How to Succeed In Business in a New World

A Game of Chance

    Today was supposed to be grandly productive, in that we had planned to do nothing but work, had gotten some excellent moment going with writing the night prior so I was really looking forward to continuing that and Marie had laid out her fabrics in some way that made sense to her with the promise of getting started on the base models. There was a simple pleasure that came with being productive, even with this being the first time in a long time that I had been so. Maybe it had more to do with doing remarkably easy work but still getting it done, and I wouldn’t have enjoyed anything where I needed to be actually creative. In a way it wasn’t too dissimilar from grinding I suppose, the work was easy and somewhat repetitive but it was all to achieve a larger goal. Maybe the similarities stopped there but game designers loved to use our goal oriented brains against us so now I was just activating those reward centers in a more tangible way, even if it still wasn’t entirely legitimate. Either way we passed most of the day along on our fairly repetitive and menial tasks. Maybe the major difference was that I was doing it with someone else, even if we weren’t being social in really any way, but just being able to look up and see someone else whittling away at their work could be motivation enough.

Before I really knew it the sunbeams coming in were getting low and long, without a clock or anything I hadn’t noticed that I had been working for hours on end with scarce few breaks. Even half a day more like this and I would probably be able to finish my draft of the script, I couldn’t imagine there was any easy way to copy papers that had already been written, at least in a mechanical way. There was probably a spell for duplication but really the best way probably would have been carving blocks for a printing press, though I couldn’t help but wonder how much business a wizard doing duplication on documents would get. Even if duplication is something of a hard spell he could just do all of his work in batches and then even to make a thousand copies of multiple documents wouldn’t take more than eight castings. Maybe most magicians skilled enough to know a spell like that viewed the work as too menial for them but all you needed was to find one who was down on his luck and pitch the idea and offer consultancy for a small portion of the pie and you could secure an easy passive income source. I’d keep it in mind but I wasn’t going to count on the situation ever presenting itself to me, I had other get-rich-quick fish to fry for now so I’d put my all into finishing the preparations for the big show. It also occurs to me that one copy of the script will be fine since we can all be looking at it even while the show is going on. Maybe puppetry as a medium had more merits to it than I had initially given it.

End of Day Report

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End:         ¤ 10.00

I felt particularly rested after a day of not much activity, which was probably for the best because today was the day we were scheduled to go on the quest to save our bank account. Though our grand plan for doing so involved completing another quest, one much more focused on killing some vermin that had been pestering workers on a construction project. To be totally earnest, I was rather excited for it, not only would I really get to use my new, meager yet promising weapon and armor, but depending on how much they were really looking after us I may be able to walk out of there with some lumber. Other than my hopes of procuring some free material for the puppet theater, the feeling of anticipation before a quest was really making my hair stand on end. Maybe that small break from actual combat was just what I needed to totally refresh my vigor for the thrill of the hunt. My cocktail of feelings did have a heaping teaspoon of sour anxiousness that refused to be dissolved, since I didn’t even know what we were even going to going up against here I couldn’t even do my research, I’d be going in blind as could be and I’d have to depend on my ability to think on my feet. Sure I had done it before but I didn’t really like doing it then either, having some preformed strategy would just be like a security blanket for me. I strapped on my single piece of armor and took in hand my net and was ready to compensate for my lack of knowledge with sheer artificial and material superiority. 

“Are you almost ready in there?” Even though I could hear that Marie was making noise in her room when I got up she had yet to emerge. She was still raising a racket so I was sure she hadn’t gone back to sleep but I really had no idea what she could be doing.

“Hold on! I need to pick what to wear!” Maybe letting her build her wardrobe was a bigger mistake than I had realized. A few minutes and a few more calls to hurry it along later she emerged from her room wearing something. If I hadn’t resented her outfit for all the grief it had indirectly caused me that morning I would have noticed that it was comprised of a long white dress with a rough leather hide vest and a silky red sash tied around her waist, it really made her look like a real mage. At least a real mage who just so happened to be fairly low level. Real wizard armor always seemed to just be long robes that were enchanted to protect them or just the same thing as regular armor if they were more of a battle wizard. But that was really neither here nor there, it was nice to have a support caster that was really starting to look the part. 

When we got to where the listing had directed us we were still on the outskirts of town, but maybe it was still in the town? It seemed that the construction that was being used as a temporary residence for some creature was in fact an extension of the town wall. There was an open, unfinished edge and an almost cavernous space inside. It wasn’t as tall and stately as the wall was around the gates but it seemed that there was an attempt to make up for that by building guard towers and a way to get into the guard towers up through the actual wall. In short it was taking on more of a fort or castle style wall that could be manned and defended rather than just a massive pile of bricks that should be keeping things safe. It was interesting to see that they would make the switch so abruptly but there was probably a foggy reason for it like all things a government does. At the open end of the battlement there was a burly looking man dressed in work clothes.

“Are you here about the animal problems?” He called out to us while we were still a bit of a ways away.

“Yep!” I called back to him. We didn’t exchange any more words until we were right there with him.

“I’m the foreman on this site and I’m required to be here while you sort out the little situation in there.” That was some of the less important information he could tell us but still good to know I suppose. 

“What seems to be the cause of the situation?” I still just really wanted some idea of what I was gonna be up against and he seemed like the guy to ask, at least the best guy around.

“Well the real problem is that all of my men are apparently a bunch of superstitious babies, but since the project manager says that I can’t just hire someone to smack sense into them, you’re the next best thing.” That still didn’t exactly tell me what the problem that I was supposed to be solving was. 

“So what is it that’s making them act like superstitious babies?” Talking to him with his own words might help get something useful out of him. Though this would also be an excellent time for my secret charismatic weapon to make her big debut and put some charm on this guy. It seems that my biggest mistake was that I didn’t set up any sort of a signal for her to get to work, I also still haven’t primed my weapon so to speak.

“They keep talking about how some kinda bird made a nest in there and that if they disturb it they’ll be cursed or whatever.” Why was someone so lukewarm on the entire issue the one sent to supervise us, granted most of the people who believe in the nebulous curse that this guy was talking about probably wouldn’t want to be here when it got taken care of. I didn’t consider myself much of a superstitious baby but this wasn’t really much of an unfounded idea that you’d be cursed for disturbing an animal’s nest. We heard stuff like that at shrines and temples and in parables and fairytales and those would be more to teach a lesson to kids than anything else, but here actual magic existed. There were animals that were definitely magic in one way or another so what is there to really stop this one from putting a curse on you. 

“Do you remember what they were calling the bird?” I had already heard about one magic bird and I did my best to get in that one’s good graces so if possible I’d like to see what I can learn about this one.

“They were calling it either a Game Owl or a Dice Bird or something. Might’ve been a Dice Owl and a Game Bird, I’m here to supervise them working, if they aren’t working I don’t have to pay attention to them. This damn thing is putting us weeks behind schedule so I need you guys to take care of, don’t care how.”

“Can you tell us anything about what they were saying?”

“Ughh first I have to close the site cause none of those whiners would do anything anyway, then they make me come on a weekend and barely give me any overtime to supervise some numbskull adventurers and all they can do is ask a million questions.” I was unsure if he knew he was saying this all outloud but once it was clear that he didn’t intend to give us an answer I figured he wasn’t going to care either way. As much as I wanted to get this quest done quickly it looked like we were going to have to go and do some research. Though now we did have options in a way, we could either go to the library and ask the girl that claims to have read every bestiary around or go to the old man and ask the guy that’s probably written for a few of them. After a few moments of deliberation we came to the joint decision that it'd probably be better to go to the library, not only was it closer to her job description to help us get information but she would probably be a lot more happy about visitors. Not to mention we may be able to get a verdict on the proposal we had made the other day. 

The librarian was somewhat surprised to see us again so soon but was more than happy to give us a sort of rundown on the creature in question.

“For starters it typically goes by either a Game Owl or a Dice Bird but if you told someone about a Dice Owl they’d probably know what you’re talking about. Game bird but not get you the same results though.” Nice to know but not exactly helpful for the task at hand.

“We heard about some curse for disturbing it, what exactly would that curse be like, and what exactly would constitute disturbing it?” I was hoping that we could just shoo it away or catch and release it somewhere else without suffering the dreaded curse.

“Well most of the legends surrounding the Dice Bird are told in communities of gamblers, they say that if you disturb it you’ll be cursed with supernatural bad luck and never win another game again. The owls themselves are purportedly big fans of games of chance themselves and most stories involve a cheater or sore winner being challenged by one on his walk home and when it sees the same behavior it will curse them, but there are a few stories which someone will be gracious with the bird and they’ll be justly rewarded with excellent luck or even straight up cash. They’re supposed to be extremely clever as owls are often depicted, enough to be able to speak though this cleverness may seem to contrast with their love of games, particularly ones of chance. They’re supposed to be extremely adept and cunning at whatever games they play, though if they can curse others with bad enough luck to never win then it’s debatable how good they need to be to win if you ask me, but some stories make it seem like they’ll lose on purpose to test your character. As for what counts as disturbing them I wouldn’t exactly know, obviously cheating and showboating seem to be peeves of theirs but it isn’t hard to imagine that they’d be annoyed by things that annoy regular animals too.” So just smacking it with a broom until it left seemed like it was off the table in that case and I’d really rather not tempt fate with this thing. Incurring the wrath of a mythical, and seemingly vindictive, being sounded as unappealing as ever. If I was going to get this thing out of there I would prefer to get it out with some cunning of my own. I didn’t have much to gamble with, not that this thing needed money for its life as a bird, so I’d need to get it indebted to me in some other way. She told us some more about how the legends spread and different variations and descriptions of it, supposedly it was rather rare, the only habitat it was really said to be native to was anywhere where games would be played often and gambling was popular. Some places that ran under the table operations would even put them on their signage or have fake ones out front to advertise the fact to their clintle without putting anything in writing. Usually when people claimed to see one they had been having a few drinks at such an establishment so their testimony was never widely believed and there were some who thought that the bird only existed in fables to scare cheaters. I didn’t really see much reason to doubt what the workers had been saying, either way if we went in there and it was just a regular owl then I doubt we’d be getting nearly as much restitution after telling the foreman that so maybe we should just let him believe it. 

Of all the magnificent beasts I’d heard about this seemed like one of the more interesting ones, I wondered a bit how much of it was actual legend and how much was true and just sifted through the oft unreliable filter of oral tradition. Even if it could just talk that would be pretty amazing to me, considering the only other mystical animal I had heard about that wasn’t trying to kill me was entirely legend I was prepared to be impressed by this one. When we got back the foreman was reclining against a part of the wall further down, I saw no reason to wake him so we made our way up the scaffolding into the inner room of the wall. As we got further from the gaping entrance the light grew rarer, only pouring in the narrow arrow slits facing the outside, I suppose this was a decent place for a nocturnal creature to take up residence. Speaking of I hope we wouldn’t be waking it, that sounds like an easy way to displease it right off the bat, and waiting until nightfall sounded like just as bad of an idea. A few of the slits were stuffed with straw, twigs, and other nest building material with a few strips of color here and there, plunging the narrow hall into almost total darkness, I could use my spell to get a more sustained light than the one I had used on the rats but that could wake him just as easily. It was only a few more paces before our footsteps were accompanied by the crunches of walking on similar material and just as my eyes were getting familiar with the lack of light I saw a massive object that could almost be mistaken as luminous. Staring at it more closely it was an owl, covered in white feathers save for five black spots on its forehead arranged like on a die. It was much bigger than I had expected, I knew owls in general got pretty big but it must have been upwards of four feet tall roosting in its nest. It seemed completely infeasible that this thing could spread its wings unless it turned parallel to the hall. As impractical as it seemed for this thing to live here, there it was. And worst of all, there it was sleeping. It was still before noon so I wasn’t too keen on waiting for nightfall, and if we were to wait then what would we even do? Would it pay to go back home and get some more work done on our creative pursuits or just sit around and pass the time. If the supervisor had to be here by government requirement then I couldn’t imagine he’d enjoy having his time waited through, though it would mean more overtime for him. Though, sitting around passing the time might be more effective than I had thought.

“Sit down here.” I directed my compatriot to do as I was doing in a half hushed tone. It might have been a bit of a long shot but it wouldn’t work for sure if we woke it up before we even started. Once we were sitting together I held out a fist, and pretty much expected her to catch on from there, maybe I was being a bit obtuse or she wasn’t picking up on my signals. I could have sworn I had taught her how to rock-paper-scissors when we were doing anything and everything to pass the time while in the bureaucracy hell that was the guild on a weekend. Even if I didn’t that was no excuse for not knowing, even if it didn’t exist in this world. Rather than go through the trouble of explaining it I just fished into my pocket and took out a coin. “Heads or tails?” No way the absolute baseline of all probability exercises wasn’t ubiquitous. 

“Hmm… Heads.” She restricted her volume accordingly but as the coin tumbled through the air there was a startlingly loud sound.

“Tails!” Even though it didn’t need to be said the deep bass had come from the owl declaring what side he was claiming. My plan had worked a treat, if this thing was attracted to games of chance then what better way was there to wake it up. He craned his neck downward as I caught the coin in my palm and flipped onto the opposite wrist. Maybe it was only because of how closely I was being watched but I felt an enormous amount of tension even though there was nothing really riding on the result. I prepared to promulgate what I saw as I lifted my hand. 

“Heads, the lady wins it.” I felt the need to sound official in my announcement, so did an imitation of what a casino dealer might sound like. I had always liked the idea of gambling but my experience with it came much more from movies and such than ever actually doing it myself. Sure I had played some gambling games online but I had never really gone to a real casino. During culture festivals there would sometimes be a class doing a casino night and those were one of the more enjoyable themes for me personally. Though that probably had as much to do with my aversion to how overly social most of the other standard projects were as it did with my fondness for games of chance. I mostly got my gambling fix from online games using it as a secondary mechanic. 

“Very well.” It seems that while the game itself had caught the attention of the snow white owl he wasn’t all too broken up by the results. After all it was hard to get invested when you had nothing invested. He lifted and adjusted his massive wings and twisted his head from side to side a bit as if he was really just waking up, which while he was it was a bit strange to see this rather stately looking specimen do something so anthropomorphic.

“We were wondering if we could ask you something…” I’m sure that given the reputation these things had they probably got asked for favors all the time so I was quick to defend my admittedly suspect sounding lead in. “We don’t want your blessing or anything, not at all.” Maybe a little really. “But seeing as we won just now how about you just hear us out.”

“Very well.” He seemed more begrudging at this acceptance than the last time he had said it.

“Would you be willing to leave here? We’re willing to move all your nesting materials and find you a new, better spot anywhere you’d like.” I knew he wasn’t going to take that offer, he didn’t care about finding a new spot or the work involved. Why would he be living here, somewhere he can’t even spread his wings or fly if he cared about the work of moving his nest. That was just something of a negotiation trick to make him think we’re willing to do a lot to earn his trust, and that fact alone does a good deal to earn his trust. 

“That will not be necessary.” Of course he didn’t care about it. He would get out of here as long as we indulged him, there was no way we would get him out of here without playing him in something, and I doubt he’d be willing to reward us just for playing, we would have to win. 

“Do you wanna play for it? Name your game.” I had an inkling of the types of games he would choose and we wouldn’t be getting out of here with another winning coin flip. He would want to make it a game that involved the mind, these things were supposed to be wise and cunning so we wouldn’t be leaving this up to pure randomness at all. When it comes to gambling they say there are as many “systems” as there are people playing any given game. Everyone thought they had the technique that would supposedly guarantee them victory, I was no exception but usually through a combination of my system and knowing when to walk away I could come out on top more times than not. The only real questions were, would I be able to come up with a method for whatever game he was going to suggest, and would I be able to contend with his cunning using my own. No doubt we would be playing with similar styles but I would probably be playing any game for the first time. No way we had the same idea of “standard” games, not to mention some bizarre animal acting as a karmic force of the universe would probably play some pretty out there games to begin with. It seemed only natural that he would have some sense of poetic justice with all of his games, something like strip poker for a womanizer or something like that, though even that example seemed rather tame, whether they had poker here or not. Assuming our histories were running parallel, which they almost certainly weren’t, I don’t think poker would be around in any recognizable form for a few centuries. In any case it seemed like I would have to learn the higher methods in addition to the rules as the game went along. 

“Are you familiar with the game of high-low?”

“Yes.” Was every speculation I had just made about his probable choices wrong?

“We will be playing a variation of that game.” Okay maybe this was where the twist would come in and prove me right. But now I was just thinking of how we were going to play, it’s not like we had any cards or anything not to mention how we would actually be gambling, sure we had the stakes of him leaving or not but surely we needed to have some lead up. Whoever makes the other run out of money first gets their way. Doing it on a single draw wouldn’t allow much room for strategy, though I suppose that would be in the favor of the luck controlling magic beast.Though for someone that was cracked up to punish cheaters and  the like that wouldn’t exactly be the most sportsmanlike thing to do. I really just wanted an actual chance to win rather than have it all depend on the luck of a single draw right off the bat, ideally it would come down to the final draw after some heated and intense back and forth, that’s what gambling was really all about. The excitement and risk were more enticing than any promise of winnings, at least when you didn’t have the winnings yet. 

“How are we going to play?” That was really two or three questions, what cards or numbers would we be using, what are the rules of the variation, and how would we be keeping score. I figured I’d let him answer whichever ones he wanted first and pose the rest as follow ups just so I wouldn’t overwhelm the conversation space. He opened his wings a few inches and on the other side there was a veritable mosaic of blacks reds and splashes of yellow, the reverse of his feathers were suited and numbered playing cards, and with a delicate and measured flap he shook them loose. It seemed another row was at the ready as despite the dropping of dozens of sizable feathers the wings looked no more naked. As incredible as it was to see it was somewhat undermined when he scraped them into a messy pile with an outstretched talon and pushed it closer to me as if to infer something. I took the hint and shuffled them into a grouping that could actually be called a deck. I scanned through them just to confirm that everything was there and only there once, also just making sure that it was a deck as I knew it. Four suits from ace to king were all present and accounted for, to my mild surprise. Afterwards I took some time to examine the feathers more closely. They were about a half or two thirds as wide as a standard card and probably twice as long, they were pretty rigid considering that they still looked and felt like feathers in almost every other respect. They still had some good weight to them too and the designs were all recognizable and unique if they did lack much intricacy, and I would have liked a design on the back but for being all natural I really shouldn’t be getting too picky. 

“The rules for this variation may seem a bit strange but they are fairly simple as well, and I think you’ll find that they do indeed make for a much more interesting game.” I didn’t think it was possible to smirk with a beak but I suppose the way his eyes squinted and he leaned in it couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anything else. It was far from an innocent grin, it had enough negative emotional force behind it to make me question whether this would end peacefully or not. A game where losing would be discouraged with physical pain seemed like one of the more likely things to exist in both worlds. I really wasn’t going to be able to relax until he actually explained the rules.

“So what are these rules?” I wasn’t sure how he thought that he could salvage a game as, speaking frankly, boring as high-low but I wasn’t too keen on letting me see how doubtful I was. 

“Each player first antes and then the turn player takes a card from the top of the deck face down.” It seemed he wasn’t going to spare us the most minute detail of how to play. What was the point of asking if I knew the base game if you weren’t going to use that as a jumping off point for how to explain this version? I’ve played card games before so I know how anteing and drawing cards works. “Then, the turn player may look at their card.” What a luxury. “Once they do they will then draw another card from the deck and turn it face up for all to see.” If I had ever complained about over-tutourializing then I take it back because at this point he was the undisputed king of it and worst of it all it seems like he was enjoying it. As if he were some prometheus and every extra syllable he explained was just another moment that we could admire him for teaching us a new way to play  cards. As he continued at the pace of a snail through a glue trap I tuned in and out until he started to talk about what the actual goal of the game was. Of course it would hinge around guessing whether one card would be higher or lower than another but the major twist here was that instead of just the easy to understand version it would be that with just a ton more extra stuff to worry about. Sure complicating simple games could make them more interesting to play, like having to do something else before placing a piece in tic tac toe, but this did not seem like an example of such. The thought occurred to me that in the same way the owls would supposedly let sore winners win on purpose to expose them, he may be giving me a more convoluted game to test the intellect I took such pride in. Or he was just bad at making games so no one would play them with him but saw his opportunity when I said I’d play anything with him. If it was the latter then I was more than a bit worried that he’d be taking out his long accruing spite on me, every rejection of his overthought mess of a card game would be redirected towards me with a malicious glee. I suppose I would have to choose my words more carefully next time I’m looking to please some sort of magical critter of one variety or another. As much as I would keep that in mind I was still here about to be playing a lousy card game, though maybe I could hatch a way out of this.

“Sorry but, I really don’t have much money on me. In fact that coin you saw me flip earlier was pretty much all of it. I may be able to pay the first ante but from there the game is gonna be very, very boring.”

“Worry not, this has been accounted for. Reach into my nest.” I crawled over on all fours and reached a hand in. I had a suspicion since we entered the darkened center of the corridor but this confirmed it. The colorful strips of paper were indeed dollar bills in various states of shredding, and it seemed there were large deposits of them in the very earliest, least shredded stage, no shredding at all. It only made sense that the bird would have money considering his penchant for gambling as well as the fact that he had a supply of laborers coming to him bringing him a steady flow of potential winnings. In fact to some degree I even started to suspect the only reason the builders had started to speak up about it was because they were tired of losing their savings to this thing. Though I can only imagine what their productivity must have been like while they were gambling the whole time they were on the clock. I pulled out a few fistfuls of bills, mostly of larger denominations attesting to his success at parting fools from their money. I laid out the money in rough piles organized by denominations before I started counting them up. It was without a doubt the most money I had ever seen at a single time here, maybe even in real life too, no doubt it was at least a few thousand and here I was touching all of it. Maybe I could take the money and run, it’s not like he would be able to catch up to me in this hallway, I’d have a pretty decent head start. Maybe even enough time to set up an ambush for him at the opening. Though he’d definitely have enough time to place his magic curse on me to make me lose at every single possible endeavor I undertake in life. I’d have to play by his absurd rules if I wanted to win the money. Though then again I was never guaranteed that I’d get to keep the stacks I won, after all it would only be proper if I were to at least pay back the loan I had gotten for a buy-in and even then it might be better to give it all back just in case. I knew I had just reprimanded myself about being too polite with these matters but old habits are hard to break. Though I doubt this guy valued money all too much, after all it was mixed in with the twigs underneath him, and he would have a functionally limitless supply of it as long as he was within a convenient distance for gamblers. But I had to keep in mind that the may prize on the table was him getting out of here and us getting on with our lives, though a few stacks of cash would help us do that a lot better than whatever the guild was gonna be giving us for this but I had to get that thought process out of my head. An eternal curse is the last thing I needed.

Before we began I was told to split the pot between us, and then was reprimanded for doing it wrong. 

“No, no, no. Among the three of us!” I wasn’t exactly mortified by the realization that Marie would be playing too but it didn’t exactly inspire much confidence in this going smoothly. After redistributing I placed the stack of feathers upside down in the middle of all of us. As much as I didn’t care to listen to the rules, now would probably be a good time to remember them. There was the ante, that part was easy enough, I chipped in the agreed upon amount and the others did the same. The way the other two looked at me I assumed I was the turn player and drew a card. It was the seven of diamonds, one of the best and worst cards for high-low. It was right in the middle so there was plenty of room for the next card to fall on either side which was as much a blessing as a curse. Mostly a curse for whoever wasn’t guessing, which for this round was me. This didn’t look like a good start, though with the new rules I wasn’t sure what I could be sure of. I flipped the next card for all to see the five resting on the other side. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted here. If it was just me and the bird I know I’d want him to say my card was lower so that he’d lose and I’d get whatever he bet on it but with the three of us how would it be decided who was saying what? No way he would just make it so that the one to bet first would get to decide what they thought it would be and whoever was left would just be stuck with whatever is left. There’s no strategy to that. Not to mention there were only two options, high and low. Would I not actually be betting? But then why did I have to ante? That makes it seem like I was down the price of the ante no matter what, the person who drew the card was at a marked disadvantage, and really all you would need to do was get the slightest leg up on everyone else and then just keep folding until they get bled dry from the ante on their dealer turns. It was good that I was already thinking of ways to exploit the rules but it still would have been better if I had paid attention to the rules so I could exploit them correctly. Though where would the line be between cunning use of the rules in your favor and cheating? If I didn’t steal glances at the order of the deck or anything then I really wasn’t cheating, though that didn’t stop them kicking out card counters. Knowledge of the game state wasn’t really cheating but if you were going to exploit it in a major way it would be. But this guy should be used to cunning, if I could beat him at his own game both figuratively and literally then he’d be sure to accept my request to leave, and maybe even leave some of the cash in my hands. It was a dim hope for now but I would just have to learn as I went. Luckily since I was dealing the first round the betting would start to the left of me, or at least I assumed. The owl stared intently at me for what could have very easily been a full minute. The whole time I was trying to figure out if he was expecting me to do something, and if so what on earth it could possibly be. 

“Very well, I raise.” He clutched a bill in his talons and tossed it into the center, it seems that the whole time he was just trying to perceive any minute tell I might have. He didn’t declare whether he was saying higher or lower so I guess that it wasn’t just a matter of whoever goes first. Maybe it was a privilege given to the second player to bet as some recompense of not being able to set the tone of the game, though that was a fairly ridiculous line of reasoning, I couldn’t think of any casino game that really made that distinction. Maybe in a Trading Card Game but as the game went on in theory that advantage would become unrecognizable as the cycle had more and more repetitions. Now it was the time for Marie to take her turn, she looked at me as if she was just mimicking what she had just seen done. There was another distinct possibility in addition to the options of waiting for me to do something and trying to suss out my reaction, she could have been not paying attention to the rules too and was now hoping that I would be able to give her some silent signal of what to do. I wanted to tell her to just call for now because it would probably have the lightest set of additional rules attached to it but I couldn’t think of any way to signal that which didn’t involve a phone. I was extremely interested in what she was going to do, either she had listened to the rules and I would see another example of proper play, or she didn’t and would get a stern explanation that I could no doubt also use. Either we had already started to develop a psychic connection or she wasn’t at all certain about anything but she had called and wasn’t reprimanded for it. Now it was on me to figure out if that was a bluff or she really knew what she was doing. But now it was back to me, or so I would assume. I took another peek at my face down card more to stall than anything else as I tried to figure out something that seemed reasonable to be doing. Maybe… I should draw another card? It didn’t make much sense but that seemed to be a running theme with this ruleset. It seemed that I was going to get a rigorous working over for my negligence but I did deserve it I suppose. Would it be worth it to just bluff and hope that I did a valid action for a turn… Surely I wouldn’t be doing any betting. I did have all the information here so I would be able to win no problem, not that I would mind that of course. Though there is still one piece of information I didn’t know, who was picking between high and low? Really I was more interested in what would be picked rather than who’d be doing it. Maybe it was me? The game made absolutely no sense so anything could be going in absolutely any direction. Since it did make absolutely no sense and could be going absolutely any direction there was absolutely no way that I’d be able to bluff my way through this turn. I swallowed hard and shoved my pride way down.

“Now what am I doing at this point again?” I tried to make it sound casual as if this was just a friendly game being played among friends over a couple slices of pizza or something. If I could just sound convincing in that role than that would give us a real advantage, if I could be running on all strategic cylinders while he was more relaxed then I would probably be able to win without a problem as long as my acting kept up. But I had next to no chance at winning if I didn’t learn the rules.

“At this point, after one round of betting, the turn player is to draw another card and after looking at it they choose whether to replace a card that has already been drawn or not. If they should choose to replace the second card drawn then the replacement card is flipped face up and the replaced card is shuffled back into the deck. If the first card drawn is replaced then the replaced card is shown before being shuffled back into the deck. If no card is replaced then the card that was just drawn is shown and shuffled back into the deck.” I guess that was an interesting little addition, it gave the dealer some choice on what the actual cards were so that they weren’t just sitting by while the other two players actually played. It did compound our advantage too, I hadn’t thought about it before but since Marie and I were effectively on the same team, in that if either one of us won we would get to evict the unwanted tenant so our odds started out pretty good but with this when either of us were dealing we may be able to tip the scales in each other’s favor. I drew another card before realizing that I had no real idea if I wanted to replace anything or not, how could I if I still didn’t know what was actually being bet on? While it probably wasn’t the best move I just decided to put it back in the deck for now, it was probably better to get off to a slow start rather than rush in and make a mistake. I flipped the revealed card showing everyone the queen going back into the deck. I looked to the bird as if nonverbally asking him if I was done for now but hopefully could be mistaken as the passing of the baton. He looked back at me for a few moments to try to see through my invincible poker face of not knowing what I was doing. The replacing decision was dripping with implications, if I knew everything I was supposed to I might be able to make some good inferences off that decision and then it would come down to whether the other player had counted on me to make those inferences and I was playing right into their trap. I did enjoy some metathinking like that in games but here there was still the previously bemoaned major roadblock to me enjoying it. Once my turn was apparently settled it was the bird’s turn again, he spent another stint of time staring at me and the face down card before raising again. It seemed he was either seeing something that wasn’t there or was just being cavalier. Of course he knew something I didn’t so it could very easily be something that I had no idea about that was motivating his decision. What was really more shocking was that Marie decided to raise further, did she also know something I didn’t? Did she know something the owl didn’t? It could very well be that she fully knew the rules, and with her more in-depth knowledge of my personality was able to glean some information from my body language or something. Though again this may just be another massive bluff that she actually knew the rules. What I should have been doing was watching her face while the rules were being reexplained just now, it would be best if at least of us knew what we were doing. Maybe I could get her to drop some hints or something if she did know, but I’d just be looking like an i***t if she couldn’t help me or if she just didn’t pick up on them. I’d have to sort this out on my own for the most part. While I was still pulling at my mental thread the bird raised once again, it seems that my turn gets skipped after that second drawing. They kept going back and forth raising meager amounts for a bit until the pot had grown to a rather large sum, they must have each put in at least an eighth of their banks in. From a lightly trained observer it seemed that it had become more a matter of pride than anything, how much could really have been betting on. Neither of them knew anything than the other. It’s not like they knew they had a flush or anything so any leg up they thought they had was purely mental. If they were trying to bait each other into growing the pot they certainly succeeded, though if they were both trying to do that then it was somewhat pointless. This was really my first time intently watching people play seriously, there were times when my dad had fallen asleep watching sports until professional poker came on but I was never really interested in watching, not to mention since it told you everyone’s hand it wasn’t really that exciting to me. Not to mention when I was however old I wasn’t really interested in watching anything that wasn’t animated and starring giant monsters or some form of magic power. Of course now that I had some skin in the game I was much more interested. Not to mention I was playing cards with a giant monster and magic powers were involved. Though frankly so far that had been the most boring part. The one to end the raising duel was the owl, it seemed his calculating side took over and convinced him that the chance that he could lose was too great to put any more on the line. The drawn out silence told me it was my turn to do something, maybe it was supposed to be something less esoteric than drawing another card so there was a chance that I could work it out, if ever there was a time for the high and low distinction to be made it was now, after all of the betting, was already a bad time but the sooner the better and all. Usually there wouldn’t even be a round of betting, both parties would just put up an agreed upon amount and then get right to the comparing, winner takes all. But surely I wouldn’t just be assigning who was betting on low and who was betting on high. Or else I could just make Marie win every time and she could do the same, and then if we kept our matches low value we’d be walking out of here within a half hour. I knew whether the card was higher or lower so would they be letting me decide who wins? I was going to have to ask for another quick pointer probably, unless this game was really that poorly put together that the final decision wasn’t left up to chance at all. If anything the game was overdesigned so that seemed like it wouldn’t be the case. 

“Am I supposed to be doing something right now?” I felt even more embarrassed asking this time, it reminded me of times in school when everyone would be abuzz about some assignment we had to turn in to today that I had no idea about because I had spaced out. Even though I wasn’t even getting a grade on this I still felt like it carried more weight. Maybe it was because everything that happened in school felt like it was just the training stage for real life. But in a way that had the effect of making it more important than real life in some ways. 

“At this point the dealer will reveal the initial card drawn, or the card it was replaced with had the dealer chosen to do so, and should the newly revealed card be lower than the already face up card the player to their left will take the money accumulated in the pot, should it be higher the player to the dealer’s right will be entitled to the pot.” All this pontificating was really starting to bother me, especially when it was set in stone this whole time. That did mean the exploit I had thought of for me and Marie to make each other win was still on the table. “Of course if the cards are the same value then the dealer takes the pot. Though if that was only done when they drew the potential replacement card then it must be declared then and the dealer takes the pot at the time.” That part at least made some sense honestly. The dealer had a reason to ante if he had a way to win, and if he only got lucky on the second try then he was only going to get the relatively smaller amount. But there was still the chance to really get lucky and got the whole pile with just your ante. Not too uncommon either really, a one and thirteen, or three in fifty one really, chance though you do only get to be the dealer one in three times. So while it was unlikely that you’d win it it’s something you’d always have to keep in mind as a risk when you’re the one betting. Now that I was confident that I had a firm grasp on the rules it was a bit easier to relax as I revealed the face down card. 

“So who wins now?” I knew fully well at that point but I figured some camouflaged gloating would be fun.

“The lady is the winner.” Maybe it was only because of my question but he still acted like he was doing me a favor as my better and educating me despite his loss. Even though I personally was technically down on the round our team so to speak had still made a massive gain, and we’d only be making more next round in all likelihood. The game was a lot more fun when I saw Marie raking the small mound of cash closer to her. Even just seeing this much money in one place without having to chip in a single dime of it made me feel excited now. All of this could potentially be mine, even if just temporarily.

I now waited with a mounting anticipation as the second card was flipped. It was a jack which meant I had the better odds of winning this as long as it didn’t get replaced, not that it really mattered after all as long as one of us won we would be able to leverage that into getting him to leave. This was really a rather roundabout way of completing a quest but now that I was actually having fun with it I wasn’t going to complain. It seems Marie had a decent idea of how the game was played now because she seemed to hesitate before checking and not folding immediately. I wasn’t going to be too cavalier right off the bat because I was keeping in mind that with a bit of a lucky draw we could actually lose money on this round and it’d be best to keep that potential loss as low as possible. A small raise that was answered with reluctant compliance and nothing more. The card was drawn and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hold my breath a bit, it wasn’t a jack or whatever the face down card was, or at least he didn’t say so right away, so I was more relieved than anything. Either way we would be winning whether he decided to replace a card or not. He stared intently at the feather he clutched awkwardly with a wing tip. He could very well be doing this just for show or he was making a choice of who he wanted to win the match. After a minute put it back, it was a queen so it would only make sense that he’d be sticking with the one closer to the middle by as little as it was. I felt like he was going to be targeting me with the card replacements for whatever reason, but I still had the upper hand because as long as he didn’t win, I did. Now I felt a lot more free with my money now that the possibility of him making a pair with the card he pulled had evaporated. I probably ended up being too free with it because a combination of my sizable raise and the low probability of winning, Marie folded almost immediately. As much as I would have liked to carve out even more of a hoard for myself I was still perfectly satisfied with the amount I had managed to squeeze out in the first round. Though it did make me curious as to how folding was handled in this, usually high-low had no way to fold unless you were just going to walk away and then it was to just not ante up. Presumably I would just take the money and we wouldn’t consider the face down card. Sure it may have been spelling defeat for me but in most games you didn’t need to have actually won if your opponent folded. Though this was barely a matter of playing against other people and more of a matter of playing against the cards themselves. But there would still be one reason for me to not just take my winnings after an opponent folds. I did still have another opponent technically. There was the small possibility that he had gotten a pair on the first turn. I felt the same inkling that he had it out for me and was maybe even willing to use his luck manipulation powers to teach me a lesson for not being attentive enough during his lectures. There wasn’t anything I could do other than feel immense regret as he showed the matching pair of feathers to me and brushed the loose collection of bills into his pile, returning it to roughly its original size. It figures that I’d get something of a screwjob like that but I was still in this. Worst case scenario I still had my partner to fall back on. 

It seems like everyone was a bit more conservational with their wagers for the next few rounds, no major amount of money changed hands to really shake up the balance too much. Which was bad news for me, as the guy pretty firmly in third. It didn’t really matter if I lost money to Marie or if I won anything from her, the only major concern was that I had to keep the rate at which I lost money to our feathered friend lower than the rate at which he lost money to my real friend. That did seem to be generally how it was going, with a few trifling exceptions. Most annoying to me at least was that almost all of the times I was losing it was due to absurd shoot the moon scenarios where even if the dealer was interested in nudging things in my favor they wouldn’t have been nudged far enough. I was considering just folding every hand, or at least the ones Marie was dealing, now just to stay in the game a little longer until hopefully the owl was bled mostly dry. But thinking more critically about it, that wasn’t really the most effective way to assure a win in our column. It would be a much greater risk but it might be what was necessary in order to wrap this up in short order. On the next hand where the owl was dealing I would lose in grand fashion on purpose, the risks were that Marie would fold when I went all in or that there’d be a pair. The former wouldn’t be too tragic, I would just have to either try it again next hand or maybe even just leverage that windfall into clawing my way back. The latter however would almost certainly doom us to lose. That risk was the heart of gambling. Safe bets and calculated risks were how we justified our actions to ourselves but really there was a magnetic appeal of putting it all on the line and letting the gods decide whether to reward or punish you. It was a freeing feeling, any terrible thing that happened you weren’t culpable for, it was just what the cards held for you. I had never been a huge believer in luck but here, in a world where you have a luck stat printed on your identification, it was hard to be a skeptic. The fated turn came around, the dramatic shake up that would buck the trend of low total pots between the two of us. Ironically I was excited when I saw the revealed card turn over, there was next to no way I could win. The face up card was a two, it would seem that I was betting my entire worth on an ace being face down right now. Even if that were the case there was still the replacement round for that to be changed, I still felt that whenever the chance arose the bird was going to do everything in his power to put me in a bad spot. So as long as the cards didn’t match I was in the clear, though if they did I was in the exact opposite of the clear. I put up a decent amount of money in the first round of betting, swelling the pot to a size it had usually only reached when the betting was concluding. I figured it would be better to prime the idea of going all in so that everyone could see I was losing my mind but going all in now was just a bit too dangerous. Maybe that was a mistake but it was what I did, and once it got matched I had the sunk costs fallacy on my side for the big one. The muscles in my ass tightened as I prepared for the drawing of the next card. They started to cramp up as the owl studied the card, he showed us the card before shuffling it back in. I feel like it took him significantly shorter to make his decision this time, namely because the card he was putting back was a nine. It was no surprise he was cursing me to lose but this time I didn’t mind at all really. I went all in at the first chance I had just to get the issue off of my plate, now it was up to Marie to decide whether to match my absurd wager or just fold and give into my bluff. She really shouldn't, considering the fact that she had an almost guaranteed win at this point. I wanted somewhat desperately to tell her to trust me and call but I figured table talk like that wouldn’t exactly be in the spirit of the game. She hesitantly pushed a pile equal to my own into the center. With betting forcibly concluded at this point the results would be made known. The face down was flipped over and it was a nine meaning I had lost exactly as I had planned. While I was thankful to no longer be playing a game as poorly thought out as this and thankful that now with our resources consolidated we could win much easier, there was one thing that weighed my spirits down considerably. 

From there on the rest of the bets were significantly larger and I was made to be the eternal dealer but the values they were playing for would still switch every round. While I could still technically make some money back and rejoin the game I didn’t aim to get pairs at all, instead I did my best to tip the scales in Marie’s favor. With that and the fact she just had a much larger bankroll now it wasn’t long before her lead grew to commanding status and then being unshakable before she finally held all the riches that the game had been played over. 

“Well done all!” He sounded extremely pleased to have just lost even through less than scrupulous means. “I feel we’ve all learned something here, don’t you?” He turned to me and looked into my eyes with his beaming grin even through eyes tightly closed. 

“Ehh heh, sure… There is one more thing I would like to know though. On the hand where I went bust, you had the chance to make a pair but didn’t. We had already put in a decent amount so you could have easily helped yourself to it.”

“What would you have learned from that? You needed to discover that others are sometimes more capable than you and you did that, your lesson was rewarded.” I liked this side of him more but I still wasn’t exactly a major fan of it. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by how much he loved to teach you things one way or another after all of the stories we were told about the typical stories that were told about his species. Also why was it that only I had to learn a lesson about humility or whatever? Sure I’ll admit that a lot of the time I felt like I was the only one that could handle a situation properly, but surely Marie had some lesson to learn too right? I waited for if he was going to give her a lecture about how she should always be graceful in her victory or something of the sort but nothing came. 

“So could we talk to you about leaving this place now?” I was just going to stew in my frustration because voicing it would probably just earn me another lecture. 

“Oh yes, yes. I’ll be leaving here soon enough.”

“We don’t need you to leave town or anything, just I’m sure you’ve noticed that this place is under construction and the workers can’t get much work done with you here.” For whatever reason I felt the need to explain why we were doing this in the first place, even if it was just so that he wouldn’t think we were hunting him down or something.

“I understand, thank you very much for playing with me. I had a lot of fun. And since you did learn your lesson so well it is only right that I reward you properly.” For the briefest of moments I thought that he was about to give us all of the money the game had involved he began retching and hacking, just making the most vile sounds I had ever heard. It was impossible to hide my disgust. He hunched over and in the middle of all of us coughed up a few small hard cubes that went skittering across the floor. After wiping his beak with the back of his wing he began to speak again. “As you may know owls typically produce pellets but for my kind, we produce those. They serve the same purpose but they can be easily be mistaken as dice and when used by one who has proven themselves to be worthy they will always get the result they hope for.” That sounded like it was immensely helpful but not quite as good as being able to win every game I play for the rest of my days in perpetuity. But of course that may have just been part of the legend surrounding them. 

“Well, thank you very much…” I knew I should say thank you for any gifts but I still would like to get some of the money out of here. “By the way are you going to be needing help moving out of here?” I had been dragged to help people move a few times and they would always try to unload some of their stuff on you if they didn’t think it was really worth moving, so this may be an opportunity for that to work in my favor. 

“Oh no that won’t be necessary, I collected all of this when I got here so I can easily repeat the process wherever I end up next.” That was true enough, it’s not like he had a futon to move or anything, just a pile of twigs and it’s not like his landlord would get mad at him for leaving stuff when he moved out. He smiled somewhat coyly as if he knew exactly what my thought process was leading me to, the only issue was how I would go about phrasing it. 

“So then would you mind if we helped ourselves to some of the money? After all we did technically win it…” I wasn’t sure how persuasive I was sounding but certainly sounded pretty shameless asking for the cash.

“That is true but I do believe the original owners who lost it here may appreciate it if they were able to reclaim what they’ve lost… Though I’m sure they wouldn’t mind too much if a few didn’t make it back to them.” He smiled coyly again but this time as if he was letting me in on a secret. It sort of went without saying that they wouldn’t notice a few more missing bills considering how many had already been shredded and used as bedding. I peeled a few bills off the stack and pocketed them before standing getting ready to leave. I really didn’t mind this guy as much now for whatever reason, maybe it was because now he wasn’t my enemy in any way, not to mention he was letting me help myself to a few hundred dollars now. Wherever he ended up I hope he would do well, though I doubt he would ever have much trouble being magic and everything. We asked him if he could leave for a while right after we left but after that he could come back here and take his time before leaving just in case the supervisor wanted to check and see that we actually did it as unlikely as it might be. In the end our goodbye was rather melancholy.

When we emerged from the corridor-like wall the sun was just starting its descent and the foreman was still lounging where we had left him. After we cast our lengthening shadows on him he started to talk business with us, we told him that we had done it and that the workers wouldn’t have any more problems with the “vermin” and somewhat predictably he wouldn’t need to have a look for himself, not because he trusted us but because he would hear about it eventually if we were lying. After we had let the guild know that we had completed the quest they handed over the money and we were on our way home with a lot more funds than we had this morning. As we walked back to the farm I rubbed the dice in my pocket between my thumb and forefinger, they felt like any other pair of dice. Not that it was surprising that he could produce something that seemed so inorganic after the display with the cards. I wasn’t exactly sure how I could use the dice but surely they couldn’t hurt to have at some point down the line.

End of Day Report

Start:       ¤ 10.00

                  ¤ 100.00 Quest Completion

                  ¤ 500.00 Winnings

Change:  ¤ 600.00

End:         ¤ 610.00