History of R9E (Fiction)

What follows is an in-universe history of the card game written as promotional material for the movie by ZOE.

The history of R9E, as it is commonly called, is as improbable as its ongoing storyline. R9E actually started in 1982 as a homebrew role-playing campaign held at various small conventions within driving distance of the designers’ home town of Toad Suck, Arkansas, in which the results of each adventure pointed the scenario designers to create a new adventure based on the old.

In 1989, when one of the designers moved to Charleston, West Virginia, and continued to use the scenarios in other conventions, they had to assimilate the results of the players’ accomplishments in both states, creating what became the first Evolving Storyline Convention Adventure. These ESCAs rapidly spread among small conventions across North America and even overseas to Norway.

Things “ESCA-lated” in 1996, when a wealthy raisin farmer from Fresno became enamored of the ESCA concept, and teamed up with the original designers to create an Evolving Storyline Cardgame Adventure based on the groundwork laid over the previous fourteen years. The first R9E World Championship tournament was held in 1998 with the original tarot-sized cards. Although R9E had started as a basic medieval fantasy, tournament players had an unprecedented amount of control over the story development, which included such salient events as the arrival of the extraplanar Ord, and the temporal displacement of an entire US military division from 1945 Los Alamos.

The game also survived some questionable decisions made when the entire staff but the accountant came down with the stomach flu at the World Championships. These include the notorious “partial keyword ruling,” which stated that anything that targeted an orc could also target a sorcerer card; and the “card ownership ruling,” which ended up banning borrowed cards and decks from tournaments until it was overturned in 2002.

Introduction of the Ord

The Ord came to R9E early in the 2001 season as disgruntled veteran players tired of the lack of Science Fiction within card games of the time and wanted to see some injected into the game. This was an unpopular stance among the majority of R9E players.

During the months leading up to the Regional Tournaments a growing number of players began showing up wearing t-shirts brandishing the words “One Round Domination”. These players seemed to have decks that were specifically made to beat the standing champions of each region. They also lived up to their name in the way they quickly dominated the field of qualifiers, even if not in a single round.

At The Nine Empires Invitational National Championships in Milwaukee, WI, a member of this group by the name of Mallory Smith won the right to progress the story as she saw fit. It is at this point that the Ord came to be. Per her request, the Ord appeared in their airships through what seemed to be a rift in spacetime. Their entrance was embellished to have them levitate an island to create a distinct xenophobic atmosphere to the race. Some think the game designers’ used this as a way to get back at the players who demanded that Science Fiction be added to the game by isolating their beloved Ord.