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.)
(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!
...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.
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!
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