Networks | Glowfic Constellation

They discuss business for a couple of hours.

Afterward she asks him if he'd like to join her family for their game night in a couple of days, if he's still in town then.

"Well, that depends on the games. And the size of the group, I think."

"If you come we should have twenty-five. I don't know how familiar you are with games here, if I say Magic Ladders and the Garden of Seihra-Gara and that kind of thing, does that answer your question?"

"Wow, big group. Yeah, not really. Local board games have not been my priority. Settlers of Catan and Power Grid and Monopoly are at least as meaningless to you, I expect."

"They are, but you could bring them and teach people. The Garden of Seihra-Gara is about adding things to a landscape and it's... reasonably representative. I'd be honored to teach you."

"I don't have a copy of any of those board games, though I could probably whip up a chess set. Yeah, I've got a few days of appointments and busywork here, I think I'd like to stop by and play some board games. It'll be fun. Where and when?"

"Day after tomorrow, we try to start, oh, about two hours before sunset. People might be as much as a sixth of an hour earlier or later than that."

"I'll be here."

And he is.

She shows him to what might be a living room. Nine of her husbands and three of her children are there already. One of the men is posing riddles to the kids when he arrives, one is arranging a game board so it aligns perfectly with the table it's on, one is reading a scroll, three are already playing some kind of card game that involves numbers somehow and another three are cuddling on some cushions in a corner. All of them stop to greet Nick. Lanisal introduces everyone.

How... Homey, in an alien sort of way. He can see the social structure here and it's always going to be a bit weird to him. And he's keenly aware of where everyone is - and how he's usually such an introvert who never feels quite safe in a room full of other people.

But he is polite and greets everyone back with a smile and says to Lanisal, "This should be fun. Oh, after I left the other day I thought maybe I should sell you a computer and programming books at a discount. Programming is going to be a big thing, after all, and being familiar with computers will help you run a media network on them. I've also managed to make a simple chess set if anybody wants to learn that game, but it's one-versus-one."

"Oh, wonderful. I bet Seli would like to try chess. Where and when should I meet you to get the computer and books?"

"I have some in a storage unit, been demoing them, I can show you tomorrow morning. Chess is nice, but it's not a group game. What other games are in the works?"

"Tomorrow should work for me. We're just waiting for Lialan to get here before we can play a game of Magic Ladders, I don't know if chess takes too long for it to be worth starting a game while - oh, never mind," she says as Lialan walks in. "That's him now." She formally introduces them and gestures for both of them to follow her to the table with the game board sitting on it very neatly. There don't seem to be any pieces or dice or anything else but the board itself.

"Chess can take a while, maybe an hour at the outside. I do need the rules of Magic Ladders explained, mind."

"We take turns stacking illusions. We pretend they're real enough to need something to hold them up. We measure how high the lowest part of an illusion is and award more points the higher it is. You can cancel your own illusion at no cost, then anything that falls shatters and everyone who added those loses points. Nothing can touch the table outside the board, that's out of bounds. You can make your illusions whatever shape you want. ...Oh, and you trace the shapes in the air or describe them, you don't need to be an illusion mage to play."

"Hmm. Interesting. Are there rules for allowable shapes and so on?"

"No, but everyone has two chances to veto any shape for any reason. You have to do that as soon as it's played and that player retries that turn without a penalty. In practice that means, oh, no pillars standing on the entire board and stretching to the ceiling. ...Standard rules call for a random turn order and we almost never do that, want to pick a number or randomize it?"

Meanwhile most of the others are coming over to sit around the table, except the three who don't feel like leaving their card game. Someone taps the board and a series of marks appears in the air, like a yardstick standing up next to the board, repeated at every corner.

"I have a feeling I'll lose, just because of unfamiliarity with the usual strategies. How do you choose who goes first?"

"So it has to do with our ongoing household chore competition..."

She explains how it works and tells him the current turn order.

Nik makes pleasant small talk and plays, with rapid fire descriptions of his moves when his turn comes. A vampire mind's speed has no special advantage in spatial reasoning. Plus, he's never played before. He'll probably lose.

It turns out it's mostly not about spatial reasoning. As this family plays it it's mostly about alliances between players. People make alliances, build towers together, try to convince their enemies to turn on each other, test each other's loyalty.

Lanisal plays to keep Nik from coming in last. She leaves him openings to build on her towers if he trusts her enough to take them. She avoids moves that would ruin plays he looks like he might be setting up.

Hmm.

...He decides to play like the Joker. Wild card. Arranging alliances and then not taking any benefit from them. Randomly breaking one of his pieces with no clear strategic goal. Making sure his shapes rely on as many different others as possible.

He takes what Lanisal offers, too, and doesn't fail to notice. He winks.

Somehow all this culminates in him making sure that two different alliances will lose most of their advantage if he wants them to. And he's been playing so erratically, can they trust him? Can they bribe him? Who knows.

...This is fun.

Most everyone seems happy about this, except one of the kids.

Lanisal vanishes a piece that doesn't quite make everything above it fall, but will if anyone tries to build right over the gap in the foundation right now. Building on the other side should stabilize it, though, and that means the Seli-Renbar-Lialan alliance will have to build on foreign ground, so to speak, or crash everything and take the penalty. Seli eyes an enemy tower but Lialan's turn comes first and he brings everything down. Half the pieces in play shatter and disappear. Nik loses his kingmaker position in the crash, but the other alliance seems to decide Lanisal is on their side and since she's on Nik's side so are they. The resulting alliance is big and powerful and definitely going to fall apart before the end of the game.

Late arrivals who stop and watch before going off to play cards with each other seem very entertained.

He'll just go back to trying to build a kingmaker position again, then. With many contingencies this time. This sort of elaborate alliance-building and betrayal is fun for a while, he can think of it in terms of market maneuvering and competitors, but he's starting to get tense since he feels vaguely like an intruder. It would have helped if there were anyone but him who wasn't in Lanisal's family here, but there's not.

"How long does this game usually tend to run anyway?"