Medieval Dipsomancer toy, or fraudulent speculation source? You decide.
The history of a simple, seven-by-seven grid of spaces, laid on a plain wooden board, lost in the annals of time, shrouded in mystery, doubt, and fraud.
Some say the game originated with monks, or Spanish gamblers, or even the Papal courts of old; none know for sure. Archived somewhere, the knowledge rots in silence, obscured by the mists of time.
Logically, it has been turned into a drinking game.
The game is simple enough; the recipe for the game’s requisite foci are easy to find, and often fun to consume: two bottles or containers of liquor, beer, or the equivalency.
Dice are thrown, and the resulting score of said dice corresponds to a number of spaces each of the shot glasses can be moved; the goal being a vertical line, left to right, of six (Line of Six) or all shot glasses (Line of Seven), or a difficult-to-accomplish ‘V’ formation, from corner to corner, with each participant and/or spectator taking a drink if offered up upon the arrival at one of the three aforementioned formations.
Game time can run between five minutes, and several hours, depending on weather, temperature, environment, and bladder retention capabilities.
The game has it’s history written somewhere, but lost even further is the dice’s history with it; it’s said that two men, a pair of horse thieves in high desert country, played the game they’d been taught by a visiting Spanish missionary.
Some say the two killed their teacher, confused at his accent, or surprised during a knife duel. Again, speculation follows every part of the game, even it’s peripheral inhabitants.
In any case, the duet took the possible-existent Spaniard’s dice, and rode to each end of the horizon, swearing each other to secrecy.
It lasted about six hours before one cracked; the other broke down in a cold sweat when he passed a church’s shadow. Each took to drinking, and gambling away their pain.
Both lost, but each felt worse than the other was thought to be feeling; again, wild speculation abounds.
Each man cursed their luck, drunken stupors, and wished ill on the source of their percieved damnation: the dice. Each was wished to Hell and back, by two damned fools, damned for being fools.
The dice, meanwhile, were blameless, and shared no enthusiasm on the mutual accord of it’s damnation. Instead, they wound up in a museum, and were stolen by a near-sighted second-story man named ‘Cleves’, who was then robbed by a one-armed pimp named ‘Stoney Flander’, and would be eventually lost in the back of a church’s last pew when Stoney Flander went to confess his weekly sins.
The dice, throughout this experience, had accrued countless woes and miseries, all wished down as it was assumed to be the source of all ills which befell any who held them for more than a few seconds at a time.
The local leader of a youth group found the dice while buying heroin to overdose his cancer-ridden, insane grandmother with, and took them to his neighbor, who’d just taught him the most wonderful drinking game, one his neighbor had learned from a friend in Spain.
The dice, however, are still as unlucky as ever. Trouble is, everyone who’s touched them hasn’t been cursed any worse than they’d already done to themselves. The dice are invisible, intangible, and impossible to locate for the innocent. Only the cursed may see and interact with them.
They are, simply put, the Devil’s Dice.
Each of them rolls a straight series, and never deviates, until you wager, bet, or otherwise render operable a game of chance, with the dice as a peripheral or focal part of the event. As such, don’t gamble with them; having them around will be enough.
Description: black metallic six-sided dice, with small raised ruby chip-looking faceted gems set into it, forming the standardized dice facings; twenty-one chips in al, for each of the two dice.
Effect:
Carry them for a day, and nothing untowards happens. Instead, you simply act a little less considerately towards another person.
Day two: you’ve taken to insulting someone you like the company of. This will probably put your relationship on hold, if no further damage is done.
Day three: you’re feeling up your best friend’s significant other in front of her parents, and commenting on their firmness. You’ll spit in a relative’s face. You’re an asshole.
Day four: you’re what most people would graciously call ‘a complete and total bastard’, and you’d feel complimented by this sentiment. By now, you’re tattooing your name and address on the elderly, and sucker-punching nuns on the subway.
Day five: if you’re not in jail, it’d be for the best if you were. By this point, you’re slapping everyone who doesn’t dodge you. Your car is covered in paint scratches, dead cats, and a human carcass you dragged out of a coffin for laughs. You’re a sick fuck.
Day six: at this point, whatever friends you have left are probably going to shoot you in the back of the head, as a public service. You’ve doubtlessly committed grievous acts of brutality, and have it coming. You’re a dangerous creature, who should be dealt with most painfully and quickly.
Game effects:
Slowly, you will turn your archetypical traits into their polar opposite; this is always a negative trait to have happen. You won’t be smarter, if you’re a dumbass, dumbass. You’ll just be formidably insane, in addition to being a dumbass. Your Soul stat inverses (70 becomes 30, 90 becomes 10, etc.), you flip your full roster of Madness Meters to their opposite. In short, you get into contact with these dice, and you’re doomed. They aren’t pretty, in fact, they’re probably some of the most destructive things to have drifted into the OU world.
Resistance? Don’t fucking touch the dice. Easy enough to avoid; it’s like a hand grenade. If someone hands you one, assume the pin’s been pulled and get it the hell away from you, as quick as you possibly can.
Rumor says there’s two dice; some say there’s four dice, possibly six. Mostly, no one knows for sure. After all, if only the warped and twisted can even see these dice, how can you trust them, right?
Then again, rumor has it some asshole put a pair into a game of Monopoly while working for Parker Brothers.
Didn’t your grandmother like playing Monopoly, when you were a kid? Isn’t tomorrow her birthday?
No. Wait.
That was last week, wasn’t it?
Lucky you.