Zara

Zara was a violent game from the Age of Legends.

Description

The board projected a field of transparent boxes in the air, and used once-human playing pieces, although other pieces were part of the game. Those derived from living humans were forced to live out their existence as part of the game and given only one choice - play or die. Being removed from the game meant death. They were essentially human consciousnesses placed inside a game piece. It is unknown whether the pieces were animate or not.

Zara was a highly illegal game, enjoyed only among followers of the Dark One. Possession of a single once-human piece meant imprisonment at the least by the forces of the Light. Sammael had a zara board in his apartments in Illian, found in a stasis box.

Robert Jordan had this to say on the game:

The [pieces] in the game could be said to still be human—those pieces that came from humans, anyway; there were other sources too—though they are about the size of moderately large chess-pieces. They retain memories, souls, personalities, but they are part of the game now, permanently slaved to the game and part of it as surely as a cog in a clock is part of the clock. They have no personal volition, though they do have awareness. The only lives they can live are being used in the game. In the Age of Legends, these games were destroyed when found; the choice for the pieces was to remain part of the game or death, since removing them from the board/field meant death in any case. The game is all one, board and playing pieces together. And that is much as I will tell you of it. I don't want to give away what I might use later on, after all.

Errata

The Old Tongue dictionary entry for zara in The Wheel of Time Companion, the pieces are referred to as "live humans beings" rather than the "once-human" used elsewhere in the books and Companion itself. This may not be an error, but could be seen as misleading in that they no longer seem to be held in human form.