Completed Discovering New Strategy

[Nya Winters]

Timestamp: 54th of Fall, 517 AV

The Kelvic had been roaming again. Nya grew restless when her mind was full and there was a lack of action to participate in. Syka tended to have more downtime than most places she’d lived, even in the peacefulness of Lormar Tower… so Nya explored when she had free time. The Maw always drew her. It was filled with mysterious buildings that had all fallen to ruin or tall towering structures that left the Kelvic wondering what they could possibly be for since they seemed to have no discernible purpose whatsoever to the Kelvics uneducated mind.

This time one building drew her. It was somewhat underground, but the scent of rotting paper and ruined moldy leather had her curiosity peaked. Nya followed the breezes carrying the scent quite a long time, periodically questioning them as to where they’d come from. “From the place of knowledge!” They’d always answer, laughing and drawing the Kelvic deeper into the forest where the stench was worse. Ruined stairs lead downward into the earth where Nya could now see what looked something like a glass ceiling – broken in a few places – resting on the forest floor. Was that right? No…. wouldn’t it be a glass floor? The sight confused the Kelvic until she made her way down the stairs that were all but crumbling under her human feet and let the breezes lead her into the darkness.

The stairway wound around, seemingly meandering to the depths with no real purpose in mind. The branches disappeared into the darkness, giving no clue as to where they lead. The splinter stairways broke off from the main one which was fairly wide having been very grand at one time. The splinter stairways were sometimes whole vanishing into nowhere. Sometimes though, they arched up and ended in broken stone that simply lead to nowhere since the stairs were so decayed that parts of the arches these smaller pathways supported had fallen and crumbled below.

Nya continued downward. Her sense of smell was acute and she was almost overwhelmed by the stench of decay. The stairway spilled out into what could only be considered a huge hall. Looking up, Nya could see that at one time the ceiling had been all glass or something similar to it. Parts of it, however, were shattered letting streaming sunlight through the ceiling which shone down on the ruin before her.

It was a library. Nya had never seen anything like it. Books filled every nook and cranny, some decayed so that only their empty spines remained standing tall. Some looked pristine. Ruined furniture was scattered throughout the entire place…. Remains of tables, chairs, even couches. Nya slipped quietly in, her mouth agape in wonder. She circled around, trying to look everywhere at once. There was so much to see…. so much to look at. The Kelvic stood there in abject wonder.

A quiet voice asked… “Welcome to the Library. What can I help you find?”

Nya whirled around. A woman stood there dressed in a uniform of some sort and looked the kelvic curiously over. There was nothing abnormal about the woman who was perhaps around her late twenties except for the fact that she was completely transparent and her torso blended off into a drift of earie fog.

“I… I’m Nya Winters. I was just looking around. The Settlement was quiet today so I was … exploring.” The woman, whom Nya thought likely a ghost, raised a translucent eyebrow.

“We have quite a lot in our stacks. If you were looking for something to do today, I could definitely suggest a book or two.” The librarian added, as if she herself didn’t understand the state of decay the library was in.

Nya looked around at the books. She was betting there wasn’t much left of most of them. The Librarian though, looked sad, even as she made the offer of books to Nya. The Kelvic wondered why. Nya was, for the moment, more concerned with Talia than she was standing in the remains of a pre-Valterian library. Now that she knew where it was, Nya could look through it at her leisure. But Talia, she might be a one time thing.

“Why do you look so sad?” Nya asked, tilting her head and sniffing the air. Talia narrowed her eyes at Nya and then something seemed to occur to her.

“I’m sad because I get very few visitors to my library. You are, in fact, the first in very long time. And you, I believe aren’t as human as I first thought. Are you one of Marcus’ creations?” The Librarian asked after having watched Nya’s movements a while. She had obviously decided that if Nya was going to question her, then she had the right to question Nya back.

“I… I’m not sure. I’m a Kelvic. Some say we were created by a man named Marcus Kelvic. Is that what you mean?” Nya answered, moving closer until she stood before the woman. Talia smiled.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. They call your kind Kelvics now? How fascinating. Things evolve for certain. So you are here to … occupy some time. Maybe… maybe you’d enjoy a game of checkers with me rather than a book. It is my favorite and I have not gotten to play it in such a very long time.” The ghostly woman said, beckoning Nya to come with her.

Nya followed the woman who lead her around the library to a quiet corner that was shadowed due to the roof being completely overgrown. A tree rose out of the broken up floor nearby and joined some of its fellows in trying to create an underground forest that thrived only on the trickle of sunlight through the transparent roof.

“What’s checkers?” Nya asked, watching as Talia patted a table that was still solid. Many of the tables were, in fact, though only a few were upright. This one was small, as if designed for only two people to sit at it intimately across from each other. On the top was carved a board, divided into a series of light and dark squares.

“It’s a game… of strategy. Lift the lid. The pieces should all be in there. Pick them up would you?” Talia said, tapping the table with her fingers until Nya complied. The Kelvic lifted the lid and found 24 circular pieces of wood, half dark and and half-light. They corresponded to the board carved into the table. It had 64 individual squares with half of them dark and half of them light. The Kelvic made a basket of her tunic hem and started gathering the pieces in her shirt. She shut the lid and looked at the board, not sure what to do with the colored circles.

“Don’t worry. I’ll teach you and it’s an easy game to play. First, I get half of the pieces…. either all the light or all the dark. You can pick which color you want. Once you pick which color, lay all of that color on the dark squares closest to you and lay all the other colored pieces on the dark squares closest to me.” Talia instructed.

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[Nya Winters]

Nya picked the dark for herself and laid out all the pieces as Talia instructed. She felt bad for the pale squares on the board. They got no pieces for themselves so far.

“Now, a player wins the game when the opponent cannot make a move. If you can’t make a move, it’s because all of the opponent's pieces have been captured or all of her pieces are blocked in.” Talia added, seemingly settling down in a ghostly chair opposite of where Nya stood. The Kelvic looked around and fetched a chair that looked more or less intact. She dragged it over and sat down on it mimicking what Talia was doing.

The Kelvic listened loosely as the ghost began to explain the rules of the game. “Now… you ‘ve heard the goal…. you capture all my pieces or block them in. You capture them by jumping them. I’ll show you….” Talia explained.

The woman took one of her paler pieces and started to demonstrate. “You can only move on the dark squares so that means you can only move diagonally or in what some call ‘kitty corner’ moves. You can’t move backwards. Instead you must always move forward. If your opponent is in the square you want to move too, adjacent to yours, you can ‘jump it’ to the next diagonal square, thus capturing your opponent’s piece. Set it aside on the edge of the board. If you are making a non-capturing move, that’s on without a jump, you can only move one square. A piece making a capturing move such as a jump leaps over the opponent’s piece and lands in a straight diagonal line on the other side of the square you jumped.” Talia explained, reaching out a ghostly finger to move her pieces and demonstrate.

Nya nodded. So far so good, she understood this game. “What comes next?” The Talderian Forest Cat asked, curious now and definitely occupied like she hadn’t been before.

“Okay, there’s a few other rules.” Talia answered, patiently and somewhat excitedly explaining the rest of them to Nya. “When a piece is captured, you have to take it off the board. Also, if a player is able to make a capture, the rule is you have to jump and make the capture. You can’t let the other player off and not capture the piece if it’s possible to capture it. But if there is more than one capture available, you are free to choose which piece you want to capture.” Talia continued, obviously getting more and more excited about playing. “When a piece reaches the furthest row from the player who controls that piece, it is ‘crowned’ and becomes a ‘king’ piece. That means one of the pieces that other player has captured is put back on the board on top of the king piece in a double stack. It becomes twice and high as the other pieces and can now move differently. Kings are limited to moving diagonally too, but may move forward and backwards. They can combine jumps in several directions… forward, back, etc…. on the same turn. Single pieces may shift directions diagonally during a multiple capture turn, but must always jump forward towards the opponent.” Talia finished, somewhat demonstrating each thing she said by moving the pieces on the board.

Nya was fascinated. She wasn’t sure what was more striking… the ghost or the new game. And she was indeed eager to play.

The Librarian leaned forward, reset all the pieces she’d moved, and then sat back. “You picked dark so you get to go first. Dark always goes first. Move one piece diagonally and let’s get this game started.” The ghost offered Nya a smile and the Kelvic reached forward to move her piece.

Talia moved accordingly too and before either knew it, they were immersed in the game. Nya picked up on the checkers fast… after all the rules were easy. Talia, however, beat her soundly the first game. The two women immediately set the board up, this time Nya taking the paler pieces for luck, and they played another round. Nya did better this time but still lost, realizing something as she played. Checkers were indeed about strategy and planning ahead, not so much about luck. It made it a game of the mind. Curious if Talia thought so, Nya quietly asked her. “Why do you love checkers as much as you obviously do. It’s a very fun game, I’ll admit that, but I’ve honestly never seen it before and I wonder why it didn’t survive the Valterian.” Nya said, watching Talia’s reaction closely.

“The Valterian?” Talia asked, once more lifting an eyebrow. It seemed that was the woman’s favorite expression.

Nya knew that if this woman was not aware of what the Valterian was, then there was a good chance she was from before and the knowledge would come as a shock to her. So rather than get the woman off track, she asked that she answer HER question first, then she’d tell her. “I’ll tell you what you want to know about it, but first tell me why you love checkers!” Nya insisted, loosing yet another game and allowing the ghost to set up another round.

Talia laughed. “Don’t want me to get sidetracked, do you? Okay…. Checkers…. It’s an excellent game for building critical thinking skills. It gives you all kinds of mental and social advantages because it helps adults keep extremely agile minds because it forces you to work on memory recall, concentration, judgment, decision making, problem solving, patience, self-control, time management, and even some battle strategy. And finally, I really love it because it can bring you closer to your family and friends. It gives you something to do at night and teaches you a lot about the people you are with.” Talia said, really showing her enthusiasm for the game.

Nya, of course, had a few questions. “How does it help you with memory recall?” Nya asked, knowing she’d be asking about some of the other things as well. Talia seemed to see this coming so she decided to elaborate on it all.

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[Nya Winters]

“Checkers has countless moves. I am not even sure anyone has ever calculated how many there are. So its impossible to know them all. But if you play it regularly, your memory is stretched because you develop a skillset… or a bunch of standard moves you and you alone like to use… because you remember the potential outcomes for each move and reuse the ones that work the best. A better memory? More wins. It’s self rewarding.” Talia added.

Nya nodded her understanding.

“IF you get distracted in checkers, then you don’t anticipate as many of your opponent’s moves and you can’t look ahead as far. And the more you win the more self-esteem you have. Checkers can really give you something to be proud of. And think about judgement. If you make a series of moves through trial and error…. Then you learn which moves result in a loss and which ones are more likely to end in a win. That helps you improve your ability to make sound judgements. In checkers, especially when the Kings are in play, you learn when its best to be aggressive and when a defensive stance is better. So you get a big improvement on strategy. It teaches you patience because you must control your demeanor and behavior or people won’t play with you. And finally, time management. I forgot to tell you there is a time limit that most people play with the game. They give the game a bell to be completed…. Thus it is a very fast game. You get five chimes between moves and each bell only contains 30 moves or so of effort. So you have to do all of this… all these things I’ve talked about… on a limited time.” Talia added. She paused to make sure Nya was done with her questions then made a gesture for Nya to tell her what she knew about the Valterrian.

Nya nodded. “Okay. Queen Kova and the King of Suvan were to be married around 517 years ago. For peace, or something…. Because there was a war. And the King killed his new bride on his wedding night. No one is sure why. One of the gods…. Ivak…. went incredibly crazy. Legend says he loved the Queen. He ruined the world. A lot of people died. There is a sea called The Suvan Sea in the middle of the world that wasn’t there before…. It’s a big crater.” Nya said softly, not sure how Talia was going to handle the information.

The Librarian grew still. She seemed to grow even more translucent. “So…. So that’s what happened.” She said quietly. “We didn’t know here. I don’t think anyone knew. Everyone just died. I didn’t though, not fully…. Because of the books. I wanted very badly to make sure they were alright. This was my dream job… my dream library.” She said thoughtfully.

“And now look at it?” Nya could actually see tears welling up in Talia’s eyes. The Kelvic leaned over, reaching across the chess board to touch Talia’s ghostly hand. “Yes… look at it. In a world where everything is gone…. most flattened and destroyed beyond all knowing…. Look at your library. Look at you. No one knows how to play checkers in this day and age…. But I do now. And because of you that bit of knowledge got passed forward. It survived the Valterrian. I’ll teach others… and I suspect there’s other things you can teach as well. This library might be in ruins, but there’s a lot here to be saved.” The Kelvic said, knowing she should tell The Founders and even Pulren about it immediately. These were the kinds of things they were looking for…. The kind of situations they treasured.

“I’ll bring others here to talk to you, Talia. Maybe some of them can help you restore some of the books.” Nya offered, knowing that should make the librarian feel better. It did. And she was glad that she made a difference to the other woman, even if she wasn’t really alive anymore. It might make a world a difference to the settlement too. Who knows what Talia could tell them. She might be wise in the way of checkers because it was her favorite game, but Nya wondered how much of the rest of the world the woman would remember.

“I should return home soon. I promised someone I would break a fast with them, but I will return again soon. This table is too big to take with me to teach them checkers, but I wonder if I could make a checkers game like this on leather with round leather pieces that I could carry with me around the Settlement.” Nya mused, seemingly asking Talia if she felt it would do the game justice.

The Librarian looked puzzled. “Settlement? You mean the city? I don’t see why not.” She replied, wondering why Nya used the wording she did when referring the city all around them. “You could actually play the game with stones in the sand, marking out lines…. That’s one of the beauties of the game.” Nya nodded, seeing Talia’s point.

“Thank you for teaching me Checkers. I will show it to other and maybe some of them will come play with you. It was very entertaining and all that you said it would.” Nya said graciously, meaning every word that she said.

The two said their goodbyes, with Nya starting back up the dilapidated stairway and Talia fading back into nothing. The Kelvic headed home to keep her dinner appointment and decided after her meal she would get started making a checker board. The Kelvic traveled home rapidly, jogging the whole way. She kept to the game trails and took the most direct route she could to speed up the time back to the beach. Her mind was on designing her own checker board, not on the fact that she’d just met a pre-Vaterrian ghost and found a lost library that might very well make all the difference in the world to Syka and its denizens.

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[Nya Winters]

Nya refrained from telling anyone about the ghost. She felt it was just too much information to really expect people to believe her. Instead she was focused on how to create her own checkerboard so she could teach some of the other settlers how to play.

The leather would have to be thick, yet thin enough to roll up. She’d have to stain it a deep dark color because the best way to make the lines on the board was by the groover which would carve out a light unstained groove that would serve as lines to make the actual checkerboard shape with. It wouldn’t be a complex project – no – because she could already see it taking shape in her head. She’d also need a little pouch and another little travel strap to tie the board up with when it was rolled and stored away or transported. She could even make the checker pieces themselves by stamping the circular pieces out of two different colors of leather. The hardest part, in all actuality, would be staining and grooving the board itself.

Nya gathered her supplies. She decided on using a piece of vegetable tanned leather about 12x12 inches for the board itself. She also picked out a piece of nicer leather – bridle leather – for the thong closure she’d make. She got out her dark dark brown dye and a little ag of powdered gloss.

For the tools she’d need, Nya retrieved her charcoal, straight edge, knife, dye rags, hole punches – the big ones – mallet, stitch groover, awl, her quilters square, her strap cutter and her cleansing towels. Once she had everything laid out, Nya was ready to get started. Her very first step was an easy one. She simply selected the leather and used her square to lay out a 12x12 selection. Then she neatly cut the leather until all she had left was the original square.

Measuring inward, Nya quickly outlined the 64 inner squares she’d need by using her charcoal and marking on the leather itself. Nya knew the stain wouldn’t be bothered by the charcoal nor would it smear the markings. And one she was ready to start grooving, the leather she peeled off would be exactly where the charcoal was marked. Nya worked steadily, not getting in a hurry and trying to do as nice of a job as she could. She used one inch measurements and marked out 8 rows and 8 columns of cubes. Around the outside she went a quarter of an inch further out and marked a second line so the whole outline of the checkerboard would be double outlined. Nya thought it was a nice touch.

Next she got out her stain, mixed the powder into alcohol, and began to appy it thickly. Nya gave it three coats until the leather was such a dark brown it looked almost black. She set it aside to let it dry and kept going on her other projects.

Taking a punch that was ¾ of an inch in diameter, Nya laid out two contrasting colors of leather that was just rough enough she didn’t want to use it as a solid piece. Taking first one leather – a dark cherry red stained one – she punched out twelve circles. They weren’t the wooden chips that Talia had shown her, but they would definitely do for her simpler less complex checkers board. Once she had the chips punched out, Nya took her edge beveler and carefully trimmed around each marker. Then, taking the wax block, she waxed them carefully and then used the burnisher to really shine up the edges. She didn’t want them to fray, look ratty, or be anything but professional. When she had all twelve cherry red leather pieces done, Nya got out her little jar of gloss, a spare rag, and gently dabbed gloss on each one and laid them flat to dry. She knew the gloss would stiffen them up as long as she didn’t work the tokens as they dried.

Setting those aside to dry, Nya took a pale almost white piece of leather and punched the same twelve holes out of it. She repeated the process she’d used on the first set. She even glossed them exactly like she had done to previous twelve. By that time, in the tropical heat, the previous set was dry on one side so Nya flipped them and glossed the back. They were already stiffening up and with the added gloss, not only would they be nice place markers for the checker board but they’d glide over the surface of the checkerboard to allow for smooth movement of the marker pieces.

Nya waited a few himes and turned the pale leather over. She glossed their off side as well, helping to stiffen the markers up. It worked like a dream. And by the time she was done with the markers, the stained leather was dry and she could flip it over and stain the back side.

Her charcoal lines had survived the stain. They were still there, though faint, and that was the next step she was going to tackle. Nya took a break, ran down to the beach for an early evening swim and was ready to get back to work when she got back up to her claim. The next part wasn’t going to be easy. So she procrastinated a bit and decided to burnish the edge of the 12x12 piece. That meant waxing it again and running the burnisher over the edge repeatedly until it had a nice rounded edge that was smooth to the touch.

Setting tat equipment aside, Nya knew she was going to get down and dirty and stress a little. The next part was tedious. She had to align the straight edge with her charcoal mark and then move it off to the side just slightly so the width of the groover running around the ruler would drag the groover straight down the middle of the charcoal mark. Grooving was traditionally for stitching or making a fold. However, in this case Nya was going to use the dug in line to basically carve away a portion of the deep dark brown leather in the checkerboard revealing a line of very pale brightly noticeable leather on the face of the piece. It was in this way Nya was going to use a steady hand and carve away the surface of the checkerboard in order to be able to lay the pieces out.

Once she had the outside edge grooved on all four sides – including making the corners neat – Nya moved her ruler in one inch and made another vertical groove creating another line. She continued thusly across the board until the larger square was bisected eight times. Then she gave the checkerboard a half turn at 90 degrees and repeated the process. This left the dark brown leather with a large square carved into it that was then broken down into 64 more squares. When Nya was done she realized one important mistake. All the squares were one color!

That’s not how chessboards worked, the Kelvic thought, studying the diagram to figure out how best she was going to deal with this. She couldn’t take away stain… nor would skiving look good. There was no way to thin the lather until it was not the dark colored stain. And she’d have to do it 32 times… something she wasn’t willing to do.

Nya studied it, at a loss how to fix it, until the thought came to her. The board was very decorative. Adding a few more decorations to it wouldn’t hurt it would it? She hasn’t used thick enough leather to stamp patterns into, nor did she think more stain would change any color. Instead she’d have to somehow take away to get a point across that those squares were different. The Kelvic crossed her arms, lost deep in thought. Then she almost immediately laughed because she had provided her own answer. Crosses!

Nya would draw an X through each of the ‘white’ squares, as if forbidding a player to use them. It would take a lot more grooving, but it would be worth it. Excitedly, Nya grabbed her straight edge and her groover, lined up the straight edge across the top right square’s corners and neatly grooved an X through the square.

If anything, it made the board look even more decorative. Nya was proud of the work she’d done.

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[Nya Winters]

By this time the Kelvic was definitely seeing some fruits to her labor ripening. The chessboard as is was totally playable. Looking at it, however, Nya wanted more. She dug around in her Leatherworking kit until she found the strap cutter and pulled it out. The board needed a thong closure. She started on this by taking the strap cutter, setting it to a ¼ inch wide and cutting a strap that was at least 24 inches long. She knotted it at one end, then cut an angle on the other end so the strap ended in a point.

Next, she went back to the game board and measured exactly halfway down to the center and off to the right side. There, she took a number 7 punch and smacked it hard with her mallet to punch a hole through the piece. Next she took all the stiffened game pieces out and got to work with her mallet. She punched a hole in each and every one of them, laughing at her own cleverness. The holes were neatly cleaned with a beveler until she was satisfied they were still absolutely perfect. The she threaded the leather thong closure through the main hole in the game board and pulled at it until the knot was snug. Then, taking the excess thong, she threaded all the game pieces onto the strap so they laid neatly behind the board. Then, all in one motion, she rolled up the board suddenly and neatly trapping the game pieces inside the roll. The knot through the game board acted as a stopper. She then looped the thong around the rolled leather once, tucking its end inside the roll. She knew she had a real winner then. Nya was holding a compact portable game that anyone could play that would help the whole settlement come together. And truthfully? It hadn’t been that hard. It had taken her about four hours – most of that stain drying time – to manufacture the board.

Nya patted the rolled up game, knowing she’d head to town tomorrow and teach everyone checkers, right after she got up with the sun and began to craft new boards. She wanted to have at least a half dozen for sale at the mercantile so that when people were first interested, they could actually buy themselves a board rather than wait for the chance to see Nya up in The Commons with her own. And so that’s what Nya did. She woke up bright and early. She then checked out all her leather, selected the few pieces that would work, and precut six 12x12 squares. She often thought about mass producing items for the mercantile, but they really didn’t need anything in quantity unless it was belts and maybe some leather pants covers to add thickness to ones drawers when hiking around. They sold plenty of those. But Nya was far more interested in providing games. So she mixed a big batch of dark stain and set about staining each and every square while she could.

Next she punched out twelve light colored pieces for each of the six boards and then punched out six more sets of twelve of the colored markers. The only problem was that Nya hadn’t marked them yet. It was one of the first things she wanted to get started – her gloss got mixed up and she quickly and carefully glossed every piece, light or dark after punching and grooving their inside holes. Once grooved and glossed, Nya went ahead and started the next step. The edges needed to be grooved and burnished.

She grooved them all at the same time, marking each line as she went. Nya worked in the summer sun, rolling back the tent canvas that usually protected her work station that was nothing more than a trio of rocks scrounged up when the tide was low and set up to work on. In fact, the sun was getting so hot her wax block was going a bit soft. Nya used it anyhow. She still waxed the edges, then ran the burnisher around each piece until it looked finished. Not wanting to scrimp on the looks, the Kelvic paid attention to the finishing details and the craftsmanship as she went.

Using her strap cutter, Nya went ahead and cut six straps as thick as the thong she’d need to tie the map into a roll. She knotted the ends of them and cut off the other ends to a point. At this stage she went back to her groover and took a couple of bells to cut all the neat grooves into the dark stained leather to outline the board and its contrasting squares. Then, she went over it again with the crossing angles, marking out the squares that couldn’t be used. Nya carefully embellished the board margins – over and over again – until they were brightly contrasted lines and decorated in a way that was appealing to both men and women.

Next, Nya threaded the leather closure, and then strung all the game pieces along the thong so they tucked neatly inside it as she rolled the piece. Finally, she snugged the rolls tight, looping off the thong closure, and setting aside her market wares for later that day.

The Kelvic was enormously pleased to have more things to sell at the mercantile… soon, very soon, she’d be ready to open her own store. It would bring her more money, but Nya wondered if in the long run it wouldn’t cost her more in terms of times being stuck in the shop. There were worse cases, of course, and worse places to get stuck. She just didn’t’ want to be tied down all the time to a store that needed sales for her to eat.

It was awkward and something she didn’t pretend to understand. Nya had a need to move and move fast if she wanted too. That was why she loved living in a large tent. It could be pulled down and moved anytime she wanted too. The furniture inside it was all things she’d made and could make again…. So somewhere back in her mind she knew she could leave anytime. Having a home and a permanent place to lay her head was an all but foreign concept.

Shaking off the gloom, Nya gathered the rolls of her new creation and went to see Mathias to find out if her new boss truly enjoy a few games. Nya was certain she could remember all the rules, and later, after the fun had died down and everyone would mingle around moments before breaking up and heading home, she’d point out that she left a bunch of the new chessboards at the mercantile and they were for sale for cheap.

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