Narrowed Isles Quartet

Julie ought to be typing this post. She claims she's been posting too much lately, so you get me (Lily) instead.

On this lovely summer Saturday, Julie and a few of her horses had some fun riding around the Narrowed Isles. Though all of them showed signs of being visited recently (some stuff had already been harvested from each), 4 of them surprised them with wild horses. 

You probably have guessed what's coming. Yep, one of the horses they found was a 6/6er. This is how I am rewarded for giving in and letting Felicity talk me into taking a buddy's horse so early in the month. *Sighs* I think it's time to buy a Tardis.

Can you guess which of the horses Julie found was the 6/6er?

Was it....

A. this fancy golden chestnut National Show Horse stallion from Chilly Forest Isle

B. this red roan Belgian mare, a Sardonyx look-alike from Dumbbell Isle

C. this bay Furioso mare with a star! from Palm Isle

or

D. this spotless Gypsy Vanner mare from Windy Pines Isle

The 



answer 



is...


















D!

If you paid any attention to the HI2 clock in the corner of the wild capture screenshots, you'll see that she was the last of the 4 horses to be caught. Julie is pretty happy she took the time to see if she could fill up that last free horse slot on Windy Pines before she headed back to sell the wild horses! (In case you were wondering, the NSH and Belgian were +3/6, and the Furioso was +4/6.)

The mare is sadly lacking the pinto spots typical of Gypsy Vanners. She isn't the brightest shade of buckskin out there either - in fact, from her profile artwork, she could easily be mistaken for a light bay. But she is still gorgeous, I must say! Just look at that mane, the dramatic feathering, and those lovely markings!

Julie is already smitten. I can tell. And with such great stats (+6/6, exactly +80), she's not going anywhere. The mare already knows it and is making herself right at home.

Well, good for you, Julie. Looks like you get an early birthday present from HI2. I'm still going to keep my fingers crossed that some month this year passes without us adding a horse to make up for this lapse, but I refuse to let go of my Ganache. <3

This isn't her permanent tack, just some extra stuff we had lying around.
I'm thinking of trying out the new embroidered blankets on her,
but we have to go track down the patterns and craft them first. ;^)

Since choosing her name, I have learned that she shares it with an NPC, an eccentric old guy we pass every time we visit NarrowTon General Store. 

I love that his staff is topped with a unicorn head. XD

Before I go, I will show you one last horse. I spotted this one in the livery among the adoptable horses. 

Hee hee, not only does she look a lot like how I think Nala (our aunt's dog) would look in equine form (chestnut with darker mane and tail, sleek, and muscular), but she even has the "Explorer" personality. (Nala loves nothing more than to escape from the humans and explore the neighborhood.) I've got to point out, though, that if Nala's persona was translated into HI2's system, she'd definitely be more stubborn and energetic than this Cob.

Flower Maze Revisited

Before I get to today's news, I must shine a quick spotlight on this handsome Warlander stallion. I noticed him in the auction house last night when I was auctioning some wilds, and I didn't want to see him leave the game to the foreign bidder. 

I bid a mere $5k on him, and a long minute later, he was ours. <3 I took some screenshots, tweaked his profile a bit, and then surrendered him to the humane society. 

He wasn't in the humane society this morning, so I'm hoping that naming him, changing his background color, and mentioning some of his best points in his description ended up getting him adopted. 

This morning, Bethany and I each spent some time on the Leaf Isles. She tackled Leaf, Bud, and Stem Isles aboard Uno. For all their efforts, she and Uno only found one wild pony despite having the islands almost entirely to themselves. But, the fairy rings and leaf piles were bountiful, and they found a few buried pirate treasures, so it was still worthwhile. 

Here's her cute Fell, who just happened to be quite similar in color to Uno. :)

Then it was my turn to play. Vaquero and I started out exploring the chain of 3 little isles off Stem Isle. We found a pot of gold on Seedling Isle and stood there admiring its pretty flashing rainbow for a bit before scooping it up.

Getting to two of the three little islands involves walking in slow-mo through reefs, but at least there are fish keep you company.

Seedling harbored one wild pony, this New Forest Pony. The other two islands were sadly pony-less.

We figured she would have low stats since she's not our lucky NFP color, light gray, and we were right. ;^)

As we made the lengthy return trip to Stem Isle dock, I considered not even bothering to visit Flower Isle, my least favorite of the Leaf Isles due to the dreaded Flower Maze. But, for the sake of thoroughness, I figured I might as well. 

My plan was to ride clockwise around the outside of the maze only (and not bother with the maze itself), but that went out the window once we saw this:

"Come and get me, suckers! I dare you!"

I am no expert at this maze, and the overzealous popup blocker on the computer I was using wouldn't allow me to "cheat" and use the maze map on Esroh Legends. So, it was time to haul out that trusty old magnifying glass again and keep my fingers crossed.

With some trepidation, we entered the nearest maze entrance, the one on the west side, and began wandering. To our dismay, we couldn't find our way to the buckskin pony, and instead found ourselves heading north. 

Then we stumbled across this black pony, who taunted us by staying just out of lassoing range. We weren't sure if it was inside the maze or out, so we continued to wander.


This wandering lead us to yet another pony! 

She tried to flee, but we eventually found our way to her and lassoed her.

Our wanderings then brought us upon Flower wild pony #4. We were pretty sure this one was outside the maze, so we decided it was time to follow the magnifying glass trail back out so we could go for it and (hopefully) the black pony.

The trail more or less worked. Once out, we continued our way clockwise around the perimeter of the maze and eventually found the black pony, a December look-alike. I was so excited I forgot to take a pre-capture screenshot, but here are his profile shots:

Then we found the chestnut, who turned out to be a small, weakling Grade Pony. XD

We tried entering the maze from the east entrance to see if we could get to the buckskin pony somehow that way, but no luck. So, we headed back out of the maze and down around the outside. My goal was to check that the pony was still there (since I had noticed a red dot on the mini-map earlier) and then try the west entrance again.

It was still there. I had Pepsi get off Vaquero and try to squeeze through the gap between leafy things. (I knew from past attempts it wouldn't work, but it sure looks like a person should fit be able to fit through some of these gaps...) Then, miraculously, the pony came right up to her!

Way to go, pony-whisperer Pepsi! Maybe she was just nervous of big, dark Vaquero!

Wouldn't you know it, she's actually a beautiful, blue-eyed, red roan POA, not a buckskin at all! She also has the best stats of all 6 of the ponies we found, which makes me glad I was so persistent. 

Someday I'll figure out this maze once and for all. I'm not sure why it gives me so much trouble, since my sisters and I have all gotten quite good at navigating the mountain isles' ledges and tunnels. Oh well. For today, I'm just happy I could find all the ponies without getting hopelessly lost. ;^)

Chocolate Surprise

To Lily's relief, we made it through May without being very tempted to add any more horses to the herd. On June 1, Julie and Melancholy broke us out of that pattern with the flute. 

We're always half-expecting flaxen chestnuts to be Belgians. Nope.

Such a handsome boy! His bird catcher spots are the perfect touch to his sleek goldenness, if you ask me. And of course you can't ignore those stats: +5/6 and +76. Very nice indeed. But... *sighs* I suppose we've got to be strong. Our buddy Gem offered to put him up for sale in her ranch store, so our tentative plan is to take her up on that. 

This would be a lot easier if he wasn't so good looking!

Lily logged on to a welcome surprise this morning, two wild horses on Palm Isle! (It's such a tiny island. We've never seen more than one wild here at a time before!) The Calabrese below was standing near Pepsi when she poofed there, but she apparently got spooked and ran behind the palm trees when Pepsi got on Onyx.

Ooh, such a beautiful color! If her persona had been more interesting, she'd have been a Millennium Fields candidate.

The second Palm Isle wild was hanging out farther north in plain sight.

Cute. What's not to like about shaggy Doles? I think this particular one would make a good Goji or Jujube.

Later on, we logged on again to meet up with Gem. She'd messaged to say she had something for us. But before I get to that, I'd better back up.

Last week, one of our buddies (not Gem) wrote Pepsi a letter, which I happened to read first. She'd caught a +81 Shire mare and wanted to know if we were interested. Well, yeah, of course we were interested... in seeing her, at least. So we visited the buddy's ranch and found her. 

After that I visited the BBB in our nearest library to check out the avatar for seal brown Shires. She gets one of those super dark (blacker than many black) avatars, plus the dramatically white legs, hooves, and muzzle of all HI2's Shire avatars. 

She was certainly an excellent horse! Had we not already been in possession of two great Shires, we'd have sent back an enthusiastic yes! 

Icing, Lily's 16.2 hand +89 mahogany bay mare

Tinsel, Julie's 19.1 hand +70 stallion

Neither of these horses is seal brown, though, and neither has her blaze. We don't have any horses with seal brown sabino avatars either.

So, I replied to the buddy that we'd be interested in buying the Shire, but that we'd be cool with it if she found another buyer too. A few days passed. No online overlap with the buddy. No letter from the buddy. I visited the buddy's ranch while waiting for Gem to come online and saw that the Shire was gone. We figured she'd found another home. Not going to lie, we were all a bit bummed out. Even though June is young, we were all rather eager for a new mare for Lily so that everything is even again (both the number of mares and stallions and the number of horses per sister). 

Then Gem came online. You've probably figured out what that mystery thing is that she had for us. Yep, the Shire. Gem and I are both buddies with the Shire's owner, so she had given her to Gem to give to me. 

So now we have our third Shire, and an endearingly huge and good-natured one at that! When we introduced her to Icing, the two hit it off! (This is a rarity for Icing. Only two other horses have made it into her exclusive circle of friends to date.) Because she and Icing got along so well, it only seems right that she join Lily's collection of horses. 

Lily has already chosen her name: Ganache. Yum. XD