A question to get you all thinking: How did the Ellimist and Crayak play by proxies? They cannot directly interface with the physical world and I'm thinking it's beyond even their powers to literally FORCE a creature to choose something against his will.
I figure it'd be more like what the Ellimist did to Jara in #13. "Head voice say, run! Go that way!" And later in the same book to Tobias, giving him information about where to go, and maybe subtly guiding his actions from time to time, but never actually forcing him to do anything.
A similar example might actually be how the Ellimist supposedly brought all the Animorphs together when they first met Elfangor. Sure, he may have manipulated events to bring that specific group of people together (I don't buy that Jake and Rachel were only 'accidentally' included in the Animorphs team, seeing as they were better fit for their particular roles than anybody else on the team), and he may have planted the idea to take the shortcut through the construction site, but he never forced them to act in any way against their will.
Crayak probably works the same way. In any case, neither Crayak nor the Ellimist would ever need to force their proxies to work against their will; if you can find the right person, and guide them to the right place at the right time (provided you know their personality well enough), you can typically predict fairly well what they will do and use that to your advantage.
One more question, just to get the brain juices flowing: What happens if there IS a victor in this millennia-long game of theirs? What happens to the loser? I mean, what DOES happen to him? The way it's described, they're beyond time and space, and therefore unkillable. Can they intentionally kill themselves without bringing utter destruction to the universe?
Interesting question. From what I understand, although the Ellimist and Crayak exist beyond time and space, they seem to stay within the boundaries of our galaxy, for whatever reason. Perhaps their influence is more finite than we think it is, or perhaps occupying multiple galaxies would just put too much strain on their attention spans. Whatever. But the point is, perhaps the punishment for losing would be to be kicked out of the galaxy (and maybe that's where Crayak came from!)
It's actually sort of a moot point, though. Since they can't fight each other directly without destroying our galaxy and thus destroying both of them, the winner would have no way of enforcing whatever penalty is chosen for the loser.
So, the more likely option is that the winner would be awarded a point (or maybe the loser drinks a shot) and they'd just start playing again.
