The Sixteen Positions of the Game are the reconstructed contents of the Ludus Umbrarum, the lost treatise on the Game of Shadows by Paulus of Alexandria: sixteen recurring positions, ciphered Φ1–Φ16, through which the gestas of the archive pass.
| Type | Work (reconstructed treatise) |
| Author | Paulus of Alexandria; reconstructed by Arkos |
| Cipher | Φ, from Paulus’s alphabet |
| Spanish entry | Las Dieciséis Posiciones del Juego |
Reconstruction
Only the title and opening prayer of the Ludus survived: “Los muertos no viven, las sombras no se alzan, aunque tú lo jugaste y luego el vivir lo extirpó de tu memoria” (“The dead do not live, the shadows do not rise, though you played it and then living tore it from your memory”). Arkos read the whole archive, from the third fantastic millennium to the South Atlantic of 1966, and rebuilt the positions from its regularities: where chronicles sharing no century, theater or company repeat a gesture, there is a position. No gesta passes through all sixteen.
Opening phase
Φ1 — The Summons
An authority calls the company to its mission, never freely: with a contract, advance payment or no way to refuse. A minor god has two heroes sign before telling them the truth; an official in a steam-improved wheelchair pays five hundred francs in Paris; in 1966 Buenos Aires a mission is arranged in a union office. In the archive: Contract of Nephtas · Iriarte · Utah · Green Kraken · Vandor
Φ2 — The Baptism
The company receives its name from a third party, a poet or the journey; its successive names are its moral biography. Anarchists emerging from an undersea tunnel are named the Deep Ones by the court. A poet names a mercenary band with Blake’s Rintrah ruge; they murder him, and his ghost, bound to a ring, comments on their renamings: Lords of York, Curiales, the Necessary Evil, Rintrah. In the archive: The Deep Ones · Rintrah · Mabrón · Lords of York → The Curiales → The Necessary Evil · The Maimed · The Word Breakers
Φ3 — The Unchosen Power
Power comes before will: an inheritance, a curse, a blood. A boy of eight inherits the first pocket watch, channel of a time god, the day his watchmaker father kills himself. A drow rebel curses an elf infant who is the twenty-fifth sun. A shipwrecked sailor has something from the sea in his blood. In the archive: The First Clock · Philippe · Arian · Golden Bones · Antonio Portet · Natalya
Φ4 — The Crossing
A long journey in a marked vehicle, with a toll battle, that reorganizes the company: demons on the Orient Express to Bucharest; a naga against a spy yacht, its head kept in brine; bronze automata on the way to Alpha Centauri; a diverted airliner landing on South Atlantic peat. In the archive: Orient Express · Spy Yacht · the Naga · Sidereal Office · Sidereal Automata · Operativo Cóndor
Underworld phase
Φ5 — The Crossing of the Threshold
Passage to a hidden stratum; the truth is always one level down (or up). An undersea kingdom; coffins under a Bucharest mansion; an inverted Torregrises under Torregrises; a coin of Aion and the phoenix bitten in half; a shared dream on the 1966 coast. In the archive: Atlantis · Natalia Petrovna’s Mansion · the Foundations · Sigil · the Descent · Coin of Aion · Carcosa · the Lighthouse-Monolith
Φ6 — The Temptation
Power, pleasure or knowledge for integrity, institutionalized: a tournament platform named the Temptation, guarded by a demon and a vampirized rider; a contract offered on a train to Belgrade; Carcosa tailoring a scene to each sleeper and asking them to sign. In the archive: Kaxathros · Coyote · the Inevitables · the Succubus · Tentator · Dream Pacts
Φ7 — The Formulaic Battle
Regulated combat recorded in detail: the infernal judge of the second circle thrown over a precipice; a vampirized colonel in a Belgrade dungeon ended by stakes and beheading; a Paris tavern brawl in which the dogs attack seventh. In the archive: Minos · Apis · Club des Gorriones · Funeral Games
Φ8 — The Pact Sealed or Refused
The moral hinge and central motif of the archive, in ten variants. An elf breaks his vow to save his master and is cast out: “te has condenado a ti mismo, y probablemente a muchos otros” (“you have damned yourself, and probably many others”). A hero sells his soul and chooses amnesia; a father kills his daughter for demonic power; a shamaness pacts offspring with hell’s prince; a paladin gives his soul to free his friends. In the archive: Oratiol · More · Maleika · Lucifer · Maristo · Adam the Harlequin · Bertrand · Pablo Mono · the Pact of Truth
Φ9 — The Inner Betrayal
Harm from within: atop an Eiffel Tower grown to the sky, the group’s gnome wishes the Gem of Creation into a bank vault on another plane; a drow hangs the poet who named his band; a harlequin enchants his companion to seize the only light in Hell. In the archive: El Fabuloso · Eiffel Tower Tournament · Gem of Creation · Kal-el
Φ10 — The Compromised Judgment
There is no clean judgment: one of the Contest’s three supra-divine judges is the prince of demons, who hurls the champions a thousand years back; Byzantine justice is a duel before the empress; an accused escapes as a mirror ball. In the archive: The Contest · Theodora · Gordo Suli
Catastrophe phase
Φ11 — The Fatal Execution
The irreversible event cannot be canceled; only who pulls the trigger is chosen. A Paris worker, waking as a Serbian student in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, fires the two shots; the dying Duchess refuses resurrection: “déjame ir… encontrémonos en el pasado” (“let me go… let us meet in the past”). A paladin purges Amun’s priests with the queen, then sleeps sixteen centuries. A lighthouse’s blue stone is fed blood. In the archive: Sarajevo 1914 · Claude Nauge · Duchess Sophie · Uchronic Guards · Amitlai · Draga Machine · Chronocide · Claromecó Lighthouse · the Blue Stone
Φ12 — The Guardian’s Relay
The archive’s signature: whoever defeats the guardian becomes the guardian, at the extreme inheriting the loser’s memory. The zodiac platforms pass their corruption to the killer; a mage learns it in Venice in 835; the Sarajevo worker wakes with seventy-five years of another man’s memory; a heroine becomes guardian of the Platform of Taurus. In the archive: The Dual Corruption · The Game of Shadows · Erzebeth · the Sentinels
Φ13 — The Closing Catastrophe
The fall that separates one era from the next: Storm 25 floods and freezes Torregrises; Antiterra heads “like a comet” for the band of dissolution; Monkchester burns. In the archive: Storm 25 · Federico · Band of the Dissolution · Black September · Monkchester · the multiple apocalypse
Persistence phase
Φ14 — The Exodus
Survivors escape, rescued by those who should not: at the Carnival of Venice in 1901 the Guardians open the zodiac platforms, with the prince of demons running the gala and Lucifer the politics. In the archive: Rapture · Graz’zt · Cakravartin · Lotario · the Ships of Chaos · Carnival of Venice
Φ15 — The Archival Deposit
Someone writes what happened inside the world, for a future reader: the Calendar, passed from librarian to librarian; a revolutionary’s memoirs; time capsules under Constantinople; the arch-villain’s bilingual tablets; the works of two mages, among them this treatise; a thirty-page letter. In the archive: Clarisa · Time Capsules · Tablets of Chaos · Pablo Casas · Kronamon · Eisagogika · Rerum divinarum et humanarum · The 30-Page Letter
Φ16 — The Transmigration
The arc reincarnates: Lotario is reborn as Oratiol, then Tailoor among the Word Breakers; the Deep Ones become the Regulators, and eighty years later another brotherhood takes their name. The way out of hell is the entrance to a new one. In the archive: Ärsvan · Hundun ↔ Coyote · The Regulators · Esoteric Order of Dagon · Uroboros
Closing
The Game closes not with wedding and throne but with deposit and relay (Φ15, Φ16), positions no other treatise describes.