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<p>Did you know that I, too, had a dream involving a chess variant?</p> <p>It had multiple boards that you could teleport between, pawns that promote into royalty (where each pawn is designated as promoting into a different kind of royalty, like Tamerlane), and if your high priest enters your opponent's church then you gain the ability to control eclipses. Play is split into frames where teleportation becomes available for each piece after each one, and cards in your hand are replenished after each one. Pieces have three attributes being strength, defense, and intelligence. Other than pawns (see above) and royalty (not all of them actually have the "royal" status) and the church (the only piece that other pieces can enter), there are religious pieces (such as the high priest) and illithid larva (can promote to illithid but only between frames).</p> <p>Now that I am not sleeping, I am completely confused as to how the game works. I don't know what eclipses are supposed to do or anything like that either.</p>

Well it was in a dream that the idea of Chess on a pair of overlapping equal-size square boards came to me - hence Dream Chess 46 and Dream Chess 47. This can also be a seen as one larger square board with a small one removed from each of two opposite corners . In other words the number of squares is 2m²-n² or m²-2n² for different values of m and n - but both with m greater than n.

Regarding counterfactual timelines I note that you write specfically of possible ones. Many authors have written of a world in which the Axis powers won World War 2, but I suspect that the only real alternative to a World War 2 won by the Allies would be a World War 2 still going on today. This is because the Axis powers would always have been after "new worlds to conquer" and would have either bitten off more than they could chew or begun fighting among themselves and been defeated by some surviving outside power. Likewise I cannot see any history in which Judaism would have been the world's main religion, or Islam taken off in a big way without Christianity doing so first, both of which I heard suggested in one edition of a radio series considering counterfactual scenarios.

The most plausible idea that I ever heard of what a world without Christianity would have been like was Carl Sagan's vision of Europe using gunpowder centuries earlier, reaching what we know as the Americas centuries earlier, and producing the industrial revolution centuries earlier. So no Christianity would not only have meant no Islam, but no Aztecs and Incas either! He did not go into detail about what the prevailing religion would be, but my own guess is that religions based on the writings of the Greek phliosphers would be widespread. Aristotelians would perhaps predominate but with Stoics and Cynics and Pythagoreans and Epicureans alongside them. This guess is based on what happened in China.

It was again... But this time it was in early morning, and dream was combined with normal thinking. And chess variant was rather modest.
Yesterday evening i've read more information about Capablanca chess. I've learnt that Capablanca refused of modernizing chess when he reilized that chess will not be "solved" soon and that enlarging the board makes average game longer.
In dream of this morning, i was thikning of game, wich will have much more possible moves than standart chess, but will retain same size and be even faster, and still will be close to standart chess.
Instead of two pawns, player have Marshal and Cardinal (as if pawns would already promote). During sleeping, i was thinking that squares of two pawns should be empty, but once i woke up, i realized that all standart pieces plus Marshal and Cardinal don't fit in 8 files, so i decided that knights should take place of these pawns.
There is no fixed standart opening position, pieces are set up randomly (pawns and knights - on second rank, other pieces - on first rank). Type of symmetry is also random - either reflecting (as in standart chess) or reversed (as in Shogi). And bishops could stand on squares of same colors. I'm not sure about positioning rooks and castling rules, but best is probably as in Fischer's random chess.
Once i woke up, i had idea that there also could be "standart" setup: Marshal and Cardinal takes places of knights (Marshal is King-side), and knights starts in front of bishops, so that they don't uncover any rook-moves on first leaps.
The most specific idea is pawns' doule-step. On last days i'm thinking about several large variants, where pawn-like pieces have alike rules.
There is no normal double-step, but instead, from any position, player may move pawn twice or move two pawns once, and either move (or both) may be capturing. These pawns were named "Euro-tigers" (as Gilman's Euro-fighter pawns and Tiger-pawns in Chinese unequal armies Five Tigers game). Pawn must stop on square, attacked by opposing pawn (this is instead of en-passant).
White player on first turn may move only one pawn once. Waked up, i also decided, that white player shpould not be able to move piece other than pawn on first turn (Marshal and Cardinal - for reason that they are too strong for first move, knights - for reason that they can advance too far on first move, and, in random setup, can uncover rook moves; or, alternatively, they can be allowed to move only on 3rd rank, but not 4th).
There also was idea to make pawns able to move without capturing 1 square sideways on opponent's half of board (element, borrowed from Xiang-Qi; also used for western pawns in variant, i submited yesterday, not unreviewed yet). On last rank they also gains ability to capture sideways. Promotion is optional, and can be fulfiled on pawn's later moves. Now i'm thinking, wich promotion rules are best... As in standart chess - to any non-king pieces? Or only to captured pieces? Or - to rook, bishop or knight without limitations, but to Queen, Marshal or Cardinal - only if captured?