As you will all doubtless know, the star competition* in this month’s Prim Perfect is a very exciting one – with a chance to win a whole castle for a month, beautifully furnished by Jeannie Moonflower (and it finishes on September 5th, so hurry up and get your entries in NOW).
And yet it very nearly didn’t happen at all!
We were all ready to go to press when the original owner of Castle Island (where our castle is situated) had to pull out of the island for real life reasons. It was devastating. The lovely island he had built up (and which we had written a great article) about was gone, and so too were the places we had written about – the fantastic central castle location, with its huge underground restaurant, the rustic old inn, the lagoion … all gone. Where once there had been a neat organisation of castles, in serried rows, our own castle among them, suddenly there was our castle in a wasteland – and one other standing frolornly in the far distance. Even the watchful guardian dragon on the great central castle had gone.
No, I don’t have a photo of that. It was too heart-breaking.
It was at this moment that Quabalah Quintus stepped in. Qabalah, owner of Castles by Q, is providing for the competition the castle he designed and built, and the space for the castle to be lived in. When I told him what had happened (and the fact that our Castle might be the next to go), he stepped into the breach and bought the island himself.
This was an amazingly generous gesture. He had been planning to buy another island in the future, and sell the lots to castle lovers (with Castles by Q‘s castles provided with each lot), but to save our third edition of Prim Perfect, he advanced his plans to make sure we had an island to keep our castle on!
Well, three weeks have passed since that rather nervewracking time, and I went back to Castle Island to see what changes have been wrought in that period. And, believe me, there have been a LOT!
A dragon is back in place as guardian of the island – but a rather different dragon. This one is cool and elegant, a beautiful metallic sculpture that watches from the trees. And, if you pull back to see the wider picture, you’ll see that a serpent lurks in a nearby tree. Or is it in fact a youthful dragon? For, as you’ll see, this dragon’s antecedents among the Wyrm family are more than hinted at …
The island itself is bustling and buzzing. There are Castles from Castles by Q there, but there are a range of other medieval and sometimes fantastic buildings from the humble (there’s a range of peasant huts available, some with authentically damp walls!) to the exciting (a glorious pirate ship) to the high fantasy (a looming Dark Tower that spits green fire into the sky).
I’m delighted that Qabalah’s rescue efforts have met with such rich rewards – and that this month’s competition winner will find him or herself with such a rich and rewarding island sim to live on – in addition to a gorgeous castle to inhabit!
*So how does one enter the competition?
It’s a very simple one.
Simply answer three questions (given below). All the answers are somewhere in the magazine – so read it carefully and you will find the answers you need!
You can read the magazine in pdf form here.
1) This month, there will be a charity auction of a castle in Tuscany. But what is the name of the real castle that this SL castle is based on?
2) The landcape of the month, Tol Eressea, takes its inspiration from the writings of a famous English fantasy author. Who is he?
3) What is the name of the store owned by Jeannie Moonflower, designer of the month?
Then send your answers to primperfect@gmail.com – together with a completion of this sentence (in not more than 15 words) …
“I want to live in a castle because …. ”
The closing date is now September 5th 2007. In the meantime, why not pay a visit to Castle Island and see the castle for yourself? Who knows? Next month it could be yours!
Prim Perfect 
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