Gamling with Fines

“Is it me or is the place kind of crowded?” I pointed out, as we entered through the gated stone wall of a moderately sized settlement.

“You’re right. There's a lot of gamblords here in particular.” Rollnaldo stopped and observed our surroundings for a moment. “There’s a bunch of street vendors too. Must be some kind of festival going-.”

He immediately got his answer, as we were stopped dead in our tracks by a tall shadow looming over us.

“Is that a giant scratcher ticket?” My jaw hung wide open in awe.

In front of us, was a massive three story tall green and gray piece of paper with dollar signs printed all over it. Draped above it was a banner that read, ‘30th Annual Scratcher Festival.’

“I believe I've read about this. This town is called Scratcherville. It's got a massive logging operation where they chop down pine trees in Wager Woods to produce the majority of the Kasino Kingdom's scratcher tickets. Once a year, they throw a celebration by producing a huge scratcher that one lucky person will get the opportunity to scratch for a set of mystery prizes.” Rollnaldo informed me.

“How do they decide who gets to scratch it?” I wondered.

“They host some kind of scratcher competition between gamblords. The winner gets to close out the ceremony by scratching the big ticket at the end of the night.”

I looked around at the other gamblords that had assembled. “Maybe I'll give it a shot.”

“That's a later problem. Now's a golden opportunity to set up shop and make some cash.” He waived off my comment about competing and set his focus on his merchandise cart.

Making our way through the city, we scoped potential spots to set up shop. Scratcherville didn't exactly seem like the most fun place to live. The city was fairly dull and industrialized with a majority of the buildings being lumber mills and processing plants. The only residential buildings were a series of boxy looking bunk houses and a couple of taverns. It seemed more like a massive sweatshop than a town.

“Right there!” Rollnaldo excitedly pointed to a small clearing just beside a set of outhouses that seemed to be illuminated by a miraculous ray of light that shined down from the heavens.

I stared at it skeptically. “Wouldn't it make more sense to set up by the other vendors in the town square rather than by these rancid smelling bathrooms?”

He laughed. “That would make sense if I was a rookie salesman, but as an expert, I like to think outside the box… Think about it, we have zero competition over here and everyone in this city is going to have to take a leak at least a handful of times throughout the day.”

I hated to admit it, but his logic was actually pretty clever. If only he could sell something other than bootleg merch…

For the next twenty minutes, Rollnaldo diligently worked to unpack his cart and laid out all his knockoff merch on a few tarps that he laid out on the ground. He added a final touch by setting up a cardboard out of Matthew the Giant Twine Ball. “And we are officially open!”

As soon as he said that, an anthropomorphic roulette ball wearing a police hat on his round bald head approached us. “Do you have a loicense, to sell here.” He spoke in a British accent.

“And what if I don't?” Rollnaldo became defensive.

“If you can't present me your merchant loicense, I'll be issuing you a ticket and ask that you pack all this up.” The officer held his notepad and pen at the ready.

“Of course I have a license…. unfortunately I left them in my other pants.” Rollnaldo attempted to fib his way out of a ticket.

He was met with a yellow slip of paper that the officer stuck to his forehead. “Nice try, I've heard that excuse at least three times already today.”

As the officer walked away, Rollnaldo ripped the ticket off of his forehead and stared at it with an angry glare across his face. “A ticket for five hundred dollars worth of chips, that's outrageous! I swear, government bureaucracy just loves to keep small businesses down… Oh great, even better…” He turned the ticket toward me so I could see. “We only have twenty-four pipping hours to pay it or face a year of prison time and more fines.”

“What if we just go get a license?” I suggested.

He let out a bitter laugh. “That would be great, but cities charge money for those kinds of things. Buying a license would probably end up costing more than the ticket.”

“So basically the city wants us to pay them money so we can run a business, but we can't make money to pay for the license unless we run our business.”

“Yep, It makes a lot of sense if you don't think about it.” He went quiet for a moment as he thought. “There's really only one solution… You're going to have to win that scratcher competition, so you claim the prize is for scratching the giant scratcher. Considering people have come from all over to participate in this contest, it must be valuable.”

“Do you even know what this contest entails?”

“All I know is that it has something to do with scratcher tickets, but that doesn’t matter what it entails. With your Gambling sorcery, I’m sure you can pull it off.” He confidently nodded.

Unfortunately even though it was his ticket and his fine to pay, if he ended up in jail, I would be completely on my own in this world. To be perfectly frank, I needed him as much as he needed me…