Nightnimbus

Hooray for May! =) This time of year will always be my favorite - I just love watching all the vegetation come back to life after a long winter. The flowering trees in our neighborhood have been blooming like crazy!

The sad, scraggly weeping cherry in our yard had its fleeting few days of glory before going back to looking sad and scraggly

Week 2 of Star Stable's Equestrian Festival featured yet another horse bazaar! Since its usual area was full of festival booths, this one got moved across the road near the lighthouse. There were only two breeds on sale this time around, but both were crowd favorites.

Not wanting to leave any display stalls empty, we got to see two Belgian Warmblood variations and two Selle Francais variations. 

Belgian Warmbloods have been on sale multiple times before. While not new (Star Stable Wiki tells me they've been on the game since Nov. 2022), they seem to be quite well-liked due to their sleek, athletic appearance and gaits. They also come in more color variations than many breeds: 11 currently, I think?

We can see the appeal too and likely would have purchased one long before now if it wasn't for their air chomping idling animation. Alas, we just can't get past it.

The other breed on sale was the Selle Francais, the second-newest warmblood on the game, debuting back in March of 2024. This was the first time they'd ever made a bazaar appearance.

Since we just took home our wonderful golden Ladyluck back on April Fool's Day, we didn't really have any business taking home another horse, especially another warmblood, so soon. We still didn't have a fancy pinto warmblood yet, though, and Felicity's birthday fell on the second-to-last day of the bazaar...

So, yeah, to Lily's chagrin, a spirited, spotted Selle Francais became our horse #17 on April 22, the day after Felicity's birthday. The two pintos we were torn between getting: the black and the sooty dapple buckskin. To see how similar they were to our existing pintos, Panda and Brighty, we rode each out to the Silverglade sale stable for side-by-side comparisons.

These two are somewhat similar from the front, but there'd be no chance of confusing them since Panda has so much floof, not to mention a bald face and a blue eye. It's not pictured here, but they look totally different from the back: Panda's rear is mostly white, while this horse's is mostly black. 

These two are even less similar than we predicted, both being buckskin pintos.

We loved both, but in the end, we chose the black pinto because of the extra cute markings.

Meet Nightnimbus! 

He has two domino-like dots on his left side...

...and a little dark cloud raining 3 raindrops on his right side, hence his name.

His gaits are less dressage-like than Ladyluck's but still quite nice. My favorite is his canter. =)

Thanks to the Equestrian Festival, he rocketed through his experience levels in just a few days!

He got to wear many different colors during his debut, including pink and purple (sorry, buddy) to satisfy the daily festival theme. 

On pink day, peach qualified, so it wasn't so bad, plus the flying pig ribbon got to come out. XD

Hanging out pre-championship with 3 other gorgeous warmbloods.

The red string trail returned! We haven't forgotten to pick up the ribbon before starting this year. (We sure learned that lesson the hard way!)

All of the horses went back into Clara's riding rotation after Night reached level 15, so everybody got to experience the festival activities at least once. Below are some entertaining screenshots we took along the way. 

We had major issues for a few days in a row with sinking through the top of this ramp during the daily race against Sabine and Khaan, as demonstrated here. We eventually learned how to time a jump to avoid it, and even though I think it's fixed now, we still always jump at the top just in case!

Lana Northray and her horse appeared to be stuck in this same spot for several days in a row!

We never asked any other players if they could see this too or if it was just us.

Shout out to "Coalgate!" What a great name for a prancy black Friesian!

A Daisy Coyoteclover sighting! Good to know she does actually exist and is not just made up to beat us invisibly in sparsely-attended championships.

Another ribbon-awarding ceremony: we impressed the Baroness!

Clara celebrating her victory with NPC friends

The ribbon in that last screenshot wasn't it. This is it!

Even better than a ribbon, we were also awarded with a fluffy tuxedo cat!

Thanks for such a fun festival, Star Stable! We'll be sad to see it go.

Lucky, Indeed!

Several days after we brought home Ladyluck, Mom won her family's NCAA men's basketball pool for the second year in a row! Coincidence? Maybe, but I like to think it was Lady. =)

Way to go, Gators! Florida was way behind Houston when we all went to bed. We figured it was a done deal that Mom would be mailing Hoops (the Beanie Baby trophy) to her cousin in Oregon. Imagine our surprise when we woke up the next day to victory! 

As you can see, Mom somehow managed to come out on top of multiple other Florida brackets. Every family member could make up to 2 brackets, and there were 34 total this year. Mom knows next to nothing about basketball, but Google and lucky guesses have served her well, ha ha. 

Now if only she could come up with more imaginative bracket names. Maybe next year.

Yay for another whole year to spend with Hoops. <3 

He's currently hanging out in Mom's home office with Mukluk, Ramsey, and Juneau, the beanies she's collected to commemorate prior basketball pool wins. Time to add an alligator now! =)

Some other fun things have happened since Ladyluck's arrival on Star Stable too.

Tigertin managed to be the only competitor entered in the Silversong Pony Championship one evening. 

This really had us scratching our heads, because previously in cases like this, the game has auto added at least one other invisible entrant with a really fast time so that we have no chance of winning. (This often seems to be "Daisy Coyoteclover" on our server...) 

Not this time, though.

We'll take it!

The days of sparse competition groups are over for now, because the Equestrian Festival has returned to the game! There's extra incentive to participate in championships while it's going on: free travel to the championships, a new batch of championship participation ribbons to work towards, and bonus tokens and Jorvik shillings that can be earned once a day for each championship.

Appropriately, Clara started off the festival on our fancy new warmblood, Ladyluck. Some of these early-in-the-festival races get amusingly crowded, necessitating the game to split participants into multiple groups. I think the max is 20 per group?

Lady quickly raced her way to level 15! The last sparkle came while they were about to start the New Hillcrest Championship.

Clara herself finally progressed to level 21 thanks to the festival quests! She'd been stalled at 20 for quite some time.

The Dutch Warmbloods have been out in force since the bazaar! We're by far not the only ones who chose the chestnut, either. Little did we know, but it seems to be every bit as popular as the dapple gray on our server now. Oh well, it's popular for good reason!

Most of the others we've seen being ridden around have been male, which we find interesting. 

This particular player rode her twinning stallion up close to Lady and stuck close to us for a while without saying a word. I wonder if she was taking screenshots as well?

The festival quests and races seem to be carbon copies of last year's so far. (Fine with us - they're fun.) There are some changes to keep things interesting, though. We have two new sets of clothing and tack to purchase via Spring Tokens: buttercup yellow and purple plaid this year, which we'll gladly work for. 

Also, the Jorvik Stables Championship has gotten some updates that make it more challenging. 

Competitors now have to navigate slippery black GED waste, chickens, rolling cheese, rolling barrels, and some additional jumps. We found it sufficiently interesting and difficult as it was (that paddock full of moving riders and horses - yikes!), but we can still make it through, so no major complaints. 

Also new this year: hunting for "spring treasure." They remind me of the essence in HI3, or the floating gold nuggets from Camp Western, but they are less abundant and have to be clicked on to be claimed.

There doesn't seem to be much point to this, since you can't do much with them other than exchange them for spring tokens, which we are earning plenty of other ways. They are fun to find floating around anyway.

We're really glad we chose to buy a Dutchie at the bazaar rather than holding out for the special pinto festival-only ones. They're full price, 950 star coins, so we'd never have purchased one.

So handsome, but alas, so pricy

To conclude, here are a few fun screenshots from the festivities.

A blue horse named "Bluetooth." Love it!

We paused the "keep the box of fireworks away from Sabine" quest to participate in a Moorland championship. Hence, the clunky box came along for the whole ride. 

Clara and Evie won!

Awkward post-champ screenshot, and another 5 star name: 

"Zebracake" for the brindle pinto Selle. <3

This persistent bug cracks us up every time

a quartet cantering in place

Sadly, all future Star Stable screenshots will be coming from "The Big Mac," not Mom's faithful MacBook, Milton. SSO's support for Milton's pre-13 operating system ends with the update next Wednesday. What a bummer that a fully-functioning, 7-year old laptop is already so obsolete (in SSO's eyes, anyway), but I guess that's life. Thank goodness for The Big Mac!

Ladyluck

Spring has officially sprung! The first of the crocuses and daffodils have appeared in our neighborhood this past week too, right on time to welcome in April. 

We're not retiring the coats and sweaters from Clara's wardrobe quite yet, but it's been fun adding the other long-sleeved options back into the rotation. No special events to report, but we have been doing some questing. Read on for some highlights!

Clara got to shoot a message in a bottle from a Fort Pinta cannon! (I thought they were off-limits artifacts, but apparently not!)

Clara also got to assist NPC Emma (the "wiii" girl) in a lengthy search to purchase a horse of her own. The first horse she tried was Clyde the Clydesdale out in Firgrove. He wasn't the one: too much horse for her.

She didn't even want to try candidate #2 out at Birk's Grange, an unimpressive Chincoteague Pony rescue they were calling "Mudskipper." (There was a bit of a mix up - she thought she was going to see a Mustang.)

Emma was most excited to try out the final horse on her list, Silvermane Seraphim, at Silverglade Manor.

No go here either. The horse excels at dressage, while Emma's passion is for jumping. With help from her friend Sonya (owner of a very cute Fjord), she realizes she wrote off Mudskipper way too quickly. They all raced back to Birk's Grange, where another potential buyer had already showed up...

Fortunately, the sale wasn't yet complete, and the seller preferred the pony go to Emma. They cleaned the pony up...

...and what a difference it made!

It may have been a bit early to call it, but happily, this was the best test ride yet: the pony loved to jump!

Clara and Emma rode out to ask a vet and a farrier to check Muddy over. She had worms, and her hooves will take a lot of work, but Emma decided she was ready to commit to a project pony after all.

I hope they will be very happy together!

Switching gears back to the main quest line, we finally got to the point where we could enter the formerly impenetrable cave and meet the mysterious Spymaster!

Our first task was to recruit chipmunks from Steve's Farm to assist as messengers/spies.

That went swimmingly.

Our second task was to go find Meteor, Linda's missing horse, out in Goldenleaf Forest. He was not hard to find...

...and he talks! I was not expecting that!

Since Meteor has already been back for some of the special events (Halloween, Equestrian Festival), we figured he'd turn up eventually in the main story line. We're so glad he finally has! So was Linda.

Next, the Spymaster sent us after another partial copy of the Light Ceremony book, hidden in a secret chamber of Jon Jarl's tomb!

Of course, Linda was not with us, requiring a ride out to Silverglade Manor and back. But soon enough, she worked some impressive magic on the Moon Chamber door to allow entry.

Book retrieved! I wonder where the next one will be?

That's it for the questing news. Our other big piece of news: another bazaar set up shop in the grassy expanse near Moorland. Only 3 breeds were featured this time: the Dutch Warmblood, the Thoroughbred, and the Lippizaner.

Aw, it's a Snowsecret look-alike!

We aren't really into the current Star Stable Thoroughbred. They're okay, but they don't have the more realistic wow factor that many of the newer horses do. 

Their slightly bowlegged back legs lessen their appeal further.

The Dutch Warmbloods were back on sale once before, at the 2024 Black Friday bazaar. They were discounted to 649 star coins that time. We passed them over to take home Garnetgazer the Finnhorse instead.

They're on sale for 569 star coins this time, 80 more than last time. My sisters and I do quite like this breed. Felicity was hoping for one of the two pinto ones that only are available during the Equestrian Festival. Those two are gorgeous. However, we have no idea how much they will cost this year, and there's a good chance it will be more than 569 star coins. Hence, our dilemma. 

My vote was actually for a Dutchie in a solid color, since our first warmblood, Frosty, is a pinto, and since most real-life Dutchies are solid colors anyway. Wouldn't you know it, Julie and Bethany were okay with that, and even Felicity eventually got on board. So, for once, I guess you can blame me for being the reason we spent star coins rather than saving. 

Our top three: cremello, dapple gray, and chestnut. 

After a days-long struggle, we eventually settled on this one:

We were quite pressed for time on the final day of that bazaar, April Fool's Day, but we made time to log on to buy her and ride her home. <3

All of her gaits are so lovely!

She's been zooming through her experience levels.

She even won her first championship ribbon already at level 7, a silver at Fort Pinta!

Way to go, Ladyluck! We're so proud to have an elegant warmblood of our own at long last! =)