The Fall of Renais
Check Mate
“It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played — all over the world — if this is the world at all, you know.”
- Lewis Carroll
When I lived in Los Angeles, I had a good friend Brock. Brock and I were always talking about things that we found deeper in life than the surface level. Things that touched our souls. We both were in relationships that were fairly vapid and hard to get past small talk. Conversations that just moved around in circles, over and over again. When Brock and I would talk, we’d talk about things that no one else in our circle was really interested in, so we spent a lot of time talking just the two of us.
I was almost always drunk at this point in my life. If I wasn’t drinking, I was probably high on something. I lived in Los Angeles, and I was young, so my life was a lot different. I didn’t really walk the most straight and narrow path.
In chess, the pawns are just the tiniest pieces. When I was young, I used to think of them as throw-away pieces because I didn’t realize how much power they had. By playing smart, you can control the board. Strategy games have always been my favorite, but chess lacked the visual component that could keep my attention.
The fire emblem games are also strategy-based and much more my tempo. The series is still one of my favorites to this day. Erika and Ephraim will always be my favorite characters, but I think that’s because of the special connection I have to the game, much of an aside.
Brock and I used to get sucked into this world of strategic thinking through our problems, just the two of us. I was obsessed with philosophy when I was smoking weed, so we’d often talk about that. I had this theory that the entire world was just like one big chessboard. All of the people you see on the streets are just another piece.
In my warped sense of active addiction, I always considered myself one of the bigger pieces. A controlling member of the board. Someone that could sway opinions and had a bit of control on the way things would play out.
In Fire Emblem, when one of your characters dies, the game can continue, unless, of course, it’s one of the main characters, like Erika or Ephraim. When one of those two die, the gameplay stops, and you either have to load a save, or quit playing. I’d normally restart the chapter even if it were one of these “pawn” like characters who died because they don’t come back to play if they died in the game. They sort of just vanish into the distance of your memory as the gameplay moves forward. There is no mourning; there are no funerals; they’re fictional.
Erika and Ephraim were kind of like the King and Queens of the board, or in this case, map.
I know they’re all fictional characters, but I’ve already established I get attached to things easily. When I was dropping out of college crying as I said my goodbyes despite the fact I had decided to leave, it was like I was losing people.
My theory was that the King and Queen really were all that mattered. Protect them at all costs, and things will continue as normal. I’ve never really spent the time learning the chess game, though, with no visuals, and I never kept playing through without all of my game characters so that I would play until the end with everyone.
The game series is similar because there are knights and bishops, different kinds of knights, and bishops, but the same syntactic sugar. The same kind of language brings up the same kind of imagery. In the game, the pawns are a little less obvious. They’re characters that are “townsfolk” or “citizens.” They have low skill levels but can be crafted into extreme warriors. You have to grow their skills and bring up their levels.
Internally I always considered myself a King or Queen; I was the Erika or Ephraim. I think because they’re the main characters, most people's minds would automatically associate with them. But my favorite players to play with were always the Pegasus Knights. Any characters I could turn into the Pegasus Knight or Wyvern Lord, I would. They got to fly around on things and were strong against magic. Weak only to archers, that could take them out from an extra space away.
I came up with this philosophy that the world was made up of all these chess pieces. Some little, some big. It just depended on who you were. You could be an Erika or an Ephraim, or maybe another of the lesser named Neimi and Colm characters.
Neimi was an archer, and Colm a thief. They reminded me a lot of brother and sister, so I always connected to them. The brother-like figure taking care of his sister. This dichotomy was because Erika and Ephraim actually were brother and sister, and I considered myself a King or Queen. Instead of seeing my sister's relationship as Erika and Ephraim's kind of relationship, I always considered our relationships like Neimi and Colm. Colm was always coming to Neimi’s rescue. She was a weaker player, so kind of more like a pawn.
Erika starts the game searching for her brother, and when I was young, I didn’t think my sister and I had that sort of relationship.
Brock and I would spend a lot of time talking about crazy stuff like this because it all made sense in my high mind. I never learned the rules of chess, though, so I had a kind of skewed view. There was no strategy to my thinking, just sort of feelings and things I worked out when I was in a “deep” state of mind.
When I played Chess, I would sacrifice many of my pieces to protect the Queen, my favorite piece on the board. The Queen can travel in just about any direction and with the right play through taking out just about any piece. I’ve not won a ton of chess games, though, so I don’t really know all the right combinations to make the most of the playability. There was no trial and error; once the Queen was gone from the board, she was just gone, no game over or load from the last save.
I likened the pieces to actual people and treated certain ones as disposable. Not exactly the best strategy if you know anything about Chess. Liking strategy games doesn’t mean you’re good at them.
I came up with this entire theory that we were all moving around the board, aimlessly trying to figure out the right space to move to next. Some of us could pull fancy moves while the rest were just moving one space at a time.
To keep the player characters alive, you can hide them in forests, jungles, on mountains; they’d get a little strategic boost and be able to take on more damage. In chess, if you’re getting taken out, you’re just getting taken out.
The common player characters would get the same strategic advantages, but I’d sometimes treat them as expendable because I knew I could always restart.
What I didn’t know was the power behind the pawns—the real movers of the board. If your Queen gets taken out, you need to move one of your pawns all the way to the other side of the board. It’s actually pretty hard to do, but possible if you actually think through your strategy.
I was always fighting with the Queen, though, so what was the point of figuring out the rules? I’d eventually make most of my pawns the Pegasus Knights, and they could fly, getting away when enemies got too close.
Brock thought my philosophy was so thought out. He was adamant that I must be on to something. Really I was just lost and trying to wrap my head around what was happening in my life. I felt like a pawn when I wanted to be a King or Queen.
Instead of learning the strategy, I tried to find the fast path to winning. Using the player's fancy moves to accomplish whatever the winning goal was in the game's round. Sometimes taking out the boss, sometimes seizing the throne. I’d use my fancy players forgetting about the Neimi’s and Colm’s.
Erika and Ephraim were who I wanted to be.
There are so many character player types, though. It’s not all bishops and knights; sometimes, you need to use a rook or a pawn. A commoner player that may be a little weaker but still worthy of attention. I never knew you could turn them into more. You lose a few pieces but have all these pawns. I’d just be moving around the King and Queen.
If you focus your attention, though, and move smart, you can become stronger. You have to make it to the other side. Because when you do, that pawn can become whatever you want to be. A piece you lost before.
