The number of times the Gods did not bicker and banded together can be counted with only one human hand. The most famous of these times is when the gods poured one tear each into the world, and so humanity came to be. This was so that no one God could claim ownership over the world, for the world would have a natural tiebreaker to oppose the races of the Gods; the elves of the Lady, the dwarves of the Lord, the wildlife of the Huntress, and the monsters of the Bastard, along with the innumerable lesser races of lesser deities.
Thus, humanity could do what all Gods could do, and not limited like the other races. They could shape and affect the world, like the dwarves. They could do magic, like the elves. They had to eat, sleep and die, like the beasts. They knew good and evil, like the monsters who so tragically choose to do the latter. One could say that, collectively, Humanity is a God in and of itself.
The second time the Gods united, and the root cause of our hero's story, is when Luck was ousted by the Gods. Angry and bitter that Luck could cheat them all, rigging the game of Reality in his favor, they trapped him in a deity-entrapment-device, shortened as dice. Each subsequent dice replicated by mortals would contain the tiniest fragment of Luck, no matter made of bone or gold, as long as it had six sides and rolled fairly.
When Luck was imprisoned, it is said that the world finally started to work as it should. Luck could not cheat anymore, and the Gods relished their freedom from the tyranny of Luck and chance, for each God had been cheated by Luck at least once (except Death, who Luck fears to cheat.) However, Luck still exerts some form of will, and it is through this will that he rolls and lands a seven on a six-sided die.
'Rolling a seven' is a colloquial term, used whenever someone beats overwhelming odds. More commonly it is used to refer to cheating. However, when a seven is truly rolled, the effects are catastrophic. This is the story of Nat, son of Twenty, a poor boy from a poorer village: unluckily the luckiest boy in the world. He always managed to survive through mere chance; always scrounging up just enough food, always finding some sort of shelter. But never more than that. Unluckily lucky.
The Gods were playing the game of Reality that day, rolling the true dice that contained Luck, and betting that Silv Silvertongue would defeat Pottymouth the Foul (Each God staking their champion (one remembers humanity belongs to no God), in exchange that Death would not claim the life of a God, as today was Fated for a God's death.). Silv, in a bar in Nat's town, was betting all his belongings, from his silver lute to his silver sword, in a game of dice against the bar-owner, in exchange for a night with the barman's daughter.
The barman, a veteran gambler, agreed. To his dismay and his daughter's delight, Silv won the bet. However, Nat was in the bar sweeping the floors, and he had a rather old crush for the barman's daughter. In an unnatural surge of bravery and recklessness, he challenged Silv to another game of dice. Same terms, except Nat would volunteer his sister (who naturally agreed and was hoping for her brother to lose). Silv, smiling snidely, for he had a magical coin that tipped luck in his favor, agreed.
Realizing what he'd done, but unable to take back his bet, Nat picked up the dice and rolled. Luck, who so wished for vengeance upon the Gods, thought that if Silv did not have his items, he could not defeat Pottymouth, and thus, exerting unnatural and excruciating effort he shifted the dice ever so slightly.
To the utter horror of Silv, the disappointment of the staked girls, the barman's relief, and Nat's shock, they saw that the dice had landed on the seventh side.
Author
Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___ (Read 313831 times)