There was nothing more I loved in life than dice, cards, and the ever unassailable roulette wheel. I was well known on the Spice Isles by locals and tourists alike. They called me Lucky Lenny, the highest roller around. For the blind and dumb, my name conjured fanciful images of what happened when the folly of youth met a crippling gambling addiction. For the casinos and those whose sight or wit was strong enough, I was a legend.

I was born in the slums of the Spice Isles, shortly after the plantations of old had been razed to the ground but before the islands’ recreation industry had taken off. True traders and merchants were scarce visitors back then, but sailors of a less reputable sort still frequented our shores. The brothels, drugs, and overwhelming corruption were irresistible to veteran pirates and naive bluejackets alike.

To the best of my knowledge, no one knows what my mother did for a living. What I can say is that I was a bastard child that was orphaned at a young age. My earliest memories were promises of a dashing captain who would one day seize me from the squalor I lived in and legitimize me before making me the heir to his fortune. Some days that fictitious captain’s wealth took the form of a mercantile empire, on others it was a noble estate, and once it was even a vast criminal syndicate. Thanks to a cholera outbreak, the passage of time, and more pressing concerns, I’ll never know which of those lies was closest to the truth.

Regardless, I did what was needed to survive during my adolescence. The informal games that took place in taverns, and later the earliest betting houses to set up shop on the isles, had little in the way of security beyond hired muscle. Don’t get me wrong, those thugs could and did wring my hide whenever they caught onto one of my tricks. But more often than not they just sported a mean glare whenever they saw me. All this to say that I was almost never caught cheating as a young man.

It started out simple. Peeking. Marking cards. Ratholding. Then I graduated to engaging in conspiracy with friends on the other side of the table who could falsify their shuffle, cut, and deal. But it was only when I learned that certain games had a mathematically optimal solution that things really started happening. That was a costly lesson since the officer that shared it with me took the entirety of my savings to spare me the gallows for catching my attempt to defraud him. The information was worth every penny I lost.

Blackjack was beatable. Poker, too, though as the isles’ recreation industry took off I quickly learned how complicated adding other players to the mix could be. Even the newfangled slot machines that the casinos imported were subject to my methods after lengthy observation. Of course, the roulette wheel rebuffed me at every turn. I’ll admit that it became a bit of an obsession. I tried everything and then some, but nothing worked. I had almost given up hope on conquering it when I discovered the solution: magic.

You see, the Descrier Guild practices a unique form of divination that relies heavily on calculating probabilities. Trust me that it’s really not as much of a secret as some of the guild members make it out to be. When the guild set up shop on the isles they tested the locals for aptitude and, well, you can guess what happened next. Little Lenny had a talent for magic!

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I made a lot of coin as a clerk for the guild, and later even more as a properly certified scryer. As you may have guessed, I began to multiply my fortune at an incredible rate by introducing magic into my repertoire of tricks. To give you an example, counting cards in Blackjack gives you an edge over the house of maybe one or two percent. Once the casinos caught on, anyone counting was risking their health if not their life every time they tried that. With divination… well, let’s just say that after a few years of practice the odds had shifted so far in my favor that it was a struggle not to win.

At that point the proprietors of certain establishments started to watch me closely, very closely. There is a reason the moniker Lucky Lenny developed. The way I won, the amounts i won… it was preternatural. I tried paying off some mooks at the temples to spread rumors that I was blessed by a foreign goddess of luck to ease the suspicion on me. It worked so well that soon I had to go back to those same nuts I’d bribed to have written assurances delivered to the casinos I frequented stating that I was not, in fact, divinely favored.

My reputation stopped the casinos from trespassing me outright for fear of dispelling the illusion that anyone who set foot inside one of them could win big. Still, there was tension between me and them. So I found a way to balance my interest with theirs. I would win an incalculable sum of money. I would lose an almost equally incalculable sum of money. Almost being the key word. It was challenging to find a way to lose so much money without feeling a gaping hole in my chest. That was when I revisited my nemesis, the roulette wheel.

Calculating probabilities can only get you so far. Roulette is complex. The wheel spins, which would be enough of a headache by itself. You have to factor in environmental factors like gravity, air resistance, and humidity to get a good feel for how the wheel and the ball will act. Don’t even get me started on the croupier. How much force did they apply to the wheel? How much force did they apply to the ball? As if all of that isn’t enough, you’ve only got a few seconds to get it right. It should be impossible. I’m certain it isn’t.

In fact, I know for a fact that it’s possible because I figured it out on the night I died. It was a Thursday night and I was out clubbing with a bodacious babe that bumped into me. My mind was in a haze of drugs, alcohol, and lust. To say that my revelation came as a shock to my inebriated self would be a great understatement. I remember that we had made our way back to my place. I had been dreading the hangover I was going to experience in a few hours. As I lay down on the bed, my date asked me a series of questions that I answered more truthfully than I probably should have. That led me to a breakthrough that would solve the roulette wheel once and for all.

But I never got to prove it to her. Tony the loan shark was waiting in my living room. My debts were being collected. Listen, I know what it sounds like. I had rich taste and expensive hobbies, okay? When you can double your money in a night, debt becomes an afterthought, more of an annoyance than a threat. At least, that’s what I thought. In my intoxicated state I may have shared too many of my thoughts on Tony’s profession and character. He got upset. Furious, actually. Knocked me out.

Now I’m dead. I don’t remember dying, but the currents have been dragging me along the seafloor for longer than I care to remember. Drowning happens after a few minutes underwater, at most. By the time I woke up, if a corpse regain consciousness can be called that, fish had already started peeling flesh from bone. So… yeah. That’s the bad news. Death and all that nasty business. However, there is also good news!

I haven’t been idle as the ball and chain weighing me down scraped its way halfway across the world. Through some extremely frustrating magical exercises, I have secured my freedom. At this very moment I see it before me despite the lack of sunlight. A hook, or something approximating it anyway. I’m no expert at deep sea fishing, in fact I’d only heard of it once before my untimely demise. All I had to do was determine where one of the few lunatics who engaged in the sport would want to fish and maneuver the remains of my body in such a way that the currents took me there at exactly the right time. Not exactly simple. Surprisingly not as complex as beating the roulette wheel. Well, here comes the hook. I’ll bite.

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