burning the midnight whatever it is they use for fuel in the future

[friendofdorothy]

WHO: Liir and you
WHAT: Liir is trying to make sense of local things
WHERE: around NSO HQ
WHEN: Throughout the week
WARNING(S): -

[war without tears]

Having gotten caught in no less than three different Yakshabah incidents in the space of two weeks, with wildly different seeming goals and modus operandis, Liir was determined to find out which was the 'real' Yakshabah. So he could be found in the organization's library, trying to ferret the truth out.

Much of this time was spent with several holo-consoles spread around a large oak table, each displaying incidents involving the meta-rights/supremacist group. He would draw lines between them in the air and rearrange the articles into categories. This eventually got so convoluted he looked like an iconic meme of his grandparents' generation, tho with holos instead of paper.

He leaned back in the chair, rubbing his temples and trying to clear his brain. That was when he realized he wasn't alone, and let out a small, surprised 'oh.'.

[games without frontiers]

It wasn't all serious current events time, however. To clear his brain, or at least reshuffle the contents, Liir could be found in the same place with some decks of a classic card game that was old in his grandparents' time.

He didn't know anyone who wanted to play, so he played by himself, silently playing through imaginary turns. Sometimes he would add or remove a card from his deck.

Was he aware of how sad it looked?

Comments

Games Without Fronteirs

[ayoungman]

John was no stranger to the antique games store during his trips to Arcadea. Sure, it required him to sneak out of his house yet again while his dad was at work, and sure he was still technically grounded due to almost losing his life the last time he wandered off to Arcadia, but he just couldn't help himself!

Addiction is a powerful thing after all. And he would rather be hit by another falling rock from the sky than be forever stuck in his home.

What John didn't expect was to see someone else in the dinky old shop at around this time. None the less seeing the guy simply sit at a table with no screen or game-consul or anything to entertain himself save for some playing cards couldn't help but pique John's interest.

"What game is that?" The twelve-year-old couldn't help but speak up, looking casually over Liirs shoulder. "Are you trying to work on some sort of old dinky magic trick or something?"

Because that is 100% his jam and he is def willing to watch that.

a MAGIC trick you say

[friendofdorothy]

"Space: The Convergence." Liir says, without looking up, putting something down from his hand and turning it sideways. He frowns at it. That changes everything.

"Do you know how to play it?"

Mom Elphaba had had several decks of these and he'd spent a long time as a child amusing himself trying to puzzle out their meaning.

[ayoungman]

"Uh-uh, although I must say I'm not completely unsavvy to playing cards either. They're pretty useful in a lot of my own tricks," Tilting his head he leaned in to watch over the way the cards were pulled and turned whichever ways. "So it's a game, right? How do you lose?"

[friendofdorothy]

John, the only way to not lose M:tG S:tC is to not play in the first place. Look upon the nerd before you and despair.

"You summon units, using a resource called Psi. Those units attack the other player, which reduces your Control."

He hands him the spare deck he was using to test his ideas against (crystal/pyre aggresive assault), playing against himself earlier. He's skeptical if a kid could learn it but it beats the alternatives (playing by himself or trying to find opponents on a net that keeps going down with the power).

[ayoungman]

"So it's sort of like a tactics-based videogame," Taking a seat opposite of Liir, John took the cards offered to him. Looking them over curiously, he admired the traditional illustrations of different strange creatures and warriors. "Woah, look at how these were painted. How old are these cards?"

[friendofdorothy]

"Yes, a lot like that. These are from a more recent reprinting but this game has been printed since before our parents were alive."

He gathers up the cards that were on the table in his long fingers and begins shuffling that deck (blue mill cryo displacement). He watches John for signs of comprehension. Someone to play with would at least beat playing by himself.

[ayoungman]

"So it's still in production now then? Wow, and here I thought anything besides virtual had gone out of fashion," He says, casually watching as Liir handled and shuffled at his own cards, in turn mimicking the act and shuffling the ones he held in his own hands. He was no stranger to card shuffling at least, not so much for card games as for his own practices with parlor tricks. "So we each have all these cards in our hands? Is there a limit to how many cards a player can have in a game?"

just say that's like, the scifi equivalent of cheatyface or something

[friendofdorothy]

"Nostaglia, probably."

He nods in response, and gives John a brief rundown of the rules.

However, John may find out that there's several copies of a card in his deck that may tap into his talent for sleight of hand...

Go figure THIS is how I finally learn how to play MtG

[ayoungman]

"Okay, I see. So it's like a points system that builds up to another points system which directly jumps into your attack and defenses. It's like starting off a game with zero mana and looking to find enough potions to finally be able to go and jump into the battles," He thinks he fairly understood the premise with Liir's explanation. Lightly gazing his cards over until he suddenly spots a certain mischevious looking genie. Looking over the words slowly he takes a moment to think, and instead puts down a single water mana card and some shitty guppy instead.

A magician never reveals his trick immediately after all. He builds up to it!

"So, I can do something like this. Right?"

wars without tears

[rubricatus]

"Don't stop on my account," Magnus answers, waving a hand through the space in front of him. It's a bit halfhearted, so far as his typical body language goes — but only because Liir's holos have gotten his attention, Magnus regarding them intently as he stands over the table. He even crouches down to get a better look at them, managing to flatten himself to about the height of a normal person once his knees have hit the floor.

The grouping of articles becomes apparent before long, and Magnus says, "If you're looking to find some unified goal in the Yakashbah's actions, you're going to be disappointed."

[friendofdorothy]

Liir looked way up. Professor Magnus was so big, even in comparison to himself, who gangled all over the place.

"That's what's puzzling me. It's like there's several different Yakashbahs...Do you think there's a leadership crisis?"

[rubricatus]

"What I believe is that, by its very nature, the Yakashbah is faceted. Consider the NSO by comparison. Its goal is similarly broad, yet more clearly defined, and while that goal could be achieved through any number of methods, the organization benefits from maintaining some level of good public standing. Advocating that the human population be killed until their numbers are equal to ours might be one way to achieve equality, but if I were to do so, I would no longer be a welcome associate.

"That isn't so where the Yakashbah are concerned. Their platform, and the methods they advocate, have always been shadowy. It makes sense as to why it would be this way; the group has always been a refuge for those who feel they have been failed by more conventional tactics, along with those with a natural inclination towards more radical solutions. If there are beliefs they turn away, we aren't privy to them, and when a group has no true public face, there is no lens by which some of its members' beliefs are magnified while others are rendered invisible."

There's a half-second pause here, and when Magnus continues, his tone drops into something a bit more candid. "With all that said, I've also thought that the latest instance seemed out-of-character." He sweeps his hand out in a gesture toward the arrangement of holos. "You'll notice that, however the tone of these reports paints them, no other incident matches it in violence. Why is that? Has something changed, or is this merely yet another one of its faces coming into view? Are we dealing with a splinter group, or someone else who has decided to take up the Yakashbah's mantle? There are too many possibilities for an easy answer."

[friendofdorothy]

Liir listens intently, nervous about looking smart enough in front of the professor. He pauses a few seconds to mull over his reply.

"Or agent provocateurs, false flags, whatever you call it. Or a combination of those factors, Yakashbah's leaderlessness making them easy to infiltrate. Ultimately we don't know because Yakashbah's actions are so cryptic...A bad strategy for winning a revolution." He sighs. "I don't think i'm any closer to answers."

[rubricatus]

In the face of that serious answer, Magnus smiles, his expression every bit that of a teacher pleased by his pupil's observation. His head nods once in a silent gesture of encouragement — and then, rather than linger on the original question about Yakashbah, he asks about something else that had slipped into Liir's reply.

"And what strategy would you recommend instead, Liir?"

No pressure or anything. Magnus just wants to know how he thinks.

[friendofdorothy]

Liir blushes...Only his inherited mutation makes it green, so he probably looks a lot more ill than embarrassed.

"I don't know, I've never won one. But I know if you become isolated from...the people you're trying to help, it's...bad. Not in a moral sense but in a sense of depriving you of your best weapon. So I guess you should do the opposite of that. Communicate with them. Maybe through an above-ground front group."

He thinks of mom The Witch, becoming increasingly isolated and bitter at Kiamo Ko, her raids more infrequent, less discriminating. A sad fate for the twilight years of a formerly great revolutionary.

[rubricatus]

"I'm surprised by your pragmatism." Though, judging by his expression, the surprise isn't an unpleasant one. Magnus swipes one of the holo stories free from where Liir had pinned it: an account of a previous raid, free of civilian casualty — but one that the author nonetheless condemned for its violence. "Even many post-humans regard the Yakashbah and their tactics poorly. I wonder how many fewer would, had the Yakashbah a voice to shape their own narrative."

Then, another holo is picked out, this one quoting the Yakashbah's typically cryptic, ambiguously separatist rhetoric. "Of course, we also have to consider that it may have never been the Yakashbah's goal to sway those who don't already believe."