Rules And Novella

Game Instructions Situation You are Vetvel, one of seven acolytes on Kira, a moon of the planet Lamina. Lamina is populated by seven intelligent species who have spent most of their histories in strife. The tiny colony on Kira was founded as a political experiment to demonstrate the ability of suitably- inclined Laminans of different species to live in harmony, The experiment came too late; Lamina fought a limited nuclear war, shattering its civilization and leaving the colonists on Kira stranded. Under the leadership of a remarkable person named Siboot, the Kirans founded a new civilization based on the development of telepathic powers and a universal telepathic language called eeyal. From their position on Kira, they beamed radio messages to the home planet, proselytizing their philosophy/religion. Under this influence, Lamina successfully re-civilized itself, coming to accept Kira as the spiritual center of its civilization and the leader of Kira, called the Shepherd, as its spiritual leader. One hundred and thirty-five years have passed since the nuclear war; there have been four Shepherds. Now Feslym, the fourth Shepherd, has died, and the time has come to replace him. The Shepherdship will be awarded to the first acolyte who garners eight auras of each of the three types: tanaga, katsin, and shial. Auras are a mental property associated with telepa- thy, and they confer upon their owner greater telepathic powers. Each acolyte has, by dint of much training, built up a goodly set of auras. But now the acolytes will engage in mental combat to acquire the remaining auras each needs to attain the perfect 8-8-8 set and become Shepherd. Mental combat Mental combat is fought at night, while you sleep. Your spirit travels into the Land of the Auras, there encountering the spirits of other acolytes. During an encounter, you wrap your- self in one of your auras, as does your opponent. A tanaga aura will defeat a katsin aura, a katsin aura will defeat a shial aura, and a shial aura will defeat a tanaga aura. Two auras of the same type stand off without a victor. The victor in mental combat gets to keep the aura of the loser. Players will normally try to play those auras that will win them the auras of which they have the greatest shortage. The trick to mental combat, then, is to learn how many auras your potential opponents have; if you have this information, you can readily anticipate what aura they will use in combat and counter it with the proper aura. Discovering what auras people have is the outermost challenge of the game. 1 Deals You spend most of your time during the day scurrying about trying to gather the informa- tion you need. Each morning, you awaken with a single item of information about each of the other acolytes. An item of information is called an “aura-count”; it is the number of auras of a single type (tanaga, katsin, or sh…