![]() My gracious host remarked that they might hold some value for Jasoomian collectors of oddities. In light of the fact that I do not have room to carry them with me, I have decided to divest myself of several of these sets. There is also a small bloodstain on one corner. The stains have proven impossible to eradicate. ![]() I managed to retrieve it, but not before it had been soaked. ![]() While setting up for a game during an unpleasant journey through the Toonolian marshes, a sudden wind swept the cloth from my hand. The pieces and box are painted and stained skeel, and have been carefully waxed to protect them from weathering and splitting. The pieces are all present, however, and the board is without holes. Naturally, the set has experienced some wear. I managed to take a few of these with me when I went, and others have returned to me as time passes and chance declares. The "boards" I painted on bits of cloth and canvas less sturdy and stable than typical wooden boards, but they could be rolled tight and stored inside the betting boxes with the tokens, and the whole was easy to slip between bars, conceal, or carry. I bartered for several lesser-quality betting boxes and sets of tokens, scoured them clean, and redecorated them with the black and white paint used to mark our bodies before each match. Once all bets have been made, the box is closed up, and the tally is made at the end, when the warrior must pay in coin or goods equivalent to the value marked on the back of the token. Warriors place their bets, using either dark tokens or light tokens depending on the side they are supporting. Small wooden betting tokens are marked with the warrior's personal sigil and a tanpi value. Hopefully this bare description will suffice. I never saw the faces of many of these brave men and women, but I remember their voices well.īetting between Green Men is often a bloody practice, and is much more complicated than I have room to delineate here. So long as the light held, or if the moons were high, we could play games with one another by calling out our moves from cell to cell. Remembering how the games with my Thark friend had eased my despair, I made a Jetan set with which to occupy myself and my cell-mate, and soon made sets for the other prisoners. I eventually won my freedom, a tale for another day, but I remembered the games fondly.Īfter many more adventures, and one unfortunate misadventure, I found myself captive in a Warhoon gladiatorial arena with a young warrior from Ptarth. My enslavement was, naturally, dismal, but I befriended a young warrior, and in the weeks that followed we played many games of Jetan together. These vary region to region.įifteen or so years ago, I was captured by a group of Green Men as I foolishly attempted to cross the empty sea-beds of Thark territory alone. The art of the Green Men is not representational in any way, so they mark the pieces with geometrical shapes. They often play outdoors on the soft, dense lichen, and flat pieces are less prone to tipping if the board shifts. The Green Men of Barsoom do play the game of Jetan, but they play it with flat discs instead of carved and sculpted pieces. The board is canvas with painted squares, edged with a blanket stitch to keep it from unraveling.Ī note from the panthan who made this set: The box is wooden with a flexible lid, lined with fine paper, decorated with real bone beads. The set is birchwood, stained and painted with acrylics. This is the sort of thing a wandering panthan might while away the time making for himself - or herself - out of very basic materials: small and very light, self-contained, and attractive.Ĭhess may be the game of kings, but Jetan is a warrior's game known over all of Barsoom, from Manator to Helium, from the marshes of Toonol to the Valley of the First Born. A Jetan/Martian chess set I made in a fit of Barsoomian nostalgia.
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