The Growing Coins
(Site, Sigil: Market Ward)
written by Heiner de Wendt
Character. Chance is governed by
laws, but laws can be twisted by chance. If you take the risk, you can win much,
but you can as well lose much - maybe just your jink, maybe your life or even
your soul.
Description: From the outside, this
place looks like just a regular gaming hall of Sigil. It's a large, four-story
building visited by gamblers and bubbers from peak to anti-peak to peak again,
and it's filled with tables and various weird constructs, all needed for some
form of gaming. There's also plenty of space to just sit and relax, get a
drink, or count your coins. But there's more to the Growing Coins than just that
- it's the owners of this place. See, the gaming hall is run by a couple of
modrons, led by a tridron that customers call Bluefeather (due to a blue bird
feather someone's stuck to his top with glue). The tridron commands the usual
twelve duodrones, who again command twelve monodrones each. The monodrones
usually do the simple works of the gaming hall - mixing and delivering drinks,
cleaning, and such -, while half of the duodrones care for the more complex
needs of customers, and the other half run a couple of the games available in
this place. A few of the simpler games are run by monodrones, as well, while
Bluefeather pays some non-modrons for keeping the rest of the games running.
Surprisingly, the whole thing doesn't work as lawful as one could expect -
people get cheated here again and again (though never by the modrons
themselves), and even fights erupt with a certain regularity. Thing is,
Bluefeather has been sent here to find out about the rules that govern gaming -
and everything related to it. This whole business has been set up so Bluefeather
can gather data to when cutters and bubbers get so angry that they get
aggressive, when people cheat and how, and so on. The modrons don't provoke such
things - but they do nothing to prevent it, as well. The Harmonium's constantly
patrolling this place to keep problems down somewhat, but they're far from
successful. It seems Bluefeather has done a good job by setting up his gaming
hall, and he's always busy observing visitors.
The Chant. Recently, rumours come up
telling Bluefeather is actively recruiting knights-of-the-post. He doesn't want
his gaming hall to be overwhelmed by these cutters, but also wants to make sure
the Harmonium doesn't interfere with his mission too much by keeping
cross-traders out. It seems he's estimated to how often trouble should come up,
and if the Hardheads keep things too low, Bluefeather gets active by recruiting
cheaters, thieves, bashers, and very rarely even an assassin, or - even more
rarely - a Xaositect or three. Now, the modrons aren't the only interesting
beings within the Growing Coins gaming hall. The gnome Bladurk Windfinger, a
blood from Bytopia, is working as a freelancing game inventor here since a few
weeks. His games are of utmost complexity, and usually involve weirdest
constructs, but whenever a new game's set up, large crowds gather to watch
what's going to happen. Sometimes, it's just a barmy or funny new game, but
things even turned out dangerous or really fantastic now and then. Visitors
still tell of the day Bladurk has presented his arcane Dice of Surprise game: A
Doomguard priest who has won against a Xaositect bariaur involuntarily (more or
less) turned the poor berk into a heap of dust - but into a LIVING heap. The
dust-bariaur is now kept somewhere in the Doomguard headquarter as an example of
the truth of their philosophy.
Latest News. A thieves' guild is slowly establishing within this gaming hall. They've been attracted by the seemingly unlawful nature of this whole place, and hope to set up a base of operation here. Bluefeather has noticed their activities, though, and dislikes it - it seems such an organized thievery opposes his task, and he's working to keep the guild out of the Growing Coins. A cunning spinagon called Culthor has contacted the tridron lately, hoping to set up a unique kind of game. The idea is to make up contracts with the fiend, to reach a certain pre-discussed goal. If you manage to outwit the baatezu and reach your goal, he will provide you with a magical item helpful to you. If you don't, you have to give him a magical item. Of course, no matter if you win or not, you'll have signed a contract with a baatezu, and Culthor's goals might differ highly from the goal of the game. Bluefeather is not yet sure if he will give the spinagon a fixed gaming table within his hall. He has invited the fiend a few times now to play his game for a few hours, observing how visitors react. But his invitations to the spinagon become rare already, probably a sign that he will decide against the fiend's ideas in the long run.