"You are correct, that could've easily been a mess."

"I think Kib's strategy is actually better, if one can successfully pull it off, but there is something to be said for playing along with the hallucinations. Or so it seems so far, I'm only on my third."

"Well, my strategy has this tendency to make one's significant others sad."

"While mine is positively soothing for my loved ones. The - the first time we spoke, after I got back - your expression - "

"Fair enough."

Hand squeeze. "Okay, that's tech and the other Ardas, which is what I think we wanted. If anyone's interested in staying to be Kib's second in Governor we'd be delighted to play host, but we don't have much sense of how busy you all are..."

"So tempted. Maybe if you don't mind having to break up the game if Cam gets an urgent letter and has to fetch me."

"I'm supposedly in charge of this country and people certainly bother me as if it's true, we couldn't play at all if we insisted on uninterrupted stretches of time. Can Allspeak sound like Harthanic or something, because otherwise you'll be stuck passing each other notes..."

"I can cover it with illusions. Who's your second?"

"Findekáno, obviously. He will grumble at me that people who don't think their lives are hallucinations have things to get done but he won't mean it. We have Kib back. We used to all four play in Valinor -" he sends a memory -

"Awwwww. Well, if Aydanci isn't going to be annoyed that I'm stepping into his place I would be delighted to sabotage things for you."

"He won't mind."

"In order to not benefit the Enemy who might be making Kib and/or me hallucinate this, we picked some truly absurd starting conditions -" and he outlines them.

"Cute, but how are you planning to decide who everybody's vampire-style mate bond matches up to?"

"Hmm, we could do it randomly in advance and have it discoverable in the game, but that'll get some personality mismatches - I don't have a sense of how much personality mismatches are a problem with real mate bonds..."

"Don't happen, basically, requires bizarre interactions with other things to even look like they happen. Circumstance mismatches happen but not basic personality ones."

"Then this world will have slightly inferior vampiric matebonding, since we can't set the personality of everyone who'll come up well enough in advance..."

(Cam kisses Loki goodbye and teleports elsewhere.)

"Poor population of bizarre-starting-conditions-land."

And Findekáno comes and will make token complaints about how his King wants hundreds of millions of golems but must not want it that badly, and they sit down for a game of Governor.

And Loki covers her communications with Kib via illusion, and sabotages things on his behalf.

Kib is as anticipated not quite on his game, although Loki seems to be able to guess where he'll be falling down on the job and compensate.

Arcologies! Hex's magic system! Vampire mate bonds! All these delightful new rule systems to play with! Kib, functioning again! He is not going to simmer but he will stare adoringly.

Kib is not as creative as he usually is but he can appreciate a good play as usual and simmer a little bit.

Well, he will throw things at Kib that are highly requiring of creativity, see if that helps.