Lore
Old Jara sits with her carved walking stick and remembers everything.
Escalating tectonic activity. Always deadly. Always getting worse. It comes with no discrimination — young, old, near, far. It doesn't care.
Milder in the cold season. The Cellars are the only reliable shelter, reinforced by cardium. The Rac'i built them. Not out of generosity — they couldn't stomach watching others die.
Low-growing, dark leaves, small white flowers. Grows throughout the Southlands near walls, foundations, roadsides. Unremarkable in daylight. Easily overlooked.
Under the right celestial alignment: light visible along the veins on the underside of the leaves. Not a glow. More like the dark is thinner there. Light trying to come through from the inside.
Played on a 64-square grid scratched into the table. Five stone types — Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Spirit — in fixed ratios. Spirit is the rarest. One per player.
Stones are placed, never moved. Each type follows its own rule: Earth anchors the space around it; Water must flow from what you’ve already built; Fire extends in a straight line from your last Fire stone; Air lands anywhere; Spirit can only be placed where two of your own stones already guard it.
The goal is formation — patterns named for natural events and cultural lore. The Shake (three Fire stones, diagonal) is the first one learned. The Ridge (Spirit flanked by Earth on two sides) is worth five. The Breath (Spirit adjacent to three Air stones) is worth seven. The Confluence — one of each type, Spirit at center — scores fifteen. No one scores it without planning the whole board from placement one.
Complete a formation, score it. Break your opponent’s in-progress formation, score a point for the disruption. Highest score when all 64 squares are filled.
Controlled by the Rac'i — nobleman descendants whose ancestors were the first to build cities and work with alloys. They hold cardium knowledge. They built the Cellars.
From the ridge to the north, you can see it all. Everything Kai knew was small from there. Not diminished. Just the right size.
Maturity around 60 years. Characters live for centuries. Kai is 40 summers. Ace is 157. The Elder has been alive long enough that the number stops meaning much.
What does it do to ambition, grief, risk tolerance, when you measure your life in centuries?