Fables of the Flying City, Episode 9 “Games For Liars”

Scene: The Aerial Guard Runway and later, the Soldier’s Mess

Characters involved: Ashe, Tolban, Sgt. Slanger, Jobrani, Mari, Bug. Cerranah is mentioned–and, presumably, doing the drills–but is not a player in either scene.

References:   The drill our Aerial Guardians do is not based on anything particular, just the thought that if you were taking off and coming down to a moving platform (as we know from last episode, Amperstam is in motion), you’d want to your pilots to be extremely comfortable landing and launching.  Small beer is beer with a low alcohol content, and is there more to balance out the low-calorie, vitamin rich pottage in the soldier’s diet than it is to get drunk. ”Sheep’s knuckles” refer to the probable origin of dice, made from the ankle bones (specifically the talus or “astragalus”) of hoofed animals. .  Liar’s Dice is a real game that is as old as dice itself.  Liar’s Knives, however, is not.

Notes: Like all gamers, I love the savage romance of “rolling the bones,” and even sought out a pair of actual bone dice to give to my wife for Valentine’s Day. It gives the game a nice edge in presentation that plastic or wood or even metal cannot touch. So all of the sheep knuckles on Amperstam are made of bone. Though they may not, in fact, be made of sheep. More than few soldiers unwittingly carry pig or goat knuckles in their pockets, which are typically thought to be bad luck.

This episode is the first mention of Tolban’s past, and we get a hint as to why he left the family business of brewing that he clearly has a taste for. More on that as it develops…