You head on over to the tip of the ship. The air hits your face as two twin towers make their appearance on the horizon. The screen fades to black as two sets of golden letters appear.
Hingashi
Kugane
The screen slowly fades back with a front view of the merchant city
of Othard. A huge gate and castle lie in the background, while the
foreground is occupied by a giant building that seems to attract all
sorts of adventurers.
Just like yourself.
You disembark and slowly make your way across the wooden bridge.
With the world at peace at last (or at least until the next patch), you
decided to take a short rest, and what better place to do so than in
Eorzea’s most popular city?
Mind you, maybe not so much as an AFKing spot, but no one would
deny that it’s housing district, Shirogane, was the most sought-after.
You take a short walk around the platinum district in hope of maybe
getting a lot of your own, but you return back to the golden city not so
long after.
A blue crystal floats next to you, and you click on it to look at all the map’s aetherytes.
Should you go to the pier? There was no denying that it had been
quite a long while since you had last gone to the Forbidden Land,
Eureka, and this was the perfect time to continue on your journey.
Eureka was getting more activity lately, and that would allow you to
work on a few more of your pending relics.
Or maybe the markets? Your inventory bag was about to burst, and be
it trade or storage, you certainly needed to do something about it.
Most activities rewarded you with an item or more, and you certainly did
not want to end up trashing something just to get a new item. You
definitely needed all of them for crafting later. Once you leveled those
classes. One of these days.
Or maybe…
You close the teleport interface and instead start looking for a specific marker. A small, golden rectangle with a ! sign on it. Yes, that’s what you’ll do.
Luckily enough for you, the first NPC with that icon is in the
building right next to you. You enter Kugane Tower and quickly head over
to the receptionist to challenge her to a Triple Triad game. However,
your enthusiasm disappears after looking at her information.
Opponent: Kotokaze
Match Rules: Same
Same. One of the few rules you did
not understand about the card game, which explains how she crushed you
so easily after you challenged her. Going after the other NPCs, it’s
all, well, the same. Every single character seems to be using one or
more advanced rules, which makes you lose time and time again.
You continue making your way down the list of possible NPCs, hoping
to find at least one that will play fair, when you find another icon.
One that none of the guides online seems to mention. Moreover, when you
get there, there does not seem to be any NPCs nearby that you could
challenge.
A bug, maybe?
You open the Help Desk support, but before clicking on submit, a
memory flashes right before your eyes. Could it be… You walk over to the
side of the Sekisegumi barracks. If you remember correctly…
Knew it!
Next to the barracks lies a series of passageways going to the
sewers and under the city proper. You had forgotten all about them since
it had been several years after you’d done the quest that you there,
but now it was all coming back to you. You follow the same path as
before, trying to make your way around the seedy underbelly of the
golden city, when you reach what seems like a dead end.
Or it’d be if not for the glowing circle that indicated a map change.
You click on the circle and get transported to a rundown and mostly
bare room. In the middle of it, a lupin, the wolf-like race native to
Orthard, is sitting on a small cushion with a wooden table in front of
him. Behind him, a Hrothgar with a scar on his face is carefully looking
at you. You guessed that this had to be newly added content, not only
because of the big cat man’s presence, but it’d also explain why no one
else seemed to have heard about this place.
Looking at your toolbar, the button to return home is disabled,
which gives you an even worse feeling about this place, but the shiny
icon atop the lupin’s head is like a siren’s call to you.
You click on the lupin, and he starts to talk, “Greetings! You did
well in finding my hiding spot. Triple Triad? Oh, you mean this card? I
don’t really care about it. I could give it to you, but how about if we
make this more interesting?”
You quickly click through his dialogue, not caring about what he
has to say as long as you get what you came for, when a message box
suddenly pops up.
Upon proceeding, several cutscenes will play in sequence.
It is recommended that you set aside sufficient time to view these scenes in their entirety.
That’s weird. Usually with these sorts of events, the NPC is
glowing to warn the players that cutscenes and battles might be
involved. You hesitate for a moment when the NPC starts talking again.
“So, are we going to play or what?”
If you’re above the maximum allowed level, it will be synced as follows:
Level: 1
Item level: 1
You move your mouse over and click on the button, which makes the screen fade to black again.
Duty Commenced
When the screen fades back in, you find yourself in the same room
as before, but everything seems bigger. Also, you could have sworn it
was not made of wood before…
The screen starts to shake, and you see the huge frame of the lupin
looking down at you, the enormous hrothgar right behind him. And that’s
when you take a look at your status bar and realize what this all
meant.
He had cast Minimum on you, and you were now on top of the wooden table!
“Well, let’s get started.”
Golden coins rain down from above and land into a neat little pile
in front of the lupin shortly before a huge cup falls on top of them.
You remember this from that game in the Golden Saucer, and your guess is
confirmed when you see two more cups fall down soon after. The cups
start to shuffle around, slow at first, but then quickly picking up the
pace, soon spinning at such a speed that it’d be impossible to discern
with the naked eye.
Finally, the cups settle down, and the table is divided into three sections as indicated by a brief flash.
“Take your guess.”
If you remembered correctly, the correct cup was always the one
with the coins before the shuffling starts going out of control, which
would make it the one to the left. You stand next to the cup and wait
for the timer to end.
The cup next to you goes up and you find out… that you were wrong.
Standing under it was a canine monster, and just like in the
Saucer, he uses an attack that targets the whole section you’re on,
knocking you back. However, instead of being sent flying outside the
table, ending the game, you end up crashing against some kind of wall
which causes several coins to fly out from your pouch.
You take a look at your Gil total and realize that this was not just a visual effect, you had actually lost money.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” the lupin says, “well, you knew the stakes before playing. Maybe you’ll have better luck next time?”
You glare at the lupin and notice the Hrothgar laughing behind him.
You don’t know if the lupin was saying the truth or not (because of all
the dialogue you skipped), but there was no way you were spending all
this money on a single card. Unless it was on the marketboard. You open
the Duty menu, but the button to leave is disabled.
You’d have to finish this game one way or another.
“Take your guess.”
You manage to catch a small glimpse of the flash that indicates the
cups are done shuffling. Even if you had not been busy in other menus,
the only cup that went up was the one you had chosen, so you still
didn’t know where the prize was. You look at the smiling lupin/hrothgar
pair, both of them well aware of your predicament.
5
Given the circumstances, it did not matter which cup you choose,
but the sight of the timer is enough to make you panic and you run to
the one lying right in front of the lupin.
You get sent flying and your Gil diminishes again. However, unlike
before, this time it’s by 20%. You take a look at your status bar and
notice a Vulnerability debuff has been stacked on you, meaning that
you’ll lose more and more money each time you get it wrong.
The cup falls, covering the monster, and they start to shuffle again…
- - -
The screen goes to black.
Duty Failed
That last hit had sent you way over the edge. You didn’t know that
Gil could go into the negatives, but now you did. Even if you had been
left without a single Gil, at least it was over.
The screen fades back in and you are… in the same room as before. Still at the same size. Still on top of the table.
Still being looked down by the giant wolf.
“Oh my, it seems like you accrued quite the big debt, haven’t you?”
You try accessing the teleport menu, but without any money, you’re
unable to go anywhere. There’s an invisible wall stopping you from
jumping down the table, and you’re not sure if you want to take your
chances with the giant pair by yourself.
“So, what now?” The hrothgar asks.
The lupin flops his head down on the table and starts toy around
with you. “These adventurers are usually part of something called Free Companies. Maybe one of them could come and pay for its rescue?”
“And if they don’t?”
“Well…” the lupin smiles. “I’m sure we might be able to find
another way for it to settle his debt.” The lupin looks at you again.
“And I think I know where to keep you in the meantime…”
The lupin straightens himself and loosens his shirt, leaving you
with a full view of the top of his pants and the bandages covering his
abdomen. A quest marker then appears on the spot connecting the two of
them.
He then starts to reach out to you out to you with one hand when the hrothgar speaks again, “Hey, not fair. Why do you get to keep it?”
The lupin stops and takes back his hand. He looks at the hrothgar
from a moment before he smiles, and a cup falls down on top of you.
Leaving you in total darkness.
“How about a game to decide that?”