Drowsy Dodo

393 AC - I haul myself onto the secluded islet, then stretch my back, which is all sore after climbing this series of islands. Each time I try to contact Spike, all I get back in return are some fleeting and sometimes incoherent feelings. He's just over there on the next rock, probably in the middle of… I raise an eyebrow. A large ball of colorful feathers is nodding its head, while a large bubble of sleep emerges from the hole in its beak. It's almost comical, really. He's barely staying upright, leaning on his cane as if it's the twisted mast of a rudderless ship. O…kay… And, of course, I see Spike wrapped up in the bird's plumage as if it were a quilted blanket.

It seems both of them are having a siesta. In his half-sleep, the Eidolon recites a string of cryptic words in a croaky voice… "If both player’s markers meet at the same time, first check if any player moved forward further than necessary to win the game. If one player did and the other did not, the player who did wins the game. Otherwise, players play a tiebreaker Day in the Arena. The Arena is on the back of the Companion region card. Place it in the center of the table and put both players' Expedition markers on it." I place a hand on Spike's head. I don't know what arena you're talking about, but you won't win the race if you're asleep…

The dodo from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is, according to Lewis Carroll himself, a caricature of the author, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Suffering from a stutter in his childhood, when creating the dodo character, the writer remembered the many times he tried to pronounce his name but only managed "Do-do-dodgson" instead. In the book, the dodo organizes a race with strange and useless rules, which the author undoubtedly intended as a satire of the Victorian society he was living in.

ARJUN