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]

"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."

[from_scratch]

"And what, exactly, are you planning to cast on me with this chess set?" Cam asks.

[queensidecastle]

"General protection spell, with focuses on luck and magic. Bad things become less likely to happen to you, and anyone trying hostile magic on you gets stonewalled unless they're powerful enough to break through the spell. Which hasn't happened yet, although I haven't gone up against any really big players, so I'm not going to give a guarantee. You won't notice a difference in daily life unless you're the sort of person who stubs your toe a lot - little accidents like that will get less frequent. And if someone does break the spell, the break itself won't do you any harm on top of whatever nastiness they're getting through with. Might throw some alarming special effects, but that's it."

[from_scratch]

"Does this remain the best spell you have in the arsenal if I tell you that at least under conventional circumstances I am physically indestructible? Not invulnerable, just indestructible."

[queensidecastle]

"Yeah. It's not a direct physical protection. Those are harder and less effective, and I figured that if you don't know much about local magic, protecting you from it was probably a higher priority than protecting you from unexpected stabbing."

[neverbeatme]

"I am moderately protected from unexpected stabbing," volunteers James.

[from_scratch]

"Okay. How big do you want the pieces, and do you want a board to match or are you just using your fancy floor?"

[queensidecastle]

"Anything in the standard size range should do it, and I don't need a board but it is helpful to have the full set available even if we aren't using all the pieces. Standard sizing usually puts the kings between three-and-three-quarters and four inches tall," she adds, "in case you didn't know that off the top of your head like us chess nerds. Queen is next tallest, conventionally followed by bishop, knight, rook, and pawn in that order."

[from_scratch]

"Okay." Cam taps his chin, then makes a chess set, no board, laid out on the floor.

The pawns on each side are little smoothly-stylized-to-the-point-of-androgyny fairies; the diamond side have dragonfly wings and the tourmaline side have butterfly wings, each fairy slightly different in pose and shape.

The rooks are traditional crenelated castle turrets, with the tourmaline side flying little triangle flags and the diamond flying square ones. The bishops and knights he also renders as buildings, after a fashion - little cathedrals for the diamond bishops and little mosques for the tourmaline bishops, little spaceships for each side's knights on different sides. The queens and kings are demons on his side and angels on the other, but, like the fairies, have no detail to their features beyond distinguishing wing types. Each king sits in a tall throne, wings trailing over the sides, and each queen holds an implement and stands on her own feet, wings held tense as though preparing for takeoff. On the black side the queen has a sword held ready to slash, and wears a less elaborate crown than her king. On the diamond side the queen is holding what appears to be a large fountain pen, ready to stab, and she has a fancier crown than her king.

"How's that?"

[queensidecastle]

"Very nice," says Chris. "All right. Jamie, gimme a square. Focus east, white queen front and center, white rooks in line, king north, queen south, black rooks with their monarchs. You'll be sitting anchor. Those are some interesting pawns; I think I'll use them in the circle. But the knights and bishops can go on the table."

[neverbeatme]

"Got it," says James. She proceeds to lay out the major chess pieces on the floor according to Chris's specifications. Cam's diamond queen stands close to the middle of the room, facing the window; the white rooks stand one in front of her and one behind, with the one in front about two feet away and the one behind more like six, putting them about equally distant from the centre of the floor pattern. The tourmaline king stands on the queen's left, the tourmaline queen on her right, each with a black rook in front of them; together, the four rooks form a square centered on the middle of the room. She leaves the fairy pawns clustered between the square and the window, but collects knights, bishops, and spare king to put them all on the long table.