call me maybe

[from_scratch]

Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.

He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -

with the Joker (kappa)

with Ripper (kappa)

with Darren (Aestrix)

with Minus (kappa)

with Emma (Marri)

with Facility 3141592 (armokGoB)

with the admin (kappa)

with Jarvis (kappa, Aestrix)

with Miles (kappa)

with Hank (Nemo)

Comments

[queensidecastle]

"Interesting chess sets are made of unusual materials, or have pieces in weird shapes," she says. "I collect them. They're magically useful. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but maybe I just don't know enough about the kinds of trouble you're planning to get into while you're here."

[from_scratch]

"I am planning to be constructive and helpful on large scales, which will reportedly attract all sorts of ire on top of the racism."

[queensidecastle]

"Gimme a nice chess set or two and I'll cast some protection spells that should help with that," says Chris. "As a bonus, you'll get to see me cast spells, which should be interesting and informative."

[from_scratch]

"Sure. Requests or should I make stuff up?"

[queensidecastle]

"Oh, make stuff up, that sounds much more fun."

[from_scratch]

"Sure." He nibbles on his lip thoughtfully while looking for a good place to put a chess set.

[queensidecastle]

There's a mostly empty coffee table right over there in the living room!

[from_scratch]

And now on that coffee table is a chessboard with squares in sardonyx and malachite, with the banding neatly matching up at the borders between them, and pieces made of emerald and ruby with normal chess-style tops on twisted spiraly bases that make them resemble glass more than precious jewels.

[queensidecastle]

"Nice," says Chris approvingly.

[from_scratch]

"Christmasy," says Cam. "Spells?"

[queensidecastle]

"Spells," she agrees. "C'mon upstairs."

[from_scratch]

Cam follows her upstairs.

[queensidecastle]

As she ascends, she asks over her shoulder, "If you were a chess piece, which one would you be and why?"

[from_scratch]

"My first instinct is 'queen, because they're obviously the best', my second instinct is to wonder how this information is supposed to be used so I can give a less kneejerk reply?"

[queensidecastle]

"A lot of my magic, and in particular my protection magic, is chess-themed. Spell participants and sometimes spell targets are represented by chess pieces. I make an excellent rook; James tends to take king and queen simultaneously, but she can do either one separately just fine, and she's also been known to handle the occasional knight if a spell called for it. There's a lot of leeway in constructing the metaphors, but certain people still usually have more affinity for certain pieces than others. I could see you as a queen. Jamie, is he a queen?"

[neverbeatme]

"He's pretty queenly," says James, following up the stairs behind them. "You could probably shoehorn him into knight if you had to. Not rook. Maybe bishop, if you wanted a specific bishop metaphor. I think he might be too old for pawn. King is iffy."

[from_scratch]

"I'm a hundred seventy-two. Pawn is age-limited?"

[neverbeatme]

"It's not strictly age-limited, but from what I've gathered just idly guessing the past and present chess affiliations of people I've met, it seems like some people go through a pawn phase early on and then grow out of it sometime between late teens and early thirties. When I consider whether or not you'd make a good pawn, I get a bit of an ex-pawn vibe."

[from_scratch]

"Ex-pawn. Huh. What are good pawns like?"

[neverbeatme]

"Flexible, versatile. Someone with a lot of unrealized potential, or someone who can take on a variety of different aspects or roles to fit the situation," says James. "I can do pawn in a pinch, but it's by no means my natural piece, I'm way more of a king/queen split than anything else."

[queensidecastle]

"A pawn can also represent limitations or weaknesses, but usually conditional or temporary ones," says Chris. "They're also a useful piece to figure out somebody's affiliations - a pawn promotion will tell you whether you're more of a rook, knight, bishop, or queen. And usually hint if you're a better pawn or king than any of those." She opens a door some distance down the hall from the top of the stairs, and here they are in... a room!

It's quite a room.

The wall opposite the door is mostly one huge window, with a narrowish table running the whole length of the wall just under the point where the window ends. The table holds a number of different boxes in varying materials and sizes, some open, some closed; the open ones contain mostly tumbled rocks sorted neatly into compartments, but one has a row of quartz crystals in a tray and one has a jumble of assorted chess pieces. There are also several smallish cabinets and chests-of-drawers lined up under the table.

Between the table and the door, the floor of the room is covered in an intricate asymmetrical pattern of different kinds of wood - squares and circles and long strips and every conceivable kind of triangle, in varying sizes, pieced together into a complex design. There is order in the chaos, but it's impossible to pick out a single unifying pattern; look long enough, and you can see a dozen different rings or squares or hexagons or octagons or snowflakes formed in the angular mosaic. The only point of commonality is that all of the different figures center on about the same point, right in the middle of the room.

[from_scratch]

"This is a very cool floor," comments Cam. "I'm assuming it's not just aesthetics."

[queensidecastle]

"You assume correctly," says Chris. "I'm glad you like it. It was an enormous hassle to design and install. But with this, depending on component placement, I can do almost any geometric arrangement I can think of without having to draw and erase every time."

She goes over to the table and starts opening and closing boxes, picking out handfuls of this or that stone, and muttering to herself. "Agate, tourmaline, tiger's eye, diamond... Hmm, while I have someone here who can generate arbitrary chess sets, might as well take advantage." She puts down the handful of smooth tiger's eye stones she's holding and turns to Cam. "Feel like designing yourself a chess set? One side's pieces diamond, the other side black tourmaline. Make the king and queen designs different between each side, and design the diamond queen as something you particularly like or identify with. Optionally, give the black queen a sword somehow, and if you do that then make sure the black king also has a crown."

[from_scratch]

"I can do that, can you tell me why?"

[queensidecastle]

"Usually I have to fit the metaphors I'm planning to my available chess pieces. I'd give you a white queen and James the black king and queen from the same set, and myself all four rooks, and I'd just have to pick the set that came closest to what I'm aiming for. But since I have the option, I might as well fit the chess pieces to the metaphors instead. Jamie's taking queen-as-sword and king-as-crown; you're taking queen but I'm not planning the exact aspect in advance, so the important thing is for your queen to be something that resonates with you. Oh, and I didn't specify, but it also helps if my rooks are either the traditional turret shape, or something else with a stone-walls motif. That's my usual rook aspect. But it's less important to include that than to get the rest of it."