"Variety is the spice of life. You probably all know each others' styles, and I'm new and shiny and tricky, eh?" He laughs.

Next time it's his turn he abandons his conservative kingmaker strategy and starts building high again.

There are a couple not-very-strategically-interesting rounds of the giant alliance stacking unreasonably artistic pieces on top of each other and vanishing pieces when someone else tries to play.

Then someone refuses to be the one to vanish their piece and the next person down refuses too and the glaring match that follows is very understated and nonviolent but there's no longer a giant alliance after that. And now some of the players aren't playing to win, they're playing to make specific other players lose. No one is playing to make Nik lose (yet) and if he keeps it that way and just plays very boring conservative moves he'll probably end up scoring in the top half but it'd take something more than that for him to have a chance at winning.

...He makes a bid for the top three, counting on Lanisal to support him at a critical moment. If she does, he might win. If she doesn't, it'll have been an interesting game.

She does and he places second. Literally everyone congratulates him, all of them sincerely, including some people who weren't even in the game. All the players tell him he's welcome to play with them again. The sincerity there ranges from the one who doesn't care much and is being polite to the one who would play him five more times tonight if anyone else wanted to play five more rounds, which no one does.

Some people start setting up for another very multiplayer board game and invite Nik, if he's interested. They overlap some with the set that was playing magic ladders and it's mostly not the same people but the one whose idea it is to invite Nik is one of the ones who just played magic ladders.

Lanisal's not playing this one. Neither is the young man she mentioned would probably like to learn chess.

In one corner of the room an old man, visibly older than Lanisal, starts playing something that could arguably be called a lyre.

"I usually find games with more than five or so players aren't my favorites, but that was fun. I think I want to teach Seli chess for now."

Seli is thrilled to hear that. He finds a space for them by one wall.

He explains chess, the various pieces, capturing, castling, pawns getting two moves if they haven't yet moved, et cetera.

"You'll probably lose, to be honest. I've been playing this game for years. If I start down a few pieces, think it'd be more even and interesting, or nah?"

"Then it wouldn't be very good practice for playing against someone who has all their pieces, would it?"

"If you say so. Tradition holds that first mover has a slight advantage, you take white."

He starts by moving a knight out and watching Nik's reaction.

He schools his face blank-slightly-smirking, and moves the pawn in front of his king one step forward.

He frowns at the board for a while and then moves his own king's pawn forward a step.

Queen advances two spaces diagonally, and then he starts assembling a staggered pawn line if nothing needs immediate action on the next couple of turns.

Seli gets some of his powerful pieces out but doesn't seem sure how to make the best use of them. He gets the idea of protecting valuable pieces but the protections aren't anywhere near adequate, he'll come out worse if Nik starts capturing pieces.

Nik trades one of his pawns for a bishop when the opportunity presents itself, but mostly focuses on moving pieces into controlling positions so Seli can't do much without putting some piece of his into danger.

After a while Seli gets too overwhelmed to keep trying to win and switches to trying things at random to see why exactly they're bad. He pays careful attention to everything Nik does, trying to figure out what the strategy is.

He doesn't particularly obscure it! Two fundamentals are making a move that threatens two valuable units at once, and you can only save one. Another is making a move that sets it up so that the opponent can't move a piece, or else expose an opportunity to capture something else for free.

Nik's strategy is 'control the center, pin him down, and take his pieces one by one'.

"Check."

He's aware he's losing but he plays out the last few moves anyway, even though even he can see where the string of forced moves will end up. It's fascinating. It's fun.

He's a very gracious loser. He thanks Nik for teaching him.

"You're welcome. Chess is fun. Haven't had a chance to play it much lately. Or games at all, really. Couldn't make myself relax while I was insecure and poor. Busy busy busy busy inventing things. But now I have an industry and a business and can afford to let up a bit."

"You know she's deciding whether to ask you to join the family, right? So you could just invent and play games and not worry about ending up poor again."

...Sigh.

"I sort of suspected as much. Thing is, I'm a human man, not a caralendar one. Suffice to say, reverse harem doesn't really appeal. Ignore that, cultural reference. Having something all on my own is important, too. Motives and desires are complicated, eh? But I can certainly make a lot of money working with her."

"Well, you don't have to - wait, back up, you're human? I thought you were some kind of blood-drinking parasite species."

Oh hey a topic change. "Cursed human, technically speaking. Not of this world. It's a whole thing. I could turn more humans, maybe other species, haven't experimented, don't plan to."

"...Yeah, uh, don't turn more people into carnivores, it's really inefficient."

"I might be able to get vat-grown meat to work if I tried very hard and hired inheritance mages. But, fair. There are other drawbacks too. I wouldn't have chosen it were it optional."