Axiom of Ages

Axiom of Ages - A Game About Time Travel

Welcome, traveller. So you sought the furthest step of them all, did you? You wanted to travel through time. Well, a lot of people do. And of course, I can give anyone the power. That's the easy part. But of course you know as well as I do what the power does to the human body. Advanced ageing. Access to all of time, and so little of it your own. Of course, the Sands can rejuvenate you. Restore your natural life, and then some. But they are scarce, and their seekers are many. So take my gift, if you wish. Take my curse, if you must. Then go forth to the Stadium of the Sands and test your luck. You never know – you just might be the one to live.

The Game
You are a time traveller, cursed with extremely rapid ageing. So rapid, you'll be decrepit in twenty turns. Unless you fill your hourglass with the Sands, I'm afraid you're gonna end up like that Nazi in the Last Crusade.
So how do you get the Sands? Simple, you all start with one Measure of Sand. Between you, there are exactly enough Measures for one of you to live.

Your Options
On your turn, you can move, and then you can either take Sand from another player or travel through time – or just end your turn if you're boring. At the end of your turn, you age, getting one step closer to death. You begin being able to move ten squares in a turn, and lose one square for every two times you age. When you age for the twentieth time, you perish of old age.

Taking Sand
When your traveller is directly adjacent to another traveller, they may attempt to take Sand from them. If the travellers are of the same age, then a coin is flipped to decide if the attempt is successful (the player making the attempt flips, the one being stolen from calls it). If the travellers are of different ages, the younger traveller gets the Sand. You can take all the sand from a corpse at once. While you have all the Sand in place, you are immune to death by old age.

Travelling Through Time
At the end of your turn, rather than attempt to take sand, you may decide to travel through time, up to five turns forward or backward. Travelling forward is simple – your traveller is removed from play until enough of your turns have passed for you to arrive, fresh-faced and young. So, say, on Turn 1 you decide to travel forward 1 turn – you are removed from play, the other players each take their turns, and then at the end of what would have been your second turn, you reappear, age for the first time, and then take your second actual turn on what would have been your third.
Travelling backwards is an entirely different beast. Rather than actually going back when you decide to, what you're actually doing is deciding in advance to come back to this point in time. So say on Turn 1 you decide that on Turn 3 you will travel back in time to now. Your senior counterpart appears adjacent to you, having already aged twice, and as your turn ends you both age. All instances of you move at the same time, and when two of your are adjacent to another traveller an attempt to take Sand is always successful. Bare in mind that you have committed your younger self to travelling back in time at the end of Turn 3 – they can't travel forward because they're already going to travel backward.
After travelling forward, you must wait as many turns as you travelled before travelling forward again. If a future version of you travels back and has waited long enough, they can travel forward.

Tracking Sand
For the sake of simplicity, all concurrent instances of a given traveller have the same amount of Sand. If Sand is taken from either instance, the other one loses it too. Ditto for gaining Sand.

Winning The Game
Once you have all the Sand and everyone else is dead, you win. Congrats.
If everyone dies without gathering all the Sand, nobody wins. Sucks.

Optional Rules

Unbounded Axiom
-There is no maximum distance for travelling backwards or forwards through time.

Madman's Axiom
-Ignore the rules of Tracking Sand – Each instance of a traveller has their own Sand count. Go on. I dare you. No I'm not going to tell you how you're meant to do it. Figure it out.