Role

Chapter 1

What is the point?

There is a game that I learned in the orphanage.

It was a foolish game, tell you the truth. Or at least, the way we played
it was.

Simple enough in application though. We would stack wooden blocks in a
tower. Sometimes tall, sometimes not. Then, we would sit about the tower in
a circle and each remove a block from the middle or base of the tower
before trying to balance it back on top.

I learned a lot about my fellow orphans playing that game. Some would take
blocks as high as the rules would permit, a safer choice for those with a
steady hand, and on the face of things an optimal strategy. Some would
always take blocks as low as possible. Each success of a block coming loose
and the tower standing being met with cheers. Some methodical, some random,
some simply indifferent.

Some attempted to cheat. To stack the tower in such a way as to ensure
certain places were safer to pull from than others.

The tower always fell though. Someone always lost in the end, and it was
almost always me.

"Oi. Who is this nutter?"

I just can't help myself, ya know?

You see, there is a truth to this game that noone really understands. Its a
game made to lose. Blocks from the top, blocks from the bottom. Chipping
away at that tower one brick at a time. A gradual undermining.

You can clap your hands and cheer as it sways and holds. You can gasp in
awe as a block from the foundation slides free and it stands tall, defiant
and spitting in the face of reason. You can point to the tower, and cry:
'look. Is it not wonderful?'

But really?

"Will someone get him to pipe down?"

The only way to win?

The only one to have real agency in the game of slow decline?

Is to be the one who gets to say when the tower falls. The other players at
the table will laugh and smile. They'll see the scattered blocks, so much
rubble. They'll walk away, hearts all full of childish pride.

But they're all just blocks in the crumbling tower.

And I'm the architect of their fall.

I get to say when they start their tumble. I get to say how it all unravels,
and most important of all: I can't be sure quite where it'll all come down.

"A'right son. Time for you to leave."

That's the point, friends. That's the only point. The question in life
isn't who you are, or what you are, or what you do.

Its are you a block in the tower?

Or are you the one who kicks it over?

Its really that simple.

Shall we begin?

Na, not yet.

Lets build the tower first.
- Angram Freth'aran monologuing to a somewhat confused gathering in a
Galadon bar just trying to enjoy some Yuletide cheer, shortly before it
mysteriously caught fire.