Galbrae
Galbrae is the board game, and not a game in the sense the other two are. Nothing is ever captured, nothing is ever moved once it is down, and there is no luck in it whatever. Two players fill a board between them, and at the end the board is read.
The board and the stones
Sixteen by sixteen — two hundred and fifty-six points, the number this world reaches for when it wants a number. Each player has a hundred and twenty-eight stones in four kinds, thirty-two each of Personal, Family, Station, and City. Players place one stone at a time, of whichever kind they choose, on whichever empty point they choose, and go on until there is nowhere left to put anything.
Scoring
Every stone is judged by the four points beside it.
- A Personal scores if none of its neighbors are its own player's — standing alone, as the aspect does.
- A Family scores if two or more neighbors are its own and at least one belongs to the opponent — standing among its own and facing outward. A stone buried in a friendly mass is not standing with anybody, only surrounded.
- A Station scores if exactly one neighbor is its own: one partner and no more.
- A City scores if two or more neighbors belong to the opponent — holding a line where the pressure is.
A stone that stands correctly is worth a point and one that does not is worth nothing, and the higher total takes the match.
The play
A player is never attacking, because there is nothing to attack. Every stone he places does two things at once: stands in some relation of its own, and spoils the relation of everything around it. A stone dropped beside an opponent's Personal ruins it for the rest of the match and cannot be picked up, and must also earn its own point where it lies. Nothing is recoverable.
A serious match runs three days. The notation is standard everywhere, so a game played in Eldershore can be replayed from a sheet in Stormharbor forty years later, and matches are published as a matter of course. Clearhold's Registrars keep an archive going back centuries that anybody may consult, and the Academy publishes analyses argued over for years. Clearhold produces the best players in the world and is insufferable about it. Children play it on a flagstone with pebbles and a scratched eight-by-eight grid, and no adult watching recognizes it as the same game until they look at what the child is doing with the corners.