Heroes of Might and Magic II: These peasants had a calcium rich diet [SSLP]

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Darth TNT: Sep 20, 2013

Wat is this?
In 1995 Jon van Caneghem developed and released a game called Heroes of Might and Magic: a strategic quest. Set in his already wildly popular Might and Magic universe the turnbased strategy game was a great success. Such a great success even that in 1996 Jon had already finished work on the second installment. Heroes of Might and Magic II: The succession wars.

Set 25 years after the original it follows Lord Morglins sons, Roland and Archibald Ironfist as they fight over the throne their dear departed father left behind. I have no idea what happened to their mom, but let's assume that she's dead as well.

So what was changed? A lot, the graphics were greatly improved, the battlefield was increased in size, more creatures were added, more artifacts, more heroes and of course 2 completely new factions (Wizards and Necromancers). The racial inherent bonuses were replaced with an actual skill system and the hilariously broken magic system of the first was completely replaced by a more standard spell point system partially dependent on the aforementioned skills. Don't worry, we'll explain it when we get there.

The game was also setting up the return of the Might & Magic franchise, that had been dormant for several years since Sword of Xeen. It even had some previews to Might & Magic VI as a secret easter egg in the main menu, showing it in all its 3D glory... well, as glorious as early 3D could be anyway. Likewise, Might & Magic VI would continue right where Heroes II canonically left.

Enough talk, let's see if we can still run this thing:
System Requirements:
60 MB hard drive space
SVGA graphics card
Microsoft compatible mouse
8MB RAM
Double speed CD-ROM drive
Windows 95 or DOS 5.0 or greater
IBM 486 66Mhz or greater and 100% compatibles

:cripes:

Nope, we cannot.
Fortunately Dosbox and Good Old Games have us covered. Actually I won't be playing that version, I'll be playing the version enclosed with the Heroes complete edition. Fellow goon PC Snob however will be playing the GOG version.

PC Snob? Who, what, where?
PC snob who you may remember from his unfinished (due to circumstances) Supreme Commander LP and from contributing in the discussion of my original Heroes I LP will be joining me. While Heroes1 had only one storyline which was identical for all four lords this game actually has two distinct storylines. One for each brother, with Roland being the good storyline (Knight, Sorceress and Wizard) and Archibald being the evil side (Barbarian, Warlock and Necromancer).

PC Snob will be playing the not so good Archibald, while I attempt to take care of the canonical storyline featuring the exploits of Roland.
This game has some very fun cinematics, especially the opening and PC Snob has managed to rip everything from the game in excellent quality. :golfclap:

If you're nostalgic or have never seen them, I highly recommend watching them.

In addition we'll use GIF's where we feel that they will better communicate some of the better parts of this games and we'll link to the excellent music this game has. In fact, when first launched the game's soundtrack was the real bottleneck for PCs of the time, which could handle the graphics fine, but would usually choke at the complex Opera soundtracks, courtesy of the amazing duo of composer Paul Anthony Romero and producer Rob King. They added lower-quality MIDI versions of the soundtrack as well so machines with less potent sound cards had a chance to keep up as well, but it was still a tall order.

Why this game?
Well, pretty much the same reasons as when I played the first. It's a fun game, it has great and varied mechanics, graphics that still look pretty nice thanks to marvelous spritework and art design as well as a sense of humor that was partially lost starting with Heroes3. It was also the first Heroes game that I or PC_Snob owned, so nostalgia helps.

(PC_Snob Comment: Heroes II was actually the game that turned me into a gamer. I had played other games like DOOM, Wolfenstein 3D and stumbled my way through a confusing SimCity before, but it was just silly distractions to me. It was with Heroes II that I started to see games as something that would become a central part of me as a person. It even encouraged me to buy my first game: the original Heroes I. So this will be some great fun to me too.)

Didn't this have an expansion?
Why yes it did. The Price of Loyalty was an expansion pack released in 1997. Because many unsuccefull attempts have been made at LPing Heroes2 we figured we'd start small and focus on the base game first. If either of us still feels like playing this game after we're done we'll probably do it as well, but for now let's focus on the succession wars first.

Index:
Update zero: Who am I fighting for!

Level 1
Roland
Update 1: Level 1
Update 2
Update 3
Update 4: The end of the first level

The so called king Archibald
General Snob, Mission 1 The Makings of a Great Buffet Part 1
General Snob, Mission 1 The Makings of a Great Buffet Part 2
General Snob, Mission 1, Part 2, A New Challenger Has Appeared
General Snob, Mission 1, Part 3, JAFFA, FLEE!

Level 2
Level 2 preparations: Of lords and barbarians.

The true king Roland
Update 5: Level 2: Annexation
Update 6: Level 2 finished

The other guy
General Snob, Mission 2, Part 1, I'm on a Highway to Cracklands
General Snob, Mission 2, Part 2, A Proud Austrian Warrior-Race

Level 3
Level whatever number comes after 2: preparations

Roland, the early finisher
Update 7: Level 3: Save the Dwarves!

Archibald, the connoisseur
General Snob, Mission 3, Part 1, Bewdiful Creatures
General Snob, Mission 3, Part 1.2, Bewdiful Creatures
General Snob, Mission 3, Part 1.3, Dorfs Abroad
General Snob, Mission 3, Part 3, DRAGONS! EVERYWHERE THERE BE DRAGONS!

Level 4
Level 4 preparations: General Snobs mission wrap up

Roland, savior of Dwarves
Update 8: Level 4: Carator Mountains
Update 9: Level 4
Update 10: Level 4 end

Archibald, Dwarfbane
General Snob, Mission 4, Betrayal of the Damned

Update before 5
Update before 5

Roland, the non betrayed
Update 11, mission 5: Turning point

Archibald, General harassment panda
General Snob, Mission 5, Part 1, The Office (Harassment Seminar)
General Snob, Mission 5, Part 2, Bone is Thicker Than Blood
Part 2.2

Roland, Defender of the tiara
Update 12, Mission 6: Defender
Update 13, Mission 6: End

Level 7/8 preparations
Darth TNT diary Level 7/8 preparations

General Snob prepares for mission 6

Roland: Scenario 7
Update 14, the Guantlet

Darth TNT fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Jul 29, 2016

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Darth TNT: Sep 20, 2013

General Snobs compendium (with notes from others):
On the origin of Wizards/Mages and people who make tables float:

The_PC_Snob posted:

I actually have a higher education in linguistics, so I will try to help you.

All these words come from very specific meanings. Warlock is from old english w�rloga, literally "oath-breaker", and refers to evil wizards because it was literally synonymous with the devil or equivalent religious representations of evil. Technically a Warlock is someone who made a pact with the devil for powers, the same as a witch.

Wizard is basically just a derivative of the word Wys, meaning wise. A so a wizard suffers from wisdom like a drunkard suffers from drunkness (I am not making this up).

Sorceress/Sorcerer comes from french (sorcier) which in turn comes from Latin (sors), which in turn can mean fate or a vision. It also means sorting, as in putting things at their place. In Portuguese it even derived "Sorte", as in "Luck". So basically a sorcerer is someone who sorts things into their place in order to divine the future (or something).

Then there is mage, which can be traced back all the way to proto-indo-european (believed to be the common root of all European, Mesopotamian and Middle-eastern languages) mehgh-, which would means "can" or "may" in the sense of being able to do something. Keep in mind that in most latin languages one who "can" is basically the same word as "power". So... mage means one who may do anything, because he is powerful.

---
Just a couple extra pointers: "Magician" comes from "magic", of course, which comes from the same proto-indo-european root as "Mage", that is, Mehgh-. In fact, "Magic" and its derivations are one of the most common words in all of Europe, thanks to this common root.

And then there's the Iberian word "Bruxa/Bruja" or "Bruxo/Brujo", which translate to "Witch"/"Warlock" in the same context as someone who made a deal with the devil. And the funny thing? NO-ONE knows the etymology of this word. It has no roots in either old german, latin, greek or the proto-indo-european (the most common roots). There are a few similar words in old Irish and Breton (bricht and brith), but they are much more likely to have the same root than being the root themselves. It got coopted by many latin languages with close contact with the Iberian civilizations, all the way to the Occitan and the Galician.

The closest we get is "Brixta" (spell, magic) from the Celtiberian, an Iberian branch of the Celtic language that is long dead and has very little surviving data about it.

It is interesting how the Iberian Peninsula was such a fertile ground for so many different languages thanks to their mountainous terrain that was great at isolating tribes, even though today it mostly consolidated to Portuguese and Spanish.

ManxomeBromide posted:

I'm also enjoying the magic word talk. I'm not a pro, but I enjoy etymology and languages, and there are a couple I can contribute.

Thaumaturge is from the Greek, meaning "wonderworker" almost literally: "Thaumatos" is basically "wonder" in all senses (both "wonderful" and "I wonder what that is") and "urge" is "work" (see also "erg", the unit of energy in the centimeter-gram-second system of measurements).

Dweomer meaning "mana, the stuff of magic" was made up by Gary Gygax for D&D, but he backformed it from "dweomercraft". For the longest time I thought this was older - it looks like it should be Old English for something like "dwarf-talk" - but this article places it in context as being part of doing magic.

... and so was juggling. PC Snob has already covered the places where magic refers to power or lies - these two are based on magic as trickery or entertainment. I don't have a solid citation on this one, so it could be another "dwarftalk" case, but I've heard that "thauma" is also basically the same root we get "theater" from. Not sure I buy that one, though the link between "thauma" and German "Zauber" seems pretty clear. _{yes I totally learned the word Zauber from Quest for Glory I}

The_PC_Snob posted:

I can actually see that. Both come from Greek and both seem to be derived from the word "θέα" (th�a), or "view, sight". (Not to be confused with θεά (the�), which means Goddess, those accents are important).

And both seem to be directly derived from the verb "θεάομαι" (the�omai) which means "I see, I watch". One would mean "I view in wonder" θαὐμαι (tha�mai), and the other "a place to see", θέατρον (th�atron).

On Barbarians and the unwashed masses:

The_PC_Snob posted:

A bit of a linguistic lesson for the monsters of the Barbarians.

"Goblin" can be traced all the way back to the ancient greek word "κόβαλος" (k�balos) which means "knave", or, more specifically, an "impudent rogue", or an "indecent criminal", and the derivative word "κόβαλα" (k�bala), means "roguish trickery" (well, not a derivative word exactly, just a different case of the same word). In Latin it was already a denomination to mischievous and foul-mouthed mountain spirits or fairies. It led both to the words "kobold" and "goblin", interestingly enough... or obviously enough.

"Orc", comes from the Italian "Orco", which means "Ogre" (so yeah, both these monsters also have the same etymological origin). Ogre is mostly a generic term for monster, but it goes further back to Latin "Orcus", and is basically a later denomination for the God of the Dead and the Underworld, "Pluto". Now, the word is also a bit older than that and you can find it in ancient greek as well in the form of "ὀρκος" (horkos) or "ὀρχος" (horksos) and it meant "Oath". "Wait a minute, what does 'oath' has to do with monsters?" You might ask, well, Greek is strange and all greek words usually have more specific or varied meanings. In the case of "ὀρκος", it meant the object by which someone swears, in a very literal sense, as the object itself is the one binding the person to the oath (like, for instance, a river that keeps one from leaving an area). AND, it also meant an oath towards punishment, revenge, so the word was closely linked to the idea of punishment and binding. EDIT: Ah, it also bears mentioning that the term "ὀρχος" in modern Greek refers to military vehicles, buuuuuut... I'm not exactly sure how THAT came to be.

Finally, there's "Troll", which comes from Scandinavian origins, of course, and this means it has norse origins. Now, interestingly enough, Troll was a classification of the J�tunn or J�tnar, the Giants of Norse mythology, but it is also a word which refers to magic, or the act of casting, and was attributed to Giants capable of magical feats. The word can be traced back to proto-germanic "Truzla" (a generic term for large and dangerous magical beings, like giants or demons) and maybe even to the proto-indo-european "drā-" (to escape, to run away, so closely related to the meaning of fear). Why the regeneration? Well, trolls in the norse mythology could have all kinds of magical powers, and this one comes from a single instance of a troll from the novel "Three Hearts and Three Lions" from Poul Anderson, which tells the story of Holger Carlson, a Danish engineer in the Danish Resistance of WW2, who is shot and magically transported to medieval times, where after a series of circumstances he has to retrieve the magical sword "Cortana" (a word with latin origins that closely relates to the act of "cutting"). To retrieve the sword he has to fight a troll who regenerates every cut and bruise, so it ultimately has to be dispatched by fire. If that seems awfully familiar, it is the inspiration to the D&D troll, which in turn became the inspiration to most modern depictions of trolls. (Also, Holger basically becomes a Paladin after retrieving Cortana).

---
Well, that novel, "Three Hearts and Three Lions", inspired a lot of ideas for D&D. Including the Law and Chaos axis and D&D's particular version of the term Paladin. Which has origins in a Charlemagne order of Knights, but they weren't necessarily pious or saintly. WELL, actually, not even originally Charlemagne himself, but the companion knights of his Vassal Hruodland or... er... Roland, a Frank general. Paladin comes from Latin "Palatinus", which just meant "palace guard". So the Medieval paladin was chivalrous and royal, but it was in Anderson's novel that they actually became saints and champions of law.

THE BAR posted:

Magic's still called "trolddom" in Danish, literally meaning the "judgment of trolls", as we people from Midg�rd (Middle Earth) are powerless to stop it.

And Holger from Three Hearts and Three Lions is based on the actual myth of Holger Danske, one of Charlemagne's paladins, who was seeking revenge on Charlemagne after his son killed his own. After seven years of warfare Holger got within sword's reach of Charlemagne's throat, but, seeing how equal they were in combat, he instead pledged allegiance and helped in the battle against the Saracen hordes.

Oh, and Curtana's one of the British crown jewels, which is still used for coronation ceremonies.

http://royalexhibitions.co.uk/crown-jewels-2/swords/sword-of-mercy/

The_PC_Snob posted:

Now on to the Cyclopses.

While it seems more or less random the level of power assigned to the creatures in these games, I like to think they did give special consideration for every top-tier ones. Paladins are the epitome of justice, Phoenixes are the symbol of renewal, Titans are quasi-Gods of Greek mythology that represent nature in various ways and Dragons, bone-or-otherwise, are GODDAMN DRAGONS.

Cyclopses are no exception, though probably the most obscure compared to the other choices. Their name comes directly from Ancient Greek Κύκλωψ (k�kloops), a mixture of κύκλος (k�klos), which means circle (notice the "I" in the modern word, that's why I don't like to transcript the Ancient Greek Upsilon as an "U" like many do. It was originally something in between "I" and "U", and even though it led to many "U" sounds, it seems to more often lead to many "I" sounds, but depends on context) and ὤψ (oops), which means "eye" or "face" (some ancient languages don't actually distinguish between the two. Heck, MODERN Japanese doesn't bother to distinguish them to this day with "Gan" for both) and predates Ancient Greek all the way to our old friend, the Proto-Indo-European. So, literally, it meant "circular eye". Which means that the cyclops depictions with a big, dopey, circular eye are probably the most accurate.

Notice that we have Cyclopses and Trolls as the top creatures of the Barbarians. This doesn't look like a coincidence to a linguist like me. Trolls, like I said, were part of the J�tnar, the norse giants. And in their mythology "J�tunn" wasn't just "large man", actually the J�tnar were closer to the Greek Titans in their mythology. The Norse Gods seem to represent human concepts, while the J�tnar represent aspects of nature. The ice giants represented winter and cold, and the trolls were representations of magic itself, or everything beyond human comprehension.

The Cyclops, on their end, are also extremely important in their mythology. The most known is probably Polyphemus, the one blinded by Odysseus in his mythic quest to bang his wife again (while sleeping with more or less literally every woman he found on the way). By Odysseus' story alone, Cyclopses don't seem like that big a deal, but Odysseus WAS a demigod (little known fact, he was the great-grand-son of Hermes), which tips the scales somewhat in his favor. Polyphemus was regarded as a bit of a seer and capable of great curses though.

To know the importance of the Cyclops, you have to go further back to the Theogony, the origin of the Gods. Uranus, the Sky, mated with Gaia, the Earth, constantly and spawned all sorts of strange, primordial beings. Among them were the Cyclopses, the Hecatonkheires (giants with a hundred arms and fifty heads) and the Titans (making Cyclopses at LEAST brothers to Titans). The Cyclopses and the Hecatonkheires were imprisoned in the Tartarus by Uranus, mostly because he was a complete bastard and didn't want to be challenged by his kids. Therefore he proceeded to never "unplug" Gaia again, to keep her from giving birth to more potential usurpers. As everyone knows, Gaia gave Kronos, one of the titans and one of the children she couldn't give birth to, a scythe to mutilate Uranus' junk and thus free her to give birth to Kronos and his siblings.

Once they were free the titans roamed the land and Kronos (not to be confused with Chronos, that's a completely different deity, this one has very little to do with time) hooked up with Rhea, one of his sisters, and freed the Cyclopses from the Tartarus. However, in the likes of his father, paranoia seemed to be hereditary and he began fearing someone would challenge him like he challenged his father, so he cast the Cyclopses back into the Tartarus (poor cyclopses) and this time decided a fool-proof system to make sure Rhea would not give birth to someone who could overthrow him: Instead of risking his junk permanently inside her, he just allowed her to give birth and ate any children whole (mythology is fun!). As everyone knows, Rhea wanted to give birth and gave Kronos a rock in place of one of her children, and asked her mother, Gaia, to hide the child in her womb (well, a cave in her, but Gaia is the earth and a cave in Gaia is pretty self-evident).

Zeus, that child, grew up to challenge Kronos. From this moment on it is a bit fuzzy, but these things happened: He defeated Kronos and opened his belly to free some surviving brothers (Gods are remarkably sturdy, even at infancy), or Kronos might have been poisoned by Rhea to puke them out, depending to whom you ask. Zeus also freed the Cyclopses again and they smote some nifty weapons and armor for him and the Gods, like the Lightning Bolt, the Trident of Poseidon, the Helm of Hades, and both Artemis and Apollo's bows and arrows (drat twins always get matching gifts). Then the Gods and the Titans warred (though technically, only a few titans actually did join the war, Rhea mostly helped her children and other female Titans also generally stayed out of it), the Gods won and the cycle never repeated again. And this time the Titans were the ones cast into the Tartarus. The Hecatonkheires remained there the whole time because they were jerks.

Oh, and when Kronos threw Uranus' testicles into the ocean (as one does when one mutilates one's father's junk with a scythe), his semen mixed with the water and created Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. So... that happened.

On the warlock bewdy beasties

The_PC_Snob posted:

Continuing my etymology lessons:

Centaur comes from Greek, but the etymology is really obscure. If you simply follow the composite words to κένταυρος (k�ntauros), you'd have κεντέω (kent�oo) which is a verb that generally represents the act of physically harming someone (�I wound, stab, cut, torment, etc...�), and of course you have ταῦρος (ta�ros) which means �bull� but could generally be applied to large herd animals. So a direct meaning seems to be something along the lines of �violent horses�.

Centaurs in Greek mythology generally are used as a metaphor for the struggle between civilization and savagery. While intelligent and skilled, centaurs are easily lured by their wild side and are particularly prone to becoming intoxicated. Centaurs and Satyrs were often depicted as servants of Dionysus, regarded in popular media as the God of Wine, but a more accurate description would be that he's the God of Impulse or God of Instinct, as he represents mankind's most basic and primordial drives and wine is just a tool to for men to tap into these drives, not all there is to Dionysus (which is a shame, it is one of the few Greek mythology stereotypes that wasn't averted or subverted in the Percy Jackson books).

Chiron was one centaur who represented the exception, as he was able to keep his urges in check and be moderate about his alcoholic intake, which allowed him to be one of the wisest figures in Greek mythology, since he was able to curb the savagery in him even though it was a very strong drive. Notably, he is often attributed as a mentor of very famous Heroes, most prominently Achilles (No, Achilles' mentor was NOT a short satyr called Phil. Philoctetes was another Greek hero, a legendary archer that got screwed by Odysseus and left to die in a random island for years until he was rescued because prophecy required him in the siege in order for Troy to fall. Though that's the least of Disney's Hercules complete disregard for Greek mythology).

Generally, it is believed that the term came from the Greeks' first encounters with horse-back ridding barbarians. The term was also common in the Greek region of Thessaly and applied to local savages. If this is true, it'd explain why centaurs often succumb to savagery in myths (which is to mean there's lots of brutality and rape in Centaur myths). I wonder if that's why they eventually joined the Stronghold from Heroes IV onwards. It seems like a lot more research than it really needed to be done, though, so it is unlikely.

Gargoyles are, at the same time, relatively recent and ancient. The term comes from the old french Gargouille, which means �throat� or �pipe�, and refers to statues that are used in architecture to cover up drainage pipes. They are a special form of �Grotesques�, which are statues with bestial and ugly features that are placed perched atop Gothic buildings from the 16th century. Thing is, this type of decoration was actually rediscovered from the Romans, and the word �grotesque� was used to describe these statues supposedly because the Italians rediscovered them in paintings inside an unfinished Palace commissioned from Emperor Nero, that was buried in some Roman ruins called �La Grotte�. Incidentally, that's the origin of the term �grotesque�, literally �came from a cave�.

The Roman Gargoyles and Grotesques were simply an extension of their Arabesque art, which were patterns and figures they loved to carve and paint at their walls, columns and roofs (the idea that the Greek and Roman cities were all white in marble is misguided. They thought of plain white marble as precisely that, plain and boring. Their famous white statues were actually colorfully painted, as well as basically everything else. Or at least that's the idea more recent historians hold as the most likely, both from reinterpretations of old texts and spectrometric analysis of Roman and Greek relics). Their purpose was to make the buildings less of a geometric eye-sore full of bits poking out.

In time, in both Ancient times and Gothic architecture, these grotesques were absorbed by the folklore as a form of precaution to ward off evil spirits, curses and witches. Apparently old folk were both very superstitious and believed the monsters they were afraid off were easily fooled. In any case, Gargoyles eventually developed a fame as guardians of sacred sites.

Griffins, or Gryphons are very, very old. It predates the Greeks, who called them �γρύφων� (gr�phoon) or �γρύψ� (gr�ps), but references can be found even in the Ancient Egypt, as far back as 3000bc! We are not entirely sure of the etymology, as the ancient Egyptian language is still something of a mystery in some regards, but the Greeks probably loaned the Akkadian word karuubu (unfortunately, I can't write in the cuneiform alphabet), which meant �winged creature�, from the Akkadian, an extinct Semitic language in the Mesopotamia,.

The griffin is one of the most popular mythological creatures in ancient times, be it in Greece, Persia, Rome, Egypt, if it is a major western civilization, you'll likely find a lot of griffins in their art. Not that it is surprising, considering how popular lions and eagles are, you can understand the temptation of representing both at the same time.

There's been so many hoaxes throughout the ages that most people throughout history considered griffins a real animal, with all the things this entails (griffin talons were considered a remedy to all maladies, and ostrich eggs were sold as �griffin� eggs). Not even Christianity couldn't resist them. While depicting dragons as one of many forms of the Devil, Griffins were a representation Jesus (well, more accurately, Hippogriffs, a crossbreed between griffins and horses, because people really thought Griffins were real).

The Minotaur's etymology fairly simple. μίνως (M�noos) meant �king� in Crete, while ταῦρος (ta�ros) we've already established meant �bull�. Therefore the Greek word �Μινώταυρος� (Mino�tauros) could mean both �the king bull� or the �king's bull� or even �Minos' bull� (and the first interpretation might explain why they called the upgrade �minotaur king�, which turns out it is very redundant, but hey, Greek was a language full of redundancies, so they'd probably appreciate).

Weird that in popular media Minotaurs gained a fame for being able to navigate labyrinths, considering that in the original myth that labyrinth was built to TRAP Asterion, the original Minotaur. Now, this is where things get complicated, Minos, the King of Crete (he's the one whose name became the origin of the title) asked Poseidon (you know the one, God of Seas) for a great white bull to be sacrificed in his name (Poseidon's name, not Minos), and thus receive his blessing as the ruler of Crete. Poseidon sent the great white bull to Minos, but the king liked the bull so much he decided to keep it.

Poseidon, enraged by this act of defiance, asked Aphrodite (the Goddess of Love) to make Minos' wife, Pesipha�, lust after the bull. Pesipha� ordered Deadalus, a legendary craftsman, to build her a cow frame for her to fool the bull and mate with it... which, well, happened. From this mating the Minotaur was born, making Minos realize his terrible mistake. Supposedly the creature was invincible and mad, so Minos asked Deadalus to create a labyrinth so intricate that no-one could escape from to trap the minotaur within (maybe just making a large cubic prison would just make the Minotaur try to go through the stone, so it had to be something to make the Minotaur roam hopelessly).

In some accounts Athens was then plagued because of the death of Androgeus, son of Minos, and lost to Crete in a war, so among the reparations they had to send seven boys and seven girls every seven years to sate the Minotaur in hope of staving off the plague because Greek politics were a mess even back then (and Minos was an rear end in a top hat). Oh, and Minos trapped Deadalus in a tower so he could not reveal the secret to escape the labyrinth to anyone, because Minos was really that scared of the Minotaur, and because he really was that much of an rear end in a top hat (though Deadulus invented artificial wings in order to escape the tower, which he did successfully. His son Icarus though... was less successful).

The Minotaur was eventually slain by Theseus, a hero and demigod (which is a redundant description for Greek heroes) who was sent to the labyrinth as a sacrifice, but with the secret objective of slaying it, and he managed to later escape it thanks to a ball of thread gifted to him by Ariadne, one of Minos' daughters. Theseus then proceeded to thank her by abandoning her on the island of Naxos on the way home, because Greek heroes are also assholes (see, Odysseus and Philoctetes up above).

The Hydra, or rather, the Lernaean Hydra, has a very simple etymology, as it's name simply denominates it habitat. Hydra comes from the Greek �ὓδρα� (h�dra), meaning �liquid, water�, that is to say, it's name simply means �from the water� or �water monster�.

The original hydra has three main, unalienable characteristics (that is to say, it is common to all versions of the myth), but only one seems to really be remembered nowadays, the most fantastic one. First, it had several snake heads that, whenever one was cut down, two more grew in it's place, and even Herakles only defeated it by burning off the stumps until no heads remained, that's the part everyone knows. Second, it was an aquatic creature, as it pretty much says in it's name, as it lived in the Lake Lerna (so it's name was basically �water monster from the lake Lerna�, which is ANOTHER thing Disney's Herakles screwed up, but to be fair almost no-one gets that one right).

And thirdly, it's main weapon was it's poison, because it was ridiculously, absurdly poisonous. That part some people remember because it's poison was embedded into Herakles' arrows, and his poisoned hydra arrows are one of his most iconic possessions (after the invulnerable hide of the Nemeian Lion and his trusty humongous olive-trunk club). The hydra is described as breathing out a poisonous gas that killed anything that wasn't a demigod and even the smell of it's own blood was poisonous, so non-Heroes basically didn't stand a chance against that thing even if they kept their distance because they'd never be able to chase it down. So I find it a bit disappointing that the Hydra has never been poisonous in Heroes of Might & Magic. At one point, in Heroes V, it got acidic blood and spit, but no poison...

in modern Greek refers to military vehicles, buuuuuut... I'm not exactly sure how THAT came to be.

The_PC_Snob posted:

Continuing on our etymology binge:

The Medusa is an interesting case because it is both a specific monster (like the Minotaur) and a kind of monster (like Griffins), in that the Medusa is one of the Gorgons, three terrible female monsters and sisters. The term Gorgon comes from the Ancient Greek �Γοργὀς� (Gorg�s), meaning terrible or dreadful. The Gorgons are pretty consistently described as women with sharp fangs, snakes for hair and a dreadful stone-turning gaze, as well as brass or brass-like hands (which I think it meant to say they have very strong hands despite being women). They are NOT, however, described as having the body of a snake bellow the waist, but artistic licenses must be excused, this makes them look cooler.

Both Medusa and the Gorgons have conflicting origins, though. In the oldest myths, they are considered Chthonic monsters, daughters of Κητώ (Ket�o) and Φόρκυς (Ph�rkis), two pre-olympian gods. Both of these have a very weird genealogy that make them both children and grandchildren of Gaia, the earth, which leaves the Gorgons at around the same place in the Greek divine genealogy trees as the Olympian Gods or the Titans. That is to say, they are ancient, primordial monsters related to primordial gods in this version.

A more recent (as in �Roman� instead of �Greek�) and popular version of the myth, though, says that Medusa and her sisters were politically powerful mortal women (Medusa comes from �Μέδω�, which means �to rule�) cursed by Minerva to become monsters, which is generally the accepted version from the Romans. The story goes that Medusa rebuked Neptune�s (Poseidon) advances and for that he raped her in Minerva�s (Athena) temple, which angered the goddess, which prompted the cursing (her sisters were cursed by proxy for defending her against divine will).

While it seems like a dickish move from Minerva, it must be remembered that the Greeks and Romans had somewhat different morals from modern men. A lowly mortal disobeying a God was certainly an act of heresy and �allowing� a crime to happen at the temple of the Goddess of Justice (as Minerva was seem by the Romans, which is slightly different from the Greek Athena) was also an act of heresy to the Goddess, regardless of how powerless that mortal is from preventing it. Only Heroes were allowed to challenge the Gods without prompting automatic failure. If that seems weird, remember that it is considered morally in the right for Jacob to attempt to sacrifice his son Isaac in order to not disobey God in the Bible, and there�s plenty of other religious passages where questioning or disobeying God�s will is considered the greatest of sins regardless of how bizarre or seemingly cruel that will is, so the Romans aren�t that weird at all (this is not a direct criticism of any of the mentioned religions, just an attempt to make what seems like a bizarre moral instance from an ancient civilization look less bizarre). Still, �raping� was... a contentious topic among these classical men (just look how contentious it STILL is... but let�s not go there). Anyway, the end moral from this is �the divine is always right, so shut up�.

In the end Medusa is famously slain by Perseus, son of Poseidon (which instantly means he�s a hero, but in the Roman version it means Neptune sired a son just to ultimately slay the woman that rejected him. Harsh.). Perseus famously polished his bronze shield and used its reflection to be able to look at Medusa indirectly in order to be able to fight without turning to stone and slay her via decapitation. He then took her head as a prize and used it to turn people he didn�t like into stone because that�s how Greek heroes roll.

Dragons are one of the most interesting mythological monsters. Along with Giants and Fairies, Dragons are unique in the sense that they are universal, that is, there�s not a single corner of the planet that don�t feature Dragons in its mythology in some form or another. The word dragon comes from the ancient Greek �Δρακών� (Drak�on), which was a general term for �serpent�.

There are many, many variations of Dragons, but every single one have more or less the same physical atributes, as in they are reptilian, they are large, they fly (with or without wings), they breath fire or are otherwise capable of destructive magical feats, and are majestic as hell. �Drak�on� might come from the term �Δἐρκομαι� (D�rkomai), which means �I see, I glean�. It is probably meant as a realization of peril. Also, it is a term that comes from the Proto-Indo-European, that old friend of ours.

It is hypothesized that Dragons are universal because they penetrated our collective subconscious very early in our development as a species. Generally they seem to embody the characteristics of snakes, large felines and large birds of prey, which are three of the greatest and most terrifying predators of monkeys and simians, our evolutionary cousins. It is not a stretch to think that early hominids were also terrified of these animals, and then extrapolate that when we were first developing a language, our very first languages were used to pass on the story of the dangers of these creatures.

The variations of Dragons are staggering. You have your greek ones, usually mentioned as great serpents capable of breathing fire. You have the Egyptian Apophis, a great snake God that embody chaos and occasionally tries to conquer earth on great pyramid-ships (that last part may have come from a different source). You have the Persian Azhdahā which is very prominent in Zoroastrism and best embodies our modern idea of a Dragon (that is, horned serpent head, four limbs and two wings, malevolent and colorful), which is no surprise since they�re the version used in Dungeons and Dragons. You have the slavic Zmey, which resembles winged hydras with their multitude of heads. You have the Chinese Long, king of all animals, depicted as large flying serpents of colorful scales. You have the Japanese Ryuu, similar to the Chinese but usually representative deities of rivers and other bodies of water. Then you have your pre-colombian Quetzalcoatl, a winged-serpent God very similar in form to the Chinese dragon, except usually it is depicted feathered.

Now, this is where I start talking some bullshit, but bear me out. I believe Giants represent the unknown. Why rivers follow the path they do, what makes the earth shake in an earthquake, what carves a mountain or digs a valley? They hide in plain sight by being too big for us to make them out from the landscape. If that hill you climbed was a giant covered in moss, how would you be able to tell? Usually, they�re regarded as asleep, or away, because they shaped the land long ago and were then finished with their job. They do with their bare hands and barely any effort what us mere mortals need tools, numbers and time to accomplish. They�re both part of the landscape and the ones that shaped and gave it form.

Fearies, on the other hand, represent the unknowable (why is there a difference between the unknown and the unknowable? Because I say there is). They are what cause your machines to break down, your clothes to wear out and your teeth and hair to fall out. When you get lost, despite being so sure about your path, it is because you were tricked by fairies. When you lose an object you were sure of its whereabouts, it is because fairies took it away, and when that object turns up again, it is because they returned it to you for their own cryptic reasons. They�re the ones watching you when you�re all alone but feel like you�re being observed. Lost ideas, strange sensations, deja-vis, sudden inspirations, all of these are the work of fairies (the Greek Muses are deity-like fairies, but they have plenty of normal fairies as well, like the Nymphs and the Sirens).

Dragons, however, represent fear. They are that which stalk you. They are nature taken form, when it is angry. The erupting volcano, the wailing storm, the rampaging hurricane, the all-consuming forest fires. When disaster strikes, our minds wander into the shapes and roars of dragons. They are the unsurmountable challenge that only the best of us can hope to take on. There�s a reason why Tolkien�s Smaug compares every single anatomical feature of its body to a great disaster, because that is what it ultimately embodies. They are hopelessness and despair, that which no man can hope to face alone, but also represent our greatest triumphs when overcame.

This is why I believe these three are so ingrained into our collective conscious, at any rate.

thetruegentleman posted:

And another addendum to what PC Snob wrote: it's quite likely that dinosaurs, whales, and other mega fauna were assumed to be dragons based on the discovery of fossils. This theory also helps to account for why dragons look so very different from culture to culture: no group of fossils would ever be the same, leading people to draw different conclusions from each group, depending on what was found (although common features also arose based on how convincing each 'story teller' was, with features always being added on, forgotten, or merged.)

For example, a whale would get you a serpent whose fins would be mistaken for wings, a large bird of prey would get you a western dragon, etc. Naturally, human imagination and weather/celestial phenomena would get you the more elaborate things, like fire breathing or magic.

The_PC_Snob posted:

Yeah. It is believed that the myth of the cyclops was born thanks to the fossils of the cranium of a dwarf elephant that lived in the Greece. The nasal cavity was so large it looked like an eye-socked, and seeing it that way the Cranium almost looks human.

The_PC_Snob posted:

Onwards towards etymologic research! The rest of the Necromancers� creature are yet to be thoroughly examined.

We are now entering two pop-culture classics: The Mummy and The Vampire.

Mummy is, quite understandably, a very, very old word. In terms of phonetics, however and remarkably, it stayed relatively unchanged throughout history. It entered the English vocabulary through the french, which in turn inherited it from Latin. The original word came from the Persian muumyiaa, which in turn is a derivative of the old Persian word �mum�, or wax. Meaning a mummy is nothing more, etymologically, than a waxed person.

The mummification process is not really much of a secret, nor is it really only an ancient practice. Mummification is nothing more than the process of staving off decomposition from a corpse and we do it to this day, even if only to gain more time for a funeral where the corpse can still be openly exposed for their relatives. And it is a universal human practice, that we can observe in most of the major civilizations of yore, be it the Egyptian Dynasties, Pre-Columbian Empires, to old Chinese Emperors, in varying degrees of success. But the practice does play with our collective imagination since the times of old. The decomposition of a corpse is the ultimate proof of death, after all (it is what truly classifies a zombie as a corpse, as a dead person who somehow still moves). But, if you could keep a body from decomposing... could it mean you are keeping it from truly dying? (Well, no, of course not. But we are talking here in terms of mysticism and philosophy, not science or medicine. Chemically, an embalmed corpse is much further from a living person than a decomposing one.)

This trickery of death is the main motivation behind the classic mummy. The kings of old, defying death and decomposition as they stay as pristine as in their prime in their passage for the next life. And it kind of worked, from an anthropological point of view. After all, we now know much more about King Tut, or Tutankhamun, than we know about pretty much any other of his contemporaries, all thanks to the fact that his corpse was preserved throughout the ages for our modern scientists to prod and poke at it today. And it boggles the mind, somewhat.

Vampire has interesting origins. The English language borrowed it from the French, who in turn borrowed from the German, but it is originally a slavic word, the serbo-croatian v�mpiir. But either way it is definitely older than that with its true origins probably being the proto-slavic, upirii. That in turn can mean lots of things, as the theories abound, from a derivative of witch (ubyr) from old turkish to derivatives of �unflying thing� (�u-� plus �pyrie�) or �unburned� (�u-� plus �pyr�), either meaning a creature that lost its ability to fly or a corpse that wasn�t cremated.

The vampire is, above all other forms of undeath, the true �cheat�. The way to stay, for all intents and purposes, a normal human. As long as you only look at the surface. It is the trade-off of living forever as a human, the only cost being your humanity. It is a common trade-off for eternal life, you pay for your own life with the life of others. Sure, it only makes real sense in an anthropocentric worldview, since that�s pretty much how life goes, it is just that we usually don�t consider animal or plant life to count as �other�. Still, at the center of it, it means to extinguish the spark of others to feed your own, while your own is corrupted and weakened.

Perhaps the most famous undead in the modern world, in no small part thanks to the popularity of Stoker�s Dracula, the vampire myth extended to have innumerable versions. Though one could argue that they always had, since the vampire is probably an extension of the myth of the ghoul, the dead that feed upon the living, and can be seem in various cultures, each with their own little twist to it (like the crazy Penanggalan of the southeastern Asia, who wears its own body as a marionete and detaches its head still attached to all its organs to fly into the night to drink blood). It certainly is the most attractive, since most people don�t really dwell much into the cost. And even then popular culture has looked into ways to cheat the cheat, like in True Blood where artificial blood is created allowing vampires to expose themselves without automatically being considered killers (it doesn�t go well). Or in both Twilight and the Buffyverse, where apparently any kind of mammal blood will do, so only real bastards go after people (which in the Buffyverse is explained as Vampires being possessed by demons, so being required to drink human blood is a plus, not a minus). In reality, Vampires have become so ingrained into our culture that I could spend dozens of paragraphs talking about them and not even start, but that�s not the point of this let�s play.

Finally, we have the Lich, an interesting cultural construct. The word is strictly germanic in origin (liikan), though it probably dates back to the proto-indo-eurpean liig-. It means corpse, but the proto-indo-european origin means �like, similar�. In that it means a �corpse that looks living�.

While the strict concept of a lich being an undead sorcerer who have gained immortality through his power is nothing new to literature and mythology, the word itself being attributed to it is something new, but one could argue that all we are doing is giving a proper name to a very old idea. What might surprise you is that the name wasn�t created for D&D, but that Gary Gygax and his group of friends lifted the idea from modernist fantasy and horror authors like Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, who were kind of using the term to refer to undead related in some way to magic (corpses being possessed by warlocks who invoke Yog-Sothoth in Lovecraft, undead who retain their former consciousness through magic in Howard and wizards who could resurrect themselves in Smith). Gygax also mentions Gardner Fox, a comic book writer for the DC who is famous for his really, really fast narrative where adventures that would take complete books from other writers can be completed in a couple of pages under Fox. He too had an undead sorcerer in his Kothar and the Magic Sword, though in this case the �lich� is arguably �good� since he is the one who gave Kothar his magic sword, who uses it for adventuring and profit.

There�s a kind of clash between liches and vampires in the fandom, as both kind of represent ways to cheat death, and not unlike Sorcerers and Wizards in D&D, one does so by chance, the other does so by �merit�. The disparity is moot, anyway, when both are undeniably evil in their ways, as usually the process one turns himself into a lich is depicted as being an evil ritual, even though what makes it evil is always left (purposefully) vague. In some cases it is implied that the sole act of separating the soul from the body is evil, in others it is because it requires living, sentient sacrifice. In D&D next, the current official version of D&D, a lich has to constantly consume the souls of mortals to retain his immortality, making it more of an uber vampire. In other cases, the one becomes a lich simply because they are tired of dealing with the limitations of the flesh in their grand schemes, even if not directly the mortality itself, but being forced to take a break from their true passions for food and sleep. One thing stays true, though: The process is always a choice. One does not become a lich by accident or chance, but for a personal purpose. And while a vampire might have been turned voluntarily, most will have done so against their will. The vampire can be a somewhat tragic, cursed creature, but the lich is entirely responsible for the monster they�ve become.

Darth TNT fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Jul 29, 2016

# ? Apr 18, 2015 20:51

Darth TNT: Sep 20, 2013

Update 0 

Remember, global warming is like a sword through the world.

I know how to get this LP started properly.

A warm fire to set the mood.

I�ll put on some soft music.

And we arrive at the menu screen. I used to love this screen. The music, the colors it feels like coming home. :unsmith:

That door to the left of load game features the easter egg mentioned in the OP. Strangely, I never realized that that was an advertisement for another game, eventhough I always loved those screenshots.

I was pretty stupid as a kid, I think I�ve grown past that stage.

See, I have the expansion as well. We�ll just click the top one for now.

Click here or read along.

"The troubles all began three years ago, with the passing of the old king, Lord Ironfist."

�Wait what?! I�ve only been king for 25 years.

�

"The king left two sons"

"Roland was good, kindly, and honorable,"

"While Archibald was not so good."

"Traditionally, the choice of the heir falls to the royal seer."

Look he�s waving at us!

"But he died in a tragic boating accident."

�I warned him about the bad weather conditions.�

"The skies were clear the whole day! I even went on a picknick with Catherine!"

:corsair:

"His successors' luck was no better."

"With Frederick falling out of a window"

�Such a tragic slip.�

"What was he even doing in the laundry tower?"

"Robert slain by a dragon,"

"It was you!"

�I�m not a dragon! And besides, getting toasted by dragons is a common occurrence even after the extinction of the great purple.�

"I'll concede on that last point."

"And Johann dying of food poisoning."

�I had the chef executed!�

"The chef was on holiday! You gave him that wine!"

"Archibald accused Roland of murdering the seers, and issued a proclamation against Roland."

�It was Roland all along! Oh brother, how could you.

�

"I wasn't even in the castle! Wait, that gives me an idea!"

"Fearing for his life, Roland fled the place for his castle in the west."

"Come back brother so we can talk this over."

"With Roland gone, Archibald was able to influence the new royal seer's decision."

�We were just talking.�

"The seer chose Archibald, and Archibald crowned himself king the next day."

"And so the War for Succession began."

Come on PC Snob, just because we�re on opposite sides it gives you no reason to vandalize my painting, you already have the crown. :colbert:

�Choose your lord.�

Roland

My faithful vassal. I greet your pledge of loyalty with gratitude and relief.
As you know, my wicked brother Archibald has seized my father's castle and usurped the throne. Only the lords nearest the castle have been quick to swear allegiance to him, but I fear even distant lords may take the oath in the absence of a viable alternative. I am determined to provide that alternative, even if means making war on vassals formerly loyal to my father. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that I must order you to compel the loyalty of the barons nearest my summer palace by force of arms. Since we cannot afford to fail, I have provided you with a sum of gold sufficient to the task. I have also provided you with a magical amulet to help coordinate our war efforts. Wear it always and we will be in constant communication.

Darth TNT diary posted:

�The followup wars, day one, Darth TNT.

Dear diary,

I�ve pledged my loyalty to rebellious Roland�s cause, I�m not exactly sure why. His claims are a little shaky.

I mean first I read about the seers dying in tragic accidents and next thing I know Archibald proclaimed that Roland was the killer and made himself king. Yet Roland has done nothing to deflect such accusations, instead he ran. This doesn�t inspire me with a lot of confidence.
Strangely, our single meeting thus far has made it hard for me not to trust him when I look into those baby blue eyes of his.
In addition he told me that the legendary Lord Kilburn has sided with him as well. So he must see something in him as well.
Also, he heard a rumor about some lords possibly swinging to join Archibald and he immediately commands me to attack. That at least does inspire me with confidence. He reminds me of his dad.

But why do I have to wear this stupid baby blue flashing pendant. It clashes with my outfit and I hear even the peasants laughing at me.
Roland mentioned a sum of gold, but all I found were some measly coins. I think even the miller makes more money than this.

Well, whatever. I figure if I do my best I�ll get more money and at the very least this should provide me with an opportunity to work alongside Lord Kilburn.

I do need to find a better name for this war. Followup wars doesn�t even sound like proper English.

Sincerely yours,

Darth TNT�

Right, so next to the meager sum of money Roland also saw fit to offer us something extra. Or maybe the 2.000 gold is his money and we�re just spending it immediately on bling.
Anyway, I�m stricken with decision paralysis, but fortunately I have an army of ~~peasants~~ goons to advise me.
So Goons, what shall I take along for this level. 2.000 gold, the Thunder mace (Attack +1) or the Gauntlets (Defense +2).

Meanwhile in the palace of power.

Thank you for choosing to serve me. You will find that I can be a very generous lord to vassals who remain faithful, which is more than I can say for the cowardly lords who refuse to take the oath from me. I am King! Not Roland! No one can stand before me and refuse to serve! Go! I have allocated a sum of gold for the purposes of making an example of the lords closest to my castle. Crush them, and report back to me by means of the magical amulet I have sent you.

General Snob journal posted:

�First journal entry in the Succession Wars, General Snob.

King Archibald, heir to the throne of Enroth, has summoned me to aid him in his campaign to ensure the legitimacy of his claim. His brother, Roland, has been unable to accept the decision of the Royal Seers to Archibald's claims. Considering it took four dead seers to reach that choice, I have no illusion of who's the winning side here, despite Archibald modest claims that Roland killed them.

He doesn't need to keep such a facade for me. I admire a man with ambition. Especially if that man is willing to share the spoils of such ambitions with me. Riches to live several lifetimes of debauchery and my own land seems like a fine deal, regardless of where they came from. Besides, Roland sounds like a dork.

And Archibald did make a fine choice of general, if I can say so myself. Which I can. Known from Enroth to Erathia, mastermind behind the campaign to settle Paradise Valley, strategical planner of Kriegspire, scourge of Tatalia, renowned overlord from Nighon, banned from ever setting foot in Bracada to Avlee, Elf-Slayer and Mage-Killer, Archibald could have made no finer choice.

Archibald's first task for me, to prove myself, is to either oust or convert the lords closest to his capital. Suits me fine. I've been given a sum amount of resources to get things started and an outpost from the Necromancer's guild to work from. Archibald also offered me a choice between three boons for the mission: A minor magical scroll capable of increasing the magic reserves of my front-line general, a mage ring that modestly increases one's magical power or an extra sum of gold to help with expenses. I won't pretend this choice is of much consequence, but I will give it the deliberation it deserves.�

PC_Snob here. With this we officially start the Heroes of Might & Magic II Let's Play! You've got that right, it is YOU who'll choose the bonuses for our missions, loyal readers and viewers! So, what shall it be for this first mission? 2000 extra gold, a Minor Scroll for +2 Knowledge or a Mage's Ring for +2 Spell Power?

Please provide your votes and please let us know for who those votes are.

# ? Apr 18, 2015 21:03

Loel: Jun 4, 2012; "For the Emperor."

There was a terrible noise.
There was a terrible silence.

2000 gold for each, and let's hear it for the true king Archibald!

# ? Apr 18, 2015 21:12

KennyMan666: May 27, 2010; The Saga

This better end with the two of you figuring out some way to play a game against each other, so we can see who is actually the true king.

And, of course, screenshot it and each post it as a final update.

Edit: Heroes II is my favourite Heroes game, but III isn't far behind.

KennyMan666 fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Apr 18, 2015

# ? Apr 18, 2015 21:50

AradoBalanga: Jan 3, 2013

Ah, Heroes 2. My proper introduction to this series (I had seen a friend play some of the first game and decided to jump in on 2 since it had just come out). I still fondly remember playing this game and its expansion back when I was much younger. I could sit and listen to that menu theme for hours (which I did back then) even today.

Also voting for 2000 Gold for both sides. More cash at the start is never a bad idea.

# ? Apr 18, 2015 22:07

PurpleXVI: Oct 30, 2011; Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

I'd go with +2000 gold, getting off to a fast start is of pretty big importance.

# ? Apr 18, 2015 23:18

grandalt: Feb 26, 2013; I didn't fight through two wars to rule
I fought for the future of the world

And the right to have hot tea whenever I wanted

+2000 gold for Roland's side, trust me, you will need the funds to start with. It can help a lot. I know, I replayed this game when you were doing the first one.

As for Archibald, the minor scroll will serve you well.

# ? Apr 18, 2015 23:27

Aces High: Mar 26, 2010; Nah! A little chocolate will do

KennyMan666 posted:

This better end with the two of you figuring out some way to play a game against each other, so we can see who is actually the true king.

And, of course, screenshot it and each post it as a final update.

Screw that, you both install Fraps and Skyperecorder (or whatever) and stream it :black101:

Test the devotion of your LP audience.

Also I vote for take the money for both of you since I never do

# ? Apr 18, 2015 23:39

Seyser Koze: Dec 15, 2013; Mucho Mucho; Nap Ghost

By the title I assume we're going full Necromancer whenever possible?

# ? Apr 19, 2015 00:33

JamieTheD: Nov 4, 2011; LPer, Reviewer, Mad Welshman

(Yes, that's a self portrait)

Gonna vote for the Gold for Everybody, because I know you'll both use it wisely... On Skeletons and Peasants respectively.

# ? Apr 19, 2015 01:30

THE BAR: Oct 20, 2011; You know what might look better on your nose?

The Gauntlets for Roland, as defence is the better of the two might stats, and the Scroll for our true king Archibald, who need not bother with conserving mana for his righteous conquests.

# ? Apr 19, 2015 01:37

Kangra: May 7, 2012

THE BAR posted:

The Gauntlets for Roland, as defence is the better of the two might stats, and the Scroll for our true king Archibald, who need not bother with conserving mana for his righteous conquests.

This is the way to go. Gauntlets & Scroll.

# ? Apr 19, 2015 02:24

thetruegentleman: Feb 5, 2011; You call that potato a Trump avatar?

THIS is a Trump Avatar!

Gold for Roland, as the artifacts won't be around long enough to make a difference on the first map. Archy should take the Scroll though, which should help him make things interesting right off the bat if he starts with a mage hero; who wants to see a mage beat things to death with a stick?

# ? Apr 19, 2015 02:34

Darth TNT: Sep 20, 2013

Seyser Koze posted:

By the title I assume we're going full Necromancer whenever possible?

No, it means Roland gives them plenty of milk like any rightful ruler.

Speaking of Roland PC Snob and I had a discussion...does Roland, the true king, have a terrible lisp? Or is that just Archibald's attempt at making him look inept?

# ? Apr 19, 2015 07:33

Aces High: Mar 26, 2010; Nah! A little chocolate will do

well considering how Roland sounds in his briefings...no?

# ? Apr 19, 2015 07:56

Ithle01: May 28, 2013

Go for the gold and long live the true king!

Whoever that might be.

# ? Apr 19, 2015 09:30

THE BAR: Oct 20, 2011; You know what might look better on your nose?

Ithle01 posted:

Go for the gold and long live the true king!

Whoever that might be.

The guy on the throne wearing a crown, duh.

Also, did you hear Archibald's briefing? Why would he lie?

# ? Apr 19, 2015 11:01

Guildenstern Mother: Mar 31, 2010; Why walk when you can ride?

Darth TNT posted:

No, it means Roland gives them plenty of milk like any rightful ruler.

Speaking of Roland PC Snob and I had a discussion...does Roland, the true king, have a terrible lisp? Or is that just Archibald's attempt at making him look inept?

Pay no attention to the Roland vids, that guy's a punk bitch who never did anything useful. As far as I can tell he got some people to win a war for him and then just wandered off and got kidnapped by aliens in a completely fantasy based setting, in fact I think he did it more than once, or at least two guys named Roland were kidnapped. Either way, its not an ideal curriculum vitae.

# ? Apr 19, 2015 11:25

TheresNoThyme: Nov 23, 2012

So much amazing music in this game. I hope you play all the background music by the end.

THE BAR posted:

The Gauntlets for Roland, as defence is the better of the two might stats

Curious, why do you think this? Because it scales better? For me like 90% of the time it's about your offensive damage wiping troops before they get into attack range. I usually max attack whenever possible. Using 1 troop blockers is way too tryhard for me but that strategy also synergizes better with high attack low defense.

(future quest spoiler) I seem to recall last Roland campaign is actually the most challenging if you go for the ultimate artifact and don't start with a stupid large army for claiming castles in week 1. But Archibald gets the Rebellion campaign map where the entire point is to raise literally a million skeletons so.....

# ? Apr 19, 2015 17:24

FrenchBen: Nov 30, 2013

[b]2000 Gold[b] , to be spent on peasants and skeletons! [spoiler] Dragon Skeletons also count. [spoiler]

This raises a question though: assuming the final update is indeed Darth TNT vs PC Snob, should they be allowed different towns, or should they keep in theme with peasants and as such Castle vs :skeltal:

? Because balance isn't exactly a thing in this installment, Castle is eitheir the worst town or second-worst depending on who you ask, while Necromancers are one of, if not the, best faction.

# ? Apr 19, 2015 17:41

THE BAR: Oct 20, 2011; You know what might look better on your nose?

TheresNoThyme posted:

Curious, why do you think this? Because it scales better? For me like 90% of the time it's about your offensive damage wiping troops before they get into attack range. I usually max attack whenever possible. Using 1 troop blockers is way too tryhard for me but that strategy also synergizes better with high attack low defense.

Exactly. It scales better, which is further exacerbated with low tier units, which I find crucial during the early game. You'll outmaneuver the AI in all skirmishes anyway, so it's all about minimizing casualties when it actually gets a coordinated hit in.

What I mean is that you'll normally have your low tier troops in 1-2 stacks, whereas wandering armies will have them spread out across the battlefield, which means that your 1-2 stacks will hit for so much harder by virtue of being massed, killing their lower quantity stacks outright. It's the retaliations during the round after you get within melee range that defence helps minimizing.

# ? Apr 19, 2015 18:35

The_PC_Snob: Nov 22, 2012; Mario? Never
heard of him.

Aces High posted:

well considering how Roland sounds in his briefings...no?

I distinctly hears some lisp from Roland in certain words. For instance I'm sure I hear him say "fasser's cassel" in his first video and I had trouble understanding him when I was learning English, while Archibald was much clearer. But maybe it is just me.

TNT went behind my back and started the LP already without even telling me! Well, I know I was AWOL for the last two days or so, but even so that's no excuse. :mad:

Nah, just kidding :keke:

but a head's up would have been nice. Here I was working on some GIFs for him when I open my browser, notices the Heroes I LP is finished and the Heroes II LP started.

Kudos to him though, he took some of my advice for the first update AND improved on them.

And seems like the gold is on the lead for now. Let's see where the week takes us.

Seyser Koze posted:

By the title I assume we're going full Necromancer whenever possible?

Nah, it is mostly a reference to the most (in?)famous mission on Archibald's side. Like we said, you goons are the one's who are going to pick our mission boons, and several of those boons is just choosing which is going to be your initial castle. I don't mind being assigned the Necromancers in all of them, but I'd rather have some variety (and I fully expect you goons to pick the worst castle for those missions, as such is the cycle of life).

The_PC_Snob fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Apr 19, 2015

# ? Apr 19, 2015 18:42

Aces High: Mar 26, 2010; Nah! A little chocolate will do

FrenchBen posted:

This raises a question though: assuming the final update is indeed Darth TNT vs PC Snob, should they be allowed different towns, or should they keep in theme with peasants and as such Castle vs ? Because balance isn't exactly a thing in this installment, Castle is eitheir the worst town or second-worst depending on who you ask, while Necromancers are one of, if not the, best faction.

Well if they go by canon then it will be Wizard vs. Warlock, which will be a little more fair (not by much because of the whole "Immune to Magic" thing Dragons have going on) but if it were Knight vs. Necromancer then it would be a glorious bloodbath :unsmigghh:

also you might want to close you tags there, bud

# ? Apr 19, 2015 18:52

Darth TNT: Sep 20, 2013

The_PC_Snob posted:

I distinctly hears some lisp from Roland in certain words. For instance I'm sure I hear him say "fasser's cassel" in his first video and I had trouble understanding him when I was learning English, while Archibald was much clearer. But maybe it is just me.

TNT went behind my back and started the LP already without even telling me! Well, I know I was AWOL for the last two days or so, but even so that's no excuse.

Nah, just kidding but a head's up would have been nice. Here I was working on some GIFs for him when I open my browser, notices the Heroes I LP is finished and the Heroes II LP started.

Kudos to him though, he took some of my advice for the first update AND improved on them.

And seems like the gold is on the lead for now. Let's see where the week takes us.

Nah, it is mostly a reference to the most (in?)famous mission on Archibald's side. Like we said, you goons are the one's who are going to pick our mission boons, and several of those boons is just choosing which is going to be your initial castle. I don't mind being assigned the Necromancers in all of them, but I'd rather have some variety (and I fully expect you goons to pick the worst castle for those missions, as such is the cycle of life).

Backstabbing, a fine Ironfist tradition.

I did mention wanting to start early and you can go behind my back this entire week. And I figured with how fast you were responding you'd notice immediately when I posted it. I won't do it again on Archibalds honour!

His highness does have a slight sliss if you listen closely to certain words.
But it's really not much, maybe your soundblaster was dying when you first played?

# ? Apr 19, 2015 22:46

The_PC_Snob: Nov 22, 2012; Mario? Never
heard of him.

Darth TNT posted:

Backstabbing, a fine Ironfist tradition.

I did mention wanting to start early and you can go behind my back this entire week. And I figured with how fast you were responding you'd notice immediately when I posted it. I won't do it again on Archibalds honour!

His highness does have a slight slisp if you listen closely to certain words.
But it's really not much, maybe your soundblaster was dying when you first played?

Yesterday I was completely AWOL so I didn't have the chance to check the forums, but I was keeping up with the mail. I just expected you to at least send me something along the lines "the LP has started! Here is the link"

As for the lisp, I guarantee you, Roland is much harder to understand when you're not acquainted with English yet. When I'd later came back to this game and heard him again I thought to myself "Ah! So that's what he was on about. What's wrong with his voice anyway?" It would only be even later that I'd figure it was a lisp. Lisps sound very different in my language.

# ? Apr 19, 2015 22:54

Aces High: Mar 26, 2010; Nah! A little chocolate will do

The only word I didn't know he was saying when I was a kid was "vassal" and it kinda came out as "vaffal" or "faffal" when I was a kid but don't take my word for it, I was never very good at understanding words as a kid. Everyone remembers Youtube CC v1? Yeah that was basically me as a child for pretty much anyone who talked fast or with even a smidgeon of an accent.

Don't even get me loving started on song lyrics :v:

# ? Apr 20, 2015 06:06

evilmiera: Dec 14, 2009; Status: Ravenously Rambunctious

Heroes 2 is my absolute favorite of the series, I'm amazed it didn't take longer to create. The music was awesome, the VA work was pretty great (even if only 2-3 people ever spoke in the entire game) and it just has this great mood for both campaigns. I even enjoyed myself playing the evil side, if only for that one particular mission I won't spoil

Great game, never beat it legit though

# ? Apr 20, 2015 11:09

Aces High: Mar 26, 2010; Nah! A little chocolate will do

I think one of my favourite things about Heroes 2 is the midi tracks. As we'll see (and hear) some of the faction tracks are pretty extensive so I guess when making the midi tracks, for that people didn't have a good enough sound card to hear the full instrumental tracks, they just kinda went "eh, gently caress it that's too much work".

Even better is that if you stay on one screen for too long or if you play for too long the midi tracks kind of gently caress up and you go from hearing this kind of eerie piece (or happy, depending on the landscape) and then you switch to a different hero and the track all of a sudden it slows down and it sounds like a dying record player :v:

# ? Apr 21, 2015 03:03

THE BAR: Oct 20, 2011; You know what might look better on your nose?

Aces High posted:

Even better is that if you stay on one screen for too long or if you play for too long the midi tracks kind of gently caress up and you go from hearing this kind of eerie piece (or happy, depending on the landscape) and then you switch to a different hero and the track all of a sudden it slows down and it sounds like a dying record player

This was an immense improvement in Heroes 3, in which the game remembers where each music track had gotten to.

THE BAR fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Apr 21, 2015

# ? Apr 21, 2015 07:30

The_PC_Snob: Nov 22, 2012; Mario? Never
heard of him.

Hey, if anyone could help me out I'm having a problem that is driving me mad.

I'm trying to use GIF Movie Gear to make some nice GIFs for you goons, but for whatever reason whenever I try to load a small video into it it just runs out of memory. I could just use sequential screencaps, but it is proving a lot of work since missing frames are a big deal when the animation is so precise. Working with a video had given me a good result but only one of several attempts actually went through, the rest all runs out of memory.

And I mean really small video samples. Something like 260 Kb of AVI video and it already gives up. It really shouldn't. And I tried with every other program closed. Anyone can give me any tips? Google only led me to a dead Russian site, because of course it did.

# ? Apr 21, 2015 16:20

Olesh: Aug 4, 2008; Why did the circus close?

A long, chilling list of animal rights violations.

The_PC_Snob posted:

Hey, if anyone could help me out I'm having a problem that is driving me mad.

I'm trying to use GIF Movie Gear to make some nice GIFs for you goons, but for whatever reason whenever I try to load a small video into it it just runs out of memory. I could just use sequential screencaps, but it is proving a lot of work since missing frames are a big deal when the animation is so precise. Working with a video had given me a good result but only one of several attempts actually went through, the rest all runs out of memory.

And I mean really small video samples. Something like 260 Kb of AVI video and it already gives up. It really shouldn't. And I tried with every other program closed. Anyone can give me any tips? Google only led me to a dead Russian site, because of course it did.

Why not use gooncam instead? It seems to be more commonly used for LPs and most people don't seem to have any problems with it.

# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:01

Spermy Smurf: Jul 2, 2004

I use GifCam. It's simple to use. I made a few gifs in my LPs and the DF Arena thread.

http://blog.bahraniapps.com/gifcam/

Do a ctrl+F on the site for "Support GIFCAM" because the stupid Download link is hidden in a really really really stupid place.

Also: Post a link in the old thread to this one.

# ? Apr 21, 2015 18:06