Fortune Telling

Oracles of Arbitrius

Black, frizzy hair hung over a thin, nearly gaunt, face. The old heblin oracle gazed at the worn cards on the table and grinned so widely that, just for a moment, she looked like a giddy child instead of an old woman. Her rough voice seemed to emanate from her entire being, rather than from her mouth and the young human sitting across from her leaned back suddenly in response;

"These cards show your future, boy.", she croaked, sounding both ancient and lively. "Are you ready to learn what luck holds in store for you?"

Just then three soldiers with swords drawn enter the cloth hut, one declaring; "Gidma Silverstring, you have been accused of falsely delaring the will of the Speaking gods. Keep your hands where we can see them."

For centuries the heblin caravans across Allegri have believed in the truth behind chance. They do not generally believe in the divinity of deities or more powerful forces, but instead worship fortune and luck as a powerful force. Unfortunately for the growing heblin population within Etude, 'luck' and 'chance' are not recognized areas of worship and their particular methods of divination have recently been banned. Labelled as 'denying the Speaking Gods'.

The new law was proposed by a member of the mansa's court, Christofel Pers, a devout follower of Zetna, deity of innovation and science. Christofel's limited knowledge of the chaotic heblin fortune telling practices led him to believe that the random outcomes of these so-called divinations could be extremely unpredicible. Since the cards and their meanings are completely subjective, if a heblin oracle predicted something shocking they could cause unrest, even panic, which may lead to unexpected or even dangerous choices.

Although his reasoning behind putting forward such a law was presented with full transparency from the outset, a small number of citizens are concerned with the precident it may set in making outside cultures and religious beliefs illegal.

In the six months since the law banning unsanctioned fortune telling was implemented there have only been a handful of actual charges laid aginst practitioners and only one resulted in an arrest, which many people believe was simply an attempt to make an example. Most heblin are too clever to get caught practicing these traditions in public and since there were already so few who provided the service it wasn't difficult for them to take their profession underground.