Wesley wondered, based on the reactions of most of the others here, if perhaps the selection process for this place included a lot of emotional baggage. Most of them seemed to be more resigned about their plight than enraged, upset, or frightened, which were the responses Wesley would predict.

And something about the way Obi-Wan said he understood sounded, well, achingly sincere. It was a long

"Not precisely."

He gestures toward the cards.

"Playing a traditional card game would be quite futile with the decks in the state they're in. Every single deck is missing multiple cards. Combining two would make effective randomization impossible."

He's suspected since he arrived that this was done on purpose. The incomplete decks, the board games missing tokens, the horrid, horrid rations? It didn't track with the level of resources a place like this would require. No, this was either to unbalance them or motivate them. Possibly both. Turn even their recreation from a source of stress relief into an added form of stress, and simultaneously force them to cooperate in order to earn anything better.

"Instead, I've managed to combine two decks into a reasonable facsimile of chess."