Entertainment in Moru Kel
In addition to the standard entertainment practiced elsewhere — from dancing to knucklebones, and from tusks to mallet and bowling — there are a number of things unique to or particularly prominent in the city of Moru Kel.
Some of the games played in the city include:
Board/Table Games
- Chipsy: Players attempt to “hop” seeds into a central cup. One seed is used to press down upon another and then ricochet it off the table surface.
- Elevens: The city’s signature game, players lay out their tusks to attempt to reach a total of Elevens. Often simply called “tusks.”
- Eye of Skura: Advance your pawns across a board, finding your way through the Haze to Araphel. Played by the Sisters of Skura as a game of divination, but also played widely as a simple game.
- Keeps: A tusks game, where players score points based on the tusks they draw and race around a board.
- Patolli: A gambling/race game. Also called the game of Six Treasures, each player must put up six treasures (sometimes just six pennies, sometimes more interesting treasures) and the players battle it out to see who wins the others’ treasure.
- Push: A game of physical dexterity, popular among sailors, in rural areas, and as a pub game. The table — which is about 2' across — has a hole at the center with several posts around it. Players alternate trying to flick their counters into the hole and remove opponents’ counters from the board. A version with a much larger table (Pushpole) is popular among the nobility, who use a pole or cue to propel their counters.
- Ranyami: The game of Queens. Players oppose each other on a gridded board, attempting to capture each others’ pieces and turn their own into queens.
- Throwing nines or Crappes: A gambling dice game.
- Togus: A count-and-capture game, players distribute their tokens on the board in an attempt to capture their opponents’ pieces. The board features a series of divots or cups.
- Truffle hunt: A pub/drinking game. A board with a hole on it is placed atop 5 glasses (one below the hole, the others at the corners). Players alternate throwing coins at it. Landing atop the board scores one point. Getting a truffle (in the hole) scores 2. When a truffle is scored, the player must drink the center glass and can assign the other glasses to whoever they choose.
Physical Games
- Bowling or Soldiers: Common throughout the city, especially at restaurants and taverns. Players roll wooden balls toward pins in an attempt to knock them down.
- Hurling: Players throw large stones — or iron balls, in more organized versions — going for distance and accuracy along a line.
- Kite Flying: Extremely popular as a spectator sport, kite-flying takes various forms including kite fighting and acrobatic displays.
- Knucklebones: A children’s game. The bones are tossed and caught on the back of the hand. In later rounds, you must “scoop” as many bones as you had in prior rounds. The winner is the one who scoops the most bones.
- Mallet: Popular among the upper class, players hit a ball with a large mallet and attempt to propel it through a pre-set course.
- Sailing: A popular spectator sport, Kilpo Bay offers a perfect natural arena for shorter races. In recent years, the longer race to and from Tarsha has become a major point of competition between nobles.
- Shooters: A game where children take turns throwing stones down the stairwells, attempting to land near an earlier-thrown marker stone.
- Stairball: Popular among children, a ball sport played up and down the tiers of Moru Kel.
- Wrestling: One of the most popular spectator sports in the city, wrestlers compete to pin each other.