Help a young practitioner pay off debt!
Well, I’ve given this enough thought, and the cards are telling me now is the time to act.
I’m Strixhaven_Student and my teacher died a few months ago. He was a Bottler and Fortune Manager, and through his work he accrued many debts that have been passed on to me. Due to those debts, my local community has ostracized me, with no intention of allowing any cooperation until the debt is cleared.
So! I’m offering my services to you instead!
All prices listed are in Canadian Dollars and ounces of luck. I take paybud and oaths respectively.
$5 + 2oz: Card Reading!
I will consult the Magic cards for any information you seek. Price doubles for each card added.
$18 + 5oz: Dead Dice!
I will ship you a set of dice cursed with bad luck. Includes 1d4, 1d6, 2d10, 1d12, and 1d20. (Pay for shipping if outside NA.)
$70 + 32oz: Custom Painted Miniature!
I will 3d print and paint a miniature of your choice. Guaranteed to liven up any ttrpg or wargame you play! (Pay for shipping if outside NA, all prices scale with size.)
$??? + ??oz: Any requests!
If you have a service or product you need provided, feel free to ask for a quote and I’ll let you know if I can provide and for what price.
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope to be of service!
Student Loan Debt
Nolan groaned into his pillow. Twenty bucks and two ounces of luck. That just barely covered the cost he spent finding the damn forum! That was drops in the bucket, and between his landlord and literal Lord, he couldn’t save up nearly enough with this plan. Earning a legitimate wage had failed.
Was there a better way? He tossed and turned under the sheets, wracking his head for a plan. The two sales he made were from people curious about his cheapest option, the readings he gave. He missed out on a sale due to not having any offensive options available for the less fortunate. Nobody wanted his minifigures.
If he consulted the cards one last time, spending the little luck he had to spare on getting the right draw, maybe he would have an idea.
“Cards of Magic, Gather together, and let the wisest leap out to my hand, for it is full of luck. Come now, you who knows the answer to my question, how do I escape this debt?”
He had tried the question many times before, and he rarely got good results. Smothering Tithe, Wheel of Fortune, and Wrath of God were all solutions to the wrong question.
The pile of cards laying by his bed shifted as he ran his hand through them. When one caught under his thumb, he snapped it into his hand and pulled it into the light of his bedside lamp.
Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni. A legendary rat ninja that stole items from the graveyard on dealing damage. It had good stats, could be cheated onto the board with ninjitsu- it even had regenerate. When did he even pull this card? It was worth twenty bucks, easy! It must have slipped in with the draft chaff he collected last week. He could sell it tomorrow at the store and have enough to buy a ton of instant ramen.
Enough celebration. Analyze. Legendary Creature, that meant it represented a specific person. They would come in without warning, given a great price paid, taking the place of an unassuming assailant. Servant of Oni, the cards sometimes were very literal. This person wasn’t likely to be an Oni, then he would’ve drawn an Oni creature. No, this person was a mage in cooperation with an Oni.
But that didn’t add up. No one nearby would work with him, the Lord made sure of that. He wasn’t worth anyone sticking their neck out for him unless they wanted beef with the Lord and the rest of the council. What did he have to offer anyhow? A few tricks in making luck into money and vice versa; it turns out you need both if you want to win big at gambling. Luck favors those who have more to lose.
What did he have left to lose?
Well, what did he have left to lose? His crappy apartment? His debt ridden life? He’d rather be a street rat at this point.
A rat.
He shot out of his futon and sat his naked butt onto his office chair. He tabbed out of Magic Online and back to OMO. He had just started writing a post, and then thought better of it. He saw how blindly reaching out without a plan went last time. He needed to take his time and study, learn about Oni on the board, and reach out to them personally.
Searching about Oni was his best chance. He found a thread that gave considerable info about a numerous set of Oni. These Rakshasa seemed promising. In less than a month, a truly powerful Oni would emerge in his hometown, and bring great change and destruction to the world. If he could find a way to be noticed by Long Shadow of Claw, and become their servant, he’d certainly be free of his debts.
It was all lining up. The aspect of the Moon of Kamigawa, the beast under a mask, he was certain he would become what this card represented. All he had to do was look into how Ink-Eyes found her Oni.
“Ink-Eyes learned the ways of ninjutsu, not through tutelage but through arcane study and solitary practice. She killed her ogre mentor in his sleep and offered his blood to their oni overlord. The oni was pleased by her treachery and ambition and augmented Ink-Eyes’ ninjutsu training with unique necromantic powers. Ink-Eyes gained the power to steal the dead, turning them into servants for her oni master.”
Who could’ve thought that an Innocent children’s card game wiki would have step by step instructions for becoming a servant of ultimate power? He could fill in the gaps with trades and advice from the wiki.
He smiled, taking the last of his notes down on his computer and returning to his bed. He dreamt of a clear sky under a full moon.
Student Pass
The world was shimmering an iridescent rainbow of hues. Stuck to every object was a tiny sticker, the price mark for how much Nolan would have to pay to own whatever he saw. He rarely used his sight, it hurt his eyes if he wasn’t closely focused on the nearest objects, and everything in the distance became a melded mess of multicolour hues.
He was looking at a series of Indigenous masks behind glass, displayed in the museum. Over the speakers, a native story was read, with each mask lit up by a spotlight as the character it represented was speaking. The cheapest mask was millions of dollars, a by-product of the complicated ownership of these artifacts. Things got expensive when you had to pay everyone who has a claim to the object.
He didn’t need to buy them though, and instead sat here in the dark and worked his plan through his head. He needed to reach out to the Oni. With the emergence of Long Shadow of Claw in Victoria this full moon, activity had to be bustling. Her disciples were supposed to be in the area, making their preparations. He had to find one, and make contact.
So he sat here, dead dice in hand, ready to make chaos and nab a free mask. He reached into his mojo, an old leather dice bag that held his stored luck. He pulled out a third of his remaining stock, and inhaled it.
He hid his next motion from the children in the room, gathered to listen to the stories as their parents explored the larger exhibit. He closed his eyes, blew the luck onto his hand before he cast the dice, and threw them into the glass. It shattered into many pieces, falling back and obliterating the most valuable masks instantly in a rain of glass shards. The narrated story cut out, replaced by an alarm that could barely be heard over the deafening sound of the shattered glass.
He slipped the simplest mask on display into his dice bag, which stretched out to fit the face covering size, before snapping back to its original shape. It was now totally inaccessible to anyone who didn’t practice.
People had gathered here now, and most of the attention was on the children. A few were badly cut by the glass explosion, as well as the two curious looking troublemakers who were now climbing into the display to get their hands on some masks as well.
Nolan just stood back and let everyone worry. They’d fill in the gaps, and security would blame it on the kids. By the time anyone noticed the single actually missing mask, he’d be long gone, and even if he was stopped, they wouldn’t find anything on him. All the poor fate would fall on the innocent child. He was sure they could handle it.
It took a while for everything to settle. He couldn’t just walk away from this without raising suspicion. By the time he was questioned, things had already found their place.
“Do you know any of these kids?” A security guard questioned him.
“Not personally.” He answered.
“Did you see what happened?”
“No.” His eyes were closed of course, he had no way of seeing the action happened. Not that he’d elaborate without them pressing for it.
In the end, after a check through his backpack at the exit, he made it smoothly out of the museum with a very special mask in his possession. The mask of the moon, crafted over a hundred years ago. A valuable mask, most wanted by the very Others he wished to meet. It would also be a target for the practitioners of Vancouver Island, but he had a way to strengthen his claim. To do that, he needed power.
He had nowhere to go once he left the museum. His apartment wasn’t likely to have any Oni in it, and he was driven to find one as soon as possible. All he needed right now was a moment alone to attune to the mask and find the trail of the Other who most wanted it. Normally this was a technique he used to find purchasers, back when his Teacher was making lucky trinkets. Now it was a line straight to his freedom.
Biking through the streets, it was almost easy to forget how awful this town was. The flowers hanging from the street lights and beautiful old brick buildings painted a nice layer of polite presentability over a ruthless money hungry void that hated anyone who couldn’t afford to live. Even the bike lanes suddenly stopped whenever he left the richest parts of town. At least downtown had plenty of places to lock his bike.
He stepped into one of the dozens of coffee shops downtown and bought a small coffee. Couldn’t use the bathroom without a purchase of course! He shut the bathroom door and locked it. The bathrooms offered by the coffee places was a big step above the wide open stalls of the public bathrooms. With his privacy secured, he removed the mask from the bag, a process that sadly spent another half of the Luck he had stored with it.
The mask of the moon was a round mask with no eye holes, and a flat white face with dark red lips and nostrils. He flipped it over and saw no clear way to attach it to his head. He suspected it was meant to be held in front of the face by hand. He switched his sight from buyer to seller, which really meant that he closed his right eye instead of his left as he activated the sight. With a bit of effort from his fingernail, and a few quiet words about the type of buyer he wanted, the back of the mask had a small line etched into it, which moved as he twisted the mask to stay pointing in one direction.
He noted the coordinates using his phone’s compass, and then slipped the mask into his backpack. He washed his hands and left the bathroom, grabbing the coffee to go.
He traveled not directly on the line, but perpendicular to it for a few blocks, finding a small alley to stop and check the mask again, this time keeping it in his bag and just noting the new direction.
From there, he simply had to look on his map to see where the two lines crossed, and set out for the destination. Apparently the Other who most sought this mask was at Willows beach.
Willows beach was the most tourist heavy beach in Greater Victoria. It’s wide sandy beachfront with plenty of driftwood to rest on and plentiful parks and concessions neighboring the area was a delight for families of all ages. It would be so crowded with innocents and curious eyes that he had no chance of getting a conversation with the Oni.
He’d wait until night, and check again. He spent the rest of the day at his apartment, tidying up his cards and room. He couldn’t be a servant of a greater power with a house that looked like this! It took a while, with layers of laundry and leftover cardboard and plastic snack containers covering the floor that had to be thrown out. He didn’t call his job finished until all of his walls and floors were scrubbed clean. He celebrated the job well done by adding an egg to his instant ramen for dinner.
As he ate, he tried on the mask. It still had no way of being seen through, but he could hold it at an angle away from his face that gave him access to his food. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but the experience wasn’t that enlightening. He’d have to find a way to attach it to his face properly.
With his apartment newly sorted, it wasn’t hard to find some tape, which he made into a small roll and applied to the inner side of the mask. Now he could stick it to his forehead and let it hang. It still completely blinded his vision, but he didn’t want to cause any permanent damage drilling holes if he could figure out a workaround with the practice.
He completed the outfit with the red sorcerer’s robes he wore when playing D&D and during longer rituals. How did the whole outfit look? He took a quick selfie with the mask on. The colour matched pretty well between the mask and his robes, and his grey dyed hair didn’t clash with the mask at all either.
He couldn’t go outside in this outfit though, and so he took both parts off and carefully packed them into his backpack. It was nearing 9pm, and the sun had just dipped below the horizon. He could bike out right now, and have the beach mostly to himself, at least enough so to let him talk to the Oni under the cover of night.
He biked from his apartment all the way to the beach, which meant the bike lane ran out right around Craigdarroch Castle, an old coal baron’s manor and now tourist trap slash domain of the Lord of Victoria. Not to be confused with the Lord of Greater Victoria, which was a position currently not held. The thirteen districts of Greater Victoria were too set against each other to unify, no one part able to take out the other twelve.
He had to fight for his place on the road with the cars and trucks. Despite living in this town his whole life, he still wasn’t great at biking, and the weight of his bag pressing against his back was trapping a lot of heat and sweat. He finally made it though, and was only mostly out of breath. He really needed a bus pass.
The beach was nearly empty, only a few young adults still gathered by the sand. Nolan took the mask out of the backpack and followed the mark once more. He was very close, and so the mark was incredibly faint even under his sight. It pointed to the playground, and there he saw them. Hiding beneath the jungle gym, so entrenched in shadow that he missed them as he was coming in, was a child in a full zip up hoodie, hiding their face and replacing it with an embroidered skull.
He didn’t know if he had been noticed by the child-sized Other, but just in case he still had the chance to make a good first impression, he quietly slipped on the robes and held the mask in front of his face. He had to approach slowly, as he couldn’t see anything in front of him anymore, but it was a clear path from him to the jungle gym.
“Hello, Rakshasa.”
“I am a Rakshasi, Practitioner.” She spat out the words with venom, but the harshness was lessened by a small feminine voice that reminded him of his niece, complete with r’s that sounded more like w’s.
“I have sought out your kind in search of a master to swear my fealty.” He hadn’t prepared his words, but in times like this he knew they would come to him.
“Then let us lower our masks, so we may speak eye to eye.” She replied, the venomous anger fading away. It was as though she had transformed mid-sentence.
He took the mask off of his head, and saw the Oni had unzipped the hood to reveal her own face. She had deep black eyes and a sharp toothy grin. Her face was pockmarked and wrinkled, but she looked surprisingly human in the overall shape of her features. The fact that she had a wide smile was finally registering in Nolan’s head. What was making her so happy?
“Rakshashi, how can I earn your trust?”
“You have done well in collecting such a fine mask, but it has no identity. You will go out tonight, to this address,” she handed him a folded piece of paper, “It is the house of a privileged and wealthy man, who recently inherited his father’s car dealership empire. Steal his most valued objects, and destroy what you cannot steal. Return tomorrow and I will use what you took to improve your mask.” She zipped up her hood, and the anger returned. “Now go.”
He left. He had the next twenty four hours to plan and execute a high stakes burglary. It was going to be a long night.
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