Cosmic Chess Game



An extension of Cosmic Plaything, where two or more gods (or similarly powered entities) are effectively using the entire world as a game board. Often one god is portrayed as actually caring about his pawns while his opponent is pure evil. May lead to a Rage Against the Heavens when the heroes find out they've been used. Often a god acts specifically through one mortal or a small group, sometimes an entire species.

Contrast Chess with Death. Human Chess is this on a much lower scale.

Anime and Manga

 * For much of Bleach, the antagonists were being used as tools by Sosuke Aizen, while the protagonists were manipulated as surrogates by Kisuke Urahara.
 * In Saint Seiya, the goddess Athena and her rivals Poseidon and Hades would serve this way for their armies. Athena was unique in that she frequently gave her champions a power boost if they were close to losing, a risky gambit since every time she did so she had to conserve power to stop a global threat.
 * The Witches' Game in Umineko no Naku Koro ni. Unique in that its fairly small in scope, limiting itself to a small island with 18 people in it.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh! Season 5, it's revealed that all the events happening in the Pharaoh's Memory World are taking place during a Cosmic Role-Playing Game between Yami Yugi and Yami Bakura.

Comic Books

 * Marvel Comics' Grandmaster does this regularly - it's his Hat. Sometimes he's the good guy and sometimes he's the bad guy.
 * Another Marvel Comics example... In the Alan Moore penned issues of Captain Britain, Merlin and Roma are literally playing chess with the main characters: they have a chess board with pieces that look like the characters, and the fate of Captain Britain's universe is at stake in the game. At one point a killer robot shoots CB with a laser beam or something, and Merlin tries to protect him in a rather literal way by putting his hands around the CB chess piece, which saves CB but gets Merlin's hands burned.
 * In Thor, Thor once saw all Asgard asleep, except for his father who was playing chess with a foe. He goes off to the foe's realm to cause trouble and disrupt the game. Sif stops him, and he learns that if he had succeeded, Odin would have forfeited the game—he has acted as the enemy's piece. Fortunately, the game ended in a draw.

Fanfic

 * The idea of an immortal game is thrown around several times in Ponies Make War, even in the very beginning, where Celestia refers to  and the corrupted Twilight Sparkle as nothing more than pieces on the board. Titan, on the other hand, views it very differently, instead seeing it as a game he has already won.
 * In the Drunkard's Walk series, Doug Sangnoir's conviction that all god-mortal interaction amounts to this trope (coupled with his experience of more than a few Jerkass Gods) is one of the reasons why he's a Nay Theist.

Film

 * In the 1981 Clash of the Titans, Perseus is guided and protected by his father Zeus, while Calibos is aided by his mother Thetis. Both use clay figures to plot destinies.
 * In the 2010 Clash of the Titans, Perseus is guided and protected by his father Zeus (which is interesting since Perseus is in this movie opposing him), while Calibos is aided by Hades, who had a real easy time of convincing him considering the (not entirely undeserved) doozy Zeus pulled on him.
 * Jason and the Argonauts are watched, challenged and aided by the Gods in Olympus, who plot their movements on a game board.
 * In Star Wars, Jedi and Sith are guided by opposing parts of the same entity, The Force.
 * Which is given a nasty Deconstruction and drives the primary plot of Knights of the Old Republic II.  is manipulating you in order to destroy the proverbial playing board.
 * The end of Men in Black reveals that
 * A variation occurs in the 2004 movie "Immortal" or "Ad Vitam", where two Egyptian animal-headed gods play chess in their floating pyramid situated above a futuristic metropolis.

Literature

 * In Animorphs, the heroes are guided by Big Good The Ellimist, while Crayak is behind the Yeerks and other adversaries. They're both godlike beings who've Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence.
 * Though it's somewhat justified for two reasons: 1. The last time they fought directly they destroyed a significant chunk of the galaxy, and 2. The Ellimist was an avid gamer back when he was mortal.
 * In David Eddings' Belgariad, the heroes and villains are respectively guided by two opposing Purposes of the Universe. The heroes have an advantage in that they receive instructions directly, whereas the Big Bad Torak does not grant his minions this privilege.
 * Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser have their lives often controlled by their sorcerous advisors, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face. Interestingly, Ningauble and Shellba have more of a friendly rivalry then being enemies of each other.
 * The early novels in the Night Watch series were all about this: as their Power Levels approach godhood, Others lose the ability to influence events directly without causing a reality warp. When that happens, they start relying on convoluted plans involving multiple Unwitting Pawns to continue the eternal struggle between Light and Darkness. The protagonists of the books usually find themselves either in the middle of this clash or in the shoes of said unwitting pawns.
 * Appears several times in the Discworld series, particularly in The Colour of Magic and Interesting Times—it's implied to be going on all the time, but those books happen to star Cosmic Plaything Rincewind. Most of the gods are involved, but the best players appear to be Fate and "The Lady" (implied to be Lady Luck, but of course saying her name is unlucky).
 * Often happens in Xanth with the Demons. In fact, it gets to the point where there's fairly even chance that any reveal will be a Demon wager on the actions of mortals.
 * In the Book of Swords fantasy series by Fred Saberhagen, the gods produced a number of incredibly powerful artifact swords with fantastic magical powers, with the intent of giving them to a number of humans as part of some kind of cosmic chess game between the gods.
 * Unfortunately, the swords were so powerful that they allowed the people holding them to become players in their own right. By the end of the third book (of eleven), the gods had lost.

Live Action TV

 * Babylon 5, the young races to the Shadows and the Vorlons.
 * Doctor Who: In The Armageddon Factor (the finale of the Key To Time Story Arc) the Doctor - who was sent on a Plot Coupon mission to get the parts of the Key To Time by the White Guardian - is opposed by the Shadow, who was sent by the Black Guardian to get the pieces of the Key.
 * For a while, Power Rangers had this when Rita gained the Green Ranger to oppose Zordon and the rangers. Of course, he eventually switched sides.
 * In Tru Calling, Jack was working for The Grim Reaper (or simply Fate), while the titular Tru had been chosen by an unknown power to save lives by way of Groundhog Day Loop. Interestingly, a suicide caused the two spirits to swap champions for an episode. This event raised further questions on the spirits' actual goals and philosophies.
 * Clarification on the Tru Calling example, assuming it refers to the episode I think it does: They didn't actually swap champions. The suicide victim did ask Jack to help her instead of Tru, but it wasn't because she wanted him to undo her death, it was because she wanted his help making her suicide look like an accident. During the redo day, meeting Jack caused her to change her mind, but he preserved the order of things anyway by allowing her to die. In other words, he was still working for The Grim Reaper.

Tabletop Games

 * The stated reasoning behind the games of the Illuminati in the card game of the same name.
 * Nobilis: The Player Characters can and probably will do this.
 * This is what Scion could be perceived as being about.
 * Werewolf: The Apocalypse, in that it is about the cosmic struggle of Order, Chaos, and Corruption.

Video Games

 * In BlazBlue all the heroes seem to be controlled by Rachel or Jubei in some roundabout way while all the villains appear to be manipulated by Hazama . The few exceptions being Arakune (completely insane and almost driven entirely by instinct) and Carl Clover (who has his own business with his father) and Bang Shishigami (who's in to promote JUSTICE).
 * In Crash Bandicoot, Crash and his friends are guided by the ancient witch-doctor mask Aku Aku, while Dr. Cortex and his gang are controlled by Aku Aku's Evil Twin Uka Uka.
 * In Dead Space, Isaac is guided by . Meanwhile Mad Scientist Dr. Mercer seems to be getting (un)holy visions from the Hive Mind, not to mention the legion of Necromorphs it's sending to kill Isaac.
 * Dissidia has Chaos and Cosmos doing this quite explicitly.
 * Actually Chaos is perfectly fine with his warriors doing what they want and doesn't force them to fight against their will. The only one that actually fights for Chaos because he's loyal to him is Garland. The rest of his warriors fight for their own agendas.
 * In Fahrenheit (2005 video game), Lucas is guided by
 * Kun Lan and Harman Smith, from Killer7, would be another example.
 * In the Soul Calibur series, Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, two sentient swords, use their powers to manipulate others to fight for them.
 * The ending cinematic of Hexen implies that by killing the final boss you have just made a move on one of these chessboards.

Web Comics

 * Housepets: Recently turned out to have a game of "Universes & Unrealities" between a Dragon and a Gryphon (with a Kitsune GMing).
 * Homestuck with the forces of Derse and Prospit battling on Skaia (a planet with chessboard soil).
 * The Meek, the two spirits in this case are brothers. And one is a giant white cave salamander and the other a vast, malformed tiger with glowing eyes.
 * The gods of Twokinds seem to be doing this with the humans and keidrans.

Web Original

 * Some of the more cynical inhabitants of the Orion's Arm universe think the archailects are doing this to modosophont life for their own amusement.