Dragon Chess!

Heh, this was fun! This came about as a result of a discussion between me, and about a scene in "Eve's Story: Remastered" where Ddraig and Eve are playing chess together on a themed set which uses pieces made in the image of Danthe Jarnhud and Jotun Stormsonn; both characters from another story. Now, draconic culture is largely matriarchal, with females ruling while their mates protected them, so it was pointed out that for dragons, the King and Queen pieces would be reversed. This was easy enough to add - and justified, since modern Chess rules weren't codified until the 1850s, yet Eve's Story takes place in 1846, and prior to that point, there were a lot of variations and local rules - but since Danthe defied these conventions - a core part of her story - we realised we'd probably need to add a few extra rules as well. 

So, after a fair bit of browing Wikipedia for inspiration - checking out both the predecessors of Chess in India and Persia, and the games derived from it in East Asia, and also looking at the extensive List of Chess Variants page - this is what I ended up making! It's heavily inspired by Grand Chess, but with a setup more reminiscent of conventional Chess, and with two new pieces that AREN'T mixtures of existing pieces (seriously, the custom versions of Chess with pieces that are Knight plus X is just ridiculous), and which are instead derived from Tamerlane Chess pieces. 

The first of the new pieces is the Guardian - keeping with the Spyro draconic theme - which is the right-facing Knight with the Rook-like base. This moves one square diagonally and then two squares in a straight line. As a result of this, there are now two supporting pieces that move in straight lines (Rook and Bishop), and two that move in a strange pattern across the board (Knight and Guardian)...and at the same time, two of those pieces are forced to stick to one square colour (Bishop and Guardian), while the other two have no such restriction (Rook and Knight). This was something I discovered by pure chance, and I'm quite proud of it...sort of balances things out, don't you think?

The second piece is called the Eggs, or the Clutch piece, which is the one behind the King. I've come to think that this should actually be a custom piece only used in certain games, but in any case, it's basically a second King, but weaker, as it can only move a single square in straight lines. When playing with this piece, the game is over when one of the King or Egg pieces has been taken, and the other is in Checkmate...as such, it's possible to take the King in this scenario, but keep the game going for a bit longer. Again, this would be an optional addition to the game. 

A visual movement guide can be seen here; 
Oh, and I should note that some of the pieces would have different names in draconic. As noted earlier, King and Queen would be switched around - meaning that when a Pawn gets promoted, it's representing the Queen taking a new mate to protect her! - although since dragons use gender-neutral terms to refer to their rulers, they'd be more likely to use the terms Monarch and Consort, and happily switch the genders of the two depending on whether they're using themed pieces or not. In addition to this, since dragons don't have Bishops, they'd use the alternative name "Archer" - which is actually used in a lot of European countries instead of Bishop.

Now to find someone to test this with...

Spyro copyright whoever
All other characters here copyright
Grand Chess invented by Christian Feeling - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_ch…
Guardian piece and "Dragon Chess" invented by me!