Imperial Deceitstones
Written for Prompt 26 (2019 Summer Camp)
Imperial Deceitstones is a dice game played throughout Elgerlia to gamble, usually for coins or food but occasionally for fun when it comes to nobility. It is extremely popular as a tool to use when interviewing or trying to gain information from someone.
The Game
The player and their opponent have a set number of dice (Either two, four or six six-sided die) each which they secretly roll and look at. They take it in turns to make increasingly high bets about how many dice of a certain roll are on the table altogether until one of them calls the other out on a bluff and confirms which dice are really on the table. The one who was wrong must remove one of their dice, and the loser is the one who is eventually left with no dice at all.
People use Imperial Deceitstones to converse with one another as they play. Higher bets are more dangerous but also allow them to ask more daring or important questions, while calling bluffs often cut off lines of conversation altogether.
History
Originally, the game was just known as Deceitstones, but when the Great Western Empire took over the continent, a mad Emperor - Gaius I Dragorlan - early in it's history, created a law that legally changed the game's name to Imperial Deceitstones. Technically, even 200 years after the law passed, anyone that doesn't call it Imperial will be executed although this law has never been enacted.
Throughout Terralba, the same game is played except goes by different names. These include in Sanaros it is Sandstones and within the wizard-communities and the Arcane Academy on the Faar Isles, it is known as Mindstones.
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