[Nexus] The Gambling League of Gambling

[Lord Magtok]

Months of toil has been hidden away from the prying eyes of the Council! Innumerable shady dealings have gone by right under the nose of our Remnant authorities! It's taken more dedication and effort than anyone could've imagined, and far more than the entirety of MagCorp can usually be bothered to apply to anything, but at long last, the city of Inside has a casino to call its own,

THE GAMBLING LEAGUE OF GAMBLING!

Located in the scenic city of Inside, in the slightly-less-than-scenic Red Zone, the MagCorp-owned casino (or MagCasino, as some are prone to calling it) is at long last ripe and ready for business! From our slot machines to our Shots-Machine (a robot bartender, in case you were wondering), we've got it all! Everything you could possibly want or need for blowing your children's inheritance in a dangerous game of chance is here! A fully-stocked bar with a wide variety of beverages you probably shouldn't be drinking before fooling about with large sums of money, robot dog blackjack dealers trained to detect and pounce on cheaters, live entertainment every night, and more!

Da' Locations:

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Available to the Public:

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Slot Machines - You know 'em, you love 'em, they're in every self-respecting casino: they're the slots. There's three different kinds of slot machines, all set aside in their own section of the gambling floor, with varying payouts. Get three M's in a row, and you win the jackpot! If the machine fails to turn up any matches, or you wind up with three Remnant flags in a row, you lose.

Blackjack Tables - Also known as Twenty-One, this here's a thinking man's game. Inasmuch as a possibly rigged game of chance can be, of course. Robot dogs run these tables, and gods help you if they catch someone cheating.

Other Games of Chance! - I honestly can't be bothered to write something up for every casino game available. So yes, there's roulette, baccarat, craps, poker and whatever else you might expect to find in a casino. If you absolutely must play something harder to follow and write for than Blackjack and the slots, then go ahead. I'll totally be passive-aggressively glaring at you from my OOC corner the whole time, though.

The Bar - It serves drinks. They have funny names, with maybe a luck and gambling sort of theme to them.

The Stage Cabaret Lounge - Not far from the bar, here's where you can find tonight's entertainment. Patrons are discouraged from heckling performers or trying to join them onstage by a combination of our polite but firm security force and the lovely invisi-fence mounted right in front of the stage. Please don't make a scene, and remember: The casino is not liable if you come back out substantially less intact than when you came in.

The Restaurant - Wait, are you serious? There are people in the Nexus who actually eat food? Weird. Let's include a restaurant for 'em, then. Toss in a buffet line and maybe dress up the bartenders like those card guys from Alice in Wonderland. Take some flowers and paint them red too, just to go with that general theme. Oh, and make everything really expensive for no good reason! High prices on everything, even the salads! Woo, that was easy!

Employees Only:

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Backstage - Exactly what it sounds like. Dressing rooms, controls for the lighting equipment, etc. I don't think I really need to go into much more detail, honestly. There's enough privacy back here to do something rotten and immoral, so long as you're quiet about it.

Employee Lounge - A water cooler full of red wine sits here, as well as a number of couches, cushy chairs, and some silly motivational posters. I honestly don't really see this ever getting any use, but I'm including it anyway just in case.

Dead Elf Storage Room - This isn't where the Gambling League of Gambling keeps everyone's coats and weapons. No, that's the next room on this list. This is where unmentionables go, at least until they're needed elsewhere. Drugs, refugees, hostages, confiscated customer materials...basically anything and everything Magtok can get his villainous hands on.

Coat and Weapons Storage - If you've got a prominent sword on you when you come in, it gets taken here. If you'd like to drop off your coat while you stay, you let the staff put it here, too. Pretty self-explanatory. Attempts to rob the Coat and Weapons Storage room will be seen as an attack upon the casino itself, and such thieves will be executed on the spot by Magbot staff.

Access Restricted:

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Maggy's Office - Y'know, I really don't see why Magtok insists on including a private office for himself in all of his businesses. It's not like he can't just telewarp into his home at any given time, after all. Anyway, there's some chairs for people to sit in, pretty purple carpeting, green $ sign wallpaper, a hidden shotgun strapped to the bottom of the mahogany desk, and a framed picture of the moon on the back wall. He's probably got more sneaky tricks and murder-weapons hidden in here, but I have no idea where they are, so you'll just have to figure it out on your own.

The Chamber of Honesty and Fair Play - There aren't many rules here in Club Magtok. All the more reason to emphasize them, of course. Anyone caught cheating or otherwise getting on Magtok's nerves is brought into this filthy, disgusting, soundproof concrete room. A number of hammers, nails, circular saws, and other toys stand on a shelf off to one side, just begging to be used on any unlucky sucker dragged in here.

The Big Important Money Vault Full of Money - This is the grand vault that both stores patron's money, and houses the machine regulating the flow of slot machine tokens. A series of tubes and pipes connects all the slot machines together, because apparently Maggy was just too lazy to include a token-storage unit in the slot machines, and couldn't be bothered to stuff an entire jackpot's worth of tokens in each one.

Da' Rules and OOC stuffs:

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Disclaimer stuff: The Gambling League of Gambling is meant, obviously, for more than just losing and winning currency in a setting where currency means absolutely nothing. Underneath the neon gleam and polish, there's a dark, seedy underbelly to this MagCasino, and folks are free to try to interact with it. Entertainers may have to throw away their dignity just to nail that big gig, security personnel may find themselves paid to keep quiet about all manner of dark secrets, and anyone trying to expose GLoG for what it is will almost certainly be dealt with in an exceedingly brutal manner.

Anyways, rules!

1: I hate to steal from Vael's Mallside post, but please don't destroy the Gambling League without discussing it in OOC first. Chances are I'll say no, but it doesn't hurt to try, right? Who knows, maybe your idea is just cool enough to warrant the destruction, or maybe this thread will bomb and I'll have nothing else to do with it anyway.

...Gods, I hope that second one doesn't happen.

2: Please don't have huge fights in the casino. Broken bottles are okay, exploding bullets are not. Let's assume that your ability to spit radioactive waste and super-speed was confiscated at the door by a bouncer or something. I dunno, maybe I'll add a bit about a power-negating energy field later. This is still a work in progress, after all.

3: The casino is public, so please, no curtaining, or drug use beyond the expected alcohol/nicotine junk. Unless you're not a Remnant investigator, successfully pay off the right people, and get a private room for that sort of thing, of course. Even then, try to keep it short and most of it to the imagination. There's other people doing stuff here too, y'know!

4: I am not always going to be online, unfortunately. I know, it's a huge shock to me too, but apparently there's this "Real Life" thing that insists on getting in my way! It teams up with this big tough guy called "Sleep" to drag me off every now and then, too. Feel free to NPC-ify the casino staff a little. It has to be within reason, though. The bartender will serve whatever you want, but you're not going to seduce that dealer into giving away all his MagTokens without at least a little Mag-involvement.

5: Don't think about the layout much. Like Inside and Mallside, it'll change when it damn well feels like changing. Maggy's office might be upstairs today and smell of cheap Coffin Nail cigarettes, but wind up on the ground floor tomorrow, with a faint odor of coconut oil and human remains. The slot machines might be in a completely different room, or within shouting distance of those slovenly drunks at bar.

Final Note: The Gambling League of Gambling OP is presently a work in progress, I'm afraid. Feel free to enter, but please watch your step. We'll try to drown out the sights and sounds of construction workers and their projects with our gaudy neon lights and loud music, but until things are finished, the management humbly asks for your patience and willful ignorance. Thank you.

Oh, and any similarity in name to charity organizations focused on redemption are entirely coincidental. Totally, completely, and absolutely a coincidence. So don't bother suing.

[Neon Knight]

The doors to the casino swing open, and a tall, dark stranger in a continental suit walks in, his polished shoes gleaming with every swaggering, self-assured step he takes, the brim of his fedora pulled low over his eyes as he looks around, examining the casino with a critical eye.

After a moment, he gives a wicked smile and heads for the blackjack tables.

[Lord Magtok]

Someone's going to ask the stranger for his coat, ask him if there's any weapons on his person that he'd like to drop off, and non-intrusively pat him down a tad to be sure there's nothing to be found, whilst also mumbling a vague apology about company policy. A brief, innocuous description of the Zero-Tolerance policy towards cheating is provided regardless of what is found, and the man is offered a smile and encouraged to continue right along to the-

Blackjack Table

"Evening, sir."

The canine automaton nods politely to the man, its dark red eyes motionlessly issuing the man a slow, secret full-body scan for suspicious metal instruments. It's hard to imagine anyone waltzing into a MagCorp-owned casino with a wire on them, but it never hurts to be careful, does it?

"Minimum bet is [entirely sensible sum of money], sir."

Assuming the man goes through with it, and regardless of how much he puts up, the stranger is given a queen of clubs face-up, and a four of diamonds.

[Neon Knight]

The stranger in the continental suit surrenders his coat readily, along with a knife. The "That's not a knife; this is a knife!" sort of knife. A coffin-hilted over a foot long blade that borders on being a short sword, with a wicked clipped point. He mutters slightly at the pat down; Otherwise, he is quiet and compliant, giving a curt nod before stepping up to the blackjack table.

((What was the dealer's card? Also, does the dealer hit or stand on soft 17? These details are important to blackjack strategy. I apologize if you were wanting to keep this fairly abstract, but strategy is different if the dealer is showing a 2 rather than, say, an ace, and someone trying to portray a smart gambler might appreciate these details. I'll go ahead and act anyway, though.))

Continental Suit taps the table with two fingers. "Hit."

[Lord Magtok]

((Aaagh, fudge. This is what I get for doing all of this in a single, reckless afternoon without much thought or concern given to all those smelly details that'd inevitably come up.))

Dealer's got a five, would hit on a soft 17. The robo-dog wordlessly hands Mr. Fancy Suit a three of clubs.

[Mindfreak]

John the Immortal waltzs in in a smart tuxedo!
He is in his 20 year old form.

[Neon Knight]

Continental Suit passes his hand horizontally over the table. "Stay."

[Lord Magtok]

John

The Immortal is run through the same pat-down, muttered apology, and so on that the man with the nice suit was put through. It should be easy enough for someone to smuggle in a small weapon, if they know what they're doing, but anything particularly horrific, like that knife the earlier guest came in with, and the staff is bound to catch it.

Blackjack Table

The dealer gets a queen, flips over the card that was face-down, revealing a jack. Oooooh, looks like the dealer busts. Continental Suit wins this hand.

[Mindfreak]

John
John has no weapons on him, no need when you can use magic after all.
He frowns.
"Are you quite done?"

[Neon Knight]

[Blackjack Table]

Continental Suit just smiles that cruel smile of his, and bets double the minimum on his next hand.

[Rebonack]

[Fancy Over-Priced Restaurant]

It is here that Amil arrives!

Presently looking only generally human in body shape. She isn't hiding the fact that she's a weird bug-lizard alien at all. Silly bug-lizard aliens. No doubt Eric is somewhere close at hand as well.

She'll smile in a friendly sort of way at whatever bot is in charge of showing people to their tables. "Hello. Two for dinner."

Yay!

Two for dinner!

Totally the first PCs to eat here!

They should get some sort of silly prize.

[Halae]

[Fancy Over-Priced Restaurant]

Eric is close at hand yes. As always, he looks sort of human. Except instead of skin he has black scales colored fractally. In the middle of his forehead is a third eye, and on his shoulders and the back of his hands are more of these eyes. every eye on his body is silvery. His feet are digitigrade. His previously Brownish red hair is now pure black, and at several points along his body there are strips of glowing sienna flesh. Sienna is Eric's color.

He's wearing that backless black shirt and black jeans right now. Part of him is actually enjoying this; over the past month he got used to the looks, and actually likes scaring people a bit if it's all in good fun.

"By the way, do you still eat denim all the time?" He looks down at the pants he's wearing, wondering if should have worn something else.

[Rebonack]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

Amil giggles slightly at that question. "Yeah. But I got this neat hat," she points at the hat. Which also happens to be less of a hat and more of a pair of jeans. Being worn on her head. "It fixes itself whenever I snack on it. So whenever I get a craving I just chew on those. It's a lot less awkward than the alternative."

That is, stealing people's jeans.

That can be sort of embarrassing after all.

"It's pretty nice in here, actually. Though Magtok always tries to go the extra mile with whatever he's doing. Whether that be making a casino or creating absurd weaponized animals."

Those silly laser geese.

[Halae]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

Eric thinks for a moment, "Yeah, I remember reading about something called the magwhale online. What the hell was that about?" he chuckles, "Frankly, I don't pay much attention to celebrities. I find it sort of detracts from the people that actually matter."

[happyturtle]

Entrance

Charity and her Minotaur friend Basil enter. Basil surrenders his goober gun. Charity of course, is unarmed. Once inside, Basil wanders off to play slots, while Charity goes looking for Magtok.

[Lord Magtok]

John
John has no weapons on him, no need when you can use magic after all.
He frowns.
"Are you quite done?"

Careful with those spells, though. Use of anything fancier than a lame ol' magic missile or chair tossed telekinetically at someone's face, and John might find himself getting booted out without a refund. Anything that might do irreparable harm to the casino is a no-no, more or less.

"Yessir. Enjoy your stay at the Gambling League of Gambling, sir."

[Blackjack Table]

Continental Suit just smiles that cruel smile of his, and bets double the minimum on his next hand.

((Hrm. How good is the guy at Blackjack, anyway? I feel like a certain amount of extra handwaving might be necessary for this sort of thing.))

[Fancy Over-Priced Restaurant]

It is here that Amil arrives!

Presently looking only generally human in body shape. She isn't hiding the fact that she's a weird bug-lizard alien at all. Silly bug-lizard aliens. No doubt Eric is somewhere close at hand as well.

She'll smile in a friendly sort of way at whatever bot is in charge of showing people to their tables. "Hello. Two for dinner."

Yay!

Two for dinner!

Totally the first PCs to eat here!

They should get some sort of silly prize.

"Congratulations, ma'am. As the first PC patrons to visit the restaurant, please accept these five MagTokens...and this."

Is that a MagPlush toy in an adorably ridiculous purple pimp suit?

...Yes, yes it is a MagPlush toy in an adorably ridiculous purple pimp suit. Just when I thought that cyborg couldn't be any more vain, he proves me wrong.

"Please, follow me to your seats. Table, or booth? Non-smoking, I presume?"

In striking contrast to the rest of the place, the restaurant is actually pretty somber. No bright, abrasive colors, shining lights, or screaming grannies cranking clattering slot machines over here. I can't say those portraits of Magtok posed like Napoleon atop an enormous, genetically-engineered Utahraptor are very tasteful. Elsewhere, the forcefield separating the smoking and non-smoking sections might actually be doing too good of a job. I mean, I can't even see the patrons in there!

Entrance

Charity and her Minotaur friend Basil enter. Basil surrenders his goober gun. Charity of course, is unarmed. Once inside, Basil wanders off to play slots, while Charity goes looking for Magtok.

She won't have to take the long walk down a hall all the way to his office, fortunately. Maggy is out and about, dressed up in his favorite two-toned Chromeface suit, smiling at patrons, shaking hands, and other generic host-type stuff as he mills around the casino.

"Hey Charity! Nice to see you here! Edijar with you?"

It sounds like a fairly innocuous question, but Maggy's still burning after that last little showdown with Remnant, and the last thing he'd like to do this evening, this week, or even this year, is deal with any of Vasquez's men.

[Rebonack]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

"A table will do," Amil replies shortly before a plushy is thrust into her hands. She looks at it quizzically. "Eerr... Thank you?"


"Umm... I don't recall a MagWhale. I know that one of the KNAVES people had a robot whale submarine."

The KNAVES were very mean. A little less 'try to take over the Nexus' than AMEN and a little more 'make people's lives miserable'.

Once Amil settles into her chair she'll be busy debating between something fancy and attacking the buffet table. It's one of those fancy buffets! With crab!

"So... What's it like, exactly?" Amil inquires as she threads her tail through the back of the chair. Sitting on top of her tail is uncomfortable after all. "What happened to you, I mean. How different do you feel?"

She asks mostly because she knows that her mind and thought processes changed a fair bit after she was metamorphosed. Wonders if Eric is going through the same sort of thing.

She also asks because it feels like the statue of Magtok is staring at her and she's trying really hard not to think about it.

[happyturtle]

She won't have to take the long walk down a hall all the way to his office, fortunately. Maggy is out and about, dressed up in his favorite two-toned Chromeface suit, smiling at patrons, shaking hands, and other generic host-type stuff as he mills around the casino.

"Hey Charity! Nice to see you here! Edijar with you?"

It sounds like a fairly innocuous question, but Maggy's still burning after that last little showdown with Remnant, and the last thing he'd like to do this evening, this week, or even this year, is deal with any of Vasquez's men.

"Nah, he's working tonight. So Basil's my date for the night." She waves vaguely in the direction of the slot machines. "I just wanted to check in, see how you're doing, what you're up to." Is that a or a on her face?

[Halae]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

Eric, for his part, turns his chair sideways. Amil may have been able to thread her tail through an opening in the back of the chair, but his entire back is covered in tentacles. He's gotten use to sitting in chairs sideways - He will never know the joy of recliners ever again T_T

"Normal, mostly," he says, moving one of his tentacles to pick up whatever is on the table in front of him, to show Amil as an example. The tip, but only the tip, splits into the three part deal it has going, acting like a trio of fingers to pick up the silverware in front of him, "It's... well, I don't really think about it. They're like your arms. You want them to move and they move."

[Rebonack]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

Amil sets the silly Magtok doll next to her chair. She's honestly not sure what she's going to do with the thing.

"That's more or less what I discovered with my new pair of limbs," Amil replies, flexing the wings slightly before folding them over her back again. The two little fingers on said wings are actually clasped around her neck. Makes it look like she's wearing a cape.

Yay cape!

"I'm having trouble deciding exactly what I want. So I think I'll go with the buffet."

And now yay buffet!

Buffets are the best.

[Halae]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

"I'm pretty well good for eating anything as long as it's not synthetic or something." Eric needs his biomass too now! "I think I'll join you on the buffet."

Eric, for his part, will take pretty much the same sorts of things that Amil does. Buffets are wonderful, after all.

[Lord Magtok]

Down By The Slot Machines, I Guess

Magtok shrugs. If he notices anything particularly alarming about Charity's facial expression he doesn't show it. "Well y'know, the usual. Dressing with all the modesty of a colorblind harlot, making a gaudy spectacle of myself, and trying to convince everyone to give me all their money." A light chuckle at that, as if Maggy wasn't actually that greedy. Which he is, by the way. He's totally that greedy. He's just clever enough to know better than to blatantly rob people.

...Except when he does blatantly rob people, that is. Certain bank assaults come to mind, for instance. I'm sure MagDonalds's guilty of quite a few unethical business practices, too. Not that anything's been proven, of course, but still...

[Rebonack]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

Amil...

Seems interested in lots of meats. Coconut shrimp and honeyed ham and chicken friend steak and om nom nom!

While Tyranids technically eat anything alive it's understandable that she would have a predilection toward meat. Carnivore, rawr!

Once a plate has been piled to suitable height she'll return to her table and begin devouring it. Seems it requires quite a bit of self discipline not to just shovel everything into her mouth.

...

Did she just eat one of those ribs whole?

"So," crunch nom. "What have you been doing for the last month?"

[Halae]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

Eric thinks about that for a moment, "Squatting. Since I lost my job, I've mostly just been getting by on my landlord's forgetfulness. Not the best situation, but it's the best I can manage at a time like this, you know?"

He has also claimed quite a bit of meat. Biomass feeds his magic, afterall, and, well, he's always loved meat. It's probably quite a sight to the other guests; a pair of monsters picking up all the meat the can off the buffet.

[Rebonack]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

Nom nom munch nom!

Nothing like watching a Tyranid and an eldritch monster have a romantic dinner together. Only in the Nexus...

"Oh... That isn't any good," Amil replies, her tone shifting towards concern. "Well. What did you do before you got... umm... Tentacles?"

That seems like a reasonable question.

"Maybe there's somewhere else you can use your skills? And there are plenty of people in the Nexus who don't have any issue employing non-humanoids."

Which makes sense considering how many non-humanoids there are in the Nexus.

[Halae]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

"I worked at Time Horton's," Eric says, "Found one sitting in Market Street all confused about where it was. Made them the deal that I'd fill the manager in if they hired me, and that was working out pretty good. too bad they reacted badly when I started mutating."

Eric is eating as he says this. His tentacles split into three parts because technically, they're just mouths with very long, prehensile lips. He's eating through the mouths on his back at current, so that he can keep talking with his normal mouth. Probably looks kind of weird, but doesn't really care.

[happyturtle]

Down by the Slot Machines, I Guess

"Nothing that would hurt anyone then, I hope? All your performers are here of their own free will? No one is being pressured into providing "extra" services? You aren't skimping on the quality of the prophylactics in the vending machines? No drugs? No ties to organized crime?" Charity asks.

AMEN doesn't count. Everyone knows they're disorganized crime.

[Rebonack]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

Amil wrinkles her nose a bit.

"Eerr... I don't know what Time Horton's is," she admits whilst devouring an unfortunate prawn. "Is that some kind of store?"

She's guessing it is.

Stores often show up on Market Street after all.

The mouth-tentacles are watched with... something between horror and fascination. Amil still feels pretty bad that this happened to him all because of her.

Stupid stupid stupid.

"Well. Have you considered checking out the Sanctuary Fortress?" Amil suggests. "They keep a list of quests and stuff people around the Nexus need help with. And they pay pretty well, too."

[Halae]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

"Tim Horton's is a Doughnut and coffee franchise based in Canada, on earth, where I'm from," Eric says, still eating. He finds it to be all kinds of nice not to have to stop talking while he eats. it makes maintaining conversations during a meal much easier. "I haven't actually heard of the sanctuary fortress, though."

[Rebonack]

[Over-Priced Restaurant]

Amil's actually equipped with quite a few breathing spiracles on her body. As a matter of fact, she doesn't breath through her mouth at all. That's just for eating. Which is nice since it means she won't ever choke on her food!

Her voice actually comes from several places other than her mouth. Though she still moves her mouth as if she were talking normally. Just force of habit.

"Doughnuts, huh? Interesting... And I've never heard of a place called Canada. Though I would imagine you're probably from a different version of Earth than I am. I've had to get use to that around here," Amil laughs.

"The Sanctuary Fortress is... I guess sort of a temple? They do lots of healing for free. Generally help out the community. The place is a great spot to hide in case of doom descending on the City."

She camped out there more than once, that's for sure.