Fireseed (game)

Fireseed is a game played by children in the Realm, and in many urban centers across the Southern and Eastern Threshold.

The game is simple: each player has a collection of small spheres, known as marbles, kept in a bag. To begin the game, each player draws a random marble and places it at the center of a ring marked on the ground.

Players then take turns rolling their remaining marbles into the circle, attempting to knock other marbles out of the circle. If a marble is knocked out, the player who knocked it out adds it to their own collection. A player loses when they run out of marbles or when they choose to withdraw.

Some ancient texts describe the game being played with actual Fireseeds during the First Age, requiring extensive skill... one had to strike a fireseed hard enough to roll it out of the circle, but if it struck too hard both seeds would shatter and be gone.

The marbles used for Fireseed are most often made of Marble or glass, though they can also be carved of Moss Agate, Banded Agate, Fire Agate, or Alabaster.

In the far Northern Threshold, a variant of the game is said to be played on frozen lakes, using much larger spheres of stone flattened top and bottom, which are slid rather than rolled.