Plant
“Do you really need to play Plant?” Jo asks as she descends on the House of Agê. “The Master is here to show you the might of the multiversal structure in a Smiting Exhibition, not just to enjoy a leisurely card game.”
Jo has recently arrived to Agê’s Disc after returning to the Smiting Chamber from the repetitive defeats that she endured with Gu, Lêgba, and Xêvioso, and she is eager to see what additions Agê will contribute, if her green will truly be effective against the green in the Doom deck.
“I thought that was part of it,” Alia says between big bites of fruits and pastries that are bountiful on tables around Agê’s Smiting grid. “Issac is making his own deck, me too, and seeing y’all play with them is helpful for me. I like seeing what they do and Issac said the set specific games help to understand what the colors do.”
“I couldn’t have said it better,” Issac says. “Even if this seems like leisure, I assure you, all of our time until you all are ready to go is dedicated to getting strong enough to beat the seemingly invincible. Watching you all strategize is helpful for me and for Alia who are just simple Earthers playing at godhood.”
“You know how to stroke an ego,” Jo says with a laugh. “Summon me when the exhibition begins.” Then Jo is gone in the blink of an eye and Alia notices some of the pastries missing on the table.
“Tell us about Plant,” Issac says as both he and Alia sit on the edge of their seats.
“The three of us can play against one another,” Agê says as she shuffles and distributes cards from her green deck. When all the cards are dealt, Agê gathers her cards and begins to arrange them in her hands. “I’ll assume you both know the rules.”
“I wasn’t planning to play,” Alia admits, “but I’m a quick learner. As long as you don’t mind teaching while we play.”
“Not at all. As time goes on, I play this game less and less. It is nice to revisit it every millennia or so. The object of the game is to grow the best plants above and below, Ascend higher on one side and Descend lower on the other.”
“Oh, like the plant above ground and the roots below,” Issac says.
“Precisely. We will play to 60 so that Jo won’t interrupt us complaining that we’ve been playing too long. You know she will be back in what feels like no time asking when we plan to get back to Smiting. But 60 is good enough that you will see the strategy in it. Issac, you go first, place two Exemplars face up in front of you, mindful that the one on your right will be your Ascend pile and the one on your left is the Descend. Each round, you will place two Exemplars, one on each pile, and the Growth number will have to be higher than the one on the right and lower than the one on the left. We are only placing Exemplars this first round.”
“So whatever I place,” Alia asks, “I need to do it keeping in mind that I want to put as many of my Exemplars on each of these piles before we all run out of cards?”
“Yes, and know that in this second round, Issac will place two cards in each of his piles, if he can’t Ascend or Descend, he will have to place a card into his own discard for each pile that he could not satisfy. Then he can place a third card on any other card on the table and change the current Growth score in our Ascend and Descend piles, potentially sabotaging our plants. He can play Enhance cards if he has some that can be played on his turn, and if we have Enhance cards that can be played on his turn, we can do that before or after he places his cards. Then you do it, then I do it.”
And they do, until they have no more cards in hand. This first round of the game lasts a long time and the three players have a raucous time, mainly due to Alia’s unfamiliarity with the intoxicating beverages of the Fonlands that allow her to relax and be herself in the presence of the elegant Vodun Agê. Jo does arrive while the first round is still raging and even Agê and Issac are a little inebriated and high on the fun they are having, so Jo sits to finish the game with them. Many hours pass, rounds and rounds of Plant are played and the score to win is raised many times before Issac calls it.
“As much fun as this is, we should really get to the Smiting Exhibition. Whoever has the most points after this round is the winner.”
Agê, Jo and Alia all groan but agree. Agê wins the game, no one grows a plant like her, even though Jo had surged to second place despite missing the first few rounds of the game.
“Alright, then,” Agê says as she collects her deck from the table. Alia and Jo relax back to watch the game between the first deck of the green Vodun and the Arcana Master with his enchanted Green deck from the Smiting Chamber.
AGÊ Smiting Exhibition
“This deck is hard to kill,” Agê says. “I noticed that all of the decks created before mine were fine to let cards be beaten in battle, like some of the cannon fodder in Gu’s deck. But the beings of my deck are able to empower one another just by virtue of their presence on the board because my disc has always been a harmonious ecosystem. Not like the randomness of Jo’s Disc.”
“There is order to my chaos,” Jo says. “You have pretty flowers, but the space of my disc made the seeds.”
“Touche,” Agê says with a nod that is reminiscent of a bow toward Jo. “The Fonlands is an ecosystem, we all work well together to enhance one another, which seems to be what you four have been lacking in your games against this dramatically named Doom Deck.”
“Wait ‘til you see it,” Alia says under her breath as she munches on roasted nuts.
“My cards are very synergistic and the greatest enemy to my strategy is the black of Legba’s Deck. His death dealers are the most effective at stopping my synergies, if he interrupts it early enough. Once momentum is on my side, it is hard to slow me down.”
“This sounds very familiar and I am kicking myself that I didn’t put it together before,” Jo says. “The Doom Deck, the source of it, is plant based like Agê. Being beaten by the Doom Deck feels a lot like the games that Agê dominates when she is having a good game.”
“The colour of doom magic is partially green,” Issac says. “Maybe the addition of Agê alone will change the tide.”
Agê and Issac started the game and when the grid was full enough to start attacks, Agê’s cards on the grid included:
- The First Aziza
- Rot Witch
- Wompus Gardner
- Abada Foodbearer
- Lepusraj Soldier
- Golden Trumpet, Jungle Mother
- Iuma, Forest Mother
- Sacred Dirt of the Deep
- Nourishing Light
- Blessings of the Swamp
And Issac’s included:
- Nature Witch Coven – Universe 6DOD13
- Jinn of the Morning Dew – Universe IV21
- Halgod, Flora Engineer – Universe HV22
- Pyramid of Growth – Universe HIII312
- Chant of Enduring Light – Universe HVII31
- Beku of Two Rivers Swamp – Universe 4111
- Gabriel, Plastic Garden Golem – Universe 265
- Whadgaf’s Jungle Crew – Universe VI74
- Deathgrowth – Universe 471
- Were Hares of the Dark Knoll – Universe 6DOD33
“That card is a mouthful,” Alia says as Agê and Issac maneuver back and forth, invoking the images on their cards and rolling dice. “A Were Hare is like a werewolf? Are they as strong as werewolves?”
“These are much bigger than we probably know,” Issac says.
“You Earthers always underestimate the kin of the Fondlands,” Jo says, elbowing Age. “They have these little hares in the Earth realm, they know nothing about the proud lepusraj warriors of your disc.”
“I think these Were Hares are comparable,”Agê says and she leans over the table to inspect the card more closely. “Can the cards tell us how they measure up?” she asks Issac.
Issac asks the card from the enchanted Green deck to display projections of an average Were Hare in Hare form alongside the Lepusraj Soldier. Both are similar in build, like human Earther rabbits, but the Were Hare is taller, though not by much, and the Lepusraj soldier is much more muscle bound.
“This is impressive,”Agê says with genuine interest as she eyes the Were Hare. “They may not stack up as warriors against my soldiers but they seem like wily magic users.”
Agê proceeds to maneuver her Lepusraj Soldier to a space next to the Were Hares and engages in a battle that surprises both Vodun.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Jo says, “I have taken part in so many exhibitions, but the wonders of the multiversal structure never cease to amaze.”
The Lepusraj Solder does a lot of damage, even from bad rolls by Agê, but the Were Hares shift forms when defeated, and can change if the owner taps a green Veve. This makes the Hare resilient, but Agê manages to remove it.
Aside from the hare battle, the game is very competitive.
“This is the longest game I have ever had with a Vodun,” Issac says. “It is long, but I don’t think I can pull it out. My cards are hard to remove, but you’ve honed in on the card making them that way. And when that is gone…”
“Game over,” Agê says with a chuckle. “That was a good time. And I get to play with your deck now?”
“The enchanted Green Deck is yours,” Issac says with a slight bow.
“I am very heartened by this showing of green power,” Jo says happily. “This will be a game changer. Issac, you head over to Agbe, and I want to spend time with Agê picking her brain. And I brought a taste of the Doom Deck for a preview. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
Issac and Alia leave the House of Agê and then her Disc as Jo and Agê settle in for deckbuilding.
“That was longer than I thought it would take,” Xêvioso says as he and Lêgba fly through a cosmos that is completely foreign to Xêvioso.
“We are as far as we ever traveled together, I think,” Lêgba says.
“It is…a wonder,” Xêvioso says looking around himself at the stars that shine so brightly and brilliantly in the cosmos that the flares of their light create prismatic patterns on space. There are planets teeming with vegetation that grows beyond the presumed atmosphere of the planet, others made complete of gasses that are as full and fluffy as the clouds of Divine Essence of Xêvioso’s Disc. There are comets that shoot through space leaving trails of glittering light in their wake. There are distant hazy formations of cosmic matter that make space look like an airbrush painting.
“This is Paradise, brother,” Lêgba says. “I only wish that we had come to it under better circumstances. Sadly, we don’t have much time to enjoy the sights. We are approaching Earth.”
As arrive they at Paradise Earth, Xêvioso exclaims, “Is this Age’s Disc? I didn’t know this is what the Earth realm looked like.”
“This is unique to Paradise Earth. The Earth of the realm that the Fonlands overlaps is not this impressive.”
“This is all spectacular to see, but I hope this is worth the trip,” Xêvioso says as they touchdown.
“Ogi will be worth it,” Lêgba says, trying to convince himself.
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