Dungeons Are Bad Business

After the next day’s runs drew to a close, it was time for Vee to make good on his bet and take Reginald to the casino outside of town. It had been another good day for Crestheart. There had been eighteen adventurers, and none of them had beaten Alforde. As such, the dungeon had another nine-hundred and four silver fleurs packed away in its vault and the armorsoul had a bit more spring in his step than usual as the trio made their way to the carriage station. If one measured by days, he’d had longer winning streaks, but when counting by the number of adventurers faced this was Alforde’s longest string of victories since Crestheart opened. How much longer it lasted was anyone’s guess, though the addition of ‘Shadowforde’ had really boosted the [Dungeon Champion]’s potency in his matches.

The station was just as grimy and dirty as it had been when Vee had first arrived in Crestheart. That felt like a lifetime ago, though it had only been a few weeks. Stepping around big piles of garbage, Vee looked around. There were a few carriages loading and unloading the meager trade goods that supported the local economy, but compared to the size of the city, their number wasn't particularly impressive. Vee wondered why. The roads to the city weren't that bad, were they? Surely it shouldn't have been too hard to import and export goods, right?

He was distracted from the thought by boisterous voices nearby. In addition to the glassy-eyed grooms who saw to the animals by pushing bits of hay into their feeding troughs, a few unsavory-looking people were also loitering around the station. Some of them stared at Vee and his friends with steel-hard gazes. You don’t belong here, their hollow eyes and sunken cheeks seemed to say.

“What are you looking at?” Reginald called as they made their way to the carriage that would take them out to the casino. It was smaller than the one that had brought Vee and Alforde to Oar’s Crest, and the green paint on the sides was chipped and faded. The stench of body odor was strong inside and the seats weren’t comfortable at all.

“Why is this carriage so crappy compared to the one we came in on?” Vee said as he winced against the backboard and failed to open the window.

“Different company owns it I think,” Alforde answered. “Not Sacre’s. I didn’t recognize the name on the side.”

There were a few other people sitting in the carriage already, and none of them looked happy to be there. Most seemed to be in various stages of self-loathing. Vee shuddered as a swirl of emotions in the ethereal reached his skin. As tempting as it was, he resisted his natural curiosity and refrained from activating any of his sight skills to get a better look at the cause. He felt bad for admitting it, but he had no desire to see the ghosts and spirits that lingered near their shoulders just then. Being so close to the ghosts of good things squandered – which is what he guessed they were - was particularly painful.

Reginald insisted that the trip to the casino was short, but it still took the carriage almost two hours to get there. Vee could barely walk after they disembarked, and resolved to start carrying a pillow or something inside Alforde’s armor for future carriage trips.

The casino was a big, dingy boat anchored off the bank of a dirty river. It slowly bobbed up and down with the current, and Vee couldn’t help but notice the massive kitrekin [Bouncers] standing outside. Unlike Sacre’s goons, they made no attempt to look like anything other than thugs, dressed in tight tank tops and raggedy trousers. Both of them wore a cutlass on their hips, and Vee half expected to see one walk out of the casino entrance with an eyepatch.

Up on the ship’s deck, a group of surprisingly well-dressed musicians played a variety of shanties while a handful of people danced nearby.

“Hang on just a second,” one of the guards said as he put a hand on Alforde’s chest to stop the armorsoul from climbing the ramp that led inside. He pointed at Hammy. “Customers aren’t allowed to bring weapons inside.”

He directed Alforde to another [Bouncer] on the far side of the ship who had a pile of weapons behind him. “Take your hammer over there and they’ll give you a tag for it. You can claim it once you’re finished inside.”

With a sigh, Alforde did as they asked, leaving Hammy atop the pile of weapons with a thin blue ribbon around its handle.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Alforde said to his weapon with a sniffle. He clutched the small card in his gauntlets like it was made of solid gold.

Vee shook his head as he opened the door.

“Well, let’s go piss away a bunch of fleurs we don’t have,” he muttered as he followed Alforde inside.

“Don’t count your losses before they happen,” said Reginald.

Vee wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting the interior of the casino to look like, but what he saw before his eyes definitely wasn’t it. The wooden planks of the floor were painted purple, and there were paintings on all of the walls. Mostly nature scenes, but a few bowls of fruit here and there too. Beneath each table was a large and gaudy red and white rug. Somehow, they really tied the room together.

The staff was made up entirely of kitrekins, and they were all dressed in a similar manner to the ones standing guard outside. From dealers to servers and everyone in between, they were all armed. Most carried cutlasses, but a few had rapiers and they all looked like they knew how to use them. Admittedly, Vee hadn’t really spent much time in casinos, but he couldn’t help feeling that it was a little weird for there to be so many weapons. It didn’t really seem…conducive to the jovial gambling atmosphere they were probably trying to cultivate. He certainly didn’t feel inclined to start dumping fleurs on the table.

Alforde left them soon after. The armorsoul had little patience for cards, and instead sat himself down in front of a slot machine. At Reginald’s request, Vee plopped down at a table where the game being played was Horses.

Horses was an old, slow game that combined cards and coins in an escalating auction. Vee had learned the rules as a child, but he didn’t like the game much and knew that he wasn’t very good at it. If he was playing for his own gain, he would have simply put the minimum bet on the table each round until he lucked into a good draw.

Unfortunately, Reginald was calling the shots, such as they were. The hat was probably the worst player Vee had ever seen. He was little more than a novice, but like many people who have only scratched the surface of a given subject, was convinced that he was a master.

“Don’t worry about a thing, boss, I’ve got a system,” Reginald assured Vee as the first round of cards went out around the table. “Just do as I say, and we’ll walk out of here wealthy!”

As it turned out, Reginald’s ‘system’ relied on making a bizarre series of bets in a practice that he called ‘hedging’. However, instead of balancing risks against one another in a way that minimized downsides, the hat simply threw money at everything on the table and hoped for a lucky outcome. Naturally, as the losses started stacking up, the spirit refused to believe that his strategy sucked and insisted on simply doubling his bets over and over each time. Eventually, he explained, he’d win a hand and make back all of his losses, plus doubling his original stake.

“That may not be such a good idea,” Vee said after the fourth such double up. “You’re running pretty far in the red. If your luck doesn’t turn soon you’ll be out of fleurs.”

Reginald tightened his brim so much that Vee almost cried out, and the [Dungeon Master] left the hat to his business. Less than five minutes later, Reginald’s bankroll was gone, and Vee found himself back at the cage, trying to get another marker so that the hat could keep playing.

The kitrekin inside wasn’t terribly interested in Reginald’s long-winded explanations of the various things that apparently caused “a one-in-a-million streak of bad luck which your establishment may or may not be culpable for”, but when the hat mentioned that he was a “dear and personal friend of the Little Miss,” the entire room fell silent.

Vee had no idea who that was, but one didn’t need to be a genius to realize that it was probably someone pretty important. The gang of angry kittrekins surrounding him was a dead giveaway.

Turning around, Vee found that one of them had somehow managed to get right behind him without him hearing a sound. He smiled sheepishly in an attempt to diffuse the situation, but the kittrekin didn’t reply in kind. In fact, he cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders in the universal language that meant I’m going to break your face.

Vee kept smiling.

[Guts +1]

“I…probably shouldn’t have said that part out loud,” Reginald said. “I forgot that people aren’t really supposed to mention her. Little help here, boss?”

“What do you think I’m going to do? Gawain’s balls, Reginald! Now’s a heck of a time to remember something like that, don’t you think?” snapped Vee. He took a step back and found that it too was blocked by another angry [Pirate]. If – when – they got out of this situation, he was going to have a nice, long talk with Reginald. He wanted to know exactly who this “Little Miss” was and why mentioning her caused such a response. And he wanted to make it clear that if Reginald kept saying dumb stuff that got Vee into trouble, the hat would find himself perched atop a rack inside one of Sculla’s closets for the rest of Vee’s days.

“Come on, everyone,” said the hat atop Vee’s head. Only it wasn’t Reginald’s scratchy voice. It was rich and smooth, like high-quality chocolate and Vee had never heard it before. “Why don’t we all go ahead and [[Calm Down]]. There’s no need for this sort of acrimony, is there?”

The air grew thick for a moment and Vee’s vision turned slightly pink for no longer than a heartbeat. Warmth filled his limbs, and he felt a little drowsy. What did you just do, Reginald?

No answer. With a mental sigh, Vee added another topic to his upcoming chat with the [Majordomo].

Everyone was still for a moment, and it started looking a little bit like whatever Reginald had just done hadn’t worked. The kittrekins still had murder in their eyes.

But then, sure enough, a noise started coming from the slot machines. Call it Salvation-ex-Slot-Machina. Chimes, bells and horns all filled the air, but they weren’t alone. There was also the unmistakable jingle jangle of coins hitting the floor. That sound was the loudest of all.

Vee snapped his head to the side to get a better look. So did all the kittrekins, including the one who’d been a few seconds away from socking Vee.

Standing there in the center of the slot machine area with one gauntlet up by his helmet, was Alforde. The armorsoul looked confused. He was surrounded by gold fleurs that came up to his ankles.

“I…I think I won,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it.

Looking up at the board above the machines, Vee saw that the top prize for the slots was twenty-five hundred gold fleurs. Twenty-five hundred gold fleurs?! TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED GOLD FLEURS?!

Talk about luck! That was more than half their debt to Sacre! With all that money, they’d be done paying back the loan so fast that the interest would be barely anything. He didn’t have to worry nearly so much about finding other ways for Crestheart to make money! Vee felt as if his cheeks might split open because he was grinning so wide, and he leapt into the air with joy. His kneecaps were safe! Praise be to Piper! Alforde had won –

Ten silver fleurs.

The armorsoul reached down and picked up his smattering of silver from the sea of gold. He held his winnings up and showed them to Vee, rubbing the coins together in his fingers.

“Look, isn’t it lucky? I got three of the little wheel things!”

The world seemed to stop. Vee found that he was having a hard time breathing. A tiny salamander woman with poorly dyed blue scales emerged from behind the machine next to Alforde’s, and she stumbled over the piles of gold. Her gold. Naturally, Alforde caught her before she could fall and helped her regain her balance.

Vee, on the other hand, fell to his knees unassisted. There were no words to describe how he felt. Every disappointment he’d ever had in his life - and there'd been plenty! - paled in comparison to this moment. His fears and worries came rushing back, growing even stronger in his gut for their brief absence. The [Dungeon Master] couldn’t help but feel a little bitter as the little salamander wobbled forward and was congratulated by the kittrekins. She was laughing and there were sparkling tears of joy in her eyes.

Watching her, Vee wondered – as he sometimes did – if the world just…enjoyed having a laugh at his expense. This was one of the times he was pretty sure that it did. Stupid world!

Vee felt a shift in the ethereal as a new ghost formed on his shoulder. Like the ones back in the carriage, he didn’t want to look at it. He was pretty sure that it was the remnant of his hopes, and he [Banished] it right away.

That made him feel a little better.

Everyone in the casino came over to celebrate the salmander’s win – and maybe score some free drinks in a fit of euphoric spending – and the kittrekins surrounding Vee were momentarily distracted by the flood of people. Wiggling his eyebrows at Alforde like a madman, Vee slipped away from his soon-to-be captors and scurried out of the casino.

Thankfully, all the practice Alforde had recently gotten in reading his best friend’s eyebrows paid off and the armorsoul got the message. Once the were outside, Alforde hurried over and retrieved Hammy from the pile of weapons, and clutched it to his chestplate.

“Oh I missed you so much,” Alforde said. It had been less than an hour. Vee shook his head again.

They all heard a creak in the mud nearby and saw that the carriage that was hopefully headed back to Oar’s Crest was pulling away. Since they had no idea when the next one would arrive and had no desire to wait around and spend more time around the kittrekins, the three friends ran for all they were worth to catch it before it got too far down the path.

It took them good deal of shouting – including a promise by Vee to give the driver three gold fleurs as a tip – to get the carriage to stop, but they succeeded in escaping from the riverside casino and made it back to town safely.

Vee looked at the trashy carriage station of Oar’s Crest and felt like a [Sailor] touching ground for the first time after a long voyage.

“I swear to Gawain, I’m never going back to that place,” Vee mumbled.

[Adventurousness -1]

Taking off Reginald, Vee looked into the hat’s eyes.

“Now, you and I are going to have a little chat,” he said. “Why don’t we start with the exact identity of The Little Miss, eh?”

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales:

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 21

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 10

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 2

Might: 8

Wit: 28

Faith: 18

Adventurousness: 6 (-1)

Ambition: 9

Plotting: 12

Charisma: 4

Devious Mind: 14

Leadership: 10

Guts: 6 (+1)

Intimidating Presence: 5

Citizenship: 5

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 17

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 10

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 10

Additional Class: Clunker (Vee Vales), Level 3

Might: 30

Wit: 10

Faith: 24

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 7 (+1)

Endurance: 11

Intimidating Presence: 7 (-1)

Heart of a Champion: 2

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 3

Vigilance: 3

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ??? (-???)

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 35 (+1)

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 7

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 3

Might: 1

Wit: 27

Faith: 5 (+2)

Ambition: 24

Greed: 21 (+1)

Deceptiveness: 32

F%^*#@: ~

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Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 2