More Magic

We hope everybody has had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend! We thoroughly enjoyed the sunny, dry stretch we are just now exiting. It's back to gloom today, and our first snow dump since Halloween is underway.

Unlike Michigan's weather, Star Stable isn't jumping on the winter holiday bandwagon quite yet. Instead, they revamped the Hollow Woods area (a perpetual summer forest) with updated graphics and new activities. It's been a hefty, involved update process, or at least Milton (Mom's 7-year old Macbook) thinks so. The last few updates have seriously taxed him, taking a good 25 minutes each at minimum. *Sighs* The time may be coming soon when we can't play Star Stable on Milton anymore. We are dreading that day.

We didn't ride over for the full Hollow Woods experience until Saturday. We quickly met a lovely wild horse named Rune Runner:

 Rune Runner guided us to some human NPC's and the heart of the action, a giant runestone:

We then proceeded to catch fireflies until we were weary of the monotony and jerky graphics.

Progressing through the many levels of "whimsy" and "runology" is going to take us many, many sittings. I guess that's the idea.

We were excited for the return of the horse bazaar this week, expecting deep discounts in correlation with Black Friday. Star Stable did indeed deeply discount select horses: 50% off! I thought we'd for sure be able to talk ourselves into taking home horse #7.

All of the discounted horses are magical, some more horse-like than others. The idea is that you can then go explore the magical revamped Hollow Woods with a new magical horse.

What's extra cool about these guys is that you sort-of get two horses in one: each has both a magical appearance - the ones you see above - and also a "trying to blend in with the non-magics" disguise that they can toggle between.

Here's my personal favorite, Proteus. He can either be a funky lionfish-horse hybrid:

or an extremely handsome zorse:

The strikes against him:

- he is based off the narcoleptic Appaloosa

- we already have a striped equine

- if we were going to get an Appaloosa, it seems wrong for it not to have spots

- he has no special abilities whatsoever when it comes to riding into/through water, which makes no sense

Here is Bethany's favorite, Faramawr, the green dragon:

who likes to masquerade as a horse with the Friesian build:

The strikes against him:

- when idling, Friesians do a piaffe-like move where the back legs bend in an unnatural position that makes us cringe

- if we were going to get a Jorvegian Friesian, we feel like it should have the long, flowing Friesian mane, not tiny button braids

- he might scare the horses 

- it would be hard to come up with a name from Star Stable's very limited options that suits both a green dragon and a clay-colored horse. We tried.

Here is Lily's favorite, Kampos the opalescent seahorse creature:

who disguises himself as a pinto Akhal Teke:

The strikes against him:

- he has mildly creepy pale eyes as a seahorse

- he is sadly lacking a mane in horse form, and his markings seem rather unrealistic/like a bleach accident

- the gaits of the Star Stable Akhal Tekes are underwhelming

- like the other fish-themed horses, he has no special abilities whatsoever when it comes to riding into/through water, which makes no sense

And here is Julie's favorite, the beautiful blue crystal-studded Ephyra:

who can turn off the blue to appear as a grulla:

There's only one strike against her (since we love the Paso Fino, duns, and sparkles), but it's a big one:

- we just bought Riverrock the Paso Fino in October. For variety's sake, we've so far been avoiding duplicates of the same breed

One more snag: we've heard that these magical animals all appear as their undisguised selves when you enter your stable, regardless of which version you left toggled on previously. Do we really want to see a dragon or hippocamp in a stall every single stable visit? Bethany wouldn't mind in the slightest, but the rest of us aren't so sure...

It is therefore with a heavy heart that I tell you we will likely not be taking advantage of the super tempting discount. We are big fans of magical horses - just ask Tigertin - but nobody in this particular lineup has managed to wow all 4 of us. =( 

To end on something happier and a bit more festive, enjoy these photos from Mom's recent visit to Michigan's "little Bavaria," Frankenmuth. 

The hotel room itself was not especially Bavarian lodge-esque...

...but the bed was quite cozy...

...and the view out their window was fun. Mom enjoyed hearing peoples' whoops of excitement as they rode these two waterslides, ha ha. 

Each room in the hotel is named after a family with historic ties to the area. The one Mom stayed in was named after the Dress family, pictured below. 

This central panel, where the family included a portrait of an unnamed deceased child in their group photo, was rather haunting. Luckily, Mom is so nearsighted sans glasses that there was no chance of her being spooked by the old photos overnight.

Mom and fam took a chill cruise down the Cass River on The Bavarian Belle, which used to paddle the Mississippi River back in the day. They bundled up, sat on the top deck, and had a great time despite some intermittent rain.

For supper, they lived it up at Zehnder's, a restaurant famous for its chicken dinners. Mom enjoyed the chicken but was more impressed by the butter noodles and cranberry salad (eaten separately, of course)... and the little plastic animals that came perched on the desserts. 

Grandma got an elephant, our great aunt got a monkey, and Mom got a... what is that? Mom's a Taurus, so we'll go with bull.

The star attraction of the whirlwind trip: a stop at Bronner's Christmas Wonderland, a massive Christmas store.

They weren't in the market for a tree, but they still visited the little forest of Christmas trees anyway. That orange one certainly stands out from the crowd. =)

Even though this expedition took place in mid October, not December, Mom and fam had lots of company as they wandered around browsing and admiring all the festive decorations.

They lovingly picked out some new ornaments for various family members. We all know who the horse was for...

Keep up the good work, Bronner's. You never disappoint!

Swimming in Swimming Kitties

Even though the calendar still says fall, we already had our first snow dump of the season... on Halloween.

It was a perfect year to be in our Hogwarts sweaters and scarves, that's for sure!

The humans carved some pumpkins in time for the big night, which managed to stay lit despite the cold, wet conditions.

Hazel enjoyed licking a bit of pumpkin and pumpkin guts but was scared of the pumpkins once they had lit candles inside, ha ha. It took some doing to coax her close enough for a good photo.

She has a thing for squirrels.

She was a witch for Halloween.

 (Witch Hazel)

On Star Stable, Clara dressed up as a skeleton, Riverrock got decked out in spider-themed tack, and Nightwing the skeleton-esque raven completed the look. 

So, obviously, we did manage to collect enough unbroken bones, then find and summon both raven pets, which we were very pleased about. 

The white one's name is Gloomwing.

We also have found 8 Necromancer Kitties (the cat in the witch hat) in the cauldron so far! (Wow, never saw that coming!) What ended up being much more elusive: the haunted dressage saddle. We received every other piece of the haunted set multiple times, but no saddle. We were losing hope, but finally, on the day before Halloween, saddle! 

Looking good, guys!

Star Stable isn't ready to say goodbye to the spooky season quite yet. We're getting one more week before the portals to Galloper's Keep close for the year.

We delved into Galloper's tragic history with Linda, only to run into a wall... literally. 

Try as she might, Clara could not enter this mine to progress in this quest. Foiled by an invisible wall, presumably because she hasn't gotten far enough in the game's regular quest line. *Sighs.*

She's had much more success finding a few wandering ghosts scattered throughout Jorvik and convincing them to return to the Keep.

This one wanted to see the view from the highest point in Jorvik.

Turns out it's the end of the Red String Trail!

This one wanted to play hide and seek. We'd probably never have found her tucked away in the alley behind the Fort Pinta stable had it not been for YouTube.

We had to go off clues to pick out the ghost we needed from this social gathering.

This ghost pony gave Frostflight a workout.

Aw!

Those unbroken bones from the Haunted Trail Ride came in handy again. <3

All of the ghosts end up taking refuge back in the Keep. It's good they have each other for company, because this area would sure get depressing after a while.

It's been fun, and I think Star Stable did a good job of making the event dark and spooky without it being too scary, but I'm glad we'll be moving on into more cheerful happenings soon.

Seriously Spooky

It wasn't easy, but in the end, we did come to an agreement and picked our sixth horse! Meet Riverrock the Paso Fino! We brought him home on the last day of the bazaar.

We all love him! He is every bit as happy and baroque-like as we'd hoped, and it's been great fun riding around a dark, spider-webbed, flowing-maned horse during the Halloween event. The other horses are getting a well-deserved rest in our spooky stable while River takes advantage of all the horsey experience from the Halloween-themed games.

Every time we enter our stable right now, this ghost mare and foal slowly walk through. This took us by surprise the first time, that's for sure!

The Halloween-themed festivities center around Galloper's Keep, spooky floating islands that can be accessed via various portals throughout Jorvik.

A few take place in Goldenhills Valley, including our least favorite, a daily magic pumpkin-themed hide-and-seek game. First you have to find the big pumpkin, which is challenging enough, and then you have to find all three well-camouflaged little gourds somewhere vaguely nearby, which we find nearly impossible. We successfully completed it once and fortunately got the sought-after reward, a pale green gourd pet, on our first try. We haven't been able to find the third gourd every time we've attempted it since, so we've stopped bothering.

We can also throw various ingredients into a huge, bubbling cauldron and be rewarded with gifts. It's usually random items from "the haunted dressage set" or temporary special effect potions for your starter horse. The rarest gift is a cute tabby cat wearing a witch's hat. (Can you imagine tack, clothing, or a cat popping out of this green soup? XD Maybe I'm over-thinking this.) 

After brewing quite a few potions, we were super excited to finally find the cat this morning!

Some of the other daily games include:

A race through memory fragments of Galloper, the headless horseman

(You are temporarily the headless horseman on his scary fire horse.)

My favorite memory is of this one, which contains a giant dog head that makes deep noises.

a race up Scarecrow Hill, where we are frequently struck by electric-charged ravens

a pac-man style game where you collect all the pumpkins while avoiding the ghosts

and last but not least, The Haunted Trail Ride

It starts out similar to the Red String Trail Ride: go at your own pace, follow the torches, take your time to explore. We found it much easier to go astray and get lost, however.

probably our favorite Halloween-themed special horse spotted "in the wild"

These funji-inspired ones are also pretty cool, though

My favorite part is the ghostly animals you can "cuddle" along the way.

The donkey is my favorite because it will offer to accompany you on the rest of the ride, which we always take it up on.

Not so cute are the dangerous animals that chase you through a winding mountain pass. (If they catch you, you're spit back out at the entrance to the pass and have to try again.)

giant black cat

giant spider

giant snake

very large wolf (not as giant as the others, but every bit as effective)

We're still working on collecting all the materials needed for the remaining 2 free Halloween pets, a white raven and a black raven with a skull-like face. (We'd have preferred no skull, but whatever, we're not going to pass up a free pet!)

Ghost ravens helped us out with locating the special stones we'll need. We're just trying to gather sufficient "unbroken bones" now.

It's been pretty fun overall, despite having to deal with the ever-present lag and Milton's fan whirring away on turbo most of the time. We're very grateful again for YouTubers' guides - we'd probably not have gotten any of the free pets without them!

Like Star Stable, nature has been getting into the Halloween spirit here: chilly air, lots of rain and gloom, and dramatically changing leaves. Our sassafras trees are currently looking as neon as our gourd pet!

We're getting into the Halloween spirit ourselves as well: here we are trying on our Hogwarts student costumes in anticipation of the big night. 

We love having an excuse to bring our owl and cat pets along to our Dolloween party. <3

Have a great end of October, everybody!