That Nasherkan Legacy by Sudhish J Vyas

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The moves were made in real time and could be made even simultaneously; and the players had full freedom to manipulate their growths in any way they wanted. None of the players were to directly expose themselves to their or their rival's growths, but, with the help of the simulation controllers, they effectively ‘played God' to their societies. The Terra to be used was to be picked from a heap of lumps from the installment itself, as per the rules of Nasherkan. After a read-out of this full charter of rules, a bluish lump was chosen as Terra and the game was on.
It was fascinating to see the two of them play – one a hardened champion, the other a courageous rookie. Both went about their jobs with utmost dexterity, working out patterns, surroundings, & characters effortlessly with the simulation controllers. In the initial part there was not much to do. The players had mutually decided to increase the time rate on Terra to 2.3 Billion of the rate on Saarga, so that the game could be over in just under 2 days time. Initially, both of them went about creating characters with little or no intelligence. As they had put in tough surroundings around these characters, the societies became more engrossed in survival than in countering each other. As a result, no evolutionary version increase was being achieved. Without a version increase, the growths were lesser likely to fight, and there was the danger of the game ending in a tame draw. So, both the players agreed to wipe off everything, and make a new start to the game. After a brief lull which followed the wipe-off, the players moved on to create their most effective foot soldiers – the Naras.
The Naras were totally different from the characters that had been created till now. For the first time, the most effective weapon (MEW) of a character race was not physical. In fact, the Naras were one of the weakest characters on the physical scale. But they were provided with an unparalleled intelligence as their MEW. This set them apart and changed the whole approach to the game for both the players. Instead of the earlier skirmishes & petty fights between the growths, now planning and strategy came into the picture.
While being almost perfect miniature copies of their creators' race (as a tribute) in physical terms, the Naras were engineered to be far different on the cognitive scale. The people of Saarga had long renounced violence (it existed only in virtual games like Nasherkan now) and related grade II attributes, whereas the Naras were made to be suspicious, quarrelsome and inimical towards each other, the society, and the surroundings. This constant sense of enmity in Naras was crucial to the game's outcome, and was thence mandatorily incorporated in them by the players. As they were provided with the superior most intelligence on Terra, with its help they gradually spread over to each and every corner of it, and became the ruling class – perfect for the battle setup of Nasherkan. But because of their enhanced intelligence and resulting inquisitiveness, it was difficult for the players to maintain the ROI around Terra which had been easy to maintain in the case of the prior characters.