Ribs, Poker, And The World At War
chapter 1, book one




From the perspective of Tristan


"Ha! Won again!" Rob said as he greedily scooped A large handful of the chips in the center of the table into his pile. "Curses, you dwarves sure are good at this game! I just wish I could get some of those FREAKING chips over here!" I said as I stacked and re-stacked my somewhat small pile of chips. "We do have A talent for gambling." Rob said with a touch of smugness in his voice and a sly grin on his face. Or stacking the deck, I thought. "Yeah. Talent. Skill. Luck. Whatever you want to call it..." my voice trailed off as I slapped the Ace of diamonds in-between the Ace of spades and the Ace of clubs. "Ha! A perfect Tri!" I said. "Try and beat that!" this form of poker is extremely complicated. try combining 21 and Texas hold-em. add 4 different kinds of chips. yeah. complicated."Challenge accepted." rob said. he topped it with a Jack-In-The-Mox hand.(Ace, King, 2) "A thousand curses," I muttered. A voice from the end of the table spoke. "Hey, your doing better than I am! I only have three Pp (Play Point) chips left!" I felt exasperated. Did she not see the stupid tiny stack of chips in front of me?! "Lisa, I only have two!!" I started to argue about the amount of Bp (Bet Points) chips as A voice from a chair at the other end of the room exclaimed "HOW can you be gambling right now! The world may be at war, and what do you do? Sit and play poker!" Jeese, settle down man! emphasis on MIGHT. (see, there are two sides of this world. The one some people call 'Civilized' Has TVs, Cars, Tanks, That sort of thing. The other side is more medieval. they have jesters, Horse-and-carts, Militias. you get the picture.) "Enough!" Rob whispered. "Can you quiet down a bit Mike? Your waking Zack up!"

A tall, late teenage boy with shortish black-brown hair that was snoozing on the couch groaned. "whazzat?" Zack mumbled, half asleep. a large tuft of his hair sprung up. He wore brown, Elk-hide armor. A medium size grayish-black and white cat hopped on Zacks lap and purred rather gently. "Oh, hi cooper." Zack mumbled again, not completly awake. cooper gave a short, happy purr, then he lay down on Zack and settled into a comfortable, sleeping position. "heh. yeah. great time to be an assassin. The machine versus the mages, assassins on each side. Why people call the T.V.s and the cell phones modern, im not sure." he laughed a short, exasperated laugh. "I like a good, old fashioned throwing knife. not some crazy poison deodorant or electric harpoon-kunai. Ill stick to poison rings and wrist blades." "Well then fight! use rings and knives or even the deodorant thing if it works!" What do they mean, deodorant can be poisoned? Great, another excuse for people not to clean themselves.

Meanwhile Lisa and Rob had gotten into a rather heated discussion about the war. "All im saying is that we should be out there! no ones going to notice 6 people and a cat! We sh-" "Oh Sure!" Lisa interrupted. How should ?! What Are they going to do with a pampered cat, a old wizard-"Who are you calling old?" I objected. I'm not so much of an old mage, 25 years old. youngest one ever to make the mages guild. I guess I should tell you about my history.