"We can keep playing our games as long as I take my etiquette lessons more seriously." You explain, receiving nods and cheers in turn. Margareta hugs you from the side and your brothers raise their hands.
"Yes! Let's go." Lorenz takes point as the four of you make the trek through the manner along as you cross the first floor hallway of the manor's west wing and half-run, half-crawl your way up the elegant spiral staircase in the entry hall to the family's chambers on the second floor of the eastern hallways. This wing of the house, facing away from the sunset and into the rise, shows its luxury tastefully through the use of hand-woven rugs and portraits of grand relatives and ancestors, mostly fair-haired and bright-eyed. You make ungainly speed under their gazes, pushing into the playroom that sits at a near-equal distance between your separate bedrooms.
Your little Elysium is a decent-sized hardwood-floored room that serves as a practice room for music, dance and your brothers' fencing lessons. Other than an assortment of shelves and dressers that contain the requisite equipment, a comfortable divan large enough to sit the four of you and your two parents and a table and chairs for guests, the room is dominated by the glossy black leiselaut. It's a small stringed keyboard instrument that seems to be the current in-vogue thing for entertaining guests in high society, looking to your eyes like a simpler, smaller piano. Your toys are mostly kept here, in protective shelves laden with noxious little campfor-scented mothballs to keep the insects from eating the delicate cloth of your unused stuffed toys or the little banners and capelets on the boys' army toys. The floor is chequerboard pattern, of alternating light oak and a dark lacquered hardwood that shines beautifully in both sunlight and lamplight, probably a novelty to your parents who wanted to imbue the suite with a sense of play without committing to a room for toys for the multi-generational lifespan of the summer estate. Each tile is the length of your whole arm, maybe twenty centimetres or so.
In other words, a perfect place to stage wargames.
Lorenz calls the game 'Pretend Wars', as is the right of the eldest. With his assent you have managed to categorize your myriad toys into categories and impose rules. The toy soldiers are be 'footmen', you and Margareta's shared collection of dolls are 'archers', the toy horses are 'knights' and the various stuffed animals are 'great beasts' with their own special rules. Warfare is mostly attritional although one of your bouts involved rescuing a princess (played by Margareta's most expensive doll with silky, flaxen hair you're sure is from a real person and a dress of the most beautiful samite) which ended with the great Ur-Bear (a cotton-stuffed monstrosity as tall as you are, also from her collection) defeating you and Manfred's Knights of Gom.
The rules are simple:
Toy soldiers can advance one or two tiles per turn and attack adjacent units, but must face towards their target. Archers can attack within five tiles but must face towards their target. Knights can move five tiles and attack adjacent units, but must face towards their target. Great Beasts… have wildly inconsistent rules, as with all size-based outliers in any sophisticated simulationist system. Why not have a little fantasy to liven up the experience? Furthermore, as the youngest you are the least able to enforce your will and tell Margareta not to put her lovingly hand-stitched velvet lion on the field of battle.
All regular units can survive two attacks from the front and one from the back. Both players take turns, most of the time. Sometimes Manfred will insist that since a unit of his didn't act, it should be able to react on your turn. This too is hard to argue against, as not only is he tall enough to put his toys away where you can't reach them but a reaction fire mechanic actually rewards actions besides attacking. For that reason you actually think he's a better player than Lorenz, who simply masses everything he has into a linear charge through lines.
Cushions and chairs provide cover and elevation. You haven't really figured out those rules yet but they add effect and that alone is worth it.
Today's game has you playing the villain with a large army of monsters, while Lorenz and Manfred field their toys more or less in line with their personal possessions, while Margareta practices the leiselaut, mostly managing to work her way through a memorized folk tune, adding a pleasant ambience. You have two hourglasses before dinner.
This is going to be good.
Elisabet knows Charlotte is going to grow up to be a problem child. As the youngest of the four siblings, she is the most doted-on and least-disciplined of the bunch. With the departure of the Furstin's younger sibling, the girl's mother has had to step in to assist her husband in the governance of the demesne, leaving much of her raising to servants who hesitate to cross lines against the masters' children. Already she's quick to use her charm and forceful personality to make her brothers do as she likes, and she's liable to grow up into a famous beauty.
She cannot be allowed to grow up to be a brat! Charlotte is most likely fated to be married off to a necessary noble relation, possibly even one of the Emperor's own issue. Imagine such a marriage if she grew up to be a domineering, uncouth wastrel with no useful skills other than her obsession with war!
Still, Elisabet knows that even as her adult guardian, her power over Charlotte (and the other siblings, for that matter) extends only to the extent that they accept the premise of her governance. They struck a bargain where they would compromise: the girl will be allowed to choose some of her own time, in return for accepting seriously her lessons in life as a noble lady as she begins to approach the age her manners will be scrutinized by society. At the same time, perhaps her newfound interests can be taken advantage of? If she cares so much about fighting, it may be useful to introduce her to family histories and geopolitics.
As she sips the last of her kafroti and nibbles on a sweet, she considers how the girl will spend her 6th summer.
Elisabet has 30 Time Units (TU) to spend for Charlotte's schedule, representing her waking, free time, directly managed by the head maid. Since Charlotte compromised with her, she has 10 Time Units (TU) of her own to assign. The activities available to each are based on their various inclinations.
For this phase, players may submit schedules of activities with up to 40 TU assigned, or support another person's designed schedule. Due to how voting aggregation works, write [ ] Plan Player instead of [ ] Player. As the voting period is extended, discussion is greatly encouraged.
When designing a schedule, put the activities in any order and assign how many TU are assigned. For example for 5 TU of Formal Dance, write Formal Dance (5). Activities with a (Min X) must automatically be taken to that minimal level or higher, while activities with a (Max X) cannot have more time assigned to them then the stated number.
Elisabet Activities
Formal Dance (Min 1)
Math and Finance (Min 1)
Etiquette (Min 4)
Calligraphy (Min 3)
Reading and Writing (Min 3)
Textiles
Botany
Charlotte Activities
Hiking and Sport (Max 7)
Explore Manor Village (Max 7)
Fencing
Archery
Play Games (Min 1)
Storytime (Max 7)
Socialize with the Help
Shared Activities
Leiselaut Practice
Singing Practice
History
Geography
Equestrian Riding
"Children? Dinner will be on the next bell." You hear the call from the door from one of the younger maids.
Your fortress of Two Chairs Facing One Another has been surrounded by the combined Armies of the Two Brothers, the Great Boreal Wolf has been vanquished at Lorenz' insistence as to the prowess of his one extremely ornate toy of an officer in a burnished cuirass. All that remains of your force now are the prettily fashionable archers of your Young Ladies' House Guard, hand-carved and painted dolls in pretty pastel dresses of various colors and tasteful coifs that look natural enough to elicit suspicion that they're adorned with human hair. A formidable force to be sure, but the brothers have cunningly divided your attention and whittled your forces down to nothing. Margareta is watching on in rapt attention, pausing her leiselaut practice to perch by your shoulder.
Lorenz points at you. "Surrender Charlotte! Your monster is dead and your dolls won't win against all of our soldiers."
"Yeah, you can't win." Manfred nods, and then points to the base of the fortress. "Our guys can just hide under the chairs where your archers can't hit them and make them fall over with bombs."
As before and in far more infuriating fashion, Manfred makes the better argument as commander of the two.
You pout, feeling the sting of defeat in yet another series of misremembered rules and questionable judgments. Lorenz has been demanding that his particularly nice toys should get three frontal hits all combat instead of two because they have shiny golden paint, and Manfred has been ruthlessly abusing his reaction fire mechanic to bait you into sending troops to their deaths.
What will you do?
[ ] Sulk and throw a fit, this isn't fun anymore!
[ ] Stage a stubborn defense so that you can stalemate them until dinner.
[ ] In the spirit of sportsmanship, graciously lose so that they keep playing with you.
[ ] Fight to the last, and resolutely lose with honor and dignity intact!
