Majesty (2)

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: whatcha playing ?
mircea_popescu: majesty!

And here it is :

Majesty is a delightfulⁱ video game, completing (together with Heroes 2/3 and King's Bounty) the most perfect triad : be a Kingly Princely Ruler in your own right!

And it looks great, too!

Unlike the NWO Heroes series (in which the player assumes complete control of a fantasy kingdom and goes to battle with, fundamentally, the slings and arrows of uncaring fate built out of moronic "independents" scattered around the map and upon an armature of resource-and-time scarcityⁱⁱ), and unlike NWO's King's Bounty (in which the player assumes limited control in the shape of a generalship in the realm and at the service of a generally bumbling monarch, and goes to battle with the exact same moronic "independents" constrained this time by the latent "independency"ⁱⁱⁱ of his own armies, which make it so he can only have up to nine rather than than ten or more pikemans at any given level / point in time), Cyberlore's Majesty^iv instead makes you a simple bureaucrat.

You don't direct heroes, you don't amass armies, you just build the marketplaces and blacksmiths where they buy their potions and rings and armors. And you build the hero housing, temples and war colleges and whatnot, and you pay for the education of confused young louts who will be going about "on their own" and "making their own decisions" as to what to do with their lives while you line the roads with guardhouses and keep the tax collectors going by on the regular^v, and keep reconstructing the trading outposts the dragons / elementals / rats and shambling horrors keep eating while everyone else doesn't give a shit because they're too busy polishing that shiny new armor or delicious steak lunch a working economy got them.

Above you can admire a level 23 meat tank, strong enough to go toe to toe with a dragon (with your careful healing him with global heal spells costing 250 gold pieces per hit, of course, of course) and even kill the damned beast given enough time (about a game-week, like in the old tales^vi). Whose kill is it, mine or his ? His level 23, who made that ? How did they ?

Roman legions win wars by the shovel, said some emperor whose name's forgot. Yet all shall be forgotten ; let's move on.

Above : my cleric's ruining the Minotaur's pyramid, while the Minotaurs in question are ruining my Trading Outpost. Win-win, like they say.

Below : The towers of defense, in complex combination. This "goddess of life" evercunt decided to take offense at my preferring Crypta over anything she has to offer, and opened up a bunch of portals all over my land, out of which at intervals obnoxious loud urchins spewed out and [tried to] run amok. I destroyed all portals but one (didn't want to end the game, see) and put some towerage around it, so Princess Numbskull can continue sending her "hordes" right into the meat grinder, as this story belongs going. Industry, right ? It never had nor ever could have any other serious purpose, besides the mechanized slaughter of the cuntspawn.

Anyway, Majesty's a delightful game, very much recommended if you haven't already.

You may even pick Abela if you particularly want to. She sucks though.

1. The cutscene voices, incidentally, are the greatest voices I've yet encountered -- well scripted, for one thing, which is rare enough, and also excellently spoken, which permits their crowning excellence : they're lengthy! And because of the foregoing, they're lengthy in the good way, they're lengthy like slave-made chocolate cake with a side of imported Costa Rican coffee is lengthy, they're lengthy because nu te mai dai dus as the perfect if intraductible Romanian expression goes.

   When, I ask you, when did you last joyfully sit through ten minute+ spoken intro voices for a level of a game you played, even going as far as to restart the whole thing if it were unduly interrupted somehow ? Compare and contrast with the azn terror, where all one could possibly do is violently click through. [↩]

2. Remarkably life-like, this premise. Wouldn't you say ? [↩]
3. Just another word for idiocy, really. [↩]
4. All "online dictionary" definitions of the term are fucking broken, by the way.

   Majesty is not "a title", the world intellectual does not consist of empty labels, predicates devoid of meaning, to be mixed and matched and mishmashed by any passing peon/retard.

   Majesty is also not "sovereignity", there's a fucking reason for having different words : they denote different things. Yes, of course there can not be such a thing as sovereignity outside of majesty, which is why femstates are never sovereign, pretend all they will and claim all they might. Nevertheless, majesty is not sovereignity like electricity's not computing.

   Majesty is the collective name for each of the particular splendors, excellencies and superiorities of the qualitatively better man -- the man who has no equal, the man who is here to rule the others much like all those others are here to follow him -- as well as the harmonious whole they constitute.

   To further the elucidation, here's as fine an example of majesty on display as ever could be asked for :

   Westmoreland : O that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day!

   King Henry What's he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin: if we are mark'd to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honour. God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; it yearns me not if men my garments wear; such outward things dwell not in my desires. But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England: God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour as one man more, methinks, would share from me for the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, that he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is called the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, and say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian'. Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, and say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.' Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, but he'll remember with advantages what feats he did that day: then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd. This story shall the good man teach his son, and Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember'd. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition. The gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

   Majesty, you see, is that magical attribute which grays out the white walls around it. They used to be white, right ? As white as could be wished for ? And suddenly now they're... they're not even remotely tolerably anywhere near anything that could conceivably pass for white in any sense. That, my friend, is majesty. [↩]

5. As Hannah pointed out, it's delightful to hear them excitedly announce themselves upon entering a taxable building. "Tax collector!" they go, with all the excited pluck of Santa visiting an orphanage. Maybe there's murder and mayhem in the background, dragons spitting fire and zombies gang raping aunt Marge in the back alley, but everyone's paying their taxes on the regular, like greengrocers. [↩]
6. There's this tradition in Romanian folklore of the fight between the girly-girl "Fat Frumos" hero-because-author-says-so and the manly badguy-because-author-says-so (zmeu), which lasts a long time as a (very feminine) proxy for its value and intensity. They're fuckfighting or something, don't ask me, I never met one of either.

   So elaborately intensely important is this thing for the cuntminds that perpetuated Romanian folklore, that they came up with all sorts of typically feminine bullshit in the vein of make-up and fake eyelashes to "further accentuate" through spurious oblique means the extremely intense intensity -- there's for instance commonly a bird, usually a crow, that's asked to provide water by both participants they're so fucking exhausted by sheer boredom.

   The birdy, very girly-girl like, decides to feed water to the thinner participant, so as to get to eat the fatter corpse ; while the only possible male retort to this pile of self-piling inanity would be to have the crow inquire "what the fuck are you doing, fighting or drinking water" in sheer exasperation. So now you know. [↩]