Hollowmere

A mist has lain on the highland valley for a hundred years. Where it thins, old trails, walled burghs, lantern shrines, rivers, and mountains show through. Players lay those tiles and post Wardens to claim what the mist gives back.

Each tile edge is a burgh wall, a trail, open meadow, a river, or mountain. Some tiles carry a charter seal (a dab of red wax marked with a lantern), a shrine, a spring, or an aquifer pool.

The "+1" Gatehouse Road is the one already laid in the centre.

Finish with the highest score. When the supply is exhausted, unfinished features score at a reduced rate, and the highest total wins.

The valley is a fixed table, 41 cells by 41. The opening Gatehouse Road sits in the centre, its burgh edge facing north and its trail running east and west. Every other tile is shuffled face down.

Unless the table has chosen to hide the next tile, the top of the supply is turned face up so everyone, including anyone watching, can see what comes next.

On your turn, do these three things in order.

Draw the top tile. Turn it in quarter-turns until it shows an edge the valley will accept, then lay it in an empty cell that:

You may turn the tile before you lay it. Only quarter-turns are allowed. A tile is never mirrored.

Cells outside the 41 by 41 table are never offered. A road can run at most twenty tiles out from the gatehouse.

If no quarter-turn of the tile fits anywhere on the table, the tile is shown, set aside, and the next tile is drawn. This does not spend your Mist Veil. The replacement is laid, or set aside in turn, by the same rule.

Mist Veil. Once in the game, before you lay, you may set the tile in your hand aside and draw the next one instead. You must lay the replacement (or, if that one fits nowhere, accept the automatic redraw). You cannot cast the Veil when the supply is empty.

After the tile is laid, you may post one Warden from your supply onto that tile. The Warden stands on a single feature of the tile: a trail (as a Pathfinder), a burgh (as a Steward), a shrine (as a Keeper), an aquifer (as a Well-keeper), or — only when meadow scoring is on — a meadow (as a Grazier).

A river, a spring, and mountain can never take a Warden. On a river, only the aquifer can.

You may not post on a feature that already holds any Warden, including your own. Laying a tile that joins two features which each already have Wardens is allowed. Those Wardens stay where they are.

A Grazier lies down in the meadow and stays until the end of the game. Every other Warden returns to your supply when its feature scores.

If you have no Wardens left, or the tile has nowhere you may post, this step is skipped.

Score every feature the new tile completed, and any shrine whose surrounding ground is now full. Then the turn passes.

A trail or a burgh that crosses the same tile twice still counts that tile once.

Crossroads. Trails leave all four edges and stop at a crossing stone. Like the Three-Way Fork, each arm is its own trail, and each is closed at the crossing.

A river rises at a spring and runs from tile to tile along river edges. Where rivers meet — at a River Fork, or where two rivers are laid into each other — they join and run on as one river. A river can end in an aquifer, a still pool in the middle of its tile. On a Bridge, a trail crosses a river: the river and the trail are separate features that only share the tile.

A river never needs to be finished. Branches that run off into empty ground do not stop anything from scoring.

The aquifer is the only part of a river that can take a Warden. At the end of the game, each aquifer scores 1 for every tile on the river from its furthest spring to the aquifer, counting the spring's tile and the aquifer's tile. Follow the river along the shortest way between the two; where several springs feed the same aquifer, use the one furthest away. An aquifer no spring feeds scores nothing. Where one river feeds several aquifers, each aquifer scores on its own, from its own furthest spring.

Aquifers score by the same majority rules as any other feature, and their Wardens return when they score.

Mountain is an area, like a burgh: it runs across edges and joins from tile to tile. Mountain is never claimed and never scores by itself. Instead, it lifts what stands beside it.

Mountain boost. Whenever a burgh, a trail, a shrine, or an aquifer scores — during play or at the end — it scores 1 more for every different mountain tile that shares a side with any of its tiles. Each mountain tile counts once, however many of the feature's tiles it touches. A trail that runs through a mountain tile counts that tile when another tile of the trail lies beside it. For an aquifer, its tiles are the river tiles it scored, from the furthest spring to the pool. For a shrine, it is the shrine's own tile. Meadows get no boost, and a feature that scores nothing gets none.

The players with the most Wardens on a feature each score its full value. A tie is not split: two players with two Wardens each both score the whole amount, and a player with fewer scores nothing. A feature with no Wardens scores nothing.

Add the mountain boost to each.

Add the mountain boost to every trail, burgh, shrine, and aquifer.

A completed burgh can score for several meadows, but only once for each meadow. Meadows on the two sides of a trail are separate fields. A Grazier is never returned.

When the supply is empty and the tile in hand has been laid or set aside, score every meadow (if that option is on), every aquifer, and every feature that did not already score. The highest total wins. If two or more players share that total, they share the win.

All three start off.