Ben, Reed, Fred, and I played a game of Microscope. Our bookend events were [start] Colonists leave the old land under political persecution as a king colsolidates his power, and [end] Refugees leave the lands that the colonists control, because of persecution. The Palette was limited to Yes: galleys, electricity, and racism.

The opening round added: the new colonies became a number of independent states, the colonies prospered as privateers, and they eventually brought in large numbers of slaves as their society became decadent.

The first focus was the hashish trade. Prince Zaid, ruler of a colony, decided to nationalize the hashish trade. This led to a scene where his albino son was nearly executed for openly opposing the move. Prince Zaid's stern wife bullied him into saying he would execute their son, but then Zaid had him released on the sly. Eventually there was a war over the trade, and Zaid's ancestors were forced to sign a humiliating peace.

The second focus was a slave revolt lead by Kartan. Kartan was brought to the colonies as a youth of 16. He fell in love with the overseer's daughter but she would not act on her mutual feelings. He came to see her at night, and was lucky to escape with a beating. Later in life, as the leader of the successful revolt, he would make peace with the neighboring colonies despite his friend's urging that the revolution must be exported...it turned out that his example was enough to inspire the slaves of neighboring colonies to revolt, despite the fact that Kartan and his chief advisor had sold them out.

Actually the palette only said "multiple races": racism swept in later. That was a great example of building on each other: I (innocently!) put multiple races on the palette, Reed made the Period where the colonies started importing "cheap foreign labor" and added xenophobia, and before we knew it we had slave revolts, racist overseers, and forbidden love.

And of course Microscope-style, we did the whole Kartan story backwards: first we examined the post-revolt Kartan selling out, leading to the unintentional revolt of the neighboring colony, and then zipped back to Kartan's youth and explored his doomed love for the slave-master's daughter. I had a despicably good time with the dialog between Kartan's advisor, a freed slave himself, now dressed in the finery of his former masters, putting on airs and hob-knobbing with the nobles of the neighboring colony and looking down his nose at the slaves working in the fields around him. Wonderfully awful.

So many ideas, so little time. I really wanted to go back and take a closer look at Zaid's iron-hearted wife and their loveless political marriage. What alliance did their union seal? Whose side did the albino blood come from, his or hers? Was the albino even her son?

Oh and special thanks to our excellent audience, Kira and Xander. It was fun having you guys sit in!