UNEARTHED ARTEFACTS

++YEAR 3170++INCOMING TRANSMISSION++ Found Sector N5: Pastime x17 – Board Game - “VEGAS SHOWDOWN”

Aresearch team, digging in the sands of one of the most hostile places on this planet, recently uncovered a huge complex full of machinery designed for games of chance. It was no surprise, then, that this unit was dispatched to the area with great haste. Our department, focused as it is on games and gaming as a feature of the Flesh Devil existence, is often mocked and dismissed by the other departments across our network. But now – with this new discovery – we are the experts our leaders need. We are the point team on this new revelation.

Travelling to the target sector on our TekBird, I carried with me a copy of a board game found some years ago in Sector N5. The game is called Vegas Showdown, and it tells the story of players who are building hotelcasinos in the Late Oil Humanity city of Las Vegas. Specifically, it is set on the Vegas Strip, a holiday destination for many Flesh Devils, and a place where all sorts of decadence could be catered for. I was convinced, before landing, that the research team in the sands had uncovered one of these hotel-casinos, and I had come prepared to explain the nature of their discovery through play.

Masking up and walking through the entrance of the excavated building, I immediately saw row upon row of gambling machines. They were not powered. Their lights were dead. A few were purely mechanical, and so I pulled the arm and set the reels spinning.

The Humans loved to gamble. They loved to believe that they could somehow control the chaos of fate. I think that blind faith is a large part of the explanation behind their extinction. In Vegas Showdown, the board game, players must bid against each other for tiles that represent rooms within their gambling and leisure facility. When a player wins one of these tiles, they need to be placed within the player’s board according to certain rules. Cleverly, the complex that the player builds needs to work in a practical sense – it must be possible for an imagined person to navigate their way through the building, visiting the various rooms. Bonus points are awarded when a clear route from the front entrance of the building to the rear exit of the building can be established. It is hugely pleasing to build the complex efficiently and correctly.

And yet, it’s interesting that there is very little left to the auspices of fate in this board game. The bidding is open, and all information is shared between players. This is not a game about being a gambler – but a game about building the structures that will be populated by gamblers. It is one of a family of games that tend towards the elimination of luck. It’s clear, looking at many of the board games that we have discovered over the years, that many Flesh Devils who loved games did not have much time for any significant reliance on luck. If they were to endure failure, they wanted to be sure that they themselves were the ones at fault.

I set reel after reel spinning. Occasionally, I matched some fruit, and the machine spat out ancient coins. I turned the metallic discs in my hands, feeling their weight. Fate and fortune, I think, is beautiful. But control is truly comforting. I played Vegas Showdown into the night, and told tales of the Flesh Devils into the light of the morning.