Thunder #6: Vale of Bishops

“Let your plans be dark and when you move, fall like thunder.”

You would think Sun Tzu graduated from the Vale of Bishops with the way he waxes poetic about such things as war.  For to be a graduate of the Sixth Thunder’s hallowed halls is to come out a Wargamer, prepared, revered for what it means to plan and think in the dark, to fall and move like thunder, to be the best and out-think the rest.

Oh, strategy and tactics are more than just buzzwords to the Sixth Thunder!  Strategy is vision, and it takes a far wiser mind  than what is normally born into this world to learn the tricks to employ it.  Be without wisdom and at best you are useless; be without vision and at best you are dead.

Wargamers do not sit on their hands; they plan, they think, attack, and plan again after reviewing their first choices.  Game after game, scenario after scenario — most folk are barely out of bed when the Vale of Bishops is beginning its day.  Most haven’t even tasted their first cup of subavi!

Tucked away alongside the river Nereen, facing rolling hills, wildflowers and the breeze-bending sway of tall grass, sits a Thunder so at one with her dale that they say her dale creeps across her battlements as if she was abandoned.  Vinery covers everything.  Only her draw bridges are clear and are only so because of those that make it their daily use.  The Sixth is beautiful, picturesque, easy pickings for anyone with a brush, canvas, and an ounce of desire to draw her.

Oh but the Bishop, she may appear serene, even lull you to think she lies in slumber, but only a fool would actually think that she is lazily enjoying the afternoon sun!  Why not just compare warriors to sheep herders?  The Sixth is as committed to its purpose as much as any other Thunder in service to the land.  Her methods are simply less…well, they’re simply less flamboyant.

The Sixth does not have a Woe Hammer.  The Sixth does not have an Aeriatis.  The Sixth does not have a Sagitarri.  The Sixth does not have a Woodwives Balm.  What the Sixth has are chess pieces — chess pieces! — bishops, pawns, rooks, and knights, and collectively they make for what the Wargamers call Tacticons.  Yes, obviously, chess pieces are nowhere near as sexy as sledgehammers or suits made of leviathan skin, but enchanted is enchanted, and the Tacticon are enchanted.  For to be the bearer of the the talisman of the Sixth is to wield the very nature of wisdom, the amassed wisdom from every battle ever waged.  And apparently, it came at great debate.  What assurance did the Gods have that man even merited such a gift?  And what if he bungled it, or if it got into the wrong hands?  The world already teetered on a knife’s edge.  Clearly, their misgivings were short-lived.

Truth is the God’s couldn’t have chosen a better recipient.  The Vale of Bishops knows its burden and carries it well.  War is her life, rather, its prevention.  And to that end, she wars with everything around her.  Not explicitly, of course.  But from the perspective of the eagles that have made that area home, from their perches high above the clouds, the telling feature is that the Bishop practices what she preaches, what every warrior has ever known: that if you’re going to beat your enemy, you must outthink your enemy.  So much so that the Bishop’s field-games are said to be the stuff of dinner conversations.  Mazes and mud traps, sometimes lasting all weekend long!  And they’re said to be brutal!  From which — at least I’ve heard — crawl the most filthy, eager-minded, overzealous cadets you’ve ever seen, often looking and smelling more like wildebeest than the warriors-in-training they’re supposed to be, and all because of some flag sitting at the end of some pole they’re supposed to reach first.

No.  The Bishop wars but she wars for the heads of her youth.  She wars on her maps.  She wars on her fields.  The Bishop wars precisely so that when war greets her she stands ready.

Strategy is an aged brew.  It is the stew cooked slowly.  It is the skulling session that lasts way past dawn, that leaves its candles dripping down to nubs, that leaves one’s head hurting.  After all, knowledge like wisdom must be earned.  Belong to the Sixth, though, and it must also be rolled.

Roll the Rook,
Roll the Knight,
Roll the Bishop,
And Pawn for sight,

The sight to see,
What wisdom brings,
The sight to see,
What wisdom means,

Roll the Rook,
Roll the Knight,
Roll the Bishop,
And Pawn for sight,

That Sixth might see,
That Sixth might fight,
That Sixth alone,
Rolls wisdom’s might!

Inkling #32:
What is the Seven Thunders?  It is the Vale of Bishops, and their Wielder the Tacticon, found in Olyria, near the river Nereen.  Wargamers!  Kings of the flag and pole!  Wise is the Sixth of Seven.  Give ’em two moves and they’ll beat you at chess.  But give ’em a pair of Tacticons and you’ll wish you never stepped on the battlefield.  Roll the Rook, Roll the Knight, Roll the Bishop and Pawn for sight! — Who would have ever thought that being good with dice could get you into a Thunder?!!