ContentsChapter V
The Codex
272 pieces to collect, and you catch every single one by solving a checkmate.
272 companions.
There are 23 themed families of six pieces each, plus 134 one-off pieces that belong to no family at all. You catch every one of them the same way: find the checkmate.
- 57pawns
- 53rooks
- 48knights
- 43bishops
- 38queens
- 33kings
Queens never wander around. Each one waits in a fixed place on the map for you to come and find her. Kings are rarer still, and there are four different ways to get one. Catch the other five pieces of a family and that family’s king comes looking for you. Five kings hold famous spots of their own and you have to go to them. One is on sale at the Chessino. And one belongs to a collector who will not open the case until you have finished his story.
Exactly one piece in the whole game cares what time it is: a king who appears only at night, out on the star plain, and even then only about once in every twenty encounters. Nothing else in Casteria is locked to the clock.
The Wildfire
The Ember Rider
The Ice Throne
The Star Chain
The Crystal Court
Five of the 272, shown at their real in-game quality. The rest are yours to find on the road.
one page of the codex
You only see a piece once you have caught it.
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The Wildfire
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The Ember Rider
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The Ice Throne
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The Star Chain
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The Crystal Court
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The Quiet Geode
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Twenty-four slots from one page of the Codex, six of them filled. A piece stays a black silhouette until the day you actually catch it.
what some of them bring with them
Thirty-nine pieces do something extra just by being on your team.
Most companions are exactly what they look like. Some carry a knack, and it works the whole time they are one of your six — you do not spend it or switch it on. They hand you free hints, pay you more experience or more Pawn Bucks, or make your moves impossible to parry.
- Honeyed CounselField the Honeycomb Queen and every real game starts with one free hint.
- Rider’s InsightField the Ember Rider — the hardest catch in Casteria — and you open with three free hints and nothing you play can be parried. But there is a catch: lose a piece, and every hint you have not spent is gone for the rest of that game.
Which is the whole argument for building a team rather than fielding your six strongest. The Rider is worth the climb.
what collecting pays
The Codex pays you to fill it.
Filling the Codex is worth money all the way along, four ways.
- Every 25th pieceRegister your 25th piece and you get 1,000 Pawn Bucks and a collector’s title. Every 25th after that pays 1,000 more than the last — 2,000 at 50, 3,000 at 75, and so on.
- Finishing a regionRegister every piece that lives in a region and you get 3,000 Pawn Bucks.
- Fielding a familyPut three pieces from the same themed family on your team and every wage you win pays +5%. Field all six of a family and it is +10%. It changes the payout, not the chess.
- The Grandmaster’s BoonCatch all 272 and every match pays +25% — experience and Pawn Bucks — forever. You also start every real game with three free hints. This one cannot be bought. You collect it.
The three boons you can buy are at the Chessino — see the Boost Case.
The free demo is the first part of the game — two towns, Openfield and Frostford, and the road between them. Everything you catch there carries straight into the full game.