SHORT STORIES : The Princes of Irukandji | Xay Tomsen - Andrew Thompson

The Princes of Irukandji
©2012 Andrew Thompson.  A tale from the Irukandji virtual world.

The title 'Princes of Irukandji' didn't exist at the beginning.  Neither did Irukandji for that matter.

I only had one sim Tamita Island and three friends who followed me from my old rented block on Amelia.

So there we were; me, Jai, Kep, and Andi.  I set the guys up as estate managers and we went about creating stuff and having fun.

Within a few days, people began arriving who we'd never met before, and by week's end, Tamita had a steady flow of visitors.

They came, they shopped, and they rented my holiday bungalows.  And unexpectedly, they wanted to stay, to buy land on my artistic canvas to build homes of their own.

I decided to add more sims; one bay on each face of Tamita, and another full island tagged onto the western bay, which I called Alantay Island.

I promoted the new sim to a distinctly gay market, and Alantay sold out in a week, setting a new SL record.  So, I kept adding more and more islands, and I named the fledgling continent Irukandji.

As I built each new sim, I found them developing distinct personalities, and as a writer, I began wondering what their history might be.

My head raced as it did, and given the tropical theme and my penchant for colonial architecture, I decided on a South Pacific kingdom.

That said, I didn't want to be king.  It made sense then, that the continent should be a mix of tribes governed by a council of princes.  It all just fell into place from there.

We were in there to have fun though, and so were the new residents who had chosen Irukandji to settle down.  We ran with the regal theme, and on Tamita Island we built a palace with sweeping grounds and pools - and no doors.  Anyone could visit, and really, everyone did.

I remember one Sunday where we had forty avatars chattering away around the pool.  They were good times, and I realised that our formula worked.

Solid rules in the covenant, coupled with laidback Aussie charm.  And well, an estate team composed of pretty lads (and one token lass :)) who wandered about in scanty but regal outfits doing their jobs.

Some of the guys immersed themselves in the roleplay aspect of being a Prince, and for one in particular, I think the experience saved his life.  We all grew, even me - especially me.  Irukandji was a wonderful nurturing place.

Our motto was 'Freedom - Peace - Integrity', and we lived by that code.  A mythology grew around us and those tales became the core of Irukandji culture.  I encouraged their telling; expanding and perpetuating the legend, and the story teller that I am, created a complex history.

We formed the Irukandji Ministy of Heritage and Culture.  We had our own festivals and events, from which new histories were made, and our lives became a living novel.  Irukandji soon became as famous for its Princes as for its beautiful beaches and bays.

For some people, virtual worlds are just escapism, but for our merry band it was a curative.  It's said that like attracts like, and not by design, I found myself surrounded by others who were damaged in some way.

The effect of our kinship cannot be put into words.  Irukandji saved lives in the real world.  It fixed people and gave them hope.  It was fucked up and it was wonderful.

Regrettably though, art is rarely a match for tyranny, and Irukandji fell.  It lasted two years on the Second Life grid but was eventually dragged down by SL's corporate greed and mismanagement.

My estate wasn't the only one to go.  I only had 70 sims out of the 1000 that collapsed, and the next year, another 800 followed.  The artists fled en masse leaving SL a barren grid.

In the intervening months and years since, I've been chipping away at my own grid, You3D, and I have a version of Irukandji up and running there.

At the moment (January 2012) I still have a quarter sim on SL but I'm not sure why.  I'll probably let it go soon.

Presently without a kingdom, the Princes of Irukandji have morphed into something more casual - The Tamita Surf Lifesaving Club, and that feels good too.  I guess it shows critics of virtual worlds that true friendships can actually be forged.  For myself, I count the Princes as my family and friends.

They helped run Irukandji without pay, purely for the spirit of community - building roads and bridges, making tunnels and airfields and harbours, planting over 90,000 trees, digging holes, holding local elections, and adjudicating disputes between residents.

But most importantly, they shared my virtual life, which so often overlapped with my "real" life.  To me they were family.  More than family.

 The Princes of Irukandji are:

Andi Oh New Zealand
Cale Topaz (a.k.a. Twinky Siemens) Australia
Damian Topaz Australia
Icon Ferraris (also Governor of Palas State, Head of the Council of Governors) South Africa
Jai Noel Australia
Keppel Sands (also Governor of Aboyo State) Australia
Rah Mayo (a.k.a. Clap Papp, also chief elder of the Pinjarra nation) Malaysia
Tigra Quintessa USA
Xay Tomsen (a.k.a. Andrew Topaz, also chief elder of the Tamita nation) Australia

Andi Oh (Feb 2007 to present)
I met Andi as a newbie on Amelia Island, where I'd leased half a sim to call home.  It was around January 2007, a good month before the idea of buying a sim of my own even began to flower in my mind.

With Andi being a kiwi and me Australian, I was the first non-American she had bumped into.  We stuck together and became quick friends.

I was living with Kep at the time - we had only met a few days earlier.  He was dabbling with building houses and I was playing around with clothing.

He built Andi a shack to live in on our little patch of dirt, while she greeted visitors at my fledgling swimwear shop and art gallery.  That's how Jai found his way into my world.  He teleported in - virtually landing on top of Andi - and he never left.

Everything happens in so little time in SL.  When Jai arrived, I had been there for less than a week and everything was new.  So were my friends - All of us were newbies.  I had no way of knowing that I would soon become one of the biggest land barons in Second Life, and that my three new friends would be my stalwart supporters throughout.

For now, we were just four dumb newbies having fun in the virtual sun.

A month later, frustrated by the constraints of living on someone else's sim, I bit the bullet and purchased a sim of my own.  I called it Tamita Island.  It was February 2007, and sims took ten days to come online back then.  I was impatient as hell.

When I finally got the email, I rang them with the co-ordinates and we all beamed onto the island togther.  It was the beginning of Irukandji.

We frantically built and planted and terraformed, and within a few days, our first visitors began to arrive.  Excited beyond words, Andi and Jai, having built a quick rapport, decided that they should be poster-boy and poster-girl for the newly named Chez Xay Tropical Island Resort.

There, I had an advantage.  During the time I'd spent messing about with clothing design, I also learned a lot about building avatar shapes.

One thing that all of us hated about SL culture was that guys were eight feet tall, and women had that awful 'American fat arse' that still prevails in SL today as some bizarre measure of beauty.

I decided to fix it, at least on Irukandji, and I built Jai and Andi new avatars of realistic size and proportion. 

They loved them, and soon we had spinning billboards all over the place featuring our two local "cuties" parading my range of clothing designs.

Our marketing was a raging success, proving that sex works in advertising, even in virtual worlds.

Tamita Island was clearly the place to be.  We began selling land and adding more sims, with properties bought on spec before the islands were even built.

On Pinjarra Island, every block was gone before the sim was even ordered.

On a high from it all, I just matched the pace of the world around me.  But Andi, despite her giddy nature, was the first to state what should have been obvious to me.

"Are you still having fun though?" she asked.
I paused to think. "I honestly don't know," I said.

But I knew what she meant.  The more successful Irukandji became, the less "ours" it became as well.  I felt myself lose something but I'm not sure what it was.

But we had initiated a momentum that couldn't be slowed, and short of telling people "No, we don't want you throwing money at us hand over fist," I had to keep expanding the continent.

And we were making serious money through land sales - up to $7000 USD some weeks.

But Andi's words stuck, for I've never been driven by money.  I figured that if this was the way it has to be, then let's at least continue to have fun with it.

I began writing histories of the islands, and I set land aside as sacred - not to be sold, but to be enjoyed by everyone.  Somewhere in the midst of our frenzied activities, the Princes of Irukandji concept was born.

Throughout Irukandji's first epoch on the Second Life grid, Andi was the only female estate manager, through chance rather than by design.

As a predominantly gay-themed estate with 90% male population, Andi helped keep things sane.

It would have been easy for the continent to become just another gay estate with all the stereotypes that go with it.

I didn't want that - I never wanted an exclusively gay estate.  I hate elitist enclaves of any kind.  Instead, I wanted to build a haven for people like me who don't fit in to normal boxes.  The mission I gave Andi was a simple one; to stop Irukandji becoming a cliche, and to keep it fully inclusive to people from all walks of life.

And that's what she did; making sure that our name was out in the general marketplace, yet at the same time screening potential new land owners who might be religious nutters or homophobes.

With a key focus on lifestyle, romance, and freedom of expression, Irukandji was a runaway success right up until the end.

When I eventually walked away from SL, it was an awful time for many.  Sadness was everyone and touching beyond my ability to phrase.

The Princes left with me and for a year or so we went back to our normal lives.  But I missed virtual worlds.

I dabbled with SpotOn3D for a month or two and built a new estate there.  Andi followed.  It never really got off the ground.  Ten months later SO3D is still an empty grid.

So I decided to start developing my own.  Andi's in there now, helping me still, and I know we'll eventually get it up and running.

At time of writing this page, January 2012, I have a new sim in Second Life, and again it's called Tamita Island.  Andi's in there too.  She has been with me on every grid now, so I guess she's here to stay.

I've built four avatars for Andi over the years.  Her latest is a regression to simpler times.  Gone are the pouty facial animations and voluptuous figure, and instead a regression to a more innocent girlish design.

Perhaps like me, she is searching for a way to return to those early days on Tamita, when the world was still a mystery and held so much promise.

And I have to say of all our history together, my favourite photo is the one of her dancing like a twat at the new palace.  There is also a lovely video of her dancing for the new Afia Bikini range that is definitely worth watching.

Keppel Sands (Feb 2007 to present)
Kep had the most peculiar start to life - Peculiar in that his avatar and name were originally mine.

I named it after the tiny Queensland town where I'd spent half my adult life.

This got a little confusing for me though, so I signed up for another avatar, Xay Tomsen, which has been my av ever since.

A few days later, an odd looking robot-avatar wandered onto my block on Amelia Island and began to strike up a conversation.

I hated it instantly.  I was building a tropical paradise, not a scene from Star Wars.

Bluntly, I said turn into a human or go back to the kiddies sim you came from.  The robot became human and we chatted for a bit.

'First day,' he said, 'Just testing things out'.

Surprisingly we struck up a friendship.  He hated the avatar name he'd chosen.  He said that he might go and set up a new account.

I suggested he have my old avatar, which he thought was pretty cool, and so the deal was done.

These were the really early times in SL, when the graphics were quite cartoonish, but it was cutting edge at the time.  This wonderful new platform for creation was so far ahead of anything we had ever seen before.

A few months later, the Windlight viewer was released, and that changed the look of SL into what it is today.

But back at the beginning, it was just me and Kep.  Only a few days old myself, he was my first friend in SL and he followed me me right through to the end.

He was my first of many things actually.

We tried everything together in this strange new world, from building to scripting to avatar sex.  It was all pretty cool.

He helped me build my first art gallery then we landscaped the sim as best that newbies could.

Kep had a fascination with the movement of water, and  soon the land was criss-crossed with canals and eddying streams.

It was small-scale compared with what was to come, but in reflection, our first efforts at land development were quite good.

We then set up rental homes and sold off a few parcels of land as well, and in the midst of all this I began making swimwear.  Kep helped me model and promote them.

Before the first photo shoot, I spent hours making his avatar look exactly right.

I say this a lot, but in virtual worlds, each day seems like a month.  You can fit so much into a very short space of time.  It's easy to lose track of that time too, for in SL, there a four sunrises and sunsets every day.

I guess that's why it feels as though we spent several months together, but in reality it was only a week or two.  Soon, Andi arrived, and then Jai a few days later.

Kep and I were just friends; we never thought we were together as a couple, and with Jai's arrival, we both vied for his attention.  I won :)

The four of us settled down and found our places within the group.  Kep and Andi tried an affair for a couple of days but it didn't last. 

A few weeks later, I bought my own sim - my first sim, Tamita Island, and we all set foot on her virgin shores together.

We instantly began terraforming and building, and Kep continued with his fascination of water.

He learned a little scripting and within the first few days on Tamita, he had created a range of baths and pools and hot-tubs.  Kep built a store which he named 'All Things Wet', with a modest living space above it to live in, and I built my swimwear shop next door.

New visitors came to the island and amongst them were other content creators.  They wanted to set up shop too, so Kep and I expanded the shopping district.  We called it simply, Tamita Mall, with our shops side by side at its centre.

Kep's other interest was music, and his mind turned to setting up a night club.  Jai was keen on the idea too.

But I didn't want the island to become an eyesore, so I suggested we have an open air dance floor up on the hill, with waterfalls and quiet nooks where people could meet and chat. 

That way we could retain the tropical island feel.  It was important to me that any builds we made fitted in with nature.

Kep and Jai ran with the idea, and a few days later the first Lava Club was erected on the ridge that traversed the island.  Beside it, a waterfall careened down into the ravine.

The night of Lava's grand opening drew near, and Kep decided it was time to tweak his avatar so he looked the part of Resident DJ.

I created it from scratch, found him new skin and finally got rid of his Linden-issue hair.  A bit of stubble on the chin and dark glasses, and he was done.  Except for the occasional new skin, we haven't touched Kep's avatar since.  Its shape, height, and detail are exactly the same as they were in 2007.

His height caused a few issues over the years though, as we had to make multiple variations of scripted objects to compensate for his bulk.

At 7' 6", he is actually the average height by SL standards, but the rest of the Princes wanted realism.  To see him standing next to Cale's 5' 9" frame is quite hilarious.  Even standing next to my 6' 8" avatar, he still towers above me.

From the outset, Kep's avatar was always taller than mine.  He's a dominant type.  I used to accuse him of trying to compensate for deficiencies in other areas :)

Five years on, and no doubt for eternity to come, we've kept a height disparity.  Nowadays though, I think he's almost a foot taller than me :)

Being second tallest in our group made me feel kind of nice though.  It felt like I had a big brother looking out for me.  I think Kep saw himself that way too.

People often said that I was extremely protective of the princes, and that's true, but by comparison, Kep was aggressively so.

As Irukandji grew over the coming months, Kep earned himself a bad-boy reputation, and people started calling him 'The Hitman'.  Always behind his back of course.  I preferred to look at him as a facilitator.  He made things happen.

To the younger princes though, Kep was putty in their hands.  He doted on them utterly and never lost his cool. 

Indeed he was kind to all the guys who joined my household, and I don't recall anyone saying an unkind word about him.

However, despite his party-boy image, Kep was very reclusive.  He let few people in, and only with Jai, did he show a romantic fondness.

My marriage to Jai had little impact on the feelings Kep had harboured since day one, and in truth they perhaps only deepened as love does when unrequited.

Jai, aware of his effect, began to spend more time with Kep, and together they built a shack overlooking the romantic Tiamo Reef.  Kep also kept  a house on Manatu Island plus a shack on Mount Aboyo Island,  where no one dared intrude except Jai.

Over the years, Kep was a prolific creator of many architectural builds and water features. 

Famously, he built several incarnations of the popular Tamita Mall and the shopping district on our mainland sim at Volpe.  He also built the first Irukandji Police station and Cawarral Mansion.

He helped tunnel the deep Maskari River through Nouvelle Kiribas, Irukandji's second tallest mountain and later built several sims on his own including Cabria Island, Captain Cook Reef, and Mount Aboyo, dotting them with his waterfalls and rock formations as he went along. 

He also designed large tracts of the Trans Irukandji Causeway, SL's longest privately owned highway.

Kep's first love though was Lava, where he set himself up as resident DJ, and always drew a crowd to the venue.

In the 2008 general elections, he was appointed Governor of Aboyo State where he spent much of his private time. 

Despite his outgoing "clubber-boy" facade, Kep was a reclusive man and never ventured far from the Princes whom he looked upon genuinely as little brothers.

I don't think I have a photo of him without his trademark sunglasses :)

Jai Noel (Feb 2007 to present)
I met Jai my very first week in SL.  Within a minute, I fell head over heels in love with him.

Hold on, let's wind back a bit.

I had just leased the corner of a sim on Amelia Island and he was a lost noob tourist who somehow teleported to my beach.  That's the story he tells anyway :)

There was no voice-chat back then.  It was all typing and what struck me first was the way he expressed himself so well and openly.  To a writer, that's a turn-on.

No coquettishness or innuendo, no suggestions of going up into the dunes for avi-sex etc like everyone else who'd dropped by.  He was in SL for something deeper.

His fluency and eloquence hooked me straight away.  We spent all that day together - 36 hours non stop without sleep - talking, exploring, sharing philosophies, and by the end, it was obvious we had a connection.

It was crazy.  I felt like a clumsy teenager again.  It doesn't help that there are 6 romantic sunsets a day in SL :)  I remember going to sleep reminding myself it isn't real, that it was just some weird sort of roleplay, but it didn't stop me dreaming of him and waking with a silly grin. 

The next day I felt like an utter knob and tamed it down a lot.  He saw through it.

'Do you feel weird?' he asked.  'A little,' I confessed.

'What is weird,' he said, 'Is people who use chat-rooms and web cam to hook up for sex with strangers.  This isn't weird.  We're friends, we've gotten to know each other.  All of this is OK.  You're allowed to like me, and I'm allowed to like you.'

I told him that I liked him a lot.  'Good,' he said.  I bit the bullet and asked him to be my boyfriend.  He said, 'I thought I already was'. :) 

I decided to buy us an island.  Two weeks later, our sim arrived and I called it Tamita Island.  Our romance emitted an amazing concentric energy across Irukandji with us at its centre, and people came because they wanted to bathe in that glow, and hopefully, find someone to love of their own.  And many did.
 
Both single in real life (RL), we set no limits on our SL relationship.  We both wanted to express and share love, even in virtual form.  And we did.  We dated for a month then got married.  He imagined himself as Danos, one of the characters in my books, and I his protector and husband, and we lived our SL experience that way.

In countless ways, we used the romantic structure of Khataria as the foundation for Irukandji society.  We did a lot; we built a single island that expanded into a kingdom of 65; we made palaces, bays, parks, art galleries, shopping malls, seas, forests, marinas, and playgrounds.

We established our own fashion labels, Xay Tomsen Black Label and Ho Boy, and we learned to write scripts.  We added construction, architecture, animales, boats, cars, and landscape supplies to our range.

Naturally, we needed to convert our inworld wealth to real currency, so we did.  We opened the Bank of Tamita and became money traders as well. 

Irukandji was a real nation, with an active export economy generating $US100,000 of real hard currency a month, and at its peak, 700 people from across the world leased land on our estate.  All because of Jai and me, the energy we gave off.  Pure, contagious, energy.

It was mind blowing, a magical time.

Regrettably though, it was success stories like ours - coupled with loud mouthed idiots like Anshe Chung bragging about her wealth - that killed off the virtual world community.  Linden Labs, not happy with the exorbitant rates they already charged, became greedy and wanted it all for themselves.

It was a classic reenactment of the old land barons of medieval times over taxing the people, not realising that is was those same people who made them their fortunes.

Through several months of terrible management policies designed to bankrupt private estates, they succeeded.  Everyone started to pack up their bags and leave, taking all their wondrous creativity with them.  The once vibrant SL grid of continent upon continent was reduced to a barren sea.

There is nothing so sad as the silence of a void that once teemed with life. The grid still exists but it's a boardroom.  It's sterile, a tomb.  All the artists are dead.

But I don't dwell on that any more.  I don't regret a second of the experience, for Jai was at my side from start to end.

Looking back at it now, everything I did in Irukandji, my every attraction to the experience, was Jai.  I was there because of the joy he brought me.

Was it real?  Can a man fall in love in a virtual world.  Yes, it was very real.  He has a place in my heart that no one will ever fill the way he did, and I know he feels the same for me.

Rah Mayo a.k.a. Clap Papp (March 2007 to present)
Clap was ... hell, I cringe at words to describe him.  Incredibly soft in nature ... servile ... codependent in a nice way ... and very very scared of the world. 

He came to Tamita Island and rented a shack I built in the jungle.  No one even knew he was there until Kep saw a blip on the map one day.

We took him under wing and discovered a beautiful soul.  But like so many beautiful souls, he was injured. 

Even the reality of making friends in avatar form was too much to face, and after a year of hunting his demons, he killed off Clap and rose anew.

He became Rah Mayo, a more self asserted version of himself, but in truth, the little brother who was taken away and never heard from again. 

Angry, brash, and abrasive, Rah rubbed many people up the wrong way and took his rage out on the world.  He learnt a lot during that crossover period, and despite himself, he found he liked his old self - his true self - best.  He didn't like the person he thought he needed to be.

And with that realisation came acceptance and new self esteem.  The beautiful guy we knew as Clap returned to us, his demons beaten.

It was beautiful to watch Rah blossom in the safety of friends who understood his pains.  Surrounded by people who cared for him, he took his place in our household as a member of our family and hence, a Prince of Irukandji.

Malaysian by birth, I made him an avatar with an oriental look and a bleached Mohawk like the one he sports in real life. 

Rah is famous for his builds.  Inspired by Cawarral Mansion, Rah went on to construct many colonial palaces and fortresses using textures from the islands we lived on.

I trained Rah to be a master terraformer and he built many of the sims in Jillaroo and Kalamat States.

With Twinky's arrival on the scene, Rah found someone with the same sense of mischief and fun.  He and Twinky styled themselves as 'twins to different parents' and became inseparable friends.  We called them the evil twins :)

With a mutual love for building things, they set up the Irukandji Department of Public Works, each with a huge council depot at opposite ends of the kingdom.

They were like a pair of little kids with their huge amphibious dump trucks tearing about the estate. 

Whenever they got bored they would go out on mad construction rampages building bridges and forests and highways together.

When mischief kicked in, one of their favourite tricks was to wait until an island filled up with people, then raise the sea level two metres and flood everyone's houses - It scared the hell out of our residents :))

Rah was brilliant.  These were the happiest times in Irukandji and I am so grateful to have been part of Rah's life.

Icon Ferraris (April 2007 to present)
When I think of Icon, it always makes me smile.  And then a rogue memory hits and I laugh.

Incredibly intelligent, and with a humourous wit that ranged from cryptic to utterly outrageous, Icon was an absolute pleasure.

Sometimes in the real world, I'm accused of being an intellectual snob, and maybe there's some truth in that.  But that said, I have no hesitation in saying that in Icon, I found an intellectual equal.

Before voice came into SL, we'd type frantically for hours debating philosophy or the woes of the world, and I'm sure we covered every subject.

With the arrival of voice, I gained an even greater appreciation for this soft and spiritual soul.  He injected such humour and wonderment into our band of societal misfits, the Princes of Irukandji.

It was around April 2007 when I met him.  He arrived in Irukandji the same way most other settlers did - from a land sales ad.

My eighth sim, Manatu Island had just come online.  I'd terraformed it that morning and had just begun subdividing the first blocks when a payment came through on my screen.

I looked for blips on the map, and there he was - a lone avatar near Manatu's central canal.  I was astounded - The sim was barren - I hadn't even started planting trees.  By the time I went to greet him, he was already building his house.

We became instant friends, and I made him an avatar which he never changed.

Photogenic and fun to be around, Icon immediately became a poster boy for my swimwear range and for the "Where the Boys Are" Land Sales campaign.

Icon quickly shagged himself into a position of power and served as a Prince of Irukandji from 2007 to December 2009. 

He was a great leader of men and when he spoke, people listened. 

Playing on his success as a poster boy, he established his own property development company Ferraris Estates, selling land in Irukandji, and it went off famously. 

I recognised in him an enterpreneurial streak and with Jai overseas, the makings of a good deputy in whom I could entrust the estate while I focused on my RL businesses. 

In 2008, I appointed Icon to the role of Chief Minister.  I gave him the task of dividing the kingdom up into states, and holding elections amongst the residents to fill the positions of regional governors.

He established the Council of Irukandji Governors and presided over the first inauguration of parliament. 

When they all turned out to be boozed up warlords, he dissolved parliament and decided to let power overwhelm him completely. 

For something to do, he declared war on the neighbouring French sims and annoyed them enough with his long winded lectures on human rights abuse that they fled from their insane neighbours :)) 

We absorbed the French territories into the kingdom and gave their people self determination.  Or so the story goes.

High on victory though, Ikey wanted more.  At some point he went insane and declared himself dictator-of-the-entire-world-for-life-beginning-with-Irukandji, but his attempted coup for control of the kingdom went askew when his crappy laptop blew its graphics card.

While he fled to his nephew's house in a beaten up Volkswagen to steal his computer, I had ample time to call in the Royal Irukandji Navy.

I surrounded his beachfront villa with 8 warships and a nuclear submarine while Twinky terraformed an active volcano in Icon's loungeroom.

Meanwhile, seeing the irony of lava versus Lava Night Club, Kep rezzed his DJ gear amidst the ruins and poor Ikey logged back in to find a dance party in his back yard :)))

Yes OK, we got a little immature sometimes.  Boys with digital toys blah blah, and in the end, it turned into a great party. 

During his time with us, Ikey invested a lot of his creativity into Irukandji and the things he did are way too numerous to list, though the tale of Cyclone Icon that decimated Tamita Island remains legend.

In reflection, I miss Ikey a lot.  I missed him the minute he left SL.

He got the shits up with Linden Labs over their treatment of estate owners, specifically me, and sent them a scathing letter of abuse, aware that they would ban him from SL.  And then he left.

SL wasn't the same any more.  It had stopped being fun and was becoming a stressful place to be.

Certainly after Icon left, coupled with Jai being away, Irukandji seemed empty.  Icon saw the end coming before the rest of us and wanted to get out before it fell apart. 

We had voice enabled by that stage and I remember listening to him cry.  I told him I wanted him to stay and that only upset him more. 

I knew his sadness ran deeper than just the issues with Linden Labs, and us spending so much time together only brought his feelings to the fore.  And mine with the honesty of hindsight.

In my relationship with Ikey I tried to reason that you can't be all things to all people, and still stay true to yourself.

But have I ever been true to myself?  I think I failed this time.  I'm sure of it.  I fucked up very badly.

I hope like hell I never meet anyone like him again.  Wherever you are out there Ikey, I wish I didn't miss you as much as I do.

Footnote 31 March 2012: Icon and indeed all the Princes have returned to my worlds, both in Second Life and You3D.

Cale Topaz a.k.a. Twinky Siemens (August 2007 to present)
Years after the event, it's OK for Cale's truths to come out, for his journey through Irukandji turned out for the best.  The proof is that he's still with me now.

Like a lot of guys who came to SL, they were young, often completely inexperienced in the world due to cultural issues or geographic isolation.

Second Life gave them access to meet other people like themselves.

Cale started life as Twinky Siemens, and in the real world, he was a friend of Jai's.

He kept nagging Jai to show him Irukandji - Problem being he was only 15, and SL policy stipulated an entry age of 18 under US law.

Age was a big issue at the time, with SL embroiled in a German paedophilia case, which largely revealed that the company had policies to protect their butts, not to protect minors.

As someone who was raped as a 12yo boy, these events struck a chord with me.  It was clear that the rules were never policed.

Even now, five years on, there is no ID check or age verification that stops minors gaining all area access to SL.

So meanwhile, back on downtown Hephaistion Island, I had a curious dilemma in Jai's friend.

In my mind, it came down to how one would rate Irukandji on a censorship scale.  I had no concerns that anyone might view it as R-rated.  The rest of SL might have been that way, but Irukandji wasn't.

While sex is part of any web-based culture, and indeed nudity was common place in Irukandji, the covenant that applied throughout the estate forbade public acts of indecency or sexual harrassment.

Offenders were banished for life.

In light of that, MA15 seemed more accurate to me.  In the end, I opted to apply a case-by-case entry age of 16, which was the legal age of consent In Queensland, where I, and hence the Irukandji Continent was based.

So I talked to Jai's friend on the phone.  He seemed clear headed and good.  He waited obediently for his 16th birthday just like I instructed, and then Jai brought him in-world.

I had no internal conflicts breaking the rules.  In any case, I'd bumped into guys a lot younger on the SL mainland. 

My logic for defying the gods of SL was simple.

If a young guy is curious, he'll find some way of appeasing his curiosity, and in a country town like Cale's, disclosure of his sexuality could have proven fatal.

I also figured if he was going to be cruising the internet looking for gay connections, he would be safest in Irukandji, and safer still as part of the estate team, for the Princes were untouchable.

His timing turned out to be perfect.  By late 2007 when Twinky arrived, a rich mythology surrounded the Princes of Irukandji.

Part of that mythology was that all of them belonged to me as concubines.

In hindsight, this is quite amusing because we were far too busy building and planting to be distracted too often with avatar sex.

The myth was convenient though, and the guys enjoyed role-playing to add to the mystique.

But the message to outsiders was clear.  I took care of the Princes, and if anyone crossed them, the perpetrator was done for.  And then there was Kep to watch out for too.  In short, the boys were protected and they were family.

So, Twinky came in-world, his account all fresh and new.  I could see that the lad was a reprobate the moment I laid eyes on him dancing up a storm at Lava.

I did the 'fix up the noobie' thing and made him look half decent - starting with an old avatar of Jai's and a haircut.  Then I sat him down and smiled rather smugly.

"Jai set up your SL account, didn't he?"
"Why yes he did."
"Hmm, I thought so.  Twinky Siemens, yes, nothing facetitious about that name at all."

He went quiet for a bit then frantically typed, "That bastard!"

So I added another suite to the palace and took Twinks under wing as the seventh Prince of Irukandji.

He was great value and a fast learner.  He wanted a mission to earn his keep; to be seen as a valid member of the estate team, not just a pretty boy being kept on for his looks.

Ambition is rare, so I began to show him the ropes.  He learnt the covenant by heart, and I sent him off to sell land.

He had such a pleasant nature, and coupled with his cuteness, everyone loved him.  No one wanted to upset him for fear that he mightn't like them anymore.

It was really very sweet, and from a land baron's perspective, I found it brilliant to have someone so popular to sort out resident disputes.  No one could get angry with him.

Then I taught him to terraform, and this he excelled in.  After only a few days, I gave him a new island to build from scratch, complete with bays and rivers.

Twinky loved terraforming, and along with his 'evil twin' Rah, they established the Irukandji Public Works Department (IPW) and set up depots across the estate.

Twinky quickly reached my level of skill and within a few months, he started contracting his services outside of Irukandji.

He built around two dozen sims on other estates for a flat fee of $250 USD an hour.  It was incredible.

But he never liked leaving Irukandji.  He would go away and do an hour or two's work then scamper back and not leave my side for the rest of the day.

Twinky's crush was sweet, and I was fond of him too.  Meanwhile, Jai - my inworld husband of eighteen months, and Twinky's best real-world friend - was about to go overseas for a twelve month modelling contract.

It was Jai's idea that we should marry while he was away, on the provision we divorce when he returned.  I didn't like the idea of divorcing Jai just to be with Twinky.  I loved Jai - It was genuine love, and we'd been together since the start.

So instead, I built an alt avatar and Twinky built one too.  We wanted the same last names, so we became Andrew Topaz and Cale Topaz, and these two avatars got married.

It was a bizarre period for me.  The problem with running an alt is that one's possessions don't necessarily transfer from one avatar to the other. 

It became a huge point of frustration for me, as I'd developed everything under Xay Tomsen, and also the sims were in my name.  I could only make Andrew Topaz an estate manager - I couldn't give him full rights to the sims.  So I abandoned the alt.

Cale however, kept his new name and abandoned his old avatar.  He was tired of being teased about his name, and it was time to move on.

But four years later, legacies of the old Twinky Siemens still survive.  To this very day, all of the vehicles I build run Siemens Radials, a brand that Cale invented when I taught him scripting.  It was that creative bond that attracted us to each other.

Jai returned from overseas in the midst of the estate's final death throes in 2009-2010.

It hit all the Princes hard but Jai worst of all, for he and I had built the kingdom from nothing save the dreams we dreamt together.

It proved too much for him and he ran away from virtual worlds for a good two years.  As to Cale, he stayed throughout, jumping with me from grid to grid. 

Only now is Jai starting to pop in and see what I'm up to.  It's January 2012 as I write this, and we are all finding our way again.

Damian Topaz (December 2008 to present)
Damian was the last person inducted into the estate team on the original Irukandji Continent.  A real-world friend of Cale's, he came inworld when the estate was in its first slow death throes.

By early 2009, I had downsized Irukandji from its 60 or so sims to 18, due to a 67% price rise in Second Life server fees.

It was the last of many blows to hit us courtesy of the greed and mismanagement inherent within Linden Labs, the company that owns Second Life.

The estate team had begun to wind down as well.  Jai was overseas for a year and I think that left a gaping hole that cut through Irukandji, for he was at the heart of its culture.

Meanwhile, Icon was too upset to keep coming in-world, and eventually exploded at Linden Labs which earned him a suspension from SL.  With my two key accomplices gone, the magic left with them, and it wasn't as much fun anymore.

Damian however, had been through none of this.  He didn't know the old ways, so everything was new and exciting.

He instantly fell in love with Irukandji.  There was still a great deal to explore, and the world I'd created was entirely new to him.

Building his avatar was an easy task.  He decided to become Cale's little brother, so it was simply a matter of reducing Cale's avatar by an inch, and finding him a different hair colour and eyes.

Despite Damian being a little ray of sunshine though, not even his best efforts could stem the Princes' waning morale.

Rah, Kep, and Andi came in-world less and less.  Meanwhile Tigra was doing his best to keep on top of Icon and Jai's myriad in-world business interests.

Basically, that just left Cale and me, so Damian's arrival proved timely.

Cale showed him the ropes, and he moved in with us at the newly built Bicentennial Palace on Tamita Island.

With the estate team decidely smaller now and much of its history relegated to the past, I phased out the term 'Prince of Irukandji'.  It seemed ridiculous now.

At this point in Irukandji's history, I wasn't sure if my downsizing would be sufficient to keep the estate viable, so I focused my attention on content creation rather than land sales.

I rebuilt the Irukandji Fish Farm on Manatu Island, and XT Automotive on Baie de l'AmoreBaie de l'Amore, and left Tigra and Damian to run them.

I also expanded my clothing range, most notably the Suva and Bondi collections, with Damian and Tigs as the poster boys.

These measures helped but only prolonged the inevitable.  I hadn't counted on what should have been more obvious at the time; that people would stop coming into Second Life.

And they did stop.  SL had earned itself a well-deserved bad name.  People stopped spending money, and stopped buying land, in favour of living communally or sharing a sim.

The economy drew to a halt, and with that, creators stopped creating.  Effectively, SL's new policy of greed had killed all the artists.

Irukandji reduced from 18 sims to 9, and then to 5.  I got the message.  I sold off the remaining sims and gave up the fight.

All of us left virtual worlds after that.  None of the team tried other grids.  Eventually though, I had to come back to virtual worlds - I loved the technology too much.

I bought ten sims on the discount grid, SpotOn3D, and this time I measured my expectations realistically.  I gave it two months.  I saw no improvement and I left.

But the experience did rekindle the guys' interest in virtual worlds.  Cale, Damian, and Andi all came to SO3D with me to give it a try.  When it failed, we agreed not to get disenchanted, and I immediately began building my own grid, You3D.

You3D remains an ongoing project, and in the meantime I've bought a single sim on Second Life again - begrudgingly.  As soon as I get You3D up and running though, I'll leave SL for good.

For now though, in early 2012, it is wonderful to see every last one of the Princes returned.

I do feel a little sorry for Damian though.  I wish he had arrived in Old Irukandji a little earlier so he could have experienced the true fullness of what it meant to be a Prince of Irukandji.

Tigra Quintessa (November 2007 to present)
more info and pics to come.