Plur-ven

Chess, but with gods. Plur-ven is a game much akin to chess in its strategy, with the end goal of capturing the king piece. However, the gods have a hand in these battles, and while the "mortal" pieces move around the board below, the "god" pieces move over them, applying modifiers to any pieces that fall under their domain - their area of the board.   The board is built with checkered squares, a grid ten by ten, and each player has twenty-four pieces - twenty mortals, and four gods. The game starts with a separate piece - the "god of chance", a coin, being flipped to determine who goes first. The god pieces are stood on thin stilts so as to be able to stand on the board above the mortal pieces, and each of the four gods has a different range and ability. The mortal pieces each have their own move set and capabilities, but these can be altered by the gods standing above them. Two gods enhance the pieces, and two gods limit the pieces. The strategy often revolves around moving the limiting gods towards your opponent's side of the board and the beneficial ones towards your own, so as to cover as many mortal pieces as possible for maximum effect. The mortal pieces are moved around the board with the end goal of capturing the king (and as many other pieces as possible, if you're playing multiple games for points).   Plur-ven boards are often designed in many ways, but hold a common theme of the god and royalty pieces usually having some more elaborate ornamentation. In the most expensive sets, you might find the ground board made of the finest woods, the commoner pieces made of solid gold or silver, and the nobility and gods decorated with many inlaid gems. In its simplest forms, the board is often little more than a flat piece of wood with squares scratched into it, wooden tokens for the commoners and marbles or larger tokens for the royalty and gods, while the stilts of the gods can be simple sticks.   The game of plur-ven is known for the strategic mindset required, and is hypothesized to have originated from simpler war games to train and keep sharp the minds of military commanders. Now, however, it is used more for entertainment, and even as competition. The sharpest minds can play multiple games at once or even play without seeing the board.