tushanshu_logs | Sonja Late-March Catch-All

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Sonja Late-March Catch-All

Characters: Sonja, Gene, Valdis & OPEN
Date: March 24-30
Location: The Midnight Hotel, The Welcome Center, and around the various sectors of Keeliai
Situation: People meeting with Sonja. She doesn't bite... with her teeth
Warnings/Rating: none

A: Harmless Plotting - The Midnight Hotel (Closed to Gene)

Sonja had left a message with Anton to request Gene join her in her room on the third floor when he saw him. While Sonja occasionally went down to the commons, especially to eat, it was generally tiring and she was often glad to retreat back to her room.

So while she waited for Gene, she was holed up in her room, listening to the radio on her phone and scribbling out some math on printing costs.

B: TableTop - The Welcome Center (Valdis & OPEN)

Sonja came to the hotel center late in the month with a stuffed satchel. She dropped it onto a table near the center of the main room and started pulling things out - wooden boxes, parchment rolls, a few sacks, and some loose-leaf paper.

She rearranged some space on the bookcase and started to neatly stack the various materials. When she was done, she took one of the loose leaf papers, scribbled a few characters on it (some of them using some reference) and then hung it from the shelf, becoming a sign that said, in several languages including Japanese, Chinese, and Kedan - "Games."

During lulls at the center when Sonja wasn't tooling around on the consoles and crashing people's Network posts, she would take a game off the shelf and start trying to write up rules in different languages, or just for kicks, play herself.

C: Making Rounds - Around Keeliai (OPEN)

Sonja is still making her way through the sectors, following Wan's plan of trying different combinations to solve the console message. She was getting pretty bored of that whole thing, and the only thing keeping her going was that she'd committed to it.

It's not like she didn't like walking around Keeliai anyway. It was good exercise, and it was a good opportunity to meet people, get recognized, see new things, new people. Walking through town was her 'on' mode, and she looked a lot less likely to say 'bug off' if you approached her than normal.

Sonja was a prodigious documentarian, and could be seen frequently taking pictures, or scribbling notes, or making person memos into her phone as she wandered around. She was also loose with her money, frequently stopping in shops and throwing a juulan or two around.

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Valdis had never visited the Welcome Center before, but feeling quite aimless, she decided to see what it was all about. The first thing she noticed was that Sonja was busily scribbling away at something. A chess board was set up nearby and so Valdis made her way over and sat down next to the young girl.

"What are you up to these days?" She asked, hoping that the girl was making good on her promise to limit her time in the fire sector.

"Huh?" Sonja said, not looking up. She kept scribbling at something until she finished her thought. A few seconds later, she remembered that someone had asked her something and looked up.

"Oh! Valdis, hi." She didn't think she'd seen Valdis in her- human form? That was a weird thing to think about. She hadn't seen Valdis as a woman in awhile.

"Nothing much. Giving that 'polite and respectful' thing a try."

"And how is that going?" She asked, pulling the chess board over, ignoring the pain in her head in favor of looking over the board.

A frown. "I'll let you know."

She noticed Valdis looking at the board. "Do you play?" Sonja was rather fond of the game.

She grabbed the sack of pieces and pushed it over to Valdis. The pieces were crude but recognizable.

"I commissioned a craftsman to make the pieces. A few juulan only gets you such good craftsmanship, but it'll do."

A smile slowly lit up her features and Valdis opened the bag and began to set up the board. "Chess is the game of nobility and warfare," She replied, "Of course I play." Within moments the board was ready. "Black or white?"

Perhaps this was what she needed to get her mind off of things.

"Black."

Counterplay was Sonja's bread and butter.

She started to set the game up, in the formation she knew best.

Valdis raised a brow as Sonja re-set the board, but let the girl arrange the pieces.

"I am unfamiliar with that particular formation," she said with a smile, "Care to explain the rules that you are familiar with so that we can play by the same ones?"

"The first row are the pawns, which move one space forward and capture anything they land on. In the second row you have one bishop, which can move diagonally in all four directions, any number of spaces, limited by the board, friendly pieces, or by capturing an enemy piece. The Rook is its counterpart, which does the same, but moves forward or horizontally instead.

"In the back row you have the King, who can move and capture one space in any direction. He is flanked by the Gold General who can move one space in most directions except diagonally backwards. The Gold Generals are flanked by the Silver Generals who can move one space forward, or diagonally backwards.

"The Knights (behind the Bishop and Rook) jump forward two spaces and one to either side , and the Lancers (the very ends of the back row) can move any number of squares direction forward, limited by allied pieces, and by capturing enemy units."

"Moving a piece into, out of, or through the enemy Promotion Zone, which accounts for all three rows of the opponent's starting space, allows you to flip a piece over and promote it. Promoting a silver general, knight, lance, or pawn lets it move as a Gold General, although it's generally advantageous not to promote a silver general since they are more mobile in reverse.

"A rook or bishop retain their movement but also gain single space movement in any direction, like a King. Kings and Gold Generals can't be promoted.

"Instead of moving, you may also place a piece that you've captured on the board under your control. You can Drop on any empty space on the board, with a couple of exceptions. They must be placed so that they can legally move, you can't double up pawns in one file, and you can't drop a pawn to checkmate (though you can check).

"To win, you must put the enemy king into a position where they cannot block an attack. When you move a piece to threaten the enemy king, you put the King in Check. The only legal move for your opponent in that case is to block the attack, have the king move out of danger, or capture the threatening piece. If the opponent can't do any of that, then its Checkmate, and the game is won."

Edited 2015-03-31 20:05 (UTC)

Valdis listened intently, it was similar enough to the modern rules of chess in her own world and made sense. When Sonja was done explaining, she nodded her head.

"They replaced the Queen with lesser pieces," she said absently, "In the European version, the Queen is the strongest piece, next to the knight that is. But based upon this," she gestured to the board, "They have replaced a single piece with four pieces. I suppose that tells you something about the value of a Queen."

"Ah, yeah, they play something like that in Green Earth. I think concentrating so much power into one piece makes for stagnant and repetitive gameplay, myself. Promotions are rare since even a lowly pawn can promote to a queen. A game is more or less decided by letting a single piece cross the board."

"But sometimes a single piece can make the difference between victory and defeat and a single move can change the course of a battle." She replied, "But of course, the problem with putting so much stake in one piece, is that should that piece fall, the rest of the plan may fall apart, and I know that folly all too well." She sighed, momentarily lost in thought.

"Are we still talking about the game?"

Games were inspired by real life wars, but rare was the instance where a real world issue could be simulated to any useful degree with a board game.

"In a manner of speaking." She looked over the board, running strategies through her mind. "I once knew a man who played his Queen poorly, he lost her and now his kingdom is in disarray. Unfortunately for him, it is not as easy to replace his lost queen as it is in the game. In fact," she said with a smile, "It is impossible."

"Are you the queen in that story?"

Sonja didn't like extended metaphors or uncertainty.

"I'm partial to the King piece, myself. I don't want to be the most powerful piece on the board, I want to be the center of the game."

"I was," She sighed, "But now I am just me, no kingdom and no king."

She contemplated Sonja's words for a moment. "You want the war to revolve around you?" she asked. "Or do you mean that you wish to be the one moving the pieces?"

Oh, whoops, yeah, she could see how you would interpret it that way. She hadn't really considered that because obviously Sonja wouldn't be the center of any kind of world, that was silly at face value.

"The making the moves part," Sonja said.

"I see," Valdis replied, interested in how the girl saw the world. "Well, my little tactician, who moves first? You or me?"

Sonja blushed. Valdis' endearment simultaneous made her bristle and also kind of melt a little and it was disconcerting and also she wanted Valdis to do it more.

"Y-you first."

Valdis looked over the board, pretending to not notice Sonja's blush and carefully made her move.

"Did you play a lot of games involving tactics back home?" She asked.

"Yes. Father isn't any good at them, but some of the generals and colonels are good players, when they had some spare time, which isn't often."

She moved a pawn up.

"Computers make good opponents if all you want to do is learn how to play the game perfectly. Less good if you are into the psychological aspects of them. Most tactics games are available for play online, but it's a little annoying to have to use pseudonyms."

That was interesting information. Sonja played war games with high ranking officers when they had time...another piece of interesting information.

"You said that they didn't have much time to play, is your nation at war?" She said as she moved one of her own pawns.

"Not really. Border skirmishes with other nations have been rare to nonexistent since the formation of the Allied Nations, and cleaning up scattered Black Hole forces is really more of a police action than warfare."

She moved another pawn. She was attempting to form a wedge on the right side of the board.

"But we're not generally fans of idle time in Yellow Comet, so even in times of peace you'll find someone of such high rank and important will have plenty to fill their time with, not the least of which being reconstruction."

"Consider yourself lucky then," she said, more interested in the conversation than the game, but still focused on the strategy. She didn't plan on winning, but she could still make Sonja work hard for the victory.

"Three of the four races of my world are at constant war with each other and the fourth race is often at war with itself."

"Race as in different ethnicites, or like wholly disparate species?"

Edited 2015-04-10 18:58 (UTC)

"The best way to describe it would be different species," she replied, moving her knight. "Angels, Demons, Hellhounds and Humans."

B: Let the chess mastering begin!

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