"Oh, it's like - I think the answer I was worried about there was like, if you don't have a reason on some cultural shortlist of good enough reasons, you're supposed to pick up whatever attraction you need to not let people down? Since that would be... possible, here, and it would be one reason it would be rude to turn someone down by saying you're gay, if you're instead supposed to just. Stop."

"I agree that that would be bad."

"Oh good."

". . . I'm sorry; I don't think I'm being the best conversational partner at present.  Erm, how about - probably you don't have sports if - no, you said something about genetic engineering for them - "

"Yes, why wouldn't we have sports?"

"They seem like the sort of thing that would be less fun if no one's very good at them?  I suppose I don't know where the baseline for that skill is either."

"Perhaps you have more fun with sports than we do but many of us still like them. Usually you loosely segregate by skill level."

"We do that as well, though I suspect for different reasons."

"Why do you?"

"Well, often having the build that makes you the very best at a particular sport isn't actually all that convenient for day-to-day life, so there are separate leagues for the fully-optimized people versus regular folks, and then on top of that some allow copying stamina during the game and others don't, some of them allow you to copy your opponents' skillsets during the game and others don't; et cetera et cetera."

"Gotcha. Yeah, ours are just like, to make it a fair and reasonably level competition."

"It's yet worse with less-physical games.  Or better, from some perspectives."

"Like chess or whatever? Yeah, I guess if you had magic available to try to be the best chess player ever you might wind up warping something delicate."

"Chess is - a very interesting word, according to the version of Kularan in my head.  Like Jackelope was."

"It's a board game. I could teach you if you want, ideally you have specialized pieces but you could just write their names on scraps of paper."

"I could tell it's a board game!  And I can tell it's a board game very similar to one that we have, but not an exact match and not one where I can deduce what the differences are."

"There are a lot of similar board games. I'll explain mine and you can see where they match." He explains chess.

In the citreliac version, knights aren't ubiquitous; instead, there's a pool of pieces with movesets mostly unfamiliar to Sarham which both players agree on using one of before the start of the game. Each player is still allowed eight total double-step pawn moves, but it's not limited to one-per nor to pawns leaving their starting square; there are accordingly more-convoluted en passant rules.  Castling queenside has the king move three steps towards the rook instead of two, and castling through (but still not into or out of) check is allowed.  Otherwise it's the same.

"Seems like you may have started with this chess back when humans got here however that happened and then a variant achieved fixation."

"Agreed!  One of the people I was considering introducing you to for unrelated consultation has a passion for card and board games; perhaps you'd enjoy teaching and playing against him."

"Wouldn't mind it. There's no internet here so we have to make our own fun."

"You might only want to play him a few times; he's usually the national champion of something or other and maintains a very high level of skill in more games than anyone else I've heard of."

"Do you have games with a luck element here? To keep it fun."

"Probably.  Or you could introduce or invent some."

"I'll teach your friend poker."