There is a place beneath the city where bets are made in flesh.<br/><br/>When the torches are lit and the weary have slunk to their beds, the night belongs to the drunk and the desperate. When the cobblestones are chill with night and the endless rains make them slick beneath the boot, one door becomes two. It's never the same door, but the people looking for it always seem to find it. A friend of a friend tells them, or word on the street says. Somehow they always find it, and when the haggard man who greets them asks where they're headed, they know what to do.<br/><br/>"Penny for the boatman," the say, and place a single copper coin in the man's hand.<br/><br/>The spiral staircase he brings them to is wrought in iron, worn and faded with age and use. No one can remember when the game started, or when rumors of it first came, and the only evidence of age is the parlor itself. It is not a clean place, nor particularly big. Lit by candles and candelabra of the same worn away irons, the tables and chairs are thickly built of wood so marred by a patina of cuts and scratches and gouges that it is almost smooth again. The floor is stone, as are the walls--the ceiling looks like the bottom of floorboards, rafters visible no matter where it ends up being. But the room itself is only a setting: the game is in the tables.<br/><br/>The cards are very old, thick slats of ivory smooth to the touch and yellowed with age atop the bloodstained tables. Inked in spidery numbers and letters and etched in cryptic illustrations, there's a set for each of the tables.<br/><br/>The Table of Flesh is the most obvious, and the most grotesque. The men and women sitting around it are either grizzled and dour or whole and nervous. This is the table for worldly concerns--for food, for comfort, for sex and for money. Temporal things, but essential nonetheless. The dealer is by far the most lovely creature in the establishment--an enigmatic woman with ruby lips, pale skin and a body that offers more than its fair share of enticement, she never shows her teeth when she smiles and only when she deals can you see where the fingers she's lost to her own game should be.<br/><br/>Ante is to the knuckle.<br/><br/>The Table of Bone is by far the smallest of the three tables, but there's always a few souls there. Those sitting around it are the most desperate of all, for they've come here not for themselves but for someone else. Their mother is sick, their son is ill. Their family's fields refuse to grow. Whatever their reason, they've come for someone else, and they're willing to dig bone deep for them. The dealer is a one armed man whose skin stretches tight across his skull. He's old, very old, and one of his sleeves is empty.  The most compassionate of the dealers, his eyes ring of sympathy for his charges. Rarely would they come if there was any other choices, but there's always a few willing to risk everything for another.<br/><br/>Ante is to the wrist.<br/><br/>The Table of Blood is almost as large as the Table of Flesh, but those who participate are of a different make. They risk their lives and their health for the intangible, the unknown--they need answers, they must know. They need good fortune or an audience, they need favors, and the dealer offers it to them all with a smile. Only those serious about their concerns deal with him, because of the three on the floor he is by far the most off putting. Though he couldn't have spent more than a dozen years on this earth, his hairless body shows scars and the deep cuts of his table. His caustic sense of humor is as wicked as his smile, and he is the most talkative of them.<br/><br/>Ante is a full cup.<br/><br/>As the nights wind down, a hush falls over the assembled as the time to cash out rolls around. The lucky that have won come away with their prizes... and those that have lost must pay their debts. Some do it themselves, and they are the brave and the better off by far, for the dealers are not gentle. One way or another, the devils get their due.<br/><br/>Some people say there is a fourth table, but when asked the best anyone can do is direct you to the Table of Blood and wish you luck. Knowledge has its price.<br/><br/>But tonight the lanterns have only just been lit in the city of endless rain. The streets have only just begun to fill with their nightly throng, and the door has only just been opened.<br/><br/>The tables are filling. Best get your spot while you can.