“Dragonchess” is the word used to describe the game “Dragons vs. Giants” and is a game representing the clash of the earliest races of the world. When dragons were young, giants were building kingdoms. The giants empire was laid low by war with the dragons, and their gods abandoned them in shame. Since dragons have an advantage and almost always win, the game is called Dragonchess.
The pieces of the giant side are arranged by the ordening, and dragons by power and alignment. Each piece moves depending on power, and the moves are unique (as in the giants have different moves than the dragons). The dragons always move first and often have an advantage. Playing as the giants is harder, and the usual way to ‘win’ as the giants is to kill as many dragons as possible and make the draconic victory as costly as possible. A ‘game’ of Dragonchess is actually two games, each player playing each side till victory, and the results of each game determining the victor.
The giants have a cast system. The greatest hill giant is less than the least stone giant
and so on. 'The ordening' the giants call it. A giant, playing this game, would never let a frost giant 'piece' die to save a stone giant 'piece' because stone giants are lesser. It’s too ingrained in them. The way Somon and other humans play, sometimes a sacrifice has to be made of a higher piece to get a lower piece with the right kind of movement/ability into a good position.
Most human players don’t realize that “The Ordening” is an important and intrinsic part of actual giant culture, they just think of it as a way to value pieces on the game board, like the ‘power’ of the dragon pieces.
Somon thinks outside of the ordening. He thinks in cold blooded terms of what needs to happen to win, what pieces need to be where in order to win, like in real-life chess, you know the points values and you don't make bad trades. Later on in learning real-life chess, as you try out new tactics, sometimes you make a bad trade early to get a better trade later.
The ordening is like the point value in chess. If you play where you keep point values in mind and don't make bad trades, you can still do pretty well. Most human players realize the ordening issue, and humans are good at playing outside the ordening. Somon is an 'okay' player. A giant, like an actual frost giant, playing the game, would never even THINK of playing outside of the ordening. It's just so ingrained in their culture, and i think that's why they lost the war with the dragons. The dragons are interesting, because the dragons are divided between themselves, so there are 5 'good' pieces and 5 'evil' pieces. Good and evil dragons can’t interact without killing each other, and each individual piece has unique moves and rules. Dragons is a more complicated side to play. Inherently more powerful, but unable to work together.
GIANTS
Special Rules
Hill giant : move 1 square. No diagonals.
Stone giant: move any number of squares laterally, but only 1 forward or backward.
Frost giant: move any number of squares forward, but only 1 in any other direction.
Fire giant: can move 2 in any direction and jump over pieces.
Cloud: can move any number of squares laterally, forward, or backward.
Stormseer: can move any number of squares in any direction. Sacrifice to undo last move.
Stormcheif: can move like any other giant, when moving, can pick any giant and that giant mirrors the move (for example, if the chief moves 1 to the right, he could move any giant who could legally make that same move)
DRAGONS
Special Rules
White
Blue
Green
Black
Red
Brass
Copper
Bronze
Silver
Gold
-------
the stone giants live in the earth, deep in the mountains, carving caves from within the bones of the earth. The dwell among each other, and the world under the sun is like a dream. it's not real. nothing matters. it doesn't 'count' to them.
these are the giants that invented the game of dragon chess. the game was a way to tell the story of the war that happened under the sky to the other stone giants.
like if you drew a picture to explain a dream to a friend.
each piece was perfect, the rules of it's movement and action carved into its design. dragons and giants, a board of squares, carved with minute terrain. the game was a lesson, and a story, and it was played a thousand times in a row when it was shown to the other stone giants, deep int he blackness of the earth.
the artist who made the game brought it to the other giants. the hill giants fought each other to own the different pieces, the board forgotten on the floor of a hut made of mud.
the fire giants admired the craftsmanship, and made their own copy, and played. the stone giant watched them, waiting for them to understand, but like in a dream where you talk but no one hears you, the lesson was lost.
the frost giants took the game, carved pices from bone and wood, played on stone tables, broke pieces in anger, wrestled each other to decide who played the side of the dragons, because the dragons in the game were more powerful, and frost giants like nothing more than winning. the stone giant craftsman watched, and took his game to the cloud giants.
the cloud giants kindly thanked the stone giant, and placed the game on a pedistal, and looked at it admiringly, and nodded kindly when it was explained like you would to a child telling you about a story they made or a dream they had. they never played it.
the storm giants palace was on a cloud floating far above the earth. the stone giant craftsman climbed to the tallest peak, and waited a year as the clouds slowly moved in great spirals, till the edge passed within a fingers bredth, and he placed the game on the edge of the cloud, and clambered up after it. he walked the cloud, a land unto itself, for another year, walking ever inward over spiraling swirls of cloud, till he found in the ey of the storm a flat clear plane of cloud and a storm giant in the center.
the storm giant gestured and a table billowed up from cloudstuff. without a word, they began to play. she played as giants first, and lost against the crafter. she played as dragons and won. she played as the giants again, and lost. she played as the dragons and won. her eyes cracked like lightening. they played, and the giants lost, and the dragons won. the crafter was not as good a player, even after her first move, but without words, he knew that she understood. the game was a story, like a picture you draw of a dream. they played for a year, game after game, until the table of cloud stuff collapsed, and the board and the pieces scattered.
he gathered the pieces, and left. a year he walked back around the spiral of the storm till he reached the edge, and a year he waited there at the edge till he saw the mountain he'd come from, and he set the game down, and hung from the edge, his foot a toes bredth from the top of the mountain of stone, and he stepped down, leaving the game at the edge of the cloud to be carried away by her kingdom. maybe she woudl find it again at the edge of her land and learn to play to win. he walked home, across lands, and back under the mountains, to the real world, and never told any of the other stone giants of the strange dream he had had, of the surface world.
the end.