Sunday 8 April 2007

We have seen some of the disadvantages of attempting to locate my story in a real location. One of the advantages is that the valley and its landmarks really exist, in a fashion. Therefore, keeping in mind that the distances are four times as they appear, I can show you some “photos of Lothere”.

Saturday 7 April 2007

Devin has unwittingly reminded me that I have been wanting to put up some maps of Lothere.

First of all, where is Lothere? We know it’s in Britain, and I hope it’s clear that it’s in the border country between England and Scotland—which border was frequently changing at this time period. I have also hinted that it’s west of Northumbria. And, for the serious detectives, I have placed it south of Carlisle, since Carlisle was called Leol at that time, and I have mentioned Leol once or twice as being on the way to Scotland.

That’s enough information to put it in the Lake District of northwest England. However, I have been deliberately vague about its exact location, because it is impossible to fit it anywhere in the real world. I’ll tell you the story of how it evolved so you can how I painted myself into this corner.

Tuesday 27 March 2007

Now that we have seen the outside of Egelric’s castle, we can have a look at some of the interior.

Wednesday 21 March 2007

Although it was one of the most recent castles to be built in Lothere, Egelric’s castle will be the first of the castle tours, partly because Devin asked for it, and partly because it is my favorite.

Monday 19 March 2007

Tiana gets a second request granted right away, but since she is starting a new story that may involve caves I wanted to help her out by showing how I built Kiv’s cave. (A story about cave-​dwelling dwarves?) Hopefully it will interest some of the rest of you.

Unlike most of my lots, Kiv’s cave really is something of a “set” in the Hollywood sense. It is not set up to be a realistic cave (or even a playable lot), but only with story-​telling in mind. My castles look like real castles, as we shall soon see with Egelric’s, but one can only go so far with cave-​building in The Sims without resorting to cheats and tricky camera angles.