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@ Bob Greenwade[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Bob Greenwade wrote on Tue, Apr 2, 2024 02:43 PM UTC:

259. Qayin (Ayatollah / Contrasatrap). When Charles Gilman first proposed this counterpart to the Satrap, he called it Contrasatrap. While I call it Ayatollah in Desert Dust, on the whole I prefer to call this the Qayin (even though I don't now remember what led to that moniker).

As a rotary counterpart to the Satrap, the Qayin moves one space or leaps two spaces orthogonally without capture, or captures by moving one space or leaping two spaces diagonally.

I normally resist doing rotary counterparts except on weekends, but since these pieces got mentioned in the Piececlopedia article on the Steward for their appearance in Desert Dust, I decided to make an exception. (That, and I'm starting to run out of pieces that don't have rotary counterparts!)

As with the name Qayin, I don't remember the reasoning behind this shape, other than that it was based on historical headwear.