The world apart

The beast was moving slowly through the alleys, while the rest of the city panicked and fled. “Where are the guards?” people were saying. There were none left already.

The world does not waitWaitan open question that nobody else is looking into: it belongs to you, it ripens, it has the right never to close.part 8 for you.

It pushes: somewhere, someone sets off for reasons that are not yet your business.

It holds: things get done there every year, that nobody decided, and that will still be true when your character is gone.

The first movement makes the stakes. The second makes the world.

◆ What comes — raising a stirring

Draw through the deckDecka single pack of 78 cards, majors and minors mixed, reshuffled at the opening of every scene.part 2 until a majorMajor Arcanumone of the twenty-two named cards, from The Fool to The World. It does not answer: it names, and it weighs.parts 2, 4, 6. Play a world sceneWorld scenea declared scene in which your character is not present: the world advances behind his back. After three scenes played at his side the floor is the world’s; never two in a row, and fate does not come into it. It moves forward what pends, or it merely lives — a breather.part 9: your character is not in it. Somebody somewhere sets off, for a reason that is not yet your business. What is left after it is a stake, and it will live like the others (cf. part 8).

Search for the major card after card, until one appears; the minorsMinor Arcanumone of the fifty-six cards of the four suits, from Ace to King: the matter of the everyday.parts 2, 4 passed through do not count. Do it before your first sceneScenethe unit of play: you open it, you play it, you close it.part 3, to give a face to what is waiting for you.

It carries a wanting, it has weight — and what has weight takes time to arrive. What “strong” means is read at the height where you play: an empire tipping over in an epic game, a village house being sold in a gentle one. The card gives the relative scale, not the absolute one.

Later, it is the reverse: a stake you have let sleep. You do not raise it a second time, since it already exists: you restart it, and for that nothing new (below).

◆ Four directions

Look at the card. What it names, in your world, often comes on its own. If you are stuck, ask where it comes from and what it is made of.

Four directions — not four boxes. The world has others, and you will find them before you have finished the book.

• From his own, someone. A person from his close world changes sides, leaves, or starts wanting something else.
• From his own, something. A rule, a house, a place: what was holding him starts to move.
• From outside, someone. Someone he does not yet know has set off, and he is in the way.
• From outside, something. A force, a power, a passage closing.

The Chariot.

One card, four directions — it does not choose for you.

Someone advancing, whom nothing turns aside:

• From his own, someone: the brother enlists, he leaves with the column, he will not come back the same.
• From his own, something: the guild has set itself in motion, and it is carrying his place away with it.
• From outside, someone: a man left another town a month ago, and he is coming here.
• From outside, something: a fleet, a flood, a decree; what bears down does not negotiate.

Four stakes, one card. It does not say where it comes from: it says that it is coming, and that there will be no stopping it on the way.

◆ By which edge it reaches you

A stake that never reached you would be backdropBackdropwhat you come across and forget: pure color, nothing to note. A Backdrop becomes an actor the day you notice that it wants something.part 7. Once the card is read, say where it will come from:

• By your desireDesirewhat your character wants. No mechanism, no count: it orients what you play.part 11, what sets you moving;
• by your place, what you count on to live;
• by someone close, who will be touched before you are.

At this instant you have only a name, a sentence and a desire. That is enough: you are not looking for a threat to the world, you are looking for what that particular desire is exposed to.

The four relations hold here too. Those of part 6, except that they are no longer read between the card and you, but between the card and your character: you are not in the scene, you are watching what puts itself in relation with someone who does not yet know it.

◆ Playing the world scene

On that major, open a world scene. It sets down a latent problem, something that will, one way or another, come as far as you.

The raising launches the game, and it is the only world scene played without having left the character three scenes.

Show, do not explain.

An unremarkable rock against a lamppost. Someone approaching at an hour when nobody passes, a hand touching the stone, and a hidden skyglider revealing itself.

Who that person is, how she knew, what it will cost: none of that is said here. It is the not-knowing it installs that makes it hold for scenes on end.

◆ The sentence that remains

The scene is not finished until it is written. One line on the standing pageStanding pagethe page that keeps what is pending: living actors, waits, stakes, desires under way, fate’s marks. There is only one, and it replaces the previous one.part 8: what is now under way. It is the only thing that will survive the page: without it, you have written a fine moment that will never come back.

It takes the form the scene calls for:

• A knowledge you have and your character does not: a decree is going to ground the free skyfarers — she does not know it yet.
• A fact nobody understands: an unknown woman found Sania’s skyglider in a southern alley, and she was looking for it.
• Or a question you put to yourself: why is this succession not being settled?

That sentence is the stake, and it goes on the standing page because it is not finished. As long as it is there, he is running.

◆ A stake, raised

I am starting a game with Nera. The standing page carries no stake yet; I raise one.

I draw through. Three of Cups, Page of Pentacles, Five of Wands… — then The Tower. A major: I stop there. I play a world scene, far from Nera, for what The Tower gives me: a collapse on its way.

passed through

passed through

passed through

the major

You draw through to the major: passing through costs nothing.

In a chamber of the High Council of Nandésis, a decree is being sealed: skyfarers without a guild will lose their mooring rights at the first snow. Nobody in the chamber knows Nera’s name. The decree will find her.

What remains fits in one line on the standing page: a decree is going to ground the free skyfarers — Nera does not know it yet. It is a stake now: others are making progress on it while she goes about her business elsewhere. It will live like the others — and it will be restarted, the day it stops moving.

◆ What lasts — the world does not only happen

Everything your notebook carries is in the middle of happening. A decree on its way, a woman nobody has identified, a debt counted in days: things begun, waiting for an end.

Nothing there says what happens every year.

It is an absence you do not feel at first, and that ends up making itself heard. After ten sessions, you will know everything that nearly killed your character, and nothing of what people eat in his city.

◆ Asking what gets done here

This is still a world scene, and it obeys the same rules. What changes lies in what you ask of the card. Ask what people do here, at this hour of the year.

You already know how to put the question: it is the moodPopulate · mood · widen · hook · probethe ways of asking: who is there and how he is (coin) · the weather (card) · what exists just beyond the frame · what is off · staying with the answer that has already fallen. (parts 1 and 2) (part 2), one notch higher. The weather becomes the season you are crossing, and the season, what it makes people do. Who works and who can no longer travel, what gets shut, what gets burned, what gets handed down, what is dreaded every year on the same date.

◆ What remains goes to the portrait

The portraitPortraitwhat you write about someone, actor or character: a name, what he wants, his suits, and what he carries when that says who he is. Without any count, and never corrected — you write a fresh one, further on.parts 7, 11 describes a fact that enriches the world. It can be a one-off event, a custom, a festival in preparation or under way. A banquet, a law being passed, a street fight between two rival guilds.

The portrait of a place obeys the law of all the others (part 7): nothing in it is corrected, and the day the place changes, you write a new one further on. Read them one after another, and you have what somewhere has become.

◆ What does not get written

A scene like that shows a hundred things, and only one deserves the ink. The sorting comes down to one question: does it constrain or allow a scene to come?

At the first snow, the lower port freezes and the empty holds fill with sleepers forbids a departure, allows a night at the quay, and gives a trade to somebody you have not met yet.

It is cold in winter forbids nothing and opens nothing: that is backdrop, and backdrop is not written down: it is played and it is forgotten. The rule is the standing page’s, moved one page over (part 8): what you do not note has not existed.

And it will often happen that a scene leaves nothing at all. So much the better: that is a breather (part 9), and it always has its place.

◆ What gets done here, played

Three scenes now I have been in Nera’s skin, and the world has the floor. Nothing is asking to move, and I do not feel like a breather: I want to know what people do, in this city, when winter comes down.

I open the scene. Among the three cards, the Ten of Pentacles: the house, what is handed down, what holds from one generation to the next. I keep it for what it repeats, not for what it announces.

kept

left

left

The opening — a card taken for what repeats, not for what arrives.

On the lower quay, at the first snow, the old sails are brought up from the bottom of the holds and stretched over the frames. It gets done every year, and nobody gave the order. An old man pulls the ropes as in winters before; a girl holds the ladder and says nothing. Under the canvas the skyfarers without a mooring will sleep until the thaw. Those who have a guild pass by, leave a loaf or a coin in the basket nailed to the post, and do not stop.

Nothing has advanced, but this port is no longer the same: it does something every year, and that something already has a use.

Two lines on the portrait of the lower port, and nothing on the standing page:

The lower port — at the first snow, the old sails are stretched over the frames of the holds; the skyfarers without a mooring sleep there until the thaw. Those who have a guild leave something to eat in the basket on the post, without stopping.

It constrains and it allows: there is now a place you can fall to, and a shame in going down there.

◆ As you close a session

A stake is not penalized for sleeping. But as you close a session, look at your stakes and find the one that has moved least: write its name at the foot of the page, and the next session will open on it. You will have nothing to choose when you sit back down.

If it comes back two sessions running, make it move: open a leadLeada scene declared to make a wait or a stake move: no new gesture, only the intention changes.part 8 on it, or push it in a world scene (part 8).

◆ Raise a stake, then watch it last

Now. Search for your major. Say which direction it comes from and by which edge it will reach him. Play the world scene, far from him, explaining nothing of what you show. Then write the line that remains: a knowledge, a fact, or a question. You have your first stake.

Later, when the floor comes back to the world. Play a world scene again, for the place this time: ask what people do there at this hour of the year, and play it without anything advancing. At the end, a single question — does it constrain or allow a scene to come? If it does, two or three lines on the portrait of the place. If not, you have played a breather, and that is quite all right.