New titles

Congratulations to Royal Healer Zany Ostorsetzer, TinyTeacher Princess Clowey Greenwood, and Seeker of New Worlds Kat Burger!

Random notes

There are a few new titles to acknowledge: Assimilated Rogue Borg Copperfield, Steampunk Duke Otenth Paderborn, and Good Morning Sunshine Beeswing. The list of prospective title recipients is a little thin now, so applications are welcome. I don’t mind titling alts — someone asked me about that.

A slowdown in titles has allowed me to put gold into acre buys. I’m finally over 1200 personal acres. It will be a long time before I cap at 2000 — on the whole I’d just as soon spend gold on amnesties, titles, and bulk land grants for all of you.

Which gives me an idea. If everyone who is a prince or princess gave me just one acre ih a week, that’s a savings to me of close to 100 million gold versus buying acres myself. And 100 million gold can title 8-12 candidates (with the associated 50 acres gained!) or pay for 20 or more amnesties or land grants depending on timing. Something to think about.

And something else to think about — Princess Tascha Klees got her 1000th personal acre last night. This gives her one of the three requirements she needs to become a Vicereine in our kingdom. The other two are completing 16 of the 17 Path to Royalty steps (stopping just short of coronation) and reaching 20,000 total acres (she’s over 15,000 now). I would be very happy to have one of my first three recruits as our first Grand Vicereine. WTG!

Twenty-five and counting

Since returning to the ranks of the major kingdoms not quite one month ago, it has been Her Majesty’s privilege to grant 25 custom titles to her subjects. The newest grants are to Ancestor Hunter Austin Shepherd, Sweet Soft Tiny Melody, and Green Jello Beret GeneralX Titanium.

New title applications are strongly encouraged. Custom titles add to the fun, and the acres received with a first title build the kingdom relatively inexpensively. From an earlier post:

Anyone ranked Baron or higher may apply for a title by sending me a notecard in-world with the title you want. (I set the minimum to Baron so we know that any grantee is on the full HUD.) Titles are a maximum of 20 letters and spaces, and they replace (on the HUD) your ordinary game rank. They must be PG — no problem for us! — and the Emperor frowns upon titles that would increase drama through direct jabs at other individuals or kingdoms. If I don’t think your submission will be suitable I will work with you privately to tweak it.

While the order in which the titles are requested is respected, since the process requires that the recipient, the Crown, and a HUD offer all be online together the actual order of grants is often dictated by who is available now.

Keep those creative ideas flowing!

Long week, some catching-up to do

I’ve been very busy with an attack of RL, and have quietly been trying to catch up. You’ll notice a couple of changes on the site:

• The left sidebar has been modified to include the last known trader sighting — useful information any time.
• The pages Alliances and The Trader have been eliminated. The first was not seeing use; the second is simply not possible to keep up and of dubious use even if it were possible to fill the holes.
• Two new titles were granted: Cavalry Commander ParleyPorter Michigan and Night Owl Debbye Dover. We welcome more titles for more people, alts too.

Time for upgrades

I got a lot done this weekend upgrading Val’s. A new TP network is in place with six stations at Kingdom Park, City Hall, the fishing camp, the fencing arena, the game room, and the new Beehive Legion platform.

The new platform is 725m up, more than 200m above the sky castle. It features a show jumping course to challenge your equestrian skills, the Berzerker Battle System for melee combat, and the Wizardry game for duels between spellcasters. For jumping, bring your own horse. For Berzerker, you can buy a free set of weapons and equipment right there. I still need to set up the ability to get the Wizardry HUDs on site.

Watch for information about The Beehive Legion, a new in-world group to support riding, flying, nautical activities, and the combat games of Berzerker, Combat Cards, En Garde!, and Wizardry. It’s been ostensibly organised “for the defence of the State of New Deseret”, including air force, navy, cavalry, light and heavy infantry, and arcanist groups. What it will really do is put together events for members and the public. If you want to join now, it’s a token L$20, open enrollment.

Also, congratulations to new title holders: Carefully Corrugated Cardboard Macarthur, Court Musician Tascha Klees, and Trombone Princess Seth Troell!

Partial new puzzle solution

The Emperor unleashed a new series of Tiny Empires puzzles a couple of days ago, and they have been giving us fits. The puzzles give a sequence of five numbers, and ask you what number comes next in the sequence.

A host of players across kingdom lines have been pooling data trying to work through a solution. Part of the fun is that there is more than one solution — the Emperor appears to be using at least four different series to set his puzzles.

New Deseretians Austin Shepherd, Talia Rosher, and Sariah Plutonian have been at the cutting edge of this work, and the notes I publish below come from them and many others.

Series 1: Number of letters in the names of the months: 7 8 5 5 3 4 4 6 9 7 8 8
Series 2: Number of letters in the names of the numbers 1-10: 3 3 5 4 4 3 5 5 4 3
Series 3: Appears to be a simple repeating pattern: 3 4 5 5 4 3 3 4 5 5 4 3
Series 4: So far this series is still a mystery; I’ll go find the current construction of the list.

Well done, Terra Aurea!

Come play with us!

We have several opportunities to play together coming up soon outside our beloved TE. If you have any questions, just ask!

Crarting Competition: Crarting is a team game where teams of three create a piece of art — or something — one prim at a time, each player adding a prim in rotation. Contest runs now through Monday at the north end of Western Avenue. Contact the Poets of Zarahemla (Ingeborg Apfelbaum, Mathoni Zuhrah, or Seth Troell) for more information.

En Garde Tournament: Val hosts another Premier Series event for the United En Garde group from 1 pm to about 4 pm on Saturday the 21st. The tourney is single-elimination, random pairings, open to all. Between 20 and 25 players are expected, including several of the world’s best. Entry is L$50; the prize fund is normally at least L$2500.

Neo-Realms Team Fishing League: Either the State, the Kingdom, or Val’s Recreation will be a sponsor of the third season of the Neo-Realms Team Fishing League. The sponsorship includes entry of two teams into the league. Val is expected to fish with Ingeborg Apfelbaum for one team; the other team is open. Team members need to be able to fish together three times a week for 30 minutes each time, but have a lot of freedom in picking times that work for them. The league supplies a special rod used only for league play and practice. Contact Val if you are interested.

Get Your Horses Ready: Val will be reopening her equestrian jumping course soon, probably a couple of hundred meters above the sky castle in another aerial arena.

In other news — Congratulations to Celestial ChristianMormon Kidd, Wisconsin Badger Rickroll Tungsten, Wild Blue Princess Fopper Iwish, and Master Builder Bart Baramm! If you want a title and you are a Baron or higher, let Her Majesty know what you want. Giviing out titles helps the kingdom to grow, as each new title comes with a five-acre grant of land.

Never mind . . .

Apprently there was no change after all; the Emperor IMed me with a note that the change was actually temporary (no edict involved), and upon visiting the standings page I saw that the map has been reformatted with all 112 major kingdoms again in place. Sorry for the false alarm.

Huzzah to Sweet Spirit Candi Streusel and Tiger Princess Talia Rosher!

Updates for titles and TE3K

Two new titles have been granted in the last couple of days: Little Prince Michalius Oppewall and Tru2HerOathsPrincess Arizona Noel. Those have been updated on the Our Team page, together with a couple of adds to the waiting list.

There is also an update on the TE3K page, as I start to organise my thoughts on colonies — a new feature that replaces the citizen stat in Federation TE.

Finally, I’ll get some more out on this later on but the POZ team are putting together another Crarting contest in the northwest corner of the City of Enoch sim. Crarting is a sculpture-building contest where three-member teams take turns in strict rotation adding one standard prim at a time (possibly including scripts and texturing) to a team sculpture. It’s a lot of fun and it will run next Friday to Monday, 20-23 March.

Happy birthday, happy rez-day

My birthday is today, my second rez-day is Monday. Thank you, everyone, for all the fun we’ve had and all the things we have accomplished.

On a newsy note, we added Treehouse Genie Barbara Collazo to the ranks of the titled. Also, I put up a Tiny Empires 3000 page here for general information as I dig it up.

Four of my ten full HUDs for TE3K are now in players’ hands. Three are my subordinates now; I’ll meet up with the fourth tonight. If you want one of the other six for our journey into space, check yesterday’s post for details.