The thirsty cave...

Chapter 12.8 – The Bushweeds Autumn Tour 2023: part VIII – The Thirsty Cave.

Next chapter about the band "The Bushweeds" autumn tour posted at the Bewickton blog.. this time with a concert as they head to the venue known as "The Cave" to play for the night.

The venue is literally a cave located in a former bomb shelter under the Newstead Park, now being run by students volunteering to keep this legendary rock club alive! ;)

"The Cave" here is based on a real place called "Hulen", which translates to as you may have guessed.. "The Cave". I used to spend my years there when I was a student myself and a much younger punk then I am now.. ;)

Sam had never seen such a venue before. This place was definately something special.. dark, damp and just the right amount of dirty.... looks like the perfect place for vampires and other such dark and twisted late night individuals... totally not me being nostalgic about a different time..

..then it was time for the band to play their concert, another one in a long line of concerts with not much of an audience. Even the paparazzo seemed to find the restroom signs more interesting than the band...

..but I think I've found a trick now which I'll try next time, to set all the other venues and hangout places to "No Visitors Allowed". That should hopefully generate a little more traffic... poor band, driving for miles and miles to play for empty rooms!

Not very surprising this takes a toll on their patience, and Sam and Gerda ended up fighting with each other after Sam accused her of skipping the line at the bar...

From dirty to clean and dancing at the festival grounds.

Next chapter is posted here:

Chapter 12.7 – The Bushweeds Autumn Tour 2023: part VII – Rags to riches, or so they say.

 

Gerda was feeling a little shameful this morning, after having found such an awful place for them to stay, and wanted to make it right by logging on to SimB'n'B again at the very last minute to see if she couldn't find something better.. everyone pretty much agreed over breakfast that this place was pure trash in every possible way...

Kajsa wasn't very impressed, but felt a little better now that Gerda atleast took the initiative on her own to get them out of this mess... but was the new place really any better, or would it be just to same all over again? :P

The new place took them a distance out of the main downtown area, but it was still at a relatively central location, and even if it was just a tiny bit better than their previous place it would probably be worth it...

..and of course it was. Their new apartment was a completely different world, clean, modern and simplistic, yet tastefully decorated. Perfect.. let's turn on some music and get the party going! ;)

Everyone was up for it, except Sam whose idea of partying was playing games on his computer, but hey, different strokes.

..but of course, they can't stay in their apartment all day, regardless of how nice it looks, so Kajsa takes them downtown to the festival grounds where they will continue their party until they have to go play their concert later this night.

The chapter ends with them leaving the festival grounds, because I already exceeded the amount of screenshots I normally use with a tiny amount and also since I haven't yet played through the part with their concert.

From Pleasantview to Wad Nahadau..

Chapter 12.6 – The Bushweeds Autumn Tour 2023: part VI – Old, derelict and dreadful.. 

The Bushweeds album tour continues as they leave Pleasantview behind to head south and westwards towards the coast again..

The rain from yesterday evening has not gone away, but only intensied further during the night, and continues to do so throughout the day, making the atmosphere in Pleasantview a little less than pleasant...

 

There's only one thing for the band to do then, and that is to get out of Dodge as fast as they can, before things get potentially even worse... ;)

Then after several more hours on the road and having their trip almost cut short by a near traffic accident in a roundabout they finally end up at the apartment Gerda has rented for them on Simb'n'b only to be disappointed when that too in no way lives up to any hopes and expectations they may have had of it..

 

..but its to late in the evening now for them to find a better place to stay, so they're just gonna have to accept what they can get, but ew, what a nasty looking place.. ;)

Click here or the title above to read the full chapter at the Bewickton blog.

Prologue 0.0 and 0.1 (Repost from 2021)

Comment from 2024:

This is the orignal first post of my story thread over at the Sims 3 story forum, first posted in January 2021, shortly after I had joined the forum in December 2020. I'm reposting it here now, since it has been announced that Sims forum will be closing this July to be replaced with some new forum, and though one can nominate threads to be transferred to this new forum, I'm not really expecting any of mine to be transferred over, nor have I as of yet made the suggestion for them to be transferred. 

The over the top title I refer to down below is the original title of my thread there 'The Chronicles of Simbria', which I sometime later changed to 'The People of Simbria' because, well, I ended up thinking it was perhaps a little to over the top, and also because it really is about the people of this nation and their stories... So here it is, the original post from January 2021 that started it all...

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I must start with a birds eye view of everything and some background information to create a context for my story, complete with an over the top title to make it sound epic or something. Alright, here we go!

Prologue 0.0: The United Kingdom of Simbria.

The United Kingdom of Simbria, commonly known as Simbria, is a sovereign state comprising of six countries on the greater island of Simbria located in the Westphalian Sea on the northern hemisphere of the Simtopian Planet. It is a very big island, almost the size of a continent and thus covers many climate zones ranging from maritime subtropical on its southern tip to maritime subarctic on its very northenmost edge.


On the southwestern part of this large island state lies the mountaineous country of Frydain Pawr. Most of the population of this country is centered around it's capital Wad Nahadau, but this is not were our story plays out.

Prologue 0.1: H.K.H. Høigaffel.

The small town of Solskinnsdalen, also known as Sunset Valley, is a small and fairly isolated town on the southwestern edge of the great island of Simbria, in a country called Frydain Pawr. A long time ago, there lived a man called H.K.H. Høigaffel. Already while he was alive, he rose to legendary status as the most impressive chess player the Sim World had ever witnessed. In the year of 1783 sim time, he founded what is known as Solskinnsdalen Schak-klub (Solskinnsdalen Chess Club). It was here he would spend the majority of his days, challenging people to a game of chess, or writing on his best selling books about the magic, mysteries and strategies (as well as joys) of chess. From the money he made on his books, teaching chess and winning tournaments all over Frydain Pawr, he erected a tower to be his home on what was then the outer edge of the town area. The tower quickly became somewhat of a landmark and tourist attraction, and were nicknamed "The Rook" by the locals, as it resembled the chess piece with the very same name.



Photo of the tower, "The Rook", as it looks in the year 2021, sim time.

As this was long before the invention of the camera, no pictures of H.K.H. Høigaffel exist, but there is a painting of him by an unknown painter (ca. 1795) hanging up in the lobby on the second floor of the chess club.



Solskinnsdalen Schak-klub (Sunset Valley Chess Club) the way it looks in 2021, sim time.



Portrait painting of H.K.H. Høigaffel by an unknown painter.

As far as legend has it, H.K.H. Høigaffel did not enjoy any romantic relations, preferring to stay by himself until old age when he eventually befriended and married a sim called Joika-Kari Bastiansen. Joika-Kari was an avid gardener for the last days of her life. Officially she died of old age, but evil tongues still gossip that she died while they were woohooing in bed.



Modern day aerial photo of the chess club, with the tower "The Rook" in the back of the picture.

H.K.H. Høigaffel lived for a long time still after her death, and it was then he became an avid painter. After his death, his tower was left abandoned for years and almost fell into ruin, before the town council in 1873 declared that it should be restored to it's former glory and be opened to the public as a museum. At the same time a memorial stone was placed by the entrance of the chess club. It is rumored that if you stay at the chess club late at night, you may catch a glimpse of H.K.H. Høigaffel's ghost still roaming the corridors, or maybe even challenging you to a game of ghostly chess.



H.K.H. Høigaffels memorial stone by the entrance to the chess club.

Comment from 2024:

I was a little surprised actually that the city of Wad Nahadau was mentioned in this first post already. I had actually forgotten about that.. makes wonder when I really did start working on it. It may have been as early as 2021 already, which means that the project may have its three year anniversary some time during this year. Well, whoa.

Also, that chess player H.K.H, Høigaffel was a prominent character in the story before I joined the Sims forums and started posting about it, but since then he has been nothing but a memory. ;)

Wad Nahadau, The Bushweeds and stuff..

So.. it's definately time for an update here now. In the town of Bewickton the local folk punk band The Bushweeds had since we last saw them at Palash and Sofias wedding gone into town to try and get a record deal.. to, unfortunately, no success at all..

Meeting up with a representative of Orange Music Records it had to go as it went..

The meeting ended with an argument, and they got no deal.. Blast these capitalist major labels and companies! It's the same story as it always is.. so the band was no a little down and desperate, but by next summer they had managed to pull things together enough to record and release their debut album, completely self funded..

An important milestone in the bands history, no doubt, but they couldn't rest on their laurels now, as they had ambitions of course. This was just the beginning of their journey, since of course, they wanted after all to spread their music far and wide.. so they had to know do their best to make arrangements to get live shows to go on their first little tour to gain followers.... all of which is easier said then done without a record label and a marketing apparatus having your back, but they still scraped together a few tour dates the following autumn...

 

..and this of course, is where the city of Wad Nahadau comes into the picture. It's their fourth tour date, and their set to play at a venue called "The Cave", which is a former bomb shelter, now turned into a concert venue run voluntarily by students in the city..

The only issue here was that the city of Wad Nahadau, which is a project I started sometime in 2022 (I think, I don't actually remember when I started it.) This was a time when we were on Origin and not he EA App, and everyone could use 'Edit in Game' from the 'Create a World' tool without any problem..

 

At one point I realized that I had made the terrain of the town a little to hilly and thought I should perhaps find a way to flatten it a little, as it made building on the lots in the downtown area a little difficult, and it probably didn't look it's best.. I also needed to take a break from town building as it it really is a lot of work.. and of course, in the meantime here came the EA App to mess everything up...

Since I couldn't use Edit in Game I could no longer save whatever I built on the lots to the town itself, and if since I had already started on the downtown area, redoing it's terrain would also mean deleting the lots and everything on them, which would now leave me with a downtown area of empty lots.. that didn't feel like a good option and I wasn't to motivated to work on this project for a while and it was left alone for a good while until.. The Bushweeds was set to play their for their upcoming tour, which meant that I had to resume work and try to finish it as soon as possible, since I really don't want any delays to my story telling..

So it was back to work on the downtown area and the town itself. It doesn't look so hilly when seen from above, but it is a quite the hill in the centre of the picture above the highway tunnel that goes under the downtown area..

It was quite a lot of work in such a short amount of time, since late December of last year and until now, but I will count the major parts of the town finished for now, and what is left is "only" to fix a self illumination problem with some of the buildings and to keep refinig the distant terrain I just made.. but for now, my perfectionist self will just need to accept some of these shortcomings and continue with my game and story telling.. so yeah, coming soon.. the Bushweeds on tour! Finally...