Game Restart
Here is what Robert and the ladies know of the Shards:
The shards are about two feet in length, three inches in diameter, reddish brown in colour, and weigh about ten pounds.
On Earth, over the last four hundred years, twenty shards have been found – one in Australia, two in Japan, one in the Philippines, one in the Chinese highlands, two in Russia, one in the Swiss Alps, one in northern Scotland, one in Ireland, one in upstate New York, one in eastern Kentucky, one in Iowa, one in central Texas, one in eastern Colorado, one in Montana, one in Washington, one in central California, one in southern Alaska, and one in Hawaii.
In each case, a young woman was mysteriously drawn to the buried artifact, which she immediately took and hid in a secure place. The Shards imbued the women with mental powers; telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance and clairaudience, extreme senses of sight, hearing, or smell, and exceptional skills in mathematics, languages, and the sciences. The affected women also exhibit enhanced mental faculties in general, and are also considered more physically attractive and fit than the average woman. The very powerfully endowed women are also invariably very beautiful and attractive.
No woman has ever exhibited more than one power, but they unerringly manifest in their daughters. No power has ever manifested in a male, and direct skin contact with a Shard will kill a man within hours, as they manifest fatal cerebral hemorrhages.
As humans have begun to intermingle across the worlds, the existence of the Shards, and their associated powers in certain families, has drawn the attention of two categories of people, those who wish to defend the Shards, and those who wish to usurp them for foul purposes.
The players on the defender’s side are all families: USA (Wilder, Sanchez), Asia (Zhou, Takada, Kuznetsov), Europe and Australia (Keller, Visser). Over time, eighteen Shards and their descendants have coalesced into these extended families.
Two of the Shard families desire to acquire more of them: KY (Darlington), Scotland (Foirbeis, or Forbes). Also, the US Government’s Secret Service is aware of their rumored existence, as well as elements in the Russian Okhrana, and the British Intelligence Branch (Robert, and his superiors).
Thirty years ago, a member of the Keller family posited that the Shards could have come from a comet, and that there might be more of them on the other inhabited worlds. The theory spread among the families, and soon reached the ears of relatives in the intelligence services.
Each family has set out to search for more Shards, and to block the other group from acquiring more of them.
In the meantime, the Darlingtons and the Forbes family are stepping up their search. Although they have been tolerant of their opponents on Earth, they see Mars and the other planets as frontier territory where the gloves of civility can come off.
Louis and Meghan are first cousins. Louis’ mother, a Wilder, married Louis Wetzel. Meghan’s mother, a Wilder, married her third cousin, James Wilder. So, Meghan inherited somewhat better mental faculties than average, making her an outstanding student and officer. Louis inherited better than average eyesight and improved eye-hand coordination. Both women also have better than average physical fitness, all courtesy of the Shards.
Robert is a distant cousin to the Kentucky Darlingtons.
