Scott Cairns

“…the acrid smoke weighed on my lungs like a pile of bricks. After what seemed like hours of stumbling through soot-stained corridors I found myself outside, choking and weeping into the blissfully cool sand. Trudging through dunes reflecting that terrible great orange light, I realised what I had been doing wrong all this time - living only for myself was not a decision I made in my own interest but because I feared what might happen if I were to love someone and lose them again. The late nights, the booze, the lashing out, all of them served to dull the pain when what I had to do was confront my fears. It was that afternoon that I quit smoking.”

–The Pieces and their Player: an autobiography, Cairns, S., 2071.

“…announced he would be playing at the Vilgrad Conference, an unexpected move for the formerly-erstwhile Master. Though he was scouted there all those years ago, Cairns has never played the Conference since, a move many chalked up to his reluctance to risk rating points on non-Major Circuit tournaments. Indeed, since his readmission onto the Circuit, Cairns has seemingly focused exclusively on World Championship qualification norms, making his decision to return to Vilgrad after so many decades in more hospitable climes all the more baffling…”

–“CAIRNS TO PLAY VILGRAD”, Dukes Quarterly, Winter 2059.

“Even in our time, successful computational analysis of Dukes remains elusive. Rather than trying to play whole games, as the purveyors of fraudulent court automatons in previous years claimed to be able to achieve, modern researchers have tended to focus their efforts on the endgame. With fewer pieces on the board, it is claimed that endgames with six pieces or fewer could be entirely solved by the end of the decade. For now, however, certainty in Dukes is found when the pieces number only two.“

–Masters and Prophets: a short history of the Duke's Game, afterword by Reilly, A., 5th ed., 2047.

Written by Elouise F