I decided it was time to go International with my Second Life explorations, so I headed to the International section of The Destination Guide. I looked around at a few interesting looking links and decided to brave a visit to a scary looking location known as K’Taclysme Town. Now first things first, this is a sim created by French speakers and the notecards are in French. Therefore you may struggle with the roleplay if you’re not a French speaker. However don’t let that put you off from visiting.

One of the beauties of a virtual world in circumstances such as this is that the landscape is painted for you, therefore you can get a bloody good idea of what’s going on. Another beauty of a virtual world is that if you’re familiar with the mechanisms, you can work some things out for yourself. For example I figured out how to get hold of a visitors tag by touching the prim that contains said visitor tag.

I could also figure out how to get hold of some of the rules and background to the sim, again by touching the correct prim.

Obviously, if you’re not a French speaker then you may well have difficulty understanding the instructions, but there are tricks of the trade to guide you, such as using Google Translate to give you a nudge in the right direction. However even before doing that it wasn’t hard to work out that something bad had happened to this town. Armed military figures, strange gases on the streets, crashed vehicles, collapsed roads, floating spores and blood on the street give you the distinct impression that it didn’t end well here.

The sim is actually very atmospheric. The theme and roleplay are ambitious, from what I could work out. The basic gist seems to be that a huge chemical accident of some sort has caused chaos. In terms of roleplay, your character comes to the town after the accident, so you have no real knowledge of what happened. Then you can choose which direction to take your character, do you want to help rebuild the town? Do you want to take advantage of the circumstances with dark and devious deeds to make money?

Will you be a hero? Well stop right there for a minute, you can’t create a scenario whereby a radioactive spider bites you and you become super human, superheroes are not really allowed. However you could gain some extra power from a virus that affects your DNA, whereas another type of virus affects your personality.

As in a lot of Second Life roleplay, where you head in terms of direction with your character is going to be up to you in many ways. Although as with a lot of Second Life roleplay, certain scenarios are simply not allowed. This is why you need to read the rules if you want to roleplay. The story is an interesting one and the lack of knowing what exactly happened helps create an air of mystery as well as a spooky atmosphere.

The landing point puts you underground, armed military are visible, as are the all important rules and regulations. There’s also a board with a number of mods advertised whom should be able to help people out.

However the visitor’s tag is worth getting hold of if you simply want to visit. The sim is definitely worth a look, even if the language is a barrier. As I said, virtual worlds can break down language barriers in some regards because the pictures here speak a thousand words, most of them mysterious.

SLURL To K’Taclysme Town : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ashuertus/79/13/145/

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