Anniversary #3 and Marchenghast Castle

 We celebrated our three-year anniversary on Star Stable back on February 4! How the herd has grown!

Feb 2023

Feb 2024

Feb 2025

Feb 2026

It now takes two screenshots, as we can only have up to 18 in the stable at once. Here is a list of all 25 of them for the record:

These were the goals we set for ourselves last February.

Bethany: buy another pony - Gotland or Welshie?

Me: buy a warmblood, preferably one with spots

Julie: make serious progress on the "paths" out in Valedale and finish at least one

Lily: unlock and try our hand at archeology 

We exceeded Bethany's and my goals!

Thanks to the bazaars, we added both Vanillavalley the Gotland and Seaglass the Welshie to our herd! Hooray for pony mares!

And again thanks to the bazaars, we added two warmbloods to the herd: our sweet Ladyluck the Dutch Warmblood and our spotted Nightnimbus the Selle Francais. They rock!

We didn't totally meet Julie's goal, but we have put in considerable work out in Valedale.

We've mostly made it through the Path of Whimsy:

We still have a long way to go on the Path of Terra:

(We're pretty clueless when it come to SSO gardening. Hopefully we can make it profitable eventually.)

And we have even longer to go on the Path of Runology:

(We have yet to get excited about the runology puzzles. It's way easier to just run around chasing fireflies, ha ha.)

As Lily talked about in her last post, it came right down to the wire, but we did unlock archaeology before our year was up.

It has not been all that exciting - we're having trouble finding places to excavate other than the occasional one near Nic's camp. Hopefully it can become profitable eventually too.

Now to make some Star Stable goals for this coming year!

Bethany: buy my favorite breed added in 2025, a Jorvik Mountain Horse

Me: buy another horse with spots

Julie: keep going with the Valedale paths and experiment with gardening

Lily: get Clara well into player level 23

I think we have a good shot at reaching all of these. We will see!

A week after our Star Stable anniversary, a new area was added to the game, Marchenghast Castle! We didn't have time to check it out until today, Valentine's Day. Hence, Clara and Cherrypeak were sporting some pink during this big adventure.

The forcefield was still in place when they rode out to start the quest and met Luciana.

They detoured to Cape West to talk to some of the locals about the castle.

No one was being particularly helpful, but then Clara heard this: 

I'd say it was more of a magical message than a vision. At any rate, Luciana bowed out to go check on her horse, leaving Clara and Cherry to face the unknown by themselves. Her loss.

They approached the forcefield and...

...passed right through it!

She did not exactly receive a warm welcome. 

...but Clara was able to convince the speaker to give her a chance, and down came the drawbridge.

They rode across and met Margarete, oldest daughter of the Duke of Marchenghast, and her dragon horse Tokin.

As she lead Clara and Cherry on, she started in on some much-needed explanation. Turns out she had good reason to be distrustful, because it had only been a few months since Marchenghast had been at war with forest witches. 

At first, the area looked deserted, but once Margarete gave the okay, the residents came out of hiding.

After Clara helped out these three residents, she'd built up enough trust with Margarete to hear more about what was going on. Margarete led them to the gate to the forest and opened the doors, revealing some strange glowing pink things they call "the Blight." It came from the forest after the war, and it infects and poisons plants, trees, humans, and animals. The castle residents are sure the witches are responsible for it and are terrified of it spreading.

Margarete's rather desperate plan: send Clara, a neutral third party, out into the forest to learn more about the Blight. First, to get past the "petrified Blight" in the way, she would need a magical Pandoric lance, of course. Clara participates in its forging, though it's the blacksmith who imbues it with a pink magic shard.

It worked like a charm on the smaller ones:

And broke through the big "heart" of it with ease too:

That left the way to the forest clear, but the Blight was all over the place in dangerous fog form. Cherrypeak knew better than to enter it.

Fortunately, this cute little flying creature appeared to guide the way, carrying a magical lantern that, according to Margarete, the witches use to keep themselves and their horses safe from the fog.

They came upon a witch named Abigail who was was even more hostile than Margarete had been.

Yikes.

They would've left, had the little creature not insisted they follow it farther. It led them to a fellow creature trapped by petrified Blight. 

Clara and Cherry used the lance again to free it, and this one, Ilwedrisch, could communicate in English.

Their conversation was cut off all too soon by Abigail the witch's reappearance. She was ready to turn Clara into a tree or a beetle, but the Mahr came to her defense.

She changed her tune after that. 

Abigail allowed Clara keep the lantern from the first Mahr and took off, challenging her to find the witches' hamlet on her own. 

Clara and Cherry did, and then they got a similar tour to the one Margarete gave of the castle.

Giving off Avatar vibes, there is a protective lantern tree in the center of their hamlet. And there are the Mahr too, of course. Their calls may be a bit spooky, but according to the witches, they are benevolent unless threatened.

Aw! 

We left the story there, as I wanted to get writing this and then watch some Olympics coverage. My sisters and I love this new area and storyline so far. Great job, Star Stable team!

Cherrypeak

Welcome to February, everyone! We've emerged on the other side of what turned out to be an exceptionally frigid, snowy January. It was fantastic to finally see some sun this weekend! I even got Felicity and Julie outside - well, if the front porch counts - for a photo.

What will this month hold? Hopefully less cold and snow - both for the sake of all the drivers and all the schools that have already exceeded their snow day allotments. It sure has been beautiful to look at from the comfort of our cozy house, though!

The final week of snow on Star Stable also featured - you guessed it - another horse bazaar. The breeds on sale this time were the Criollo, the Jorvik Wild Horse, the Icelandic Horse, and the Dartmoor Pony.

Wow, we haven't seen a bazaar stable this full in a while!

The Jorvik Wild Horse is one of our favorites. <3 I'm especially fond of this one. Maybe someday, but for now we're content with Ravenspell, our magical Halloween horse based on this model.

We love the Icelandics too. We took home our favorite, Opalowl, back in December 2024, but all of them are so pretty!

As cute as these guys are and as many bazaars as they've appeared in, we still don't have one in our stable. Their lip-curling idle animation is just too much of a turn off for us.

This was the first time the Criollo had ever gone on sale, so my sisters and I found them the most exciting. Star Stable's version of the Criollo has been criticized as being sausage-like. And yeah, they are quite long in body. That's the only thing about them that isn't picture perfect: they have great gaits, gorgeous coat colors, and luxurious manes and tails, plus they don't do anything annoying while idling. It hadn't been long at all since Sandman finished his training, but I knew it was going to be tall order to talk my sisters out of buying one.

We had a whole week to think about it. In the meantime, our earliest equines got some serious riding time. Our little Zony Tigertin enjoys all the championships. Nothing seems to satisfy her more than beating much larger equines to the finish line, as happened below. 

Waiting for the others...

...and after most of them had galloped in.

Tigertin also was Clara's mount when they did the teaser quest for the new area that is coming soon, Marchenghast Castle. 

Ooh, magical forcefield! I'm guessing the fact that Clara can see it now means it's weakening?

We've spent some time out in Valedale, making slow progress on the various paths. We quite like this magical horse who lives there, Birkhir. 

Various horses have taken Clara on long, frosty treks out in the Valley of the Hidden Dinosaur lately too. We've been giving it - and Mario with his observatory - lots of attention lately in hopes of unlocking archeology, which was my goal for this past year.

Many people have required rides out to Nic Stoneground's camp, including creepy "chef" Igor.

Like so many others, this scientist seemed totally unprepared for this climate

One of the recent things to unlock was a fun race around the frozen valley itself. Two thumbs up, though we feel sorry for the smart dog that oversees it, Swedenborg: he's always parked out on the cold ice by himself.

We're making slow progress towards repairing Nic's hot air balloon. It will be so much more convenient once we can quick-travel there rather than having to journey to Valedale, up a mountain, through a pass, down a the rickety elevator, and then along a twisty trail.

one of the more entertaining repair activities: filling tanks with geyser gas

We've also been working to restore zombie-like Franke, Elsa Einstein's brother, to his pre-multi-lightning-strike state... by harnessing the power of lighting strikes into a battery pack of sorts. I'm confused as to how lightning strikes would even happen in so cold a region, but I guess it's a magical place.

Whew, after several unsuccessful explosive attempts, we finally connected everything in the correct sequence. Now just to wait for a magical thunderstorm...

All too quickly, time was up for making our decision on the Criollo. As I had anticipated, I was unsuccessful in reining in my Criollo-loving sisters: the question quickly changed from "do we get one now or wait?" to "which one are we getting?"

The two front runners:

dark bay overo

bay manchado

It wasn't easy, but we eventually all agreed on the bay manchado. The names we were considering fit her better, plus she looks really cool from the back.

Meet our beautiful 25th equine, Cherrypeak!

I'm a little sad Felicity opted to have the snow turned off for these first screenshots, as it was the virtual snow's final day. It was late in the day and pretty dark with the snow, though, which is why she got away with toggling it off. XD

We opted to buy her out in the Medieval Camp rather than at the bazaar itself, since we were out there anyway for the daily jousting/archery/championship reward.

This tack had been picked out for Riverrock, who we'd been riding earlier in the day. 

She looks great in yellow too, though.

the first sparkle!

We may have started her off gently (Moorland training races, then chill time in the stable), but she got thrown into the deep end this weekend! 

Her first championship happened to be the daunting Valedale one. I think we've had more issues with it than any other. Fortunately, she was only up against two other horse-rider pairs: a striking grullo Criollo and a Runerunner. 

Cherry made it through the course like a champ and won a silver ribbon. <3

Then she got to gallop around the mountainous parts of Valedale, first for Mario's observatory race and then in pursuit of some will-o-whips.

taking a breather to admire the view

after a will-o-wisp

If all that wasn't enough excitement, she then got to ride the rickety elevator, witness the lightning strikes in Dino Valley, and transport the super-charged, super dangerous battery pack back to camp.

Fortunately, it never exploded, not even when they had to jump a large crack in the ice.

Frank getting zapped by the "reverse lightning"

It worked! 

And, as it turns out, Frank Einstein is an archaeology buff. He gave Clara "Old Betsy" the pickaxe, finally unlocking archeology for us! There will probably be more to come on that later, once we've had more time to find fossils and get a better feel for how it all works.

Wow, what an action-packed intro to Jorvik our Cherry has had! Until next time!