It is probably worth mentioning that neither the protagonist nor the author knows anything about card games other than passing familiarity.
The Hand of Fate (A Card Game Quest)
- Thread starter Inkbones
- Start date
- Original
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 6
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- Threadmarks
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Statistics (8 threadmarks, 860 words)
User Total Inkbones 8 Threadmarks Reader mode
Setup
Inkbones
No Glory Save Honor
- Location
- Where you can still smell the sky
"Ah, tough luck friend."
You screamed, collapsed to your knees, and vomited. Thankfully, nothing came up.
"Where?" You slur, looking around you. Utterly empty darkness extended in all directions, including down. You don't really know what you're standing on.
"Not important." says the only other thing besides you. It looks like a really old pinstriped suit, except with too many arms, and nothing actually wearing it.
"I was..." you struggle to remember how you got here.
"Dying, is what you were." it 'says', somehow. It's arms never stop moving, constantly flipping, shuffling, or juggling what you think are playing cards. It moves them too quickly to tell. "Car crash. Very tragic. Not even your fault."
There is a moment of silence as you attempt to process this, interrupted only by the constant rustling of the cards.
"Okay." you say, swallowing. "What now?"
It tilts it's...neckline to the side. "I must say, you're taking this shockingly well."
"I'm sure I'll start screaming soon enough. You didn't answer my question."
"Ah, how rude of me. What happens now, is that you get a second chance, my good mortal."
"For what price?"
It lays it's gloved hand over it's heart in mock offense. "Price! You wound me. No, on the contrary, all you need to do is play the Game."
It does something with the cards that's too fast to catch, and suddenly all of them are in a stack together. It places the deck one of it's open palms and offers it to you like an expensive sweet.
"What game? And what are the rules?"
"It is the game that I played to become a god. Perhaps you will too, some day. As to the rules, you'll have to figure those out on your own."
"And if I don't want to play?"
"Then you get to find out what follows after death. I certainly don't know."
Head swimming with the calmness that only those still in shock can receive, you draw a card.
[Write-in] What is on your card?
[ ] Your name
[ ] Your face [textual description, or an image]
[ ] Your biography [1-3 sentences. Enough to fit on a small cardboard card]
And then you were somewhere else.
You screamed, collapsed to your knees, and vomited. Thankfully, nothing came up.
"Where?" You slur, looking around you. Utterly empty darkness extended in all directions, including down. You don't really know what you're standing on.
"Not important." says the only other thing besides you. It looks like a really old pinstriped suit, except with too many arms, and nothing actually wearing it.
"I was..." you struggle to remember how you got here.
"Dying, is what you were." it 'says', somehow. It's arms never stop moving, constantly flipping, shuffling, or juggling what you think are playing cards. It moves them too quickly to tell. "Car crash. Very tragic. Not even your fault."
There is a moment of silence as you attempt to process this, interrupted only by the constant rustling of the cards.
"Okay." you say, swallowing. "What now?"
It tilts it's...neckline to the side. "I must say, you're taking this shockingly well."
"I'm sure I'll start screaming soon enough. You didn't answer my question."
"Ah, how rude of me. What happens now, is that you get a second chance, my good mortal."
"For what price?"
It lays it's gloved hand over it's heart in mock offense. "Price! You wound me. No, on the contrary, all you need to do is play the Game."
It does something with the cards that's too fast to catch, and suddenly all of them are in a stack together. It places the deck one of it's open palms and offers it to you like an expensive sweet.
"What game? And what are the rules?"
"It is the game that I played to become a god. Perhaps you will too, some day. As to the rules, you'll have to figure those out on your own."
"And if I don't want to play?"
"Then you get to find out what follows after death. I certainly don't know."
Head swimming with the calmness that only those still in shock can receive, you draw a card.
[Write-in] What is on your card?
[ ] Your name
[ ] Your face [textual description, or an image]
[ ] Your biography [1-3 sentences. Enough to fit on a small cardboard card]
And then you were somewhere else.
This is an experiment with random generation and a dice system. I don't know how long I'll be updating it.
Please be kind enough to wait a few minutes for me to reserve some posts.
Please be kind enough to wait a few minutes for me to reserve some posts.
Your Card
Inkbones
No Glory Save Honor
- Location
- Where you can still smell the sky
Signature: A sapling growing out of an open book, laying on a craggy desert.
Name: Lucas Graham Royce
Appearance: A cleanly shaved young man with curly black hair encircling his head like a halo. Dark brown eyes, enclosed behind thin sheets of glass. A Grecian nose decorated lightly with freckles, supporting the bridge of his glasses.
Biography: A collegiate level table-tennis player, who majored in journalism. Was a writer for a sports magazine that recently went out of business. Died en route to a job interview.
Stress: VVV VVV VVV
Insight: VVV VVV
XXXX Hunt
XXXX Study
XXXX Survey
XXXX Tinker
Prowess: VVV VVV
XXXX Skirmish
XXXX Prowl
XXXX Finesse
XXXX Wreck
Resolve: VVV VVV
XXXX Attune
XXXX Command
XXXX Consort
XXXX Sway
Name: Lucas Graham Royce
Appearance: A cleanly shaved young man with curly black hair encircling his head like a halo. Dark brown eyes, enclosed behind thin sheets of glass. A Grecian nose decorated lightly with freckles, supporting the bridge of his glasses.
Biography: A collegiate level table-tennis player, who majored in journalism. Was a writer for a sports magazine that recently went out of business. Died en route to a job interview.
Stress: VVV VVV VVV
4th Death |
| 3rd | Cost |
| 2nd | ------ | -1d |
| 1st | ------ | - Effect |
XXXX Hunt
XXXX Study
XXXX Survey
XXXX Tinker
Prowess: VVV VVV
XXXX Skirmish
XXXX Prowl
XXXX Finesse
XXXX Wreck
Resolve: VVV VVV
XXXX Attune
XXXX Command
XXXX Consort
XXXX Sway
Last edited:
Your Hand
The Polity
Preperations
Paranoia
One more for luck
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Plan: Island of Information
-[X] A sapling growing out of an open book, laying on a craggy desert.
-[X] Lucas Graham Royce
-[X] A cleanly shaved young man with curly black hair encircling his head like a halo. Dark brown eyes, enclosed behind thin sheets of glass. A Grecian nose decorated lightly with freckles, supporting the bridge of his glasses.
-[X] A collegiate level table-tennis player, who majored in journalism. Was a writer for a sports magazine that recently went out of business. Died en route to a job interview.
-[X] A sapling growing out of an open book, laying on a craggy desert.
-[X] Lucas Graham Royce
-[X] A cleanly shaved young man with curly black hair encircling his head like a halo. Dark brown eyes, enclosed behind thin sheets of glass. A Grecian nose decorated lightly with freckles, supporting the bridge of his glasses.
-[X] A collegiate level table-tennis player, who majored in journalism. Was a writer for a sports magazine that recently went out of business. Died en route to a job interview.
Last edited:
[X] Plan: Island of Information
Turn 1, 00:00
Inkbones
No Glory Save Honor
- Location
- Where you can still smell the sky
The empty air spits you out like an apple pip.
You lie on the ground and groan for a few seconds. The air is filled with near-deafening metallic grinding and clicking noises. The floor is dusty, and the feel of the grit pressing into your cheek eventually forces you to get up.
You're in a clocktower. Gigantic mechanisms grind against each other around you, and you narrowly avoid getting your head cracked in by the enormous bronze pendulum that swings to and fro.
You're wearing the same clothes you were before the...accident, an overly-starched polo shirt and tie. The right sleeve's been torn off, and there's a hug gash across your abdomen that's covered in dried blood(although the skin beneath is untouched). You dearly wish you had something else to change into.
Your wallet is gone, the only thing in your pocket is...cards. Right, the thing said there was a game going on.
You really, really wished you'd payed attention to your old college roommate whenever he gushed about Hearthfire or whatever. The last card game you remember playing was canasta.
You'd better look at your "hand."
The cards are larger than you'd expect. Like tarot cards, maybe. All of their artwork looks absolutely stunning, with the portraits looking like miniature, impossibly well-detailed oil paintings.
You have absolutely no idea what any of them mean. You carefully put them back in your pocket and look through the glass of the clock-face. A completely alien city sprawls out beneath you, as big as New York but with architecture that looks much older. You can see a cathedral so big you can't really comprehend it, other than that it's shadow is covering a good third of the city. As far as you can see, absolutely everything is deserted. What happened here?
There is...no time to focus on how absolutely buckwild your situation is. You need to focus on the essentials. You need to find food, water, and shelter.
[ ] Write-in| What do you do?
You lie on the ground and groan for a few seconds. The air is filled with near-deafening metallic grinding and clicking noises. The floor is dusty, and the feel of the grit pressing into your cheek eventually forces you to get up.
You're in a clocktower. Gigantic mechanisms grind against each other around you, and you narrowly avoid getting your head cracked in by the enormous bronze pendulum that swings to and fro.
You're wearing the same clothes you were before the...accident, an overly-starched polo shirt and tie. The right sleeve's been torn off, and there's a hug gash across your abdomen that's covered in dried blood(although the skin beneath is untouched). You dearly wish you had something else to change into.
Your wallet is gone, the only thing in your pocket is...cards. Right, the thing said there was a game going on.
You really, really wished you'd payed attention to your old college roommate whenever he gushed about Hearthfire or whatever. The last card game you remember playing was canasta.
You'd better look at your "hand."
Master Trident-Smith (+5)
Sin of Bombast (-2)
Mortal Sin: Greed (-8)
Subtle Sawblades (+8)
Lost Darkling (+8)
Devil's Arm (+1)
Tags: Sentient, Artificer
Element: Tridents, the roaring waters.
Tinker: 5
What greater honor than to forge the weapons the hold back the Tides.
What greater disgrace than to be unable to wield them.
Sin of Bombast (-2)
Tags: Minor Sin
-2 Effect when trying to be subtle or avoid detection.
Mortal Sin: Greed (-8)
Tags: Mortal Sin
A Resistance Roll is required not to hoard or covet things that are shiny, rare, or precious.
Subtle Sawblades (+8)
Tags: Ritual, Harm, Shaker
Target is surrounded by invisible whirling blades that shred anything that gets too close.
Harm: 6
Area: 2
Lost Darkling (+8)
Tags: Sentient, Whisper, Stranger
Rituals(2):
Branch-Shadows(+1): Can see forward a few minutes into the future for paths that avoid detection.
Pruned Branches(+1): Briefly forces a Sentient to experience other worlds where they died, dealing 1 Harm.
Prowl: 5
A child of the World-Tree that fell afoul of the great wrongness which infests the Polity. They long to return home, if only they could remember what home is.
Devil's Arm (+1)
Tags: Artifact, Brute, Graft
When Grafted onto a Sentient, grants Potency in combat and and other physical pursuits.
The user is warned that it occasionally has a mind of it's own.
The cards are larger than you'd expect. Like tarot cards, maybe. All of their artwork looks absolutely stunning, with the portraits looking like miniature, impossibly well-detailed oil paintings.
You have absolutely no idea what any of them mean. You carefully put them back in your pocket and look through the glass of the clock-face. A completely alien city sprawls out beneath you, as big as New York but with architecture that looks much older. You can see a cathedral so big you can't really comprehend it, other than that it's shadow is covering a good third of the city. As far as you can see, absolutely everything is deserted. What happened here?
There is...no time to focus on how absolutely buckwild your situation is. You need to focus on the essentials. You need to find food, water, and shelter.
[ ] Write-in| What do you do?