
Game Spotlight — The Turning

A mysterious duel of wits where every turn decides who will be the master — and who will be turned.
Two opponents lock eyes across the table, fingers twitching on the arcane relics that will seal their fate. The Turning is a psychological showdown where every decision shifts the balance of power until one player becomes the Eldar, bending fate to their will, and the other becomes the Acolyte, the rebellious spirit doomed never to be free.
Recovered from lost artifacts of unknown origin, The Turning is more than a card game — it’s a ritual of control and dominance. An intense clash of bluffing, baiting, and breaking your opponent’s will, where strategy and intuition are your only weapons, and control is the ultimate prize.
In The Turning, the question isn’t who wins — it’s who best resists being the one to be turned.
Components
Requirements
The Turning is Book 1 of

Buried deep in the wilderness of the Old West was a boomtown known to its hardy residents as El Castigo.
The town rose fast — too fast — its streets paved with silver rush dreams, lawlessness, and whispered deals under desert stars. A dark flower blossoming in the depths of the desert.
Greed, though, wasn’t what doomed it. Nor was violence. What consumed the town, leaving no survivors, is a mystery lost to time. Or is it?
The truth? It’s hidden in pieces, revealed one game at a time in The Saga of El Castigo, a five-part series where every play uncovers a fragment of what really happened.

Fly Yer Colors with Pride
Skarlybones is more than a game, it's a game with attitude! Tell them landlubbers ye won't be drydocked, ye won't stop laughing at what life give ye, and most of all — they all had best watch their backs. Afterall, there's a pirate in their midst.

A Clear Map to Fun!
The rules for Skarlybones fit comfortably on the inside of the hook box the game comes in. Clearly illustrated with lots of examples, it's like havin' the path to the treasure painted on the beach for ye.

Watch Yer Back, Me Hardy
These Action cards are just a few examples of the bad things yer fellow pirates will do to ye if ye give 'em a chance. From cursed artifacts to poisoned grog to the occasional attempted murder, pirates stop at nothing when gold is on the line.

Rollin' Them 'Bones
It's the skarlybones that give the name to the game, and they're what the game is all about. These simple little skeleton meeples will land in all sorts of unpredictable ways...if luck is on yer side, maybe ye will wager right...and win!

Place Yer Wager, Matey
The Wager cards are how ye win gold in this game o' chance. If both of the positions on the card are found in the skarlybone roll, ye add that card to yer Haul. Them's that has the most gold in their Haul when cards run out is the winner of the game!

Fly Yer Colors with Pride
Skarlybones is more than a game, it's a game with attitude! Tell them landlubbers ye won't be drydocked, ye won't stop laughing at what life give ye, and most of all — they all had best watch their backs. Afterall, there's a pirate in their midst.

A Clear Map to Fun!
The rules for Skarlybones fit comfortably on the inside of the hook box the game comes in. Clearly illustrated with lots of examples, it's like havin' the path to the treasure painted on the beach for ye.

Watch Yer Back, Me Hardy
These Action cards are just a few examples of the bad things yer fellow pirates will do to ye if ye give 'em a chance. From cursed artifacts to poisoned grog to the occasional attempted murder, pirates stop at nothing when gold is on the line.

Turn the Discs of Fate
It's the skarlybones that give the name to the game, and they're what the game is all about. These simple little skeleton meeples will land in all sorts of unpredictable ways...if luck is on yer side, maybe ye will wager right...and win!

Delve into the Arcana
Core to The Turning are six suits, called the Arcana. Each suit represents a core trait whose mysterious history has yet to be revealed. Some are familiar, others are quite odd. All have meaning beyond the game itself.

The Turning is a two-player battle of wits where every turn — of the game and of the discs — is a fight for control.
Two players takes up the role of a would-be master of the arcane and the student who would replace them, wielding relics of unknown origin to tip the balance of power. The discs turn, symbols align, and in the space between strategy and intuition, one player will rise as the Eldar and the other will be turned.
But this is no ordinary contest. Every bluff carries weight. Every bait risks collapse. And once The Turning begins, there's no turning back.
Simple to learn, razor-sharp to play, and laced with layered meaning, The Turning is a game that doesn't just crown a winner—it reveals who you really are.
What Makes The Turning Special?
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Intensely Balanced Gameplay – Both of the roles of Eldar and Acolyte have advantages, but it takes different types of luck and skill to succeed with either role.
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Arcane Relics & Hidden Power – Cards and discs bearing mysterious Arcana symbols are used to align your fate and unleash secret manipulations at the perfect moment.
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Tension in Every Turn – As the discs are turned, the stakes grow higher. One decision too early — or too late — can seal your doom.
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Deceptively Simple – A tight duel of 10–15 minutes, where the surface game appears quick, but the depth is anything but shallow.
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A Game That Knows You – The Turning isn’t just about winning. It’s about control, sacrifice, and how far you’re willing to go to stay master of yourself.
How To Play
Games you don't just play — you wear them out!
Step into the circle with gear that knows the game. These ultra-soft, high-quality tees carry the mark of The Turning — designed for those who don’t just play to win, but to dominate. Minimalist design, arcane flair, and just enough shadow to make people wonder what you’re really up to. Whether you’re bluffing at the table or holding court in the real world, wear your intent like a second skin.

The Bizarre, True Story Behind The Turning
The lost box that started a journey of discovery.
This all began with a fragment of family history — something uncovered by chance, then nearly lost for good.
In 1984, after my grandfather passed, my aunts were sorting through his things when they discovered a small, wrapped package tucked inside an old broken cabinet headed for the junk pile. Inside the bundle was a letter addressed to my great-great-grandmother, and a box containing five strange wooden discs, a worn deck of cards, bundles of aged letters and documents…and a mystery.
The box itself vanished soon after, likely tossed with the rest of the forgotten past. But one of my aunts, either curious or cautious, had made photocopies of the contents of the box. That slim stack of copies is all I had to work from when I began piecing the story back together.
The letters spoke of a little town that grew up in the desert Southwest, called El Castigo. It was a boomtown that flared to life in the early 1850s, born from the greed for silver and the thirst for power. It grew quickly, fed by ambition and lawlessness, clinging to the banks of a wild river. Then, just as suddenly, it vanished.
A photograph of an unknown gypsy woman, dated 1887, with discs similar to those found in a series of photocopies of the contents of a lost box.
You won’t find El Castigo on any map. No census records. No newspaper accounts. I know, I looked for anything, digging through old libraries iand archives, scouring dusty books and anything in the digital records. There was nothing, just faint, almost accidental mentions in obscure ledgers and local histories — as if it was deliberately erased. This fact worried me the most, but also made the stories much more intriguing and worth telling.
But the letters tell another story — a stranger one. They speak of blood feuds and secret rituals, of judges and shamans locked in a power struggle, of people acting not like themselves. Of symbols scrawled into stone and flesh. And of a flood — one no record seems to acknowledge — that wiped out the town and nearly everyone in it.
Why is there no record of a tragedy that large? Why are there no headlines, no memorials, no whispers of the hundreds who supposedly perished? You'd think the deaths of that many people would have drawn some notice.
I can’t answer that.
All I have the letters. I have the symbols. I have the rules scrawled in the margins. And from those fragments, I began to rebuild what might have happened in El Castigo. The Turning is the first of five games that attempt to tell that story — one turn at a time.