The Game of Shadows (also the Game of the Platforms, or simply the Game) is the central cosmological mechanism of the final cycle of Antiterra, installed in 1784: twelve zodiacal platforms, one per sign, each activated at its time of the astronomical year, on which two opposed guardians rise.
| Type | Concept (cosmological mechanism) |
| World | Antiterra |
| Installed | 1784 |
| Supervisor | Cakravartin, King of Atlantis |
| Spanish entry | Juego de las Sombras |
Description
When a platform activates, two opposed guardians, summoned or invoked by the participants, embody the dual conflict of that zodiacal sector. Participants “must resolve the dual conflict of the zodiacal sector watched over by two opposed guardians”; resolving the conflict resolves the platform.
After serving, the guardians remain trapped on the platform and never return to where they were summoned from. Their service is perpetual: whoever summons a guardian gives that figure to the Game forever. “He who kills the guardian becomes the guardian.”
The contents of the platforms have changed over the centuries; only their number, twelve, and their zodiacal anchoring are fixed.
Supervision and geography
The Cakravartin watches the Game “with an understanding gaze” from his undersea throne. There is no single entrance: each platform has its own place, time of year and tone.
- Aries activates near a cursed temple on 21 March; it is reached on the back of the dragon Bronzo.
- Taurus lies in the territory of the Buffalo Soldiers of Fort Clark and is received by their Major, Jack Bull.
The Temporal Tide
The Game lets those who know how to operate it leap in time: they “sail like sailors of the seas of destiny, crossing not only space but also time”. The technique is “striking sails” on the Temporal Tide and needs the help of the Gathered of other times, who know the routes. It is risky. Les Libertateurs, and later the Regulators, used it to leave linear chronology.
History
Les Libertateurs
Les Libertateurs activated the first platforms. On the first, the opposed guardians were the guillotine and a saving angel; on Sagittarius, a mirror-archer who defends the holy innocents and the Kimchi Princess (mentor, friend, lover, priestess of love and freedom). The Princess stayed trapped on the platform.
In this 18th-century gesta (campaign-cycle), queens of different kinds appear as guardians or would-be guardians:
- a “jeva” queen;
- a Slavic queen, probably Queen Eva / Erzebeth, the spurned Sorceress Queen locked in a castle tower in Poland, mentioned in Events of Antiterra;
- other queens.
Washingstorm (Washington + Storm, a figure equivalent to George Washington, freed from magical corruption by Les Libertateurs) appears at some point of the arc as guardian of one of the platforms, trapped like the others.
The final cycle
The Regulators and the Deep Ones played the full game of twelve platforms: Aries in March 1888 A.D.A., Taurus in April, and so on through the zodiac. Its resolution is one of the threads of the close of the 1901 cycle: once the twelve platforms close, the Band of the Dissolution and the synthesis into Sinterra follow.
Open questions
- The meaning of “jeva” is uncertain: Argentine slang, possibly a Jewish/Hebrew queen, or a misreading of a specific name.
- The other queens are not individually identified.
- Which sign Washingstorm guards is not confirmed.
See also
- Zodiacal Platforms and Guardians — structural parallel in another gesta
- Guardians
- Dual Magic
- Lands of Crystallization
- Platform of Aries · Platform of Taurus