Frewsân

I went to go and collect some friends to accompany me on my travels to the strange new world, and it meant several games of Frewsân that I had very little hope of winning...But maybe the point of the game wasn't winning, it was the friendships made over the wins and losses.

— Tales of Discovery on Earth, Alan the Adventurer

Frewsân is a dawr pastime of great renown. Every young dawr learns about it from the moment they can differentiate the various pieces. Many grow up playing it with friends and with complete strangers. Every traveller who plans on visiting a dawr city had better learn it and learn it quick, as they will be challenged many times over the moment they arrive there. 

Rules

To begin, the game has several pieces, each one a representation of one of the main pillars of the dawr society. Each one has specific movement rules as well:

• The Emperor (1) - the most important piece. If the Emperor dies, the game ends and the other player is declared the winner. The Emperor can only travel one square in any direction; because of this, it can never capture other pieces except by surrounding;
• The Bowman (3) - this piece can move two spaces (three on its first move) and can only move diagonally;
• The Axeman (3) - this piece can move two spaces (three on its first move) and can only move horizontally or vertically;
• The Priest (2) - this piece can move two spaces (three on its first move) and one of its moves must be diagonally and another must be horizontally or vertically;
• The Craftsman (2) - this piece can move two spaces in an direction. As part of the player's turn, they can declare their Craftsman builds a Wall, replacing the Craftsman piece with one Wall piece on an adjacent space;
• The Wall (2) - this piece cannot move, take actions, or be attacked. It merely serves as a barrier to movement in certain directions, as a piece's movement cannot go through it; and
• The Mage (1) - another important piece, it can only move two spaces in any direction. It is the only piece that can move through Walls.

The game is played on a board with forty-eight squares, six vertical rows of eight spaces. The challenger places their twelve pieces (not including their Walls) in any arrangement at one vertical half of the board, then the challenged player places theirs on the opposite end of the board. The game then starts with the challenger, with each player moving one of their pieces, then the other player does the same.
To kill a piece, the movement of a piece must either go through a piece ("attacking it") or must lead to the piece becoming unable to move ("surrounding it"). If this is accomplished, the piece is removed from play. The goal of the game is to kill the opposing player's Emperor.

Type

Board game

Related Ethnicity

Dawr

Challenges

It's a dawr custom to challenge any stranger to a game when they first enter the city. Properly, there only needs to be one challenger, but it's very common to play several games before being allowed to continue with one's business. This was apparently due to a common belief that people coming to visit a dawr city were there to challenge the leader's authority, and the people of the town would reenact that sense of competition over the gaming table instead over a battlefield or a duelling room. Of course, the point is simply to play the game; there is no negative social status attributed to people for losing. It's also why the main plaza of every dawr city has at least a handful of gaming tables scattered in some corner, as well as being the centrepiece of every nobleman's foyer.

Various pieces from a frewsân set