The official prompt for today is a poem using the imagery of a sport or game.
I'm not 100% this one works. It's not using the imagery so much as the rule structure of a trading card game and as the rules on the cards take effect, the protagonist's life gets changed.
It's yet another one I've had around for a while. It's been sort of "finished" for a long time but I was never sure whether it needed completely rewriting, e.g. maybe with a different outcome or even a different conceit
— I have wondered whether the framework could come from a scriptwriter changing things about the events in a drama, rather than a game... but for the moment it stands as it is.
I would vote for Edward, any day...
Identity Cards
Set-up — deal sixteen Terrain Cards into the city grid.
The city is warm tonight.
Populate — draw a Neutral Card and place in each Terrain. As you place each card, perform any special actions.
The lights are on, and Edward Wu walks tired
but overall content, through rising dark;
echoey conversations from just a way
away, traffic, someone bounces a ball
against a metal shuttered door; and all
of this is far enough removed. There's peace
in the canal-side market, it's intimate;
warm summer air, the idea of crushed flowers,
a hint of rotting food. Ed loves this mood,
this end-of-day-and-all-work-done moment
although the latter's not entirely true
he has much homework still to do
the grading on; a weight in his backpack,
a thought in his mind of kneeling sipping tea
at Auntie's low down kitchen table, bright
lamplight circling the paper as he marks.
Dimension Door — draw a card, deploy for free in any area you control.
Moments are moments and suddenly
happens not in the moment, but half a second later
when mind wakes up. Edward's brain acts all surprised;
lightning punctuates the sky and by the time
he realises something's up, the dark-
cloaked figure blocks his way... very tall,
quite female, dressed Sunday Best Lord of the Rings;
she seems, behind her furrowed brow, also confused.
The Sorceress — when played, draw three cards. You may immediately deploy any of these (at usual cost) adjacent to the Sorceress.
Everything happens at once: a second moon,
a dragon drifts in front, briefly it rains
clockwork men... A wagon of police arrive,
take turns to shout incomprehensibly
through bullhorns. Tasers are brandished; a weirdling mist
creeps in; there's howling; ultimatums; an angry
and extended speech nobody understands;
a mobile incident unit parks; a shout...
They don't know what they do —
When threatened by a neutral card: you may destroy one artefact, then
every player draws two cards from the Random Deck and plays them
immediately.
the haft of a staff slams on the ground.
How often does a moon fall down? How frequently
is your young adult world unmade; remade;
flayed by shrapnel; the sudden change of life
or heart. The world has many moving parts
and every single one of them hits Eddy
in just a minute and a half. It's a kind
of Armageddon. A werewolf eats his homework.
Promote Leader — move any friendly or neutral card from controlled space into the Palace. Usual promotion bonuses apply.
Edward runs the city now: there's more homework.
It is an indeterminate time later;
which is the only kind of time he owns
—
the clockworkings with which the ticking men
repaired him in the ruins of the fallen moon
keep perfect beat but do not feel the moments
as they fall.
This must be what it is he says
to be a mountain with a million drops
of rain upon you every day. Each drip
exquisite and unique, but you barely feel
the river. You don't know change at all. Edward
keeps the city safe, best as he can. He keeps
the mutants in the broken lands. He stamps
quite carefully but firmly down on crime,
and once in four years finds its time to tell
the voters once again.
I am stability,
he says,
I tick. I am reliable
as only clockwork minds can be. A vote
for me, is a vote against moons falling ever
again — this is my oath: not on my watch.
