Hearth and Table Inn

[Crystalleowyn]

Harnuth mentioned the Hearth and Table Inn in his note about how Gib and Guin got to Forlaw. That was in the Ales and Tales thread for today, January 22, 2018.

Somebody might be wondering what the Hearth and Table looks like, so here it is!



The Hearth and Table Inn
As built in Second Life. Click on the picture for a larger version.

This is really how it looks in Second Life, where we have a tiny build of things from the city of Kamra in the Nightfield region. If you have an SL account, that slurl will drop you off at the entrance. (And if you don't, you can get one free at http://www.secondlife.com/. The SL client loads and updates lots faster than LOTRO.)

In Second Life, the inn still has its original name, Mark of the Kef. That's another tale that grew in the telling over the past 10 years. This is a copy of the actual Hearth and Table, which is on a private grid that doesn't allow posting pictures.

The smaller building on the left side of the picture is Mad Anthony's Public House, and the round gazebo thing is the town well. Between Mad Anthony's and the inn is the hobbit stage, inspired by the stage near the Prancing Pony in Bree.

And, yup, those are hobbit holes! We have hobbitses in Kamra, and the inn is designed to accommodate them. You might see a couple of them sitting at a table inside the inn. Those two, Pondofast and Meliandora, are named after our hobbit alts in LOTRO. If they are there, they are probably in bot mode, and so not very good conversationalists. Great listeners, though.

Here's a peek inside:


Pondofast and Meliandora at the Hearth and Table
As built in Second Life. Click on the picture for a larger version.


Pondo and Meli are enjoying a piece of the inn's special chestnut pie and a half-pint of Stromata beer. The riser lifts the hobbits' tables to the same level as the big people's tables so they can all share their evenings at the inn together.

Harnuth and I are the big people, dressed for sailing. I am Crystal Edelmann in Second Life and he is Camden McAndrews.

[Aedon Durreah]

A very lovely place.Love the Hobbit Holes outside than the picture inside. Thank you for sharing the picture. So looking forward to Hearth and Table's first appearance at Ales and Tales.

[Lauralda]

Oh my, those hobbit holes are lovely!

[Beorbrand]

But what are Barbie and Ken doing there?

[Harnuth]

Heh. Barbie and Ken are Crystal and me. We'd just got back from sailing on the Blake Sea in Second Life, and stopped by the inn to say hello to the hobbits.

For your amusement, he's what our boat* looks like:



SV High Endeavour Under Full Sail on the Blake Sea
Click on the image for a larger version


Land of my high endeavour,
Land of the shining river,
Land of my heart forever,
Scotland the brave!

If only we could launch our boat on Lake Evendim. *sigh*









*Or, at least, one of our boats, the one we sail most of the time.

[Aedon Durreah]

Would love to be able to sail ships in Lotro. Love that screen shot of yours. In UO I love taking my ship out just to relax and get away from things. It is amazing how even in a game, such things sooth the soul.

[Hannariel/Brioney]

This kind of reminds me of when I used to play The Sims, just so I could build towns and decorate neighborhoods and houses.

[Crystalleowyn]

Hannariel wrote:

This kind of reminds me of when I used to play The Sims, just so I could build towns and decorate neighborhoods and houses.

Oh cool!! That's how I met Harnuth in the first place. I was playing The Sims and looked at web sites about the game, and there was one web site where he was the webmaster and writing stories that I really liked. So I got up all my courage and sent him a kind of fan letter and he wrote a really nice letter back and that's how it all started.

I even got to play a major role in his on-going Sims story. I was married to him, and we were superheroes. That was interesting enough but it really got to be an adventure when one of our children inherited our super powers and they manifested when he was an infant.


Barry the Superbaby

[Aedon Durreah]

Ha, that is so cool Crystal, Now I want to read some of Harnuth's stories.

[Harnuth]

Just a little disclaimer: The stories that Crystal is talking about are serial fan fiction yarns, not professionally published works. There's a little list of some of my professional stuff at www.asi.org/bios/grb/grb-bibliography.html

Now for the fan fiction.

Incongruously, the old phpBB that I used for Sun Sims is still working, so you can peruse how all that started in Tales of Happy Valley. (Caution: The story is intended for mature audiences.)

Sadly, the long-running story that Crystal was referring to is offline, perhaps permanently, due to a technical change in PHP and the old version of vBulletin that I used for it. That tale was called "Anja Does the Meat Market," the tale of an innocent Dutch girl who decided to earn a living as a stripper. Like many things from Sims fandom, got into very adult content at times. Nevertheless, Sheba, Crystal's character in this tale, had her origin in Anja's predecessor, Tales of Happy Valley.

In the beginning, in Tales of Happy Valley, I was musing over a back story that would explain the behavior of my characters in The Sims 2. Then the characters started to take on real personalities and real lives, and it developed into more of a story than an amusement with game mechanics.

Then, 17 years ago, Hurricane Crystal hit...

[Crystalleowyn]

Now Hurricane Crystal is reading Tales of Happy Valley again! I'd forgotten how much fun it was!

Darn, this makes me miss Anja's story. *pout*

[Harnuth]

[Footnote] For the sake of historical accuracy, Crystal reminded me that she first wrote to me quite some time before I started writing the Tales of Happy Valley. It all started back in the days of Moon Sims, some time in late 2000 or early 2001. The Dotcom Disaster hit in late 2000, and that's when Moon Sims (and then SimsHost) started attracting a lot of attention by hosting Sims sites that otherwise would have been forced offline.



Moon Sims Tour Guides in the original game, The Sims, c. 2002
Click on the image if you'd like to peruse the ancient Moon Sims site. It's still maintained by the Artemis Society.