Game Play
Authors: Kevin J Anderson
GamePlay
Gamearth 02
by Kevin J. Anderson
Copyright (c)1989
by Kevin J. Anderson
Fictionwise
www.Fictionwise.com
Science Fiction
To Ginger LaJeunesse
(Charles Dickens
said it best ... )
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have
offered encouragement and comments during the writing of this book. I would
like to thank especially the members of my writers workshop for critiquing
above and beyond the call of duty: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Michael C. Berch, Clare
Bell, M. Coleman Easton, Lori Ann White, Gary Shockley, and Avis Minger. I also
express my appreciation to Chuck Beason, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Doug
Beason ... for a whole bunch of things.
"Always
remember this: every character on Gamearth was created by the Outsiders. We
exist solely for the amusement of those who Play our world. Our ambitions, our
concerns mean nothing
―
everything is determined by the roll of
the dice."
―
The Book of
Rules
PROLOGUE*
Melanie blew warm
breath against the map of Gamearth, trying to make the paint dry faster. She
didn't want the other players to see what she had changed. David would probably
call it cheating
―
but their game would keep playing itself, no
matter what they did.
Melanie wanted to
win.
A shoebox of
acrylic paints lay on the card table in the study. Some of the colors had dried
up, with lids cemented by hardened paint. But the bottle of deep forest green
had some sluggish drops left at the bottom.
The map's hexagons
of terrain were bright and vivid colors, like some lost Arabian mosaic. They
represented mountains, forests, seas, deserts.
Melanie pulled a
strand of long brown hair behind her left ear and blew again on the wet paint.
She looked at where the mysterious "Rulewoman" supposedly lived on
the map, in one of the forest-terrain hexes deep in the south. The complexity,
the patterns of the map were dizzying.
Gamearth
―
they had created it as a fantasy world setting for a role-playing game, she and
Tyrone, Scott, and David. The four of them played there, embarking on imaginary
adventures into imaginary lands every Sunday night for the past two years.
Melanie had painted
the map herself, acrylics on a smooth sheet of wood, using rulers and
protractors to lay down the precise grid of hex-lines between sections of
terrain. No store-bought map kit would do for
their
world
―
it had to be something personal, something she created herself.
Gamearth needed to
be different from all the other worlds available in simple boxed adventures.
Melanie and the
others put a great deal of themselves into Gamearth.
Perhaps too much.
But times changed,
and the Game went on and on. One entire race of characters, the Sorcerers,
departed from the world in a magical Transition that turned all of them into
six powerful Spirits: three white Earthspirits and three black Deathspirits.
David wanted to end
the Game there. He said it wasn't fun anymore. But Melanie and the others
outvoted David, and so they kept playing. David could not leave them. The Game
had too much of a hold on all of them. Instead, he made an attempt to destroy
the world, but he had been thwarted.
Now, though, David
had finally made up his mind
―
if the others would not let him
quit, then he would create a new monster, Scartaris, to devastate the entire
map and suck every spark of life dry.
That would end the
Game once and for all.
But Melanie planned
on stopping him. They both had to play by the rules
―
but rules
could be advantageous, especially if you bent them a little....
Melanie carried the
altered map out of her father's study. She could hardly tell where she had
repainted the one hexagon. They would not notice, since she had not changed the
terrain type, in which case she could argue -as Scott would
―
that
she hadn't changed anything relevant anyway. But she had
placed something
there
, under the paint, into the world of Gamearth.
She didn't know if
it would work, if her world could ever have any true connection with the
characters
inside
Gamearth. But this had to be the way, if anything. It
had to be.
Somehow during
their last gaming session she managed to communicate to her characters about
the growing threat of Scartaris in David's designated section of the map. Her
three characters, Delrael the fighter, his scholarly cousin Vailret, and the
half-Sorcerer Bryl, had tried to protect their land from Scartaris by creating
a giant barrier river that severed the eastern half of the map from the rest.
But now she knew,
as did her characters, that the Barrier River would not stop David's creature.
It would only trap half the inhabitants of Gamearth on the wrong side
―
with the growing threat of Scartaris.
She stared at the
blue line of hexagons that indicated the river slicing down the map. It still
gave her shivers to think about it. Gamearth showed its own power the previous
week, during their last gaming session.
This had become
much more than a game to all of them.
In their imaginary
adventure, the new river came surging through a channel from the Northern Sea
to pour across the plains
―
and as the four players watched,
Melanie's painted map reflected the change all by itself.
Hexagons of forest,
grassland, and swamp terrain turned
blue
, right in front of their eyes.
Scott, the "rational" one, had been amazed and terrified, unable to
hint at an explanation.
But Melanie knew
the explanation. It was so simple. After being steeped in the gaming fantasy as
dictated by the rules, Gamearth had developed its own magic.
And Gamearth was
not going to accept its destruction without a fight.
If she could do
anything to help, even if it meant stretching the rules a bit behind the other
players' backs, then Melanie felt obligated to do so.
After all, not many
people ever had the opportunity to save a world, not even an imaginary one.
Satisfied that the
new paint had dried, Melanie carried the map board out to the kitchen and
started to prepare herself for the Game. The future of her world would be in
the roll of the dice.
ENROD'S CROSSING
"Something is
terribly wrong here. My own city of Taire has succumbed.
People I have known
for years act strangely. At times even I do not know what I have done or where
I have been.
"And the
untainted lands to the west have cut themselves off from us with a great river.
We are trapped and alone. We have been sacrificed. They didn't even give us a
chance."
―
Enrod,
Annals
of Taire
, final entry
The Sentinel Enrod
stood on the eastern shore of the Barrier River. The black hex-line that
separated the water from overhanging willows and reeds extended razor sharp as
far as he could see, north and south.
Off in the
distance, across the impassable expanse of water, he could see the green
rolling line of forest terrain, lush and healthy. Farther north Enrod could see
the broad expanse of a hexagon of grassland. All green, all growing, safe and
protected from the evil to the east.
Enrod gritted his
teeth. His hand squeezed the eight-sided ruby, the Fire Stone, he had carried
all the way from Taire. The corners of the gem dug into the skin of his palm.
Enrod paid no attention to the pain. He was the last remaining full-blooded
Sorcerer male on Gamearth, now that Sardun was gone. Enrod had used his
reserves of magic to keep himself healthy and relatively young-looking. But now
the haunted weight of too many years shone out from his eyes.
He looked at the
green forest terrain across the River. His eyes widened and turned bright. The
terrain would not stay green for long. Alien tendrils crept up within him,
sliding along his spine, inside his skull, like some invading leech. Visions of
fire and sorcerous destruction marched across his imagination.
Enrod's dark hair
had been tangled in the long journey across the map, but he paid no attention
to it. Whenever he thought of something else, any other distraction, he felt
sharp pain in his head. It would all be better once he brought destruction to
the other side of the River, once he showed
them
what it was like in his
city of Taire.
Threads of Sorcerer
blood whipped through his veins like snakes, whispering to him constantly:
Use
the power! Show the Stronghold that they cannot cut themselves off and leave
the rest of Gamearth doomed.
They thought they
were so safe, so protected. A human fighter character named Delrael had created
the River to keep Enrod out. To keep all the Tairans out. To keep every living
thing in the East away from the sanctuary of the untouched forests, the
protected lands.
Enrod felt trapped
and compelled. It was appalling what they had done.
The memory made his
thoughts become dark, uncontrolled. He had to destroy the Stronghold. Destroy
them. Wash the land in flames. Explosions. Devastation.
He shook his head.
The buzzing returned, making it hard for him to concentrate. His feet were
blistered and bloodied from the long journey. But he couldn't quite remember traveling
to get there. Days and days seemed like a blur of hex-lines, changing terrain,
vast distances.
He kept losing
track of time. It used to bother him, but it happened so often now. He would
blink and find himself someplace, or realize he had been doing something, that
he just didn't recall. A warm, pulsing blackness filled the empty spots in his
memory.
Something was wrong
in his city of Taire, too. He thought of his home, the streets, the buildings,
the other people, all they had worked for.
Something was
wrong!
Something ... from
the east. Dark and full of power, growing, devouring. Something deadly from
Outside. Ages ago the same thing had happened, a growing force planted by one
of the Outsiders just after the Transition
―
Gamearth would have
ended then, except for the miraculous appearance of the Stranger Unlooked-For
who had saved them all.
Now they needed
another miracle.
The buzzing in
Enrod's head convinced him that everything could be fixed if he would just
devastate the land around the Stronghold. The human characters Delrael and
Vailret, and the traitorous half-Sorcerer Bryl, had caused all the problems on
Gamearth by creating the Barrier River.
Enrod could not
question that thought or the pain and confusion would start again.
Taire had suffered
enough in its history. They build the city in terrain that had endured the
worst battles of the Sorcerer wars. The land itself was desolated, hexagon
after hexagon turned into wasteland, desert.
The Wars had ended
long ago. The two warring factions of Sorcerers made their peace and then
embarked on the Transition, turning themselves into six ethereal Spirits who
then ignored all the wreckage they had caused.
But young Enrod had
not joined the rest of his race in the Transition.
An idealist then,
he stayed behind because the Sorcerers had done too much damage to Gamearth.
They could not simply go away without making amends, without trying to help the
other characters survive the aftermath.
Enrod
vowed to make amends.
He
lived in Taire, in the middle of the worst devastation.
He
wanted to
heal the land, to bring it back to what it had been.
The six Spirits
held the power to make everything right again with little more than a gesture,
if they cared ... but they too disappointed him.
After the
Transition, the Spirits vanished completely, gone on to whatever interested
them without a thought for everything they left behind. They had not shown
themselves in the two centuries since.