The System: A Divine or Dangerous Force in the Divide?

In Shawn Michael O’Brien’s The Immortal Game: King’s Gambit, war isn’t fought in the usual sense. Armies don’t just clash in chaotic fields of blood and fire. Instead, battles unfold across a living chessboard, orchestrated by an ancient and mysterious power called the System.

The System dictates when soldiers march, how they fight, and even who must die. To Solaris and Drakhelm—the twin cities locked in endless rivalry—it’s both a safeguard and a curse. To the men and women caught in its grip, it’s something far more unsettling: a silent god that rewrites their fates without asking permission.

But is the System truly a divine gift of order, or is it a dangerous mechanism that strips humanity of its will?

Order in the Midst of Chaos

Centuries before the events of the novel, Solaris and Drakhelm were one kingdom: Solhelm. When that kingdom fractured, the Divide between them became a perpetual battleground. To prevent destruction, legend says a god left behind the System—a relic that bound both cities to strict rules of conflict.

Instead of unrestrained slaughter, disputes became structured. Armies were transformed into “pieces”: pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, queens, and kings. They moved across a grid of sixty-four provinces, each square claimed or contested according to the System’s laws.

On the surface, this looks merciful. Messengers like Corso, marked by a glowing sigil on their wrists, are guaranteed safe passage to carry orders between cities. Whole provinces are spared unless the rules of movement call them into play. Even in the brutality of war, there is a strange sense of predictability.

The alternative is terrifying: without the System, Solaris and Drakhelm risk repeating the “Century of Flames,” an era of unchecked destruction that nearly ended civilization.

By this measure, the System seems divine—an impartial judge that forces restraint on kingdoms too proud to restrain themselves.

The Price of Obedience

But order comes with a hidden cruelty. The System doesn’t ask; it commands. When King Alaric of Solaris orders “Pawn to e4,” two hundred farmers and blacksmiths are uprooted and marched across the Divide; their individuality dissolves the moment the move is made. They are pawns now, lives reduced to strategic symbols.

Corso sees the weight of this firsthand when Solaris advances a pawn to f4—a bold gambit meant to disrupt Drakhelm’s defenses. The soldiers stationed there know they are sacrificial. Instead of preparing for survival, they drink quietly, carve their names into a wooden disc, and entrust it to Corso so they won’t be forgotten.

They don’t resist because resistance is pointless. The System ensures that captured pieces cannot escape their fate. For them, the only dignity left is to die with the acceptance that their sacrifice “serves the game.”

Chains bind even neutrality. Messengers are forbidden to take sides. Corso’s wrist burns with the System’s mark if he strays too close to bias. Another messenger, Seren Valkyr, once defied this law by warning Solaris of an ambush centuries ago. Her punishment? Eternal imprisonment in crystal—her body frozen, her mind trapped in half-existence as a warning to others.

The message is clear: autonomy has no place here. The System is in control.

Fairness or Blindness?

One of the System’s most intriguing qualities is its impartiality. It does not lie, it does not cheat, and it does not play favorites. It enforces rules evenly, regardless of who commands or who obeys.

But impartiality isn’t the same as justice.

For example, Corso notes that while he cannot lie, the tone in which he delivers messages can shape how they’re received. A word delivered too casually may lead a commander to underestimate an enemy. The System doesn’t care—it only punishes direct falsehoods. In this way, the so-called “divine fairness” is exposed as incomplete.

And what of the soldiers? Is it fair to reduce them to pawns whose lives are expendable because of a symbolic move? Is it fair to trap messengers in neutrality, punishing them more harshly for compassion than for silence?

The System ensures stability, but it also ensures suffering. Its blindness to human nuance creates an endless cycle of sacrifice that is tidy in appearance but devastating in practice.

The Ethical Question

This duality—divine order versus dangerous oppression—sits at the heart of O’Brien’s novel.

On one side, the System is the only thing preventing Solaris and Drakhelm from obliterating each other in fire and steel. On the other hand, it dehumanizes everyone it touches. Kings make moves, but it is the pawns who bleed. Messengers watch silently, knowing that even a word of compassion could cost them their lives.

The ethics of such a system invite reflection. Would we accept such rules if they guaranteed survival? Would we surrender freedom if it meant avoiding destruction? Or would we rebel, even if rebellion unleashed chaos worse than the System itself?

Corso’s quiet struggle embodies this dilemma. Bound to neutrality, haunted by the sacrifices he witnesses, he becomes the lens through which readers must wrestle with these questions.

Final Thoughts

The System dominates The Immortal Game not just as a backdrop but as a character in its own right—silent, merciless, yet strangely protective. It preserves civilization while eroding humanity. It guarantees order while demanding sacrifice.

Perhaps its most unsettling quality is how easily both Solaris and Drakhelm accept it. The kings and queens, soldiers and strategists—all believe the System is necessary. They no longer ask whether its rules are just. They only ask how best to play the game.

And that may be the most dangerous truth of all: not that the System exists, but that people have stopped imagining a world without it.

So the question lingers long after the last page—if every move on a chessboard cost real lives, would you still play?