On the Great Game

This is a translation of the original text “Vom Großen Spiel”

The Great Game - Who has not heard of it? That mighty battle of tasks, in which both the seals are opened, and Archons and Nyames are elected, or conquered. All the mysterious banners that had appeared out of nowhere and sometimes posed very strange quests... the glyph-covered pyramids of the seals, on which dark prophecies could be read by those who knew them... And last but not least the Archon scepters and Nyame crowns made of mysterious metal, which the new rulers of the settlers were given as insignia of their offices by powerful, mysterious apparitions of the elements... And of course the Forsaken, who were set free by unlocking the seals in the Great Game...

4 Ancient Seals have been found so far and opened in the course of the Great Game. Another seal of the Forsaken was closed to the detriment of Terra by the accursed Argus, because the settlers could not win the Forsaken variant of the Great Game for this one. Only a powerful tool from ancient times, a Xerikan, made it possible to open the last-mentioned seal, as it were with a blocking hook, without winning the game.

Even though thousands of settlers have already played the Great Game, hardly any of them can really explain how it works, only few know where it came from, and almost no one can say who built all the strange artifacts. But now all these secrets have been revealed through long and careful analysis and research. This is a report to all the settlers of Mitraspera.

Three types of artifacts make up the Great Game: banners, sigils, and the insignia of Archon and Nyame. However, none of these relics was originally intended to be connected to the others or even used in a Great Game. Therefore, to understand the present, a brief digression about the past will first be necessary, explaining the origin of the artifacts.

The staffs and circlets of power

These are known today as the crowns of the nyames and the scepter of archons. Even though they were later reshaped and changed by the rulers, they originally came from the hand of the Quihen Assil themselves (clearly verifiable by the matrix core). When the Eternal Ones had left the peoples of the Ancient Rulers to their own devices, they began to wage war against each other. The Eternal Ones saw the destructiveness of their creatures with concern and decided to give them something to remind them of the unity of the idea of creation: those who were already staunch priests of the Elements or of the Quihen Assil were given powerful artifacts that made them feel the land itself as if it were a part of their bodies, and that enabled them to perform true miracles with the powers of the world. The greatest deeds of the Ancient Rulers were presumably made possible in this way.

In addition to the insignia of rulers, there are references to some other circlets and staffs of power. So it is very likely that at least the Clavas (Tideon/Ruathin/Lhiraquin) are to be counted among these artifacts.

Author's addendum: As we know, the rulers did not use the gifts according to the intention of the Quihen Assil. Rather than establish lasting peace, they used the power of the artifacts to fight each other all the more fiercely. That' s probably why the Ouai always look a bit embarrassed when Archons fight the Forsaken with their Scepters...

The Banners of Power 

The banners of power were basically nothing more than artifacts for gathering and distributing power. Probably several hundred of them exist. Each banner extracts power from the land and sends it to its "owner", with each plot of land assigned to a banner (it may be possible in exceptional cases to detach a banner from its location and bind it to another, but usually the connection is fixed) These artifacts were also given to the peoples of the Ancient Rulers by the Quihen Assil, presumably to give even the "less gifted" Ancient Rulers access to the powers of the land. 

Whoever found a banner could bind it to themselves by challenging and completing its task. The tasks created by the banners are always adaptive as far as the challenger is concerned (for example, if the challenger comes from a race that naturally possesses wings, the task might have something to do with soaring above the treetops, while a naturally mute challenger would never be required to perform a song). Each banner was most powerful on its assigned patch of land; removed from it, the amount of power it could give greatly diminished.

Presumably, the banners were intended as a local source of power ("to each village its banner") at which the rulers could obtain relief from their daily troubles and perhaps also obtain healing or protection. In fact, however, the banners were soon jealously guarded possessions of the powerful of the Ancient Rulers, even though none of the banners were tied to circlets or scepters at the time.

The Seals

Here it is necessary to elaborate a little. We have to distinguish between the seals of the Forsaken, those that are in the center of the " Realms of the Seals " (formally we also count the 6th or "Doerchgard's Seal" among them) and the first seal that Ratio keeps closed.

Historically, the Seal of the Ratio was first built by the Pact of Nine in Siegelstatt, the site of the Starfall. Where Quin'Khal's dust blinded the Quihen Assil, the structure to combat the World Doubt was secretly created from that very material. The story is well-known, the Pact of Nine prevailed, the Ratio was banished.

Only much later Siegelstatt was revived, but this time by the Ancient Ruler of the Forsaken. Secretly they began building five new Seals, also from the dust of Quin'Khal, though this time against the sacral elements themselves! Investigations show that the construction could not be completed, however. Probably the project was disturbed, discovered or betrayed. The seals were activated half-finished, so that "only" the Avatars of the elements were subject to the spell. Whether this caused or merely accelerated the subsequent defeat of the sacral element followers remains to be seen. The liberation of the avatars from the seals, which occurred before the end of the war, also happened for unknown reasons and by unknown hand, but only briefly before the world fire.

Thus the origin of all essential parts of the great game is clarified. The following will now describe the transformation and summary of what we know as "the Great Game".

The World Fire, the Sealing of the Forsaken and the Creation of the Great Game

In the course of the World Fire, the banners, the seals, and also for the most part the Circlets and Staffs of Power were confiscated by the Quihen Assil who had descended, transformed, and created the Great Game from them. Only the last of the 5 Avatar Seals, that of the Magica Avatar, was apparently left untouched by the Quihen Assil, since it was probably simply redundant in view of the fact that there are only 4 Great Forsaken Elements. What may have happened to the Seal of the Ratio is not yet known, since it could not be examined.

All the banners were inextricably bound by the Quihen Assil to the seal pyramids, which had previously been reshaped to contain the Forsaken. The gigantic amounts of energy, which were constantly necessary to contain the Forsaken, were provided this way. The price was that due to the constant intensive energy drain of the banners, the land became almost uninhabitable; plants grew slowly, animals died quickly, weakness and rapid aging overcame those who dared to settle in the land of the banners. But the Ancient Rulers were banished anyway, and the young peoples lived in enclaves, the presumably few places free of the banners.

The Great Game as it works today 

Thousands of years have passed, during which the land has healed from the destruction caused by Forsaken and wars. And we, the settlers, have now rediscovered it, and with it the old burden, even if the whole story is only beginning to emerge. At the moment of the discovery of a Seal by a lot of settlers, the Great Game begins. All banners of the seal are challenged collectively, but not in order to serve individuals again, but to win the positions of Archon and Nyame: Whoever obtains the most banners, or can obtain banner-owning supporters, or in the case of the Nyame, wins the testing contest, receives a circlet or staff of power sent by the Quihen Assil, known as the Archon's Scepter, and the Nyame's Circlet. The power of the banners is redirected to these from the seal pyramid in equal parts after the completion of the Great Game. This led to the opening of the Seal and the elevation of the winners of the Great Game to Archon and Nyame. The great game probably has the actual purpose to unite the entire power of the artifacts and thus of the country upon the repopulation immediately on a few settlers, who are loyal to the elements and powerful. This way they created a warlike, united and clearly ordered society among the settlers for the fight against the Forsaken.

Addendum: The Forsaken Banners and the Doerchgard Seal

It was probably fortunate for Argus that the old construction of the Seal for the Avatar of Magica had never been changed. It is conceivable that he found it and used it as a model as well as a source for the material, from which he finally constructed his own seal at Doerchgard. The forsaken banners could not be fully examined, but it can be assumed that they were imitations of the real banners of power, from the time of the Forsaken Rulers before the World Fire, which also redirect power to the seal to keep it closed. However, these twisted constructions certainly did not take power away from the soul of the land, but rather from the spheres of the Forsaken or the Nechaton.