The Players
A Coterie of the Fraternity of Order
Lorill’s been the head of the Bureau of Strategic Tournaments in the Guvners for nearly fourteen years. In that time, he and his staff have stumbled across some great darks. They reckon that the whole multiverse is just a game, pure and simple. Of course, any game has its rules (or else it’d be unplayable), so they’re self-assigned mission is to figure out what the rules are. Then they’ll know how to follow, or more importantly, avoid ’em.
Players who begin to grasp the dark often come to same terrifying conclusion: if the multiverse is a game then are they themselves pawns? Do they control their own destinies? Chess pieces certainly don’t. Could this analogy be drawn to themselves? Do the creatures that reside in the multiverse have a free will, or is there every action being decided upon by some outside observer; some ‘Great Player’? Does the multiverse only exist for the pleasure of more powerful creatures than themselves? Is there a referee to catch cheaters and make sure the rules aren’t broken, and what happens when they are? What sort of twisted mentality would play games with reality?
However, these doubts are of less importance to the Players than finding the rules themselves. It’s vital to figure out what they are, then the Players will be able to play properly, for themselves. After all, life might just be a game, but it’s real too, so it’s important that you play as hard as you can!
The Law of Quantisation is the first rule, or rather, observation, that the Players have made. It’s a curious and inexplicable one at that. With careful measurements, surveys and calculations, they’ve ascertained that the aptitudes or mortals bear certain quantised characteristics. In plain language, that means it’s possible to rank the abilities of mortals by whole numbers. The Players reckon you can be ‘this’ strong, or ‘that’ little bit stronger, but you can’t have a strength in between. Similarly, you can be this agile or that agile, but not halfway.
They really don’t understand this strange law of nature yet, but they’ve been busy ranking all the aptitudes and statistics of every creature they can get their hands upon. So far they’ve found six, but there’s no telling where this might end.
In a similar vein, observation of many hundreds of combats has revealed that no matter how proficient a warrior is, he can never successfully hit an enemy more than 95% of the time. The reason for this peculiar occurrence is completely unknown, but the Players bet its got something to do with the Rules…
Most of the other Guvners scoff at the barmy notions of the Players. Of course they’ve got free wills! Nobody imagines them or controls their lives! That sort of talk sounds more like the Signers that the Guvners. Still, for all the bluster, more than one Guvner has had doubts. Could they really all be just part of a game?
Source: Jon Winter-Holt, mimir.net
