(Untitled)

[sir_samuel]

He'd found it when he had come into the rec room. An octagonal board covered in little checkered squares, populated with eight tiny trolls and thirty-two minuscule dwarfs, all set to fight their little imaginary battle. The pieces were carefully made, the small troll figures walking rocks with clan lichen painted on in minute detail, dwarfs bearded

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[starkhand]

Ned had finished his patrol and was leaving the building when he saw Ser Vimes seated at a game board of some type. He did not reckon Ser Vimes for a game-player, and stopped in surprise to look for a moment.

[sir_samuel]

Vimes had a keen sense of when he was being watched. It was one of those talents that, if you were lucky enough to have it, kept you alive that much longer when you were a copper. He looked up, raising his brows slightly at Ned's expression. "Evening, Lord Stark."

[starkhand]

"Good evening, Ser Vimes." Ned still held some resentment for all that had happened with the Lannister boy, but he was trying - with little success - to let it go, on Arthur's advice. "I did not realise you were fond of games."

[sir_samuel]

"I'm not," Vimes replied darkly. "But the island, not to mention someone else," he glared at the board, blaming the absent Mr. Shine as much as island magic for its presence, "thinks I should be."

He looked up at Ned, smiling grimly. "You wanna hear a story about blood feuds, Lord Stark? Come take a look at this."

[starkhand]

Ned stepped forward, his hands clasped behind his back, and inspected the board. Eight and thirty-two armed creatures faced each other on a field of battle. "A game of strategy?" Ned asked. "From your homeworld?"

[sir_samuel]

Vimes snorted. "Strategy. Yeah, guess you could call it that. As if we need a bunch of imaginary wars to go along with the real ones." He pointed to each side of the board as he continued. "Dwarfs and Trolls. On the Disc they've been fighting each other since the beginning of time, or at least since Koom Valley. Somewhere along the way, someone thought making a game out of it would be a clever thing to do."

[starkhand]

Ned imagined someone lining tiny Starks and Lannisters along a board and frowned. "I take it these dwarfs and trolls are not human." They certainly did not look it.

[sir_samuel]

Vimes looked at Ned blankly. "They're trolls and dwarfs." He scowled at the board again. "They're worse than your lot and those damned Lannisters. Thousands of years and it won't go away. It spreads across the Disc, becomes a lot more than their problem. And then they bring it with 'em to Ankh-Morpork, and then it becomes my problem."

[starkhand]

Ned himself had no use for blood feuds, and would have been happy to stay at Winterfell and mind his own house and family and men with no interference from the rest of the world. "What can these creatures have to fight about?" Ned asked, genuinely curious; in Westeros there were only humans and animals and the gods, and he did not understand what anyone not-human could have to fight so much about.

[sir_samuel]

"When it's been going on for thousands of year, cause doesn't have much to do with it anymore." He raked a hand through his hair. "But they say it started in Koom Valley, where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls, depending on who you ask, of course. To this day they hate each other, they fight, they sing songs about their great leaders who killed the other side's great leaders or got killed by 'em."