You head on over to the tip of the ship. The air hits your face as two twin towers make their appearance on the horizon. The screen fades to black as two sets of golden letters appear.

Hingashi
Kugane

     The screen slowly fades back with a front view of the merchant city of Othard. A huge gate and castle lie in the background, while the foreground is occupied by a giant building that seems to attract all sorts of adventurers.

     Just like yourself.

     You disembark and slowly make your way across the wooden bridge. With the world at peace at last (or at least until the next patch), you decided to take a short rest, and what better place to do so than in Eorzea’s most popular city?

     Mind you, maybe not so much as an AFKing spot, but no one would deny that it’s housing district, Shirogane, was the most sought-after. You take a short walk around the platinum district in hope of maybe getting a lot of your own, but you return back to the golden city not so long after.

     A blue crystal floats next to you, and you click on it to look at all the map’s aetherytes.

     Should you go to the pier? There was no denying that it had been quite a long while since you had last gone to the Forbidden Land, Eureka, and this was the perfect time to continue on your journey. Eureka was getting more activity lately, and that would allow you to work on a few more of your pending relics.

     Or maybe the markets? Your inventory bag was about to burst, and be it trade or storage, you certainly needed to do something about it. Most activities rewarded you with an item or more, and you certainly did not want to end up trashing something just to get a new item. You definitely needed all of them for crafting later. Once you leveled those classes. One of these days.

     Or maybe…

     You close the teleport interface and instead start looking for a specific marker. A small, golden rectangle with a ! sign on it. Yes, that’s what you’ll do.

     Luckily enough for you, the first NPC with that icon is in the building right next to you. You enter Kugane Tower and quickly head over to the receptionist to challenge her to a Triple Triad game. However, your enthusiasm disappears after looking at her information.

Opponent: Kotokaze
Match Rules: Same

     Same. One of the few rules you did not understand about the card game, which explains how she crushed you so easily after you challenged her. Going after the other NPCs, it’s all, well, the same. Every single character seems to be using one or more advanced rules, which makes you lose time and time again.

     You continue making your way down the list of possible NPCs, hoping to find at least one that will play fair, when you find another icon. One that none of the guides online seems to mention. Moreover, when you get there, there does not seem to be any NPCs nearby that you could challenge.

     A bug, maybe?

     You open the Help Desk support, but before clicking on submit, a memory flashes right before your eyes. Could it be… You walk over to the side of the Sekisegumi barracks. If you remember correctly…

     Knew it!

     Next to the barracks lies a series of passageways going to the sewers and under the city proper. You had forgotten all about them since it had been several years after you’d done the quest that you there, but now it was all coming back to you. You follow the same path as before, trying to make your way around the seedy underbelly of the golden city, when you reach what seems like a dead end.

     Or it’d be if not for the glowing circle that indicated a map change.

     You click on the circle and get transported to a rundown and mostly bare room. In the middle of it, a lupin, the wolf-like race native to Orthard, is sitting on a small cushion with a wooden table in front of him. Behind him, a Hrothgar with a scar on his face is carefully looking at you. You guessed that this had to be newly added content, not only because of the big cat man’s presence, but it’d also explain why no one else seemed to have heard about this place.

     Looking at your toolbar, the button to return home is disabled, which gives you an even worse feeling about this place, but the shiny icon atop the lupin’s head is like a siren’s call to you.

     You click on the lupin, and he starts to talk, “Greetings! You did well in finding my hiding spot. Triple Triad? Oh, you mean this card? I don’t really care about it. I could give it to you, but how about if we make this more interesting?”

     You quickly click through his dialogue, not caring about what he has to say as long as you get what you came for, when a message box suddenly pops up.

Upon proceeding, several cutscenes will play in sequence.
It is recommended that you set aside sufficient time to view these scenes in their entirety.

     That’s weird. Usually with these sorts of events, the NPC is glowing to warn the players that cutscenes and battles might be involved. You hesitate for a moment when the NPC starts talking again.

     “So, are we going to play or what?”

If you’re above the maximum allowed level, it will be synced as follows:
Level: 1
Item level: 1

     You move your mouse over and click on the button, which makes the screen fade to black again.

Duty Commenced

     When the screen fades back in, you find yourself in the same room as before, but everything seems bigger. Also, you could have sworn it was not made of wood before…

     The screen starts to shake, and you see the huge frame of the lupin looking down at you, the enormous hrothgar right behind him. And that’s when you take a look at your status bar and realize what this all meant.

     He had cast Minimum on you, and you were now on top of the wooden table!

     “Well, let’s get started.”

     Golden coins rain down from above and land into a neat little pile in front of the lupin shortly before a huge cup falls on top of them. You remember this from that game in the Golden Saucer, and your guess is confirmed when you see two more cups fall down soon after. The cups start to shuffle around, slow at first, but then quickly picking up the pace, soon spinning at such a speed that it’d be impossible to discern with the naked eye.

     Finally, the cups settle down, and the table is divided into three sections as indicated by a brief flash.

     “Take your guess.”

     If you remembered correctly, the correct cup was always the one with the coins before the shuffling starts going out of control, which would make it the one to the left. You stand next to the cup and wait for the timer to end.

     The cup next to you goes up and you find out… that you were wrong.

     Standing under it was a canine monster, and just like in the Saucer, he uses an attack that targets the whole section you’re on, knocking you back. However, instead of being sent flying outside the table, ending the game, you end up crashing against some kind of wall which causes several coins to fly out from your pouch.

     You take a look at your Gil total and realize that this was not just a visual effect, you had actually lost money.

     “Oh, that’s too bad,” the lupin says, “well, you knew the stakes before playing. Maybe you’ll have better luck next time?”

     You glare at the lupin and notice the Hrothgar laughing behind him. You don’t know if the lupin was saying the truth or not (because of all the dialogue you skipped), but there was no way you were spending all this money on a single card. Unless it was on the marketboard. You open the Duty menu, but the button to leave is disabled.

     You’d have to finish this game one way or another.

     “Take your guess.”

     You manage to catch a small glimpse of the flash that indicates the cups are done shuffling. Even if you had not been busy in other menus, the only cup that went up was the one you had chosen, so you still didn’t know where the prize was. You look at the smiling lupin/hrothgar pair, both of them well aware of your predicament.

5

     Given the circumstances, it did not matter which cup you choose, but the sight of the timer is enough to make you panic and you run to the one lying right in front of the lupin.

     You get sent flying and your Gil diminishes again. However, unlike before, this time it’s by 20%. You take a look at your status bar and notice a Vulnerability debuff has been stacked on you, meaning that you’ll lose more and more money each time you get it wrong.

     The cup falls, covering the monster, and they start to shuffle again…

     - - -

     The screen goes to black.

Duty Failed

     That last hit had sent you way over the edge. You didn’t know that Gil could go into the negatives, but now you did. Even if you had been left without a single Gil, at least it was over.

     The screen fades back in and you are… in the same room as before. Still at the same size. Still on top of the table.

     Still being looked down by the giant wolf.

     “Oh my, it seems like you accrued quite the big debt, haven’t you?”

     You try accessing the teleport menu, but without any money, you’re unable to go anywhere. There’s an invisible wall stopping you from jumping down the table, and you’re not sure if you want to take your chances with the giant pair by yourself.

     “So, what now?” The hrothgar asks.

     The lupin flops his head down on the table and starts toy around with you. “These adventurers are usually part of something called Free Companies. Maybe one of them could come and pay for its rescue?”

     “And if they don’t?”

     “Well…” the lupin smiles. “I’m sure we might be able to find another way for it to settle his debt.” The lupin looks at you again. “And I think I know where to keep you in the meantime…”

     The lupin straightens himself and loosens his shirt, leaving you with a full view of the top of his pants and the bandages covering his abdomen. A quest marker then appears on the spot connecting the two of them.

     He then starts to reach out to you out to you with one hand when the hrothgar speaks again, “Hey, not fair. Why do you get to keep it?”

     The lupin stops and takes back his hand. He looks at the hrothgar from a moment before he smiles, and a cup falls down on top of you. Leaving you in total darkness.

     “How about a game to decide that?”