and Winterfell Haven is no more , replaced by four voids, with Morigion taking the place on the grid where Haven used to be.
Many other sims were born after that Maldoror, Mithras, Amaranthine ... just to mention a few, and now there are 27 sims making up Winterfell .. and still growing :)
At a certain point Laudanum was born as well : I had always had a soft spot for the mixed residential/commercial dark victorian Absinthe. And I had thought for some time to have a small gallery to display my sailship pictures. So when Absinthe's twin sim was created I was not able to resist and I got a small plot there to have my Bright Star Gallery :)
During the last months of the Spring and the Summer great new beauty was created in Winterfell, as the new sims were populated by old and new residents. Too many parts of Winterfell are stunning beautiful to mention and display everything. What follows is but a little selection:
Isn't Winterfell wonderful ? :))
We have arrived at the present days. The palace and the village that I have loved so much in the past months will be gone in a few hours and a new breathtaking village will appear. I have talked to Miss Serra about saving in her inventory the old village. It would be a real pity to lose forever such a beautiful creation of her skill even if she has created something even more beautiful . I hope she will follow this advice :)
Good bye old village ... Welcome Taure En Lor, Grove of Dreams :)
W
