#ferrin from beyonders

[thinklikeseth]

I can't believe I had no idea this Beyonders fan video existed. So to the rest of you who didn't know, here you go <3

[duparoberto]

I have nothing better to do

[zannolin]

Beyonders will rly just drop details like yeah rachel spent her first night in lyrian in a house with a corpse. And then move on like "we don't have time to unpack all that" no no go back. Go BACK

[totallynotadisplacer]

Taking a break from the most busy weekend ever to think about the time skip at Mianamon. So here are a few things that I think happened during those months.

1. Jason and Rachel teach the gang about Earth holidays.

2. Jason teaches everyone about baseball, and they play a game. Or, as much of a game as they can. Corinne is a good pitcher.

3. Ferrin and Galloran occasionally play chess while talking strategy.

4. Rachel and Corinne are telepathic besties. That's it

5. Jason and Rachel tell everyone more about the beyond. The gang is fascinated by yet skeptical of most of it. Airplanes are a hard sell.

[jamieroxxartist]

✔ Mark Your Calendars: Wed Jan 17, 2024 on 🎨#JamieRoxx’s Pop Roxx Radio 🎙️#TalkShow and 🎧#Podcast w/ Featured Guest:

Kate Patel, #Actress ​(#Scalper | #Movie, #Horror)

☎ Lines will be open (347) 850.8598 Call in with your Questions and Comments Live on the Air.

● Click here to Set a Reminder: http://tobtr.com/12304447

Pop Art Painter Jamie #Roxx (www.JamieRoxx.us) welcomes #KatePatel, Actress (Scalper | Movie, Horror) to the Show!

● IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt23148560 ● IG: @katewdpatel ● FB: @kate.patel.14

Everyone around psychic Clementine Carter is being brutally murdered by a masked killer dubbed 'The Scalper.' Is it dead psycho Andrew Lubitz back from the grave, a copycat killer or a horror beyond imagination? Clementine must use her second sight to stay one step ahead of the maniac's blade to solve the mystery. VOD Release - 1/16/24 via Breaking Glass Pictures

Director: Chad Ferrin Cast: #SusanPriver (Clementine Carter), #JakeBusey (Detective Hayden), #BaiLing (Jade Mei), Kate Patel (Detective Lupino), #ScottVogel (Bob Tarkovskiy)

​● Media Inquiries: October Coast PR www.octobercoastpr.com

[forwritingjustcause]

(Flesh and Bone - Sammy Rae)

The children of Sanctuary played within earshot. It was some fuss about heroes and villains, dragons and their slayers. It was timid, and yet so bold. They had never seen such things. She was sure of it. It was her gift to them.

“And what do you think you are doing, young Knight-King Ji-Ji? Stepping into my lair like this?” Ferri’s voice was pitched down in a facsimile of age and gravitas, the barely suppressed smile leaking brightly, “Surely you know this is beyond even you…” 

“Nothing is beyond me! Killin’ big bad lizards is what I do!” Always to the point, Ji-Ji was. Just ten, she didn’t know yet how serious Ferri took his play-acting.

“Lizard? That’s no way to speak to your … murderer!” Ferri growled. The inevitable retort from Jian-Jian was interrupted by the sound of the heavy impact a fourteen year old’s tackle makes. It always went the same way. The scenes never lasted long when they were just an excuse to wrestle.

Aberrant smiled with her teeth. It was a mean-looking thing, strained and bloody as it was, shivering like it was fighting back against something. At least it was honest. And it was the best she could do.

The already ghastly image was further marred by another wave of crimson, shooting out with a barely suppressed cough and dribbling down her chin. It was freshly followed by a wave of furious pain, sitting heavily in the brand at her chest before leaking into her veins, catching in their walls, screaming into her muscles with reckless abandon. Still, she made no sound.

“Argh, it’s not fair!” Ji-Ji managed from underneath a heaping mound of thoughtless boy, “I’m s’posed to be a big warrior king but you’re so much bigger than me.” 

“Oh? And you think the dragon’s are gonna fight fair Ji-Ji?” Ferri laughed unabated, “This is practice.” 

The statement was shortly followed with a sort of strangled yelp, then the elated giggling of victory and a well-deserved raspberry.

“Oh yeah? Well I can be cheap too, idiot,” A small thump quickly elicited another groan from the felled child, “How’s it feel now?”

“Ferrin Ilstedt!” This was Yve now, pounding the pavement so loudly in the children’s direction that Aby could hear them from all the way on the second floor. For a moment, she shivered at the thought of the reprimand, then laughed. It could hardly be worse than this.

Yve is good people. They’re steadfast and unambitious, prone to fits of righteous indignation and teaching fervor. They loathed the outside world more than most, and had a good head on their shoulders to keep the children mostly in line when the weaker passersby needed rest from whatever ailed them. In all, they kept Sanctuary running, just as well as Aby did. It was symbiotic.

But they were an unpleasant cad when provoked.

“How dare you make such a slop in front of the Shrine? You look an absolute disaster, and you’ve sprayed mud all over the walls! Have you learned nothing of respect in your little lives? After all Sanctuary has done for you, this is how you treat us. Unbelievable. I should have you both exiled.” 

There was a beat. Everyone knew when Yve was being overmuch, including themself. That didn’t mean anyone was excited to point it out. Aby was tempted enough to help that she almost began the process of extricating herself from the floor, but another pulse of pain knocked her right back on her ass, eliciting a gasp as the oxygen was forcibly pushed from her lungs.

“But Auntie -” Ferri began.

“Don’t you Auntie me Ilstedt, you will clean this up right now before I go find someone else to do it, otherwise so help me I’ll put you on senior duty so long you’ll need someone to clean out your own bedpan by the time you’re done.”

Before Aberrant could catch her next breath, her mark pulsed again. She felt it sear this time, the smell of burning skin instantaneously lifted into the air, adding to the painful nausea that sat in her bones and made her feel all out of balance. It was a bad episode. Worse than normal. It had been ages since she’d worried she wouldn’t be able to breathe. She gasped desperately, still clutching at her own throat as she did so.

Fuck. They’re going to hear me. It was her own voice screaming silently in her head, begging her body for silence, but the mark would not cooperate. Another wave of pain crashed into the other and she spat, the blood coming up from her throat mingling with the scream from her lungs to create a sad gargled noise. She clutched at the windowsill desperately, nails cracking under the pressure.

She was back in Cyr. The skin under her fingers crackled with strange energy. The nuns looked on with horror. She was sixteen. A black ichor drips from her fingers. The thief who would have killed her convulses violently. His eyes turn to pitch as she watches. She’s eighty, and she begs for her life as her collarbone withers under its magic. She’s thirteen, the blue sparks of a simple mending spell are turning red. She’s thirty-six. She wears a shirt that exposes her collarbone so that the guildmaster can see. She’s marked. She’s poisoned and she is poison. They give her the job. She’s eighteen and she is hungry. She steals to survive. The food spoils in her hands. She’s forty-two. Yve is screaming at the doorway. Yve is placing their hands on her throat, desperately casting a healing spell. Yve is holding her face, making eye contact yelling, Don’t die on me you stupid bitch Sanctuary needs you still, don’t make do this, don’t make me cry, you told me it was fine, I swear to the gods I will bring you to a necro if you die just so I can kill you one more time, please gods Aby I’m begging. 

She’s forty-two. Her lungs clear with hacking cough and spit, Aby clutches her friend close. She mumbles and they cry. She brings them close and she is comforting.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Aby croons, “I’m okay, I’m okay. I’ll always be okay.”

“You could’ve- you could’ve died Aberrant, I-” 

“It’ll never kill me, Yve. It’s never killed me.” 

And just like that, she was crying too.

And I've been striking matches to watch ‘em burn in my childhood bedrooms, ooh/Little time, little water and light, little seed, every bud blooms, oh

[lordgrimwing]

One thing I like about Ferrin is how he shows the contrast between making choices based on reason vs based on emotion/desire.

There are a lot of reasons to not oppose the emperor, or switch to his side as soon as he gives you a good out. He's going to win in the end. By all rights, he should have won despite everything our other beloved characters did. Standing against him brings nothing but pain and bloodshed. A handful of little countries that insist on fighting him are just drawing out the inevitable with more suffering for their people. Ferrin stays with Maldor because it is the only reasonable thing to do, especially as a displacer (I've got many thoughts on that specifically that I may type up and post now that I've started talking).

So what changes? Why does he begin working against the emperor? It had nothing to do with reason, the odds haven't changed, if anything they've gotten worse. No, Ferrin betrays (by degrees) everything he's ever stood for because he cares for someone. He wants Jason to be okay.

It's not a logical or reasonable desire to act on. Who is Jason to him? From an outside perspective, he's just a kid Ferrin followed around for a few weeks (less?) as part of his job. Not someone worth jeopardizing your career and life for, and we can safely assume based on what displacers do, that he's had other opportunities to do similar irrational things but hasn't, not in any substantive way. But here Jason comes and in a very short time, Ferrin's left everything he built his life on, all because he cares about this kid.

And why does he care about Jason? Jason didn't save his life. He didn't help him with something important or stand with him through adversity. In fact, they parted on a bitter note. So why? Jason (and Rachel) let him feel like a person, and he didn't want to let that go.

That is, perhaps, an oversimplification, but we'll call it good for now. The point is, books 2 and 3 show a Ferrin who is trying to move away from acting on reason so he can protect who he cares about, with varying degrees of success (it's hard to change who you are when you distrust yourself that deeply).

I'll wrap this up by noting how Ferrin's from reason to emotion is not wholly good (or bad). Sure, he ends up on the good team, but things don't go well for him. He faces more than his fair share of adversity and rejection from the good side and ultimately dies. Had he held to that tried and true reason, he almost assuredly would have survived Maldor's conquest of the entire continent.

It's things like this that make Ferrin an irresistible character to think about.

I still think about Ferrin and his question: "But what will it cost you?"

Everything has a cost. Everything has a reward.

The cost of doing the right thing is often that it's harder to do than not, you go out of your way, put yourself at risk, make some enemies. The reward is maybe making what you believe in a bit more real, and if you fail, peace knowing that you tried.

And no matter how sweet a gift is, it comes with strings. The cost of accepting that gift is to be known to be connected with its sender, or worse, to be indebted to them.

And Ferrin, with all his harsh truths and tough love lets a life where he could have had freedom and power pass him by. He chooses to die to remain true to his friends, because he weighed all the costs and still found it worth more to him than anything.

[otakunoculture]

H.P. Lovecraft's The Old Ones is Budget Filmmaking At Its Best (And Worst?)

Not every movie influenced by #hplovecraft has a budget to pull off amazing effects, and if you want cheap, H.P. Lovecraft's The Old Ones, is a fun watch for Die Hard fans. ;) #moviereview at:

Breaking Glass Pictures Available on VOD (YouTube, Google Play) Chad Ferrin is back with another Crappy World Film’s production! In H.P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones, it’s man versus monster and from what I hear, he’s working on what may be part three of an ongoing series! I can’t wait to see what he has in store in Unspeakable: Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Hopefully, he’ll have a budget for this one,…

[cultfaction]

Scalper trailer released

Directed by Chad Ferrin, Scalper stars Susan Priver, Jake Busey, Bai Ling, Kate Patel, and Scott Vogel. Everyone around psychic Clementine Carter is being brutally murdered by a masked killer dubbed ‘The Scalper.’ Is it dead psycho Andrew Lubitz back from the grave, a copycat killer or a horror beyond imagination? Clementine must use her second sight to stay one step ahead of the maniac’s blade…

[thinklikeseth]

Ok but Ferrin from Beyonders>>>>

[duparoberto]

I'm gonna do this with every beyonders ship now btw

arm an ferris

[zannolin]

or start at the beginning.

Fic Summary: Ferrin is pale and, Jason realizes, trembling almost imperceptibly, pupils blown wide. He’s bitten clean into his lower lip at some point, and blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

“It’s gone,” Ferrin says, sounding far more lucid than he looks, but somehow very, very far away. “They’re gone.”

Jason blinks. “What now?”

“What,” rasps the displacer, “did you do?”

And then, of course, he promptly passes out.

(or, jason walker’s guide for what to do when a stray displacer follows you home.)

Chapter 4/5: chosen path

He can still hear the deep, mournful melody of the sousalax from somewhere nearby. Above, the sky is spangled with stars. Jason doesn’t recognize a single one.

He grins.

“‘Toto,’” Jason proclaims to those beautiful unfamiliar stars, “‘I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.’”

“I thought you said you lived in Colorado,” Ferrin says from somewhere very near outside the tree.

(in which we return.)

[writersstareoutwindows]

Jason: And they were scouting buddies!

Rachel: Oh my god, they were scouting buddies.

[thatdammsfreak]

"His ship went down in a violent storm

Amid the booming thunder,

But he held his breath and scoured the sand

In search of hidden plunder!

Old Ingrim was a man of the sea,

The sort you'd hope to know.

He'd buy you a drink

If you shot him a wink

Then tell you he had to go!

When he arose from the briny depths,

His pockets full of pearls,

He found the tempest had drowned his wife

So he kissed all the local girls!

Old Ingrim was a man of the sea,

The sort you'd hope to know.

He'd buy you a drink

If you shot him a wink

Then tell you he had to go!"

The Beyonders: Seeds Of Rebellion, chapter 6, page 95.

I'm actually surprised that no one has posted anything about this yet.

I spent hours searching for anyone mentioning this song, and was so disappointed when I couldn't find it anywhere.

But, now I am going to actually try to add some music to it.

I'll start on piano, for now, but I might try ukulele, or something like that.

I'm excited.

[jamieroxxartist]

Tonight's Episode #1391 of 🎨#JamieRoxx’s Pop Roxx Radio 🎙️#TalkShow and 🎧#Podcast w/ Featured Guest:

Kate Patel, #Actress ​(#Scalper | #Movie, #Horror)

The Episode has now been converted to a PODCAST and is now archived (for FREE both Stream and/or Download) at: ✔ www.PopRoxxRadio.com

also on wherever you Stream or Download Podcasts at, Including:

✔ BlogTalkRadio: http://tobtr.com/12304954

✔ Spotify: https://shorturl.at/jkuMR ✔ Apple Podcasts: https://shorturl.at/ISZ38 ✔ iHeartRadio: https://shorturl.at/zFT03 ✔ Pandora: https://shorturl.at/mBKMY ✔ Player FM: https://shorturl.at/fPRW7 ✔ VIP Ad FREE (all Podcasts, all Tiers) on Jamie Roxx’s Patreon: www.patreon.com/JamieRoxx

Pop Art Painter Jamie #Roxx (www.JamieRoxx.us) welcomes #KatePatel, Actress (Scalper | Movie, Horror) to the Show!

● IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt23148560 ● IG: @katewdpatel ● FB: @kate.patel.14

Everyone around psychic Clementine Carter is being brutally murdered by a masked killer dubbed 'The Scalper.' Is it dead psycho Andrew Lubitz back from the grave, a copycat killer or a horror beyond imagination? Clementine must use her second sight to stay one step ahead of the maniac's blade to solve the mystery. VOD Release - 1/16/24 via Breaking Glass Pictures #BreakingGlassPictures

Director: Chad Ferrin Cast: #SusanPriver (Clementine Carter), #JakeBusey (Detective Hayden), #BaiLing (Jade Mei), Kate Patel (Detective Lupino), #ScottVogel (Bob Tarkovskiy)

​● Media Inquiries: October Coast #OctoberCoastPR www.octobercoastpr.com

[frankendykes-monster]

Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile is a one to six player strategy board game where players will guide the course of history in an ancient land. They might attempt to bolster the power of the Chancellor or scheme to bring the kingdom to ruin. The consequences of one game will ripple through those that follow, changing what resources and actions future players may have at their disposal and even altering the game's core victory condition.

- description of Oath from Leder Games

Oath is Cole Wehrle’s most off-putting game yet. I mean that affectionately. I also don’t anticipate everybody will feel the same way. Riding high on the goodwill generated by Root and Pax Pamir — and dressed up in Kyle Ferrin’s affable illustrative style — this sure is a beaut for something Wehrle called a “hate letter” to the civilization genre. Would it be rude to accuse such an attractive package of false advertising? Because Oath is so determined to make its audience reconsider their assumptions that it sometimes feels like it’s asking too much.

Sometimes. The rest of the time, I’m glad it asks so much.

At its most basic, Oath is a tableau-builder.

Even that description is inadequate. Unlike most tableau-builders, the tableau you’re building is shared between players. From its very first moments, you’re presented with a map of a low-fantasy kingdom. Or perhaps it’s an empire. Or a republic, theocracy, meritocracy, thalassocracy — whatever you want, really. It’s a trick that might qualify as openness or vagueness depending on what you’re looking for, or even your mood. In any case, those destinations are divided between three regions (Cradle, Provinces, and Hinterland) and are soon populated by denizens, the game’s most common type of card. These represent, well, everything. Individuals, clans, ethnic groups, modes, technologies, actions, philosophies, ideas. Everything.

The early portion of Oath revolves around the uncovering and settling of these denizens. For example, perhaps you’ve traveled to the Fertile Valley, a minor destination far out in the Hinterland, where you happen across a Faithful Hawk Friend, a Mounted Patrol, and some Wrestlers. You decide to accept the Hawk Friend into your personal retinue of advisers, which acts as both your hand and a personal tableau that’s (mostly) untouchable by other players. In order to make room, you plant the Old Oak in the Valley. When you conquer this land, you’ll be able to trade with the Old Oak even when you aren’t personally present, hearing its whispered secrets from afar. The problem is that any visiting rival will also be permitted to do the same.

In that fashion, every card added to Oath’s growing realm offers a razor-hilted sword. It’s common to find yourself squaring off against old friends or uncovering ways to turn a rival’s most dangerous card against them. More so when moving beyond the confines of a single play.

But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

If your shared realm and its expanding roster of denizens requires a reenvisioning of the tableau-builder, the political situation demands a paradigm shift.

The easy part is that players are divided into three roles. Roles aren’t revolutionary, right? Plenty of games have roles. In Oath, each play focuses on the fate of a single central polity, whether a dictatorship, republic, meritocracy… you get the idea. The honcho at the head of this polity, whether a dictatorship, republic, meritocracy… you get the idea. The honcho at the head of this polity is the Chancellor, a masked ruler with huge military potential. He’s opposed by Exiles, Oath’s default state for anybody playing as a bandit, outlander, or ragamuffin. These folks have their own troops and can carve out their own petty kingdoms, possibly even to the point that it dwarfs the Chancellor’s polity. Sometimes Exiles become Citizens, throwing in their lot with the Chancellor in exchange for one of his relics or the protection of his massive military. Let nobody say that the Chancellor doesn’t keep his pantry well-stocked with both carrots and sticks. Which is why it’s rare — possible, but rare — for a Citizens to abandon the Chancellor to become an Exile again, bribing their troops into becoming loyal warbands beyond the polity’s control.

The purpose behind these shifting roles initially seems nebulous. Supposedly, one changes their role in order to win. That requires us to ask what victory looks like in Oath. Okay, then: what does victory look like in Oath? That’s where things get complicated.

Let’s start with the Chancellor, because the head honcho can’t exactly swap roles. Sure, the Chancellor’s polity might dwindle or even disappear, but the Chancellor isn’t about to name himself an Exile. Every play features a different goal for the Chancellor, which becomes the polity’s “oath.” Aha! So that’s why it’s called Oath! Everybody is trying to meet this same objective!

Except that’s only true to a degree. Yes, it’s possible for the Chancellor to win by keeping his oath — basically, by defining success and meeting that definition. And yes, an Exile can do the same by keeping the Chancellor’s oath even better. Then the Exile becomes an Usurper. They’re playing by the Chancellor’s rules and winning. Maybe the Chancellor needs to control territory, but an Exile has greater holdings. Or the Chancellor has declared that he will control the state religion, but an Exile shows up who’s even more charismatic and capable of manipulating the religion’s power players. That sort of thing.

But there are two additional wrinkles in this tapestry. First, Citizens are totally invested in the polity, which means their efforts further the Chancellor’s aims. So how do they win? Naturally, by helping the Chancellor keep the polity’s oath while positioning themselves as his successor. This is an entirely separate sub-objective that balances Citizens on an unstable tightrope. They want to help the Chancellor keep his oath. At the same time, they’re subtly undermining his position. It’s even possible that they’re laying the groundwork to leave the polity altogether. This can be attractive because of the second wrinkle, Visions. These are additional objectives that trickle from the denizen deck. They’re not dissimilar from the alternate win conditions from Root, apart from being achievable. While everybody else is focused on the oath, an Exile might be playing a different game altogether.

If this sounds like a jumble, it absolutely is. Of the many possible complaints with Oath, the soundest stem from this quagmire of conflicting interests. Learning the game’s handful of objectives, how they can be pursued or halted by its various roles, when to pursue one or the other, or how a rival might signal their intent through something as subtle as traveling to a distant region or playing a particular denizen — this is deeply tricky stuff. Not only is it difficult to learn, but it can also be a bear to parse. Even experienced players will spend time staring at the realm, charting the surest course from base ambition to lofty realization. Sometimes even a lot of time. And why not? This is heady stuff.

But intricate politics and competing definitions of success are only the first step. Oath takes another. Right over the ledge. Whether it soars or tumbles into the rocky waters below is the big question.

Here’s what I mean. You may have heard that Oath keeps going. The result of that first play becomes the setup for the second, which in turn becomes the basis for the third, and so on, until you decide you’re done or it’s time to reset the game. This isn’t a legacy system. There’s no preordained story. There aren’t even story beats, at least none that have been determined in advance. Instead, the winner of one game becomes the Chancellor of the next. Their holdings become the core territories of the coming polity. Their method of victory becomes the oath of the next generation. And their cards are protected while others are cut from the game, with new random denizens getting shuffled into the deck.

I have two notes on this. First, this act of transformation between plays is very real without precluding somebody from entering the story later on. Because Oath isn’t a legacy game, new cards are introduced but the mechanisms never change. Rather than opening boxes or envelopes, you’re shuffling different cards into the same shared deck. Every play is its own complete event, without omission.

That said, Oath becomes something else entirely once you experience those singular events as connected. Like links in an unbroken chain, segments of a tapestry, or the acts of one generation in a chart-spanning family tree. This requires a different perspective entirely, one willing to redefine success not only within the span of one play, but many.

I’ll do my best to explain.

In one play, I lost my temper. I know, you’re shocked. I was, too. So was the object of my ire. The inciting event was a battle. Of Oath’s many particulars, military campaigns are one of the trickiest to parse, a merger of raw military strength, denizen cards, and dice. Making matters even trickier, a single campaign can have multiple targets. Not just one or two territories, but, well, an entire empire. Even loot can be targeted. So, too, can certain of the game’s more nebulous ideas. Maybe this territory plus that relic plus, oh, the affection of the people. Like everything else in Oath, a little imagination goes a long way toward clarifying what exactly any given campaign is accomplishing.

Anyway, this battle was for the Darkest Secret, one of two banners representing control over a kingdom-wide concept. Here that concept was the religion, the intrigue, the ephemeral glue of the empire. In order to succeed, I needed to hold it for a few extra turns. Fortunately, I was fielding an enormous army with helpful denizens in tow. My attacker didn’t really have much of a hope. She didn’t even need to attack me. There’s plenty of kingmaking in Oath. Consider it a feature rather than a bug and the pill goes down more sweetly. In this case, she couldn’t think of anything better to do, so she woke up and decided to crash her warband against my army.

She won. Barely, of course. My appalling roll certainly helped. I won’t go into particulars, but there’s room in Oath for military catastrophes, and this rated. I flipped. Not the table — it’s too heavy — but certainly some dice were chucked, and not to resolve a roll. This fit arose not only because of my tendency toward competitiveness, but also because Oath had engendered so much investment in the fates of our would-be potentates that my ignominious defeat somehow burst the magic circle like a soap bubble.

My embarrassment was compounded when my attacker and I wound up connected at the hip for three plays straight. She was the Chancellor and I the Citizen who succeeded her. Then the inverse. Then again. We came to resemble rival dynasties, always at each other’s throats but never quite ascendant enough to purge the wound completely. On one occasion, our rivalry grew so heated that even though our empire persisted, its borders were significantly smaller than they had been at the beginning. She turned to me after that game, laughing about our ill fortunes, and noted, “Even though I won, it feels like we lost.”

Every game makes me consider how to win. It’s rare that I’m left asking what that victory means — what comes after. Civilization games revel in transforming their players into an Augustus or a Caesar. Less often do they strive to make us into a Tiberius or Aurelius, presiding over a contraction, a compromise, a diminishment. Over the course of a few plays, that’s precisely what Oath accomplishes. It’s full of minor successes that outlast empires, failures that loom heavy in the memories of succeeding generations, and gradual shifts of identity. As I mentioned in my preview, I’ve played countless games about history, but Oath is the first I’ve played about historiography. This is a board game that’s about writing history more than reading it. Literally, even, since it encourages you to keep a written record of everything that befalls your people.

Unsurprisingly, this works best when experienced with the same core group, plus or minus the occasional interloper. As a single experience, there’s less of a reason to play Oath than Pax Pamir, Root, or John Company. Taken in isolation, it’s an interesting plaything mired by irritants and infuriants, like spring air buzzing with pollen and insects. It’s only when given room to breathe that it adopts a unique seasonality. Here is spring, irritating and itchy, but also bursting with refreshment and renewal. Summer, hot and lazy. Autumn, the season of decay but also the season of gathering. Last comes winter, cold and bitter, but a relief in its own right, a time to burrow and hold close the things that keep us warm. Something that is stifling alone may become richer through connection. Then it’s part of a cycle, whether a harrowing or a reprieve.

Oath manages to encompass that entire cycle on its own. It’s ambitious like that. At its worst, it grows stomach-sick with ambition. Mostly when viewed through a pinhole. This passage is better suited to a window or a door. What lies on the other side captures such a tremendous portion of why history is so enrapturing: the breadth of it, the character, the sheer interconnectedness of time and place and person. Oath asks for a paradigm shift and somehow matches the gumption of its demand.