Call Me Marquise (For Now)

As if Second Life wasn’t addicting enough, I just got ensnared in Tiny Empires, a game within a game/HUD within a HUD that is part massive multiplayer game, part pyramid scheme, and set in the era of Ivanhoe, the 10th and 11th centuries. The goal is to rise through the social and royal hierarchy as you gain more land, gold and subjects. Just as in the England-like feudal society it represents, you ascend from wanderer to peasant to baron(ess) and on up to emperor, through noble deeds, treachery, cunning, strategy and dumb luck. I achieved my status because I was smart enough to recruit the industrious Darius Sartre (Count Darius, that is; who recruited the equally industrious Lestat Nosferatu as my subject, and I bought the loyalty (temporary, as it turned out) of two other nobles.

Tiny Empires is like a medieval Amway scheme, because your wealth and position depend on how many homage-paying subjects you recruit, how many they bring in and on and on down the line. It’s utterly silly because the gold you accrue from good deeds, serendipity, land sales, bribery and the sweat of your peasants’ collective brows doesn’t convert to lindens or dollars. But it’s fun anyway to plot and scheme, to suffer the slings and arrows of greedy subjects and see who’s up and who’s down in the hierarchy.

My liege, by the way, is the lovely Duchess Cyn Sin, and I am in Pannie Paperdoll’s line under Queen Bootski Broome.

To get into the game, find a Tiny Empires player and request a trial version of the game. (IM me in-world if you want!) If you get addicted, and I dare you not to become so, you pay L$499 for the full version of the game. Track the standings here and read a fun blog here.

The pictures below show me in period dress in the Cup and Spittle, the pub at the Tiny Empires homeground in Dongjak. I don’t know if you have to dress for the era but after spending a little time in the serious-roleplay land of the Gorean sims, I’m not taking any chances at causing offense. At least I can wear the same out fit in each place.