Relic of the Second City
Cards and Paints play a game, and talk about the Second City.
Paints had never met Cards before.
Cards was interesting, a master that hadn’t always been. He presides over games of all types, but was very fond of cards; after all, a card game has the power to create a lot of change. He was seated at a table, hunched over… something. Something painted a lovely blue. Paints crossed the room in a flash, barreling into the older curator.
“What’s that? It's such a delightsome blue,” Paints chirps, burrowing its head forward to get a better look. Cards is looking over a slim blue box, with thirty squares carved on top; some squares are also marked with intricate designs. “It’s a game,” comes Cards’ rough voice, as he gently picks Paints up and sets it next to himself.
“It is called Senet. From the time of the second city,” Cards continues. “My father deals in antiques, as you know. He was given this by the Duchess, for all he’s done for the cats.” Paints nods, watching quietly as Cards slides the compartment of the box open to retrieve the tokens. “It describes their idea of what happens to the soul after death. The tokens are lions and jackals.” He holds up one of each token, one an obsidian jackal and the other an ivory lion. “They alternate on the first row. You have to move them in order, they can’t jump over each other.”
“It would be hard for a jackal to jump over a lion,” Paints chirps, interrupting Cards’ explanation. Cards laughs, pausing where he had been setting the pieces up. “Yes, it would. Well, when you’ve gotten it set up, the jackals move first. You throw these sticks to calculate movement,” Cards continues, holding out the four marked stick-dice. “One marked side is one move, two is two moves, three is three moves, four is four moves, none is five. On any roll but two or three, you can roll again.” Paints nods, concentrating very hard on remembering this, as Cards demonstrates the types of rolls.
“One piece per square, but if you land on an opposing piece, you capture it and it goes back to where your piece was,” Cards continues, moving two delicately carved pieces around, so the jackal has a lead on the lions. “Two of the same color pieces prevents a capture. If you roll high enough, you can jump over them anyway.” Paints nods again, before pointing a little claw at one of the marked houses. “What do these picturographs mean?” it asks, shoving its face too close to the board in an attempt to read them. “They are not correspondence sigils. The board would explode.”
Cards gently nudges Paints back, so he has room to point out the exact symbols. “They’re hieroglyphs. That was the written language of the second city, Amarna. Square 15 is the house of rebirth, where pieces are sent back to from the house of waters.” He points to the square with an ankh. “26 is the house of happiness or rejuvenation, it’s a mandatory square, as well as a safe spot where you can’t be captured.” Next, he points to a square marked with wavy lines. “This is 27, the house of waters. If you land here, the piece must either be returned to 15, or all the way to the start. Depending on the variant, of course. It’s not a square you want to land on. It represents the waters of chaos.” Cards demonstrates this with a lion, sending it back to the safety of the house of rebirth.
“In order to take pieces off, and to win, all your pieces must be in the last row. You also need to roll exactly to take them off. The first player to get all their pieces off the board, wins. Understood?” Cards looks to Paints again. It frowns, peering at the board for a moment, before jabbing at it again with its claw.
“What about these marks?” it asks, pointing to the second-to-last two houses. Cards looks down, before sighing. “Those are the house of three truths, and the house of re-atoum. Three truths requires you to roll a three to leave, and re-atoum requires a two. Not all variations use this, however. It’ll be easier for you to learn without playing with those as rules. Once you get better, we can add them. Only if you like, of course.”
Paints hums loudly, before nodding. “That makes enough sense, I think. Can we play now?” Cards barks out a sharp, nearly human laugh. “Of course. Don’t be afraid to ask about rules again, alright? It’s a game, for fun. Not like the Marvelous.”
Paints and Cards played for a few hours that day, trading off sides after Paints understood it well enough. It occasionally forced the game to a grinding halt, when it forgot key pieces of the game’s rules and Cards slowly re-explained, never once growing cross with the younger Curator. He knew what it was like to have a relative with memory problems; his other father, Isa, had a mind like a broken sieve. Dying and coming back does that, to someone who had never left the Surface before coming to the Neath. Cards had grown up helping his father remember even the simplest of things, and it’s not like games were that much of an effort to care about for him. After all, games were his purview.
Paints was especially enamored with the myths surrounding the game, looking to Cards with wide eyes and demanding he explain. “The Egyptians believe that once we die, parts of us travel to the otherworld. Our path there is determined by our status, but great leaders travel there by boat. Their Judgement, Ra, travels through the underworld in a boat, and they believed great leaders were part of this Judgement, and traveled the same way. They would send them off with boats of all sizes, to use in their journey. Lesser people used coffins, but the leaders could use those as well, if they so chose. The coffin was guided by Nut, who is like Storm, speaking in ways most cannot hear.
Once they arrive in the Hall of Maat, they will be judged. They must name all the Assessors, and recite the sins they did not commit while alive. Once this is done, they are presented with a scale.
A jackal headed creature called Anubis weighted their heart against a feather of Maat, and if it was equal, the ibis headed creature Thoth records it and sends the deceased onward, toward rebirth.”
“And what if the feather was lighter, Cards?”
“If the heart is heavier, it is devoured by a horrible beast called Ammit, never to be seen again. It is removed from existence entirely. People who were deemed too horrible to be reborn have their heads removed, severing the parts of them needed to make it to the afterlife, which also erases them.”
The pair of them played Senet often, hidden away from the other Masters, and their hatred of the second city. It allowed the two… youngest Masters to bond, even if it was as tenuous as over a city neither of them had seen. For Paints, it was the artistry of the board, the memory stored within the playing and rules. Cards loved it for the game, of course.
Eventually, Cards convinced Paints to gamble, a little. He knew that Paints coveted the game board and wanted one of its own, but that charity is a sin. Cards decided to bet Paints that if it won, he would procure a board especially for it.
Cards ended up rigging the game, he was still partially human, after all. It was in his nature to want to be generous to someone he saw as a younger sibling. And he knew Paints would adore the game board he had already commissioned for it.