“There's only four rules,” the doorman said, leading the way down a flight of stairs. Chase stared at the tails of his ill-fitting suit, and did her best to navigate steps never meant for halvens.

“The first rule is to keep your mouth visible at all times, unless you're in the special line. That is because of the second rule, which is don't use any skills. Not even if it's one that has nothing to do with the games. We got people watching for that, you see. The third rule is simple; no fighting. This is a classy place, be respectful. The fourth rule... ”

He stopped before a door at the bottom of the stairwell, and looked them up and down.

He timed his speech so that he'd hit this point at the same time as the door. Nice!

Behind her, she heard the Muscle Wizaard grunt in appreciation. Of course another showman would recognize such a subtle touch.

“The fourth rule is that who you are outside doesn't matter. In fact, most people don't want to know. If you are allowed to be in here, you are a noble to us. Doesn't matter what you are outside. Treat every other patron accordingly, capisce?”

“Of course!” Chase said, smiling brightly.

The doorman scrutinized her for a long moment, and Chase was certain he was using a skill. But at last he grunted, and opened the door.

Instantly a wall of sound rolled over her, and her ears flicked back. Laughter, cheers, groans, the ratcheting of metal and the clattering of wood.

Taking a few steps forward, Chase left a bare and unassuming warehouse behind, and stepped into a wonderland of the sort that she had never imagined.

Brightly colored cloth lined the walls, tapestries in red and gold and silver, depicting scenes of joy, merriment, and celebration. Everything from feasts to weddings to... oh my.

Chase looked away, blushing. Humans. Humans are incorrigible.

Putting her back to a fifty-foot long tapestry that depicted an epic orgy, Chase surveyed the rest of the room.

Chandeliers of spun crystal and glittering wire dangled above, hundreds of candles illuminating the crowd below. A velvet carpet wound and zig-zagged a path through the room, which upon further observation seemed to be divided between distinct areas.

It was a very, very big room. She thought that several cellars had been joined together to make it, and instantly that brought to mind the shared basement between the Church and the Inn back in Bothernot. Chase went from amazed to on-guard, and started searching for the exits.

“What's wrong?” Renny whispered in her ear.

“I can't find the exits,” she realized. Even the door behind her had vanished, the doorman closing it silently while she was indulging her eyes. A tapestry hung there now, and logically Chase knew there was a door there, but for the life of her she couldn't see it.

“We just arrived and you already want to leave? Come, let's see what this place has to offer!” The Muscle Wizaard leaned down to clap a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she nodded in reluctant agreement.

“No games to start with,” Chase decided. “Let's get the lay of this place before we put money on the line.”

It was the right decision.

Though the casino was mind-blowingly large, the crowd was nowhere near to filling it up. Perhaps it was the time, perhaps it was the day, but it was a fairly light crowd, Chase saw.

Most of them had one thing in common.

They all smelled of desperation.

She'd seen it many a time back home, among her hormone-filled peers. Or when one of them got yearning for something unachievable... which was the same thing in a lot of cases, come to think of it. Chase's ears twitched at the laughter that just wavered near hysterical, and she watched how fingers white-knuckled against green velvet on tables as dice fell. She smelled the sweat as she passed by silent groups fanning cards and trying to keep their faces still.

The ones here now are those that need the money, she thought. Or something else? She peered through a gap in the crowd at a break in the wall, a darkened door with a line of nervous-looking men waiting before it, masked and fidgeting. They were older, she thought. The door opened and one came out straightening his clothes. A wash of perfume rolled out behind him, and a throaty female voice bid him well.

“It's not the quartiere carne, but the function is about the same,” the Muscle Wizaard said as they passed. “I'd imagine that they cater to more selective tastes.”

“What?” Chase asked. “Taste? I don't expect food has much to do with that.”

“Ah! No, selective tastes is a polite way of saying that the people through that door do socially unacceptable things for great deals of money. Which is probably why the gentlemen are allowed masks. I'd wager the clothes are loaners too, and there are dressing rooms around here somewhere. They have to take all that stuff off if they want to go back to the regular games.”

“Why are they all men?” Chase wondered. “Don't women have special tastes too?”

The Muscle Wizaard coughed. “Well, yes. But... well, it's... I don't know how it works exactly or why, but you only ever see men paying money for things like that.” The Muscle Wizaard said. “Mind you, I have had women offer me money for my time before when I was younger, so I know that can happen. I've had more men offer me money for that, though. And I honestly don't know why it's not more equal.”

“Weird,” Chase said. And it was. Like anyone else her age she'd felt the changes of adulthood, and the hungers of the flesh. But unlike most of her peers she'd realized that her dreams required her to put those aside until she could safely fulfill them.

That said, bedroom shenanigans weren't entirely out of the question, and someday she expected she would investigate them more thoroughly. Starting in the shallow end. With someone that she could trust, and was attracted to. That she didn't have to pay for their time.

Still, her mind wandered, and she angrily tried to get it back on track. This isn't the time! So instead of pondering on the fantasies available through that door, she remembered the shock and horror she'd woken to during last night's attempted groping. THAT killed her libido before it got started, and Chase was able to get her mind on business.

She cleared her throat. “So it's a casino and a brothel—”

“And a taverna,” Renny whispered, tugging on her hair until she looked over to a corner of the room that had been walled off by wine racks and glass partitions. Good glass, not the bubbly stuff she'd seen in the cheaper areas of town. Men and women sat at tables there, laughing and drinking.

We've reached the end of the room already, she realized as she noticed the corner bar. It's not quite as big as it seems.

“This place is an enormous con,” Chase realized, as she turned back to the Muscle Wizaard. “It's designed to keep you here, and everything fun here costs money. One way or the other,” she said as a richly-dressed man at one of the tables groaned at his dice, and slid over a pile of silver.

“But we're not here for money, so we should be safe, right?” Renny whispered.

“To a point. We have to look like we're here for something this place provides, and...” she considered the line of gentlemen and the strong odor of liquor coming from the corner. “...money's probably the safest thing to pretend to be after.”

“Well then! Let's see what games they have to offer,” the Muscle Wizaard gestured grandly, almost flattening a passing server. “Ah! Sorry!” he said as she ducked him without missing a beat or spilling a drink. “Wow! Such professionalism!”

Chase flushed and grabbed his robes, tugging him as best she could. It was like trying to guide a mountain, but after a moment he got the hint, folded his hands into his wide sleeves, and followed.

We are being watched, she realized as they moved between the tables. The... oh what were they called. The employees who ran the tables? Croppers? Whatever they were, they studied the trio as they passed... or rather they studied the Muscle Wizaard first, and Chase second. None of them took any real notice of the stuffed toy fox head sticking out of her pack.

Best to keep it that way. “Don't say a word, Renny.” she told the golem without turning her head, watching a few of the table people's eyes snap to her lips. But hopefully they'd assume the big man behind her was named Renny, if indeed they could lip-read.

As light as the crowd was, as early in the day as it was, most of the attended tables were occupied. Chase passed card games, marking a few she thought she knew. Dice games were a bit trickier, but after watching them a bit most seemed simple enough.

Strangest of all were metal boxes with whirling tumblers rolling around in them, levers sticking out of the sides that people jerked down with satisfying CLUNKS and CLANKS.

“Slot machines,” The Muscle Wizaard declared, when she stared at one of them for a minute too long. “Tinker contraptions. All pure luck, really. You drop a coin in, and depending on the symbols that come up, you might get more out.”

Judging by the silvers that were disappearing into each machine, and the silvers and coppers that occasionally popped at when forlorn bells rang, might was too strong a word. “It's entirely luck,” she realized, turning her head up towards her large companion. “The other games are against people. You can try to trick them—”

“Bluff them,” The Muscle Wizaard said gently,

“—right, that's what I said, more or less. You can try to... bluff them, and there's some luck involved, but you're still up against other people. Machines can't be fooled. Not the way they've set them up, anyway. I mean, unless you're an animator or something.”

“They're usually built with alarms if anyone tries to force them that way,” The Muscle Wizaard said.

She scrutinized him. “You seem to know a lot about these things.”

“This isn't my first casino. I've helped work security at them before, during lean times. Even ran my show in a couple. They each have their own style, their own gimmick, but at the end of the day most are the same.” He frowned. “Though I've seen slot machines turn up in some truly weird places. Spots where metal is a luxury and nobody knows enough to even come close to unlocking the Tinker job, yet the local gambling hall always has slot machines. It's one of the two big mysteries of these places.”

“One of two? What's the other?”

“Come with me. It's easier if you experience it for yourself.”

Bemused, Chase followed her titanic friend towards what she realized must be the rough center of the gaming area.

At it stood a raised dais, surrounded by four marble fountains, with the words “G.O Gamble!” inlaid in gold around it. Tables filled the center, slot machines lined the edges, and the place even smelled better than its surroundings, though she couldn't say how.

And every table, every machine, stood empty.

Chase frowned. This was a nice place, easily the nicest gambling spot in the entire casino. Why was it deserted?

“Go on, head up there,” The Muscle Wizaard told her.

But she knew the tone in the back of his voice. Heck, she'd heard it in her own voice, time and again.

PER+1

“You're pranking me, aren't you?”

“Only a little,” he confessed. “It won't hurt you or do anything that should set us back. Beyond expose you as a relative newbie, which is all right, I think?”

“It is. I don't mind being underestimated.” In fact, it was her preferred method of operation, when she thought about it. She'd only survived the troubles in Bothernot because everyone involved thought they had bigger problems than one small halven.

So trusting in her friend, she tried to climb up the long steps that lined the sides of the dais.

And instantly she was looking back at the gaming hall.

Chase blinked.

She turned around and tried again—

—and again she found herself a few feet away, staring at a nearby table. The man running it shot her a sideways look and moved his jaw, clearly trying not to laugh.

“Ahem,” someone cleared her throat, and Chase turned to see a server pointing at a pair of velvet ropes off to the side of the dais.

“Oh, do I go through those to go up there?” she asked, innocently, heading toward the seemingly open and empty queue.

“No. I don't think you can go up there dear,” the older woman replied and turned a small sign at the top of one of the poles supporting the ropes.

It read, PLAYERS ONLY.

Chase felt her eyes widen, and she hurried back to The Muscle Wizaard's side.

A chill crawled down her back. This was one of the cracks in the world. This was the work of the demigods, the things that the Camerlengo was trying to keep hidden and away from the rest of the world.

“There's a place like that in every casino I've ever seen,” the Muscle Wizaard said, falling in next to her. “I've only ever known a single man who could get inside those places, and he never told me how he did it. Everyone here's a player, right?”

“There's players and there's players,” Chase said, still feeling that chill. “But I don't think this will help us talk with the Rossis, or find clues to our mutual problem, so I think we can safely ignore it.”

“Well of course,” The Muscle Wizaard sounded confused. “But you asked, and I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing the oddity. So... we should probably talk. Are you hungry?”

“Ravenous,” Chase realized. It had been a long walk to the docks, and she was carrying about an eighth of her own weight in the form of her new armor. Granted, she had good strength now thanks to recent job levels, but she was still a halven. And her stamina was entirely too low. “Let's do elevenses. It's a bit early, but more satisfying than brunch.”

“Bars in these places usually have food. And we can talk more freely there, everyone will be more interested in each other,” The Muscle Wizaard confirmed.

The taverna in the corner did have food. For certain definitions of “food,” anyway. For Chase who had been raised on home cooking her whole life, it was a greasy, unappetizing mess. But she ate anyway, wondering at the mismatch. “This food is... not good.”

“Well, they don't make much of a profit on it. They also don't want people coming here just to eat, so they have to work to make sure it's nothing that anyone could consider their favorite kind of food.” The Muscle Wizaard shrugged, a motion that made his pectorals roll under his robe like calving icebergs. He wasn't eating his food, just shoving it around on his plate, so Chase felt a bit annoyed he hadn't told her about this beforehand. But she put it from her mind and focused on business.

“You know casinos. This is good,” Chase said, speaking as quickly as she thought, searching for ideas. “We need to learn about the murdered patron. The Rossi patron. But nobody here is talking. They're focusing on the games, or uh, romance.” That was a bit too kind a word for it. “The guests are going to be a bust. But the staff might know something about it.”

“They won't talk about their employers on the floor,” The Muscle Wizaard said. “If this casino is like the ones I've known, they'll have a different floor where the staff does all the work. All sorts of people, doing things from cooking to laundry to moving supplies and money around. They'll talk and gossip, in their own lounges and halls that customers never see.”

Chase considered. “Every person I've seen working here has been human.”

“They'll have a few other types working behind the scenes, where nobody sees them,” The Muscle Wizaard said. “A lot of times humans don't get along with other races. So the casinos play it safe to avoid losing business. It's ridiculous, but it's business to them.”

“Still, my odds of sneaking back there are bad. You'd be a better choice to infiltrate... except you're kind of distinctive.”

“I thought halvens were good at sneaking?” he frowned.

“The best way to sneak is to look like you should be there in the first place. And no,” Chase said, as her mind caught up with her mouth, and she started to decipher the way she'd been watched over the last hour or so. “The more we wandered the hall, the more they looked at me. They think I'm the rich person slumming, and they have you pegged as a bodyguard. So here's what we'll do,” she decided. “I'll go out there and start gambling. I'll make a show of giving you my pack, and after a few rounds you'll pull me aside, and whisper in my ear. I'll get angry and send you off, and you'll storm away. Then, you'll try to slip into one of the staff hallways. Renny will help you with illusions if it's tricky.”

“Are you sure you'll be okay by yourself?” Renny asked.

“I'll be fine. Once I lose enough money, I'll come back to the bar and nurse some wine for a while, or something. Maybe talk with one of those lonely looking men to see if I can get some useful gossip.”

“I've heard worse plans,” The Muscle Wizaard said. “It'll be risky, but the worst they'll do is throw me out if they catch me, I think. This doesn't have the feel of some of the nastier places I've had to work.”

“If it does get bloody, Renny can help you escape. Either way, if you're not back at the bar in a few hours we can meet at... at the shop. Sound good?”

“It's probably worth the risk.” The Muscle Wizaard nodded. “Are you ready to gamble?”

“Time to lose some money,” Chase said, hiding a wince as she got up from the table.

It was a good plan.

It was a solid plan.

And it probably would have worked, except for one thing.

Five minutes later, Chase stood in front of the slot machine she'd chosen to lose a few coins in, eyes getting bigger and bigger as the bells blared and rang, and gold shot like a fountain from its coin dispenser.

LUCK+1

Chase licked her lips, remembering just how high her luck was, after sinking so many levels into Oracle and Grifter.

“Er,” the Muscle Wizaard said, taking her shoulder again. This time his grip was a bit less gentle, and she turned to see quite a few men in suits around her, looking from her to the pile of gold.

“Uh, hi!” Chase said, beaming. “Beginner's luck, huh? Wow...”

CHASE'S CHARACTER SHEET

Spoiler: Spoiler

Name: Chase Berrymore

Age: 15 Years

Jobs:

Halven level 9, Cook level 4, Archer level 5, Grifter level 6, Medium level 1, Oracle level 8, Painter level 2, Teacher level 2

Attributes / Pools / Defenses

Strength: 55 Constitution: 33 / Hit Points: 88 / Armor: 10

Intelligence: 56 Wisdom: 90 / Sanity: 146 / Mental Fortitude:45

Dexterity: 99 Agility: 58 / Stamina: 157 / Endurance: 0

Charisma: 129 Willpower: 46 / Moxie: 175 / Cool: 51

Perception: 67 Luck: 136 / Fortune: 203 / Fate: 32

Generic Skills

Archery – Level 1

Brawling – Level 8

Climb – Level 15

Dagger – Level 2

Dodge – Level 12

Fishing – Level 14

Ride – Level 10

Stealth – Level 14

Swim – Level 7

Throwing – Level 24

Halven Skills

Fate's Friend – Level N/A

Small in a Good Way – Level N/A

Cook Skills

Cooking - Level 15

Freshen - Level 10

Archer Skills

Aim – Level 6

Demoralizing Shot – Level 1

Far Shot – Level 1

Missile Mastery – Level N/A

Quickdraw – Level N/A

Rapid Fire – Level N/A

Razor Arrow – Level 1

Ricochet Shot – Level 10

Grifter Skills

Fools Gold – Level 1

Forgery – Level 1

Master of Disguise – Level 3

Pickpocket – Level 1

Silent Activation – Level 9

Silver Tongue – Level 7

Size Up – Level 3

Unflappable – Level N/A

Medium Skills

Bad Fortune – Level 1

Crystal Ball – Level 1

Good Fortune – Level 1

Séance – Level N/A

Stack Deck – Level N/A

Oracle Skills

Absorb Condition – Level N/A

Afflict Self – Level 1

Diagnose – Level N/A

Divine Pawn – Level N/A

Foresight – Level 22

Lesser Healing – Level 30

Omens and Portents – Level N/A

Transfer Condition – Level 4

Painter Skills

Fast Dry – Level N/A

Painting – Level 5

Teacher Skills

Lecture – Level 4

Smarty Pants – Level N/A

Unlocked Jobs

Farmer, Herbalist

Gear

The Charlatan's Chapeau

Light Leather Armor – level 5