Gamblers

Overview

The Gamblers are the chance-eaters of the Shifting Path and the Forking Road. They feed on risk, and they test the limits of probability by forcing travellers into choices with high stakes. Among them are the Dice-Lords, which control the outcome of random events, and the Fortune-Weavers, which spin and cut the threads of fate.

Appearance

A Gambler is often humanoid, and its features change with every roll of the dice: one moment a young face, the next an old one, a different nose, a different mouth, its colouring shifting, as though it were trying on the faces it might have had. Its hands are long and quick and always busy with something, dice, coins, cards, knucklebones. Its clothes are bright and many-patterned. It laughs easily and often, and the laugh has several voices. Near it the air smells of tallow and spilt wine, as in a gaming house.

Habitat and Range

They haunt the crossings of the Shifting Path and the junctions of the Forking Road, wherever a traveller must choose.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Gambler offers a wager, and the wager is always a choice: this road or that, keep or stake, now or never. It feeds on the risk, not on winning, and it is as pleased to lose as to win, so long as the stakes were high. It cannot be refused easily; on the Path, every act forks, and refusing is a choice too.

Abilities

It feeds on chance, and near it chance grows wilder: a tossed coin may land on either face or stand on its edge. What is staked with a Gambler is truly lost or won.

Uses and Dangers

A traveller who wins against a Gambler may come away with luck, a second chance, or a better future, which is what most travellers come to the Path for. One who loses pays. Some of those caught are the Forked, travellers stuck in a loop of indecision, existing in several states at once.

Lore and Belief

Gaming houses on Caeldon have tales of a stranger whose face changed with every throw, and some gamblers swear by him and some swear at him. Path-readers say that a Gambler can be met at any crossroads where a great deal hangs on a choice.

The songs are full of men who staked their life or their lord's on a Gambler's throw, and of the one who won a kingdom and lost his name with the next throw.

Where It Appears

• The Shifting Path
• The Forking Road
• Writers' Guide: The Planes, The Resonant Zones