Jack of Harts

While the older king and princess landed on the ground to protect two royal families, the prince and his bodyguards assaulted the imperial ships that brought the invading imperials. They hit the cream of the imperial fleet in a devastating sneak attack that left it leaderless and rudderless in seconds. Then they jumped into the middle of the confrontation like Big Damn Heroes and nodded to the younger king and prince. The imperial troopers had retreated to the surrounding trees after the older king turned “The Look” on them. So when the older prince and his bodyguards advanced and gave them one chance, surrender or die, there was no hesitation. The imperials had no interest at all in dying for a battle already lost. They dropped their weapons and surrendered.

Tai built a simulation of the world ten years before the game started, and then inserted the characters me and Red pulled back into the story as “time travelers” from the future. I’ve watched the footage of their arrival in that world. I saw the other king’s surprise at seeing the older him come out of the vortex. And the young woman who was his son’s intended bride. She blocked the traitor’s attack that would have killed her mother and forever traumatized her brother, and then the older king caught and unveiled the traitor for all to see. So everybody would know who had betrayed them all. His chief guardsman. He killed the man a moment later. I had never pulled that man from the game, and when he died, the imperial attack faltered.

Tai ended up inviting all the characters I’d pulled from the story over to her house to consider the exact nature of how to save the kingdom. One problem was that some of the king’s bodyguards came from lands that had fallen to the long imperial advance. If we rebooted the timeline and defeated the empire a decade ago, their lands would never have fallen. Which would be good for the lands, but would remove their reason for joining the king. I suggested that we make that a feature, not a bug. They looked at me like I’d grown two heads. So I said that since we were basically working with time travel, why not just lean on it? Make them time travelers, come from a dark future to save their world from falling. They loved the idea.