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Valon is one of the most decorated Massieu Shard Captains. If he can out-position his enemies on Verspersa, not only could it give his people leverage to take the Trade bank, but he’d be in line to become emperor.

Wolfram is a veteran of eight battle-planet campaigns. He’s addicted to war, and compulsively reenlists for every off-world conflict. He’s aware of his addiction, and fights as much for fun as he does for Shards.

Lilith is a ranking member of the Brillouin Trade Bank, which does business across the Firmament. The bank is over-leveraged due to some bad trades. She needs to win on Vespersa to avoid scandal.

Dusana is a physicist. She believes Vespersa—a planet recently accessible for Shard harvesting—could collapse if pillaged, setting off a chain reaction that would destroy the Mahdi planetary system.

Titus’s mother was killed fighting to protect his world’s Shard stores. For him, preserving Shards not only protects his spiritual path back to the creator, but his reunion with his mother, if he’s valiant.

• The Brillouin stand nearly six feet high

• Consummate traders, always looking for leverage to be used when convenient.

• Their skin carries the slightest hint of blue, wear broad-brimmed hats to shade their eyes.

• They carry a pair of shard hand bows—expel intense gravity or time dilation

• Culture fosters deceit, duplicity, and craftiness as core skills

• Harvest Shards for trade

• Standing just under five feet tall

• Thickness in the head, neck, torso, and limbs, with a leathery tan skin

• Unique quality is their war cry—the foe loses useful thought for those few moments

• Intelligent but a loud, brash culture with no filter

• Largely subterranean—shard harvesting is territorial as people of the ground

• The Massieu stand a little over six feet tall

• Enamored with gallantry and loyal to friends

• Infuriate the opponent with cunning

• Standard weapons, as well as antique slings to hurl shard stones

• The Massieu are empire builders

• The Massieu compete for shards for one reason: Status

• Stand eight feet tall and have a hulking musculature and immense strength.

• Wield immense arm cannons

• Intelligent race with a deeply spiritual connection to the Shard of Chaos

• Regard Shards as gifts from the great creator, to be used judiciously

• Collect Shards to prevent their exploitation for gain, war, or other unseemly uses, and for their own spiritual observance.

• Between five and six feet high

• Fair and fragile-skinned people

• Wear protective armor powered by telepathy

• Carry a long staff able to channel battle thought into energy

• Level, even cool regard for other races—culture of rationality and logic

• Harvest Shards to maintain balance of universal mechanics that control light, gravity and other forms of energy

I’m a 31-year-old man on my third glass of whiskey, and a game where you play as a high-school girl is bringing me to tears.

I’ve been hiding for my entire life, but that’s about to end.

There is just something about Super Smash Bros. that takes even the sweetest and quietest among us and morphs them into a shit-talker of the highest order.