Chinese Imperial Palace seeking new home...

{Edit} The Palace has a new home! see post #9. {/EDIT}

Some time ago, I was commissioned to re-create the Imperial Palace at Shenyang China for a private sim in Second Life. This is a custom build, created solely by myself. I made over 60 custom textures for this project, most of which referenced or were adapted from actual photographs of the original palace in Shenyang China. The original palace that this is based on was built by Emperor Nurhachi in 1625, and is the only remaining royal palace in China, outside of the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Sadly, it seems very likely that the sim that it is located in will soon be reclaimed and repurposed. The client who commissioned the work appears to have left Second Life entirely, is no longer listed in Search, and is no longer paying her land maintenance. *sigh* Nothing lasts forever in Second Life, but it seems a shame for this build to vanish entirely.







The palace is roughly 60M x 70 M in size, requiring a flat parcel with 940 prims free.

If anyone out there has a Chinese-theme sim with room in it for one of the great cultural landmarks of China, I have a backup copy and am willing to donate it to anyone willing to host the sim space to keep it on-line. The original is in the Amarin Xi sim, until it inevitably gets destroyed. (I am not offering to pay monthly maintenance on it. If I could afford that, I'd put it on my own land. I just would like to see it remain somewhere in SL where people can enjoy it.)

OMG. That's beautiful. It would be a shame to see it disappear.

Thanks Brenda. As I said, I do have a full backup copy, so if it ever does find a new home, I have the Build available.

There's several other noteworthy builds in that block of sims, but the Palace was the only one that could easily be relocated. Not much call for a 70 M long suspension bridge, nor for a 250 M long bridge that spans a waterway connecting two sims.

And the most complex part of the build was a 4000+ prim Tibetan monastery that included an extensive underground complex below it. Not much hope that the next sim owner will keep it intact.

*sighs*

I just hope the parcel owner's Player is OK in RL. No one has heard from her in months.

I agree, it would be a shame to see it go. Would this not be something the Lindens could incorporate into one of their public areas??? Might be worth a shot.

I hope the player is ok too.

As for the builds, maybe talk to Jack and see about getting it onto some of the new auction land, or some abandoned land that hasn't been put to auction yet.

I can see a need for the suspension bridge since some sims have protected water swaths cut into them like roads.

That's a beautiful build and I concur with Joss to let the Lindens know about this.

Also, if you search on China in SL you can find a lot of Chinese themed areas whose
owners you could contact.

It's great you have a full backup.

Unfortunately, I have no clue as to which Linden I should contact for making it available to LL to use. It would probably work well as a Chinese-themed Welcome Area, though I would hate to se the sort of louts that overrun a lot of the Welcome Areas treating this place with equal distain. It's a significant cultural landmark.

So far I have one tentative offer from someone with a largely empty OpenSpaces sim that is willing to let me put a copy on their land. Not a Chinese themed area, but it may work out. Still need to meet with them and see their parcel to see if it would work.

Starax, where my Mt. Trumboji is locaded has several parcels for sale... nearly half the sim. It's not an Asian theme, but my name is asian! I don't think Starax is going anywhere either. It is well managed by Blackhat, which has been around for a while.

Check it out!

I am happy to report that the Imperial Palace has been saved!

I would like to thank Hannah Navarathna for providing space in her OpenSpaces sim to host the Palace. Her flower selling business, Southern Charmed, only needed part of the sim's resources, and she has graciously allowed me to move a copy of the Palace to the open field behind her store.

You can visit the palace, and her store, at the following SLURL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Napua/145/151/23

Thank you, Hannah!

I think that is rather short-sighted on behalf of Hannah - after all where will she now grow her flowers???

Congrats anyway

Ceera, that is a beautiful build. And it reminds me that I have Vol I of the Great Builds of SL.

Does anyone know of Vol. 2? Be great to have this build in it.

If anyone would like to see another amazing part of that project, go to the Tibetan Monestary that I built in Amarin Island.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Amarin%20Dong/104/185/23

Start at that SLURL, which is the closest place you can TP to from other sims. Look North and up, to the hill above the waterfall. That huge white building was the home of the patron, and is based on the Paro Dzong in Bhutan. Since the owner appears to have left SL forever, I have turned off the security system, and people may now visit that monestary without me being there to admit them.

There's ten levels of underground spaces below the monestary, including mazes, caves, and many surprises.

Enjoy it while you can, folks. It will almost certainly be destroyed once the sim owner returns to SL and realizes the rent hasn't been paid, and the tenant is no longer in SL. The only way I can imagine to save that build would be for someone to contact the sim owner and offer to buy Amarin Island and its 4 OpenSpaces sims, or to rent them from the current owner. If anyone does want to do that, I can help with transfer of the prims that make up the build. The horses, vehicles and furniture in those sims belonged to the former tenant, but virtually all of the buildings and landscaping are still technically owned by me.

I didn't imagine that many surprises could exist in SL, my mind is boggling

I just had the grand tour of the monastery from Ceera herself.

I strongly recommend visiting this place before it inevitably? gets pulled down. It's one of those builds you will rarely see - rather like Bhutan itself

Incredible

*bump*

Just a little bump because i think ppl should see this before it vanishes into the depths of cyberspace

*bump*

Worth your time.

It has one of the nicest oubliettes I've ever fallen into.

Wow, this is an amazing build... really beautiful. Tons of detail, and lovely landscaping. It's a shame the owner had to abandon it. A person could wander around there for hours... must've been a great place to ride all those horses. I realize everything in SL is changeable and temporary by nature, but it's always a shame to see places like this disappear.

It is gorgeous. What a shame it will be going to waste.

Well, it is official. All 5 Amarin Island sims are in the process of being sold, and they, together with the Sunrise Hopes sim, will cease to exist in their current form before the end of the month. So, if you haven't visited yet, and were thinking of doing so... well you only have 10 days or so left. Search the map for "Amarin" , and you should find Amarin Island, Amarin Xi, Amarin Bei, Amarin Nan, and Amarin Dong. Search for "Sunrise Hopes", and you'll find the last one... while they last. You can go anywhere. I have removed the security systems.

I don't know what happened to the tenant that commissioned all that terraforming and building. I probably never will know. Hard to imagine that she just walked away from all that, even though it did cost her a lot of real money every month to keep it going. I mean, one full-use sim and 5 OpenSpaces sims isn't cheap, no matter how you obtain them. But when she started the project, she seemed to have no problems spending all that, to get the sims and to hire me to build as fast as I could. Whatever happened, wherever she is now, I hope her Player is all right. No matter why she left... while she was here, she was a true Patroness to me, and I appreciated her faith in my ability to make wonderful things for her.

I can't blame the sim owners in the least. If anything, I commend them on their reserve and compassion, that they waited for over three months without being paid by their tenant, giving her a chance to return and continue paying, before acting to reclaim their lands and make them profitable again. That compassion cost them a lot in real money, and earned a lot of respect from me for what good landlords they are to rent from.

Probably no one cares, other than the handful who posted in this thread, but I need to post this for personal closure on the matter...

Well, the 5 sims that made up Amarin Island have been split apart and moved elsewhere.

They're now cut up pieces, tossed in among unrelated sims. I just finished going around the fragments, and doing what I could to individually return all the nice things that the former tenant had left behind. If she returns to SL and manages to reactivate her (presumably suspended for non-payment?) Premium account before the inventory is wiped, at least those things won't be in one big conglomerated mess. Her account doesn't show, so I'm certain she didn't tier down to Basic. And if she intentionally left, one would think she would have sold off what she could, before deactivating the account. So my best guess is that something happened to her in RL, and she was unable or unwilling to return to SL, or to keep up the payments on what she had. Illness, death, bankruptcy... I'll likely never know. Oh well... If nothing else, the new residents won't have to return those things that can't be transferred or purchased.

I'll try to work with the new sim owner to at least smooth the edges down to the waterlines, but probably whoever gets these fragments will wipe most of them. They look pretty awkward with one to three of the sides of the terrain chopped off at the sim border.

One promising note... It looks like the Tibetan Monastery may survive... as the personal home of the sim owner that bought the Amarin sims. She's labeled the new parcel there as her home... I hope she does keep it mostly intact, with the caves and all beneath the big place. If she does, I'll help her to repair the cut off edges as well as I can. Or if she wants to keep the caves but build something more modern or in a different style on top... We will see...

The new owner is a very lucky person, and wise to keep such a beautiful thing in existence.

Oh well... No, she didn't opt to keep any of the Monastery build. It's all been deleted now, and exists only in the backup copies in my inventory.

She is at least going to try to save a lot of my terraforming - just fix the cut edges so each sim can stand alone. What used to be the harbor can be pretty nice that way, with a little work.