It's feeling more and more like Halloween here in the Mitten. Days are getting shorter, leaves are nearly at their color-changing peak, and daytime highs have slipped into the 50's. As Lily mentioned last time, there were some additional ArtPrize entries that were especially fitting for the Halloween season. I'll start this post off by sharing our favorites of those.
Eccentric Orbits
Artistic imaginings of a few of of the 5900+ known exoplanets (planets located outside our solar system). It's impossible to observe them directly, leaving them shrouded in mystery...
All Tied Up
Aahh, a sculpture of a walking tie!
I think this gives off Dr. Seuss's The Pale Green Pants vibes.
Loved that story!
Sprawl
This painting is cool but mildly disturbing, kind of like a strange dream on the verge of becoming a nightmare...
Unraveled
I sure hope the various framed photos and artwork in our house don't start doing this.
This trio of dark, dream-like paintings really got my imagination going. My favorite is this first one, but all 3 are rather intriguing.
Some new tack and clothing sets have debuted as well. Most notable for us: the two that can be bought with the fall tokens we are so diligently earning. I am not that wild about either set as a whole, but I'm glad we're at least not getting more tank tops we'll never use. A few of the pieces, like the saddle bag with the star on it and the black helmet with gold striping, are going to get lots of use.
After 2 years in a row of leaving the Galloper Thompson (Star Stable's headless horseman) quest unfinished, we finally got the last installment!
Why there was a brush here, I don't know, but Clara eventually got to pet and talk to his horse, Morrigan, who is wise and not evil, despite her appearance. Once Galloper's 3 soul fragments were finally accounted for, Clara and Morrigan were able to convince him to let go of his anger (he couldn't do any talking, obviously, but Morrigan knew what he was thinking) and allow the ghost of Broderick (a druid who had cursed him) to cross over.
Halloween gather-ables occasionally spawn just beyond the borders of the haunted trail.
X-ray version of the pumpkin hunt in the cellar
Ok, moving on to Star Stable news, we're in the midst of 4 full weeks of Halloween festivities. Jorvik, including our home stable, has been decorated appropriately.
My favorite decoration this year:
The swirling green portals to Galloper's Keep are again scattered throughout Jorvik, and the atmosphere gets appropriately dark as you get close to any of them.
The Keep looks how we remember it, and nearly all of the activities we remember from previous years have returned. It's kept us very busy! Two new Halloween-themed magic horses debuted this year: Bixbite the vampire horse (Selle Francais base) and Galvatair the Frankenstein horse (Hanoverian base.) Here they are in their magical forms:
Some new tack and clothing sets have debuted as well. Most notable for us: the two that can be bought with the fall tokens we are so diligently earning. I am not that wild about either set as a whole, but I'm glad we're at least not getting more tank tops we'll never use. A few of the pieces, like the saddle bag with the star on it and the black helmet with gold striping, are going to get lots of use.
We are able to brew ourselves a third tack and clothing set in the cauldron this year. Instead of randomly throwing ingredients into it multiple times a day every day and hoping for the best, as has been the case before, this go-around, we have a spell book. First, we have to decipher a poem clue and use it to locate the spell book page floating somewhere around Jorvik.
Once we've found and retrieved the spell book page, it specifies the ingredients needed to craft the item. Some of them are the usual ingredients: horse hair, ghost goo, moss, etc. Others are a specific "potion" created by crafting two of the usual ingredients together. To add even more difficulty, brewing anything in the cauldron also requires a green soul shard.
This would've been much more challenging if we hadn't had some ingredients and soul shards saved up from previous years. The soul shards have been hardest to come by, but those can be found randomly in the Keep or while doing the various Keep activities. There are also soul shard vortexes that crop up from time to time in various locations. Collect all 20 soul shards for the ghost at the center of the vortex, and you get to keep one.
We often ride out to these vortexes when we spot them, though sometimes we change our minds if we determine if they're way farther away than they initially looked. Occasionally, we'll get stuck with 19/20 shards and have a terrible time finding the last one, especially when it's on cliffside areas like Doyle's Abbey or that GED site in Moorland. When there aren't steep cliffs complicating the search, marking the ghost's location (roughly) with a beacon, heading for the farthest away shards first, and then working our way in towards the center works well.
Here is the set so far. There is still a saddle bag and a pet of some sort to come. We'll be ditching the shorts and sandals for leggings and boots, as the former are so not practical for riding a horse or for late October weather.
Of course, to make things even more hectic, another round of the Championship Ranks is going on. We really went to town on this early on and managed to earn all our ribbons by week 3.
We competed in one championship with Linda, since we were in the middle of a section of Galloper's quest at the time. =)
Here's a look at the 7 ribbons this time. I liked the first two best. The next 4 are more "scary Halloween" than "fun Halloween" and not really our thing.
We'll probably never own Bixbite, so my feelings on that last one are "meh."
We've been enjoying the Haunted Trail Ride, which seems to be unchanged from previous years.
that's a big bear!
rain and ghosts don't faze Carrotcake
Clara's not falling for it this year, Songsorrow.
After we collected kites, keys, collars, and a whole bunch of unbroken bones, we wandered our way to Igor, who reanimated two new pets for us.
Again, the theme seems to be more intense scary than last year. They're both doll-like, which we find rather disturbing. They won't be coming out of the wardrobe much.
Poppet the bunny
Raggedy the cat (and moss growing in a rowboat. XD)
Our third Halloween pet was much less disappointing. This one is randomly rewarded at the the end of a pumpkin hunt out in Goldenhills Valley. (First find the giant pumpkin, then the 3 well-camouflaged gourds, then go back to the giant pumpkin) This is not one of our favorite Halloween activities, so we were very grateful that we were rewarded with the pet on our second hunt. He's a black gourd with green eyes, a great match for Jolly in his dragon form!
After 2 years in a row of leaving the Galloper Thompson (Star Stable's headless horseman) quest unfinished, we finally got the last installment!
Why there was a brush here, I don't know, but Clara eventually got to pet and talk to his horse, Morrigan, who is wise and not evil, despite her appearance. Once Galloper's 3 soul fragments were finally accounted for, Clara and Morrigan were able to convince him to let go of his anger (he couldn't do any talking, obviously, but Morrigan knew what he was thinking) and allow the ghost of Broderick (a druid who had cursed him) to cross over.
Whew, it's good to have some closure there.
On a lighter note, here are some of the more entertaining bugs we've noticed during the event.
Morrigan sometimes takes on characteristics of our own horse during the Headless Horseman's race. In this one, her body color matched Artie's. XD
Oh dear. That poor rider.
After the Scarecrow Hill race, sometime our saddle, saddle pad, and bridle turn invisible.
We tried so hard to get that bone, to no avail.
Pepita conjoined twins
Finally, it's time to talk about our first Halloween horse! We've been patiently waiting for months for these two guys to be available again, Tombhoof and Duskgrim.
The plan is to take home both of them before the end of the event, but we decided to start with Tombhoof because he is so overtly Halloween-themed, while both of Duskgrim's forms are more subtly Halloween-themed.
We kept the alliteration alive one last time...
Meet Kitekey! This is one of the more awkward girl-meets-horse screenshots we've had. XD
The first ride...
I love this guy so much already! Interesting side note: this is his last year being for sale in the Keep. At some point after this (timing not specified), he'll be moving to an always-accessible spot somewhere in Jorvik, like Pepita and Woodear moved to Jasper's pumpkin farm.
Here he is rocking his non-magical form:
And here is Morrigan taking on his stripes in the Headless Horseman's race:
We'd already earned all our ribbons before taking Kite home (this was deliberate), but we still usually participate in at least one a day for the bonus rewards. Here he is sparkling away as a race is about to start.
Happily for him, championship participation has been declining. He's managed to win a few ribbons already despite his low experience level.
If all goes according to plan, we'll already have another new horse to introduce in our next post! Until then, have a happy and not too spooky Halloween, everybody.
