well, I was hoping someone could help me (and snag co-authorship) with this:
Kurgar’s Dice
A set of ordinary-looking dice, carved from milky-red carnelian, they are named after their original owner, one Kurgar Beggars’-Friend. Kurgar earned his satirical appellation at the hands of the general populace, especially the poor and downtrodden, due to the heavy-handed taxation methods Kurgar the Burgomaster employed, during his reign as the Tax Collector throughout the Hundred Thorps region of the Archduchy of Haracon.
Kurgar taxed the villagers of the far-flung thorps into penury within the first four years of his ‘campaign’. His goal, he would explain to anyone who asked and to many, who did not, was to line the coffers of the Archduchy in preparation for the ‘Great Expansion’. The Ducal Seat would soon be acquiring new lands and expanding its borders, and that the ‘good citizenry’ of the Hundred Thorps would need to look to the greater good of the Archduchy, and give more, more often, and freely of their reserves and gains.
Naturally, those that ‘withheld’ from the Ducal Seat, or those that were in Kurgar’s estimation, ‘lying', or in any way, or for whatever reason, unable to pay, were made examples of, and punished, by Kurgar himself or his ‘toughs’. This punishment usually took the form of beatings and humiliations, and by the start of his fifth year in office; Kurgar was reviled and feared in every thorp and village. He had acquired an almost ‘Bogey-Man’ like reputation.
One fine day, Kurgar came to the village of Morning Child, one of the many stops on his bi-monthly collection travels, and came upon the meager hut of one, Old Rat, a wizened old man of no distinction, except for those pesky village rumors that he was some retired hedge-wizard of little notoriety.
As was his wont, Kurgar first politely but disdainfully asked Old Rat for his bi-monthly tithe, but the old man merely shrugged and announced he had nothing.
Again Kurgar asked, convinced that no one ever had nothing, and again Old Rat shrugged and replied he had naught.
Now Kurgar had Old Rat stripped and tied to a cross beam and beaten savagely, and again asked the barely breathing man for monies or goods of some kind, and this time the old man said:
“Go into my hut and look beneath the stool. Lift the wooden board and remove the cloth, and take out the carnelian dice, and then you will have claimed my only possession.”
And so Kurgar did just so, and came back out of the hut some time later, holding a pair of pinkish dice.
“And what good are these to me?” asked Kurgar of Old Rat and Old Rat replied:
“Take them, I have naught else.”
And so Kurgar took the dice, and left, and went on to the next house, and left the wizened Old Rat to expire from his wounds in the hot baking sun.
And so this tale that is not a tale would end, were it not for the fact that Old Rat was indeed a hedge-mage of some skill and considerable ability, and his carnelian dice were indeed his phylactery, or soul jar, as some would call such things, and when the old man died, his soul left his body and seeped into his pair of six-sided dice. And being that the carnelian used to carve these dice, was chipped from the very walls of Nar’Sihb-Qil-Tyie, the Cave-of-Weeping-Gods, where slept the Gatherer of Tears, the Smiling Crocodile, they were a thing of chaos and tainted, just as Old Rat himself, was a worshipper of the Discordant Dynasty and the Daughters of the Slug, chaos gods of a distant and antediluvian era.
Now Kurgar, did have one vice, he loved to game and gamble, and some time later he discovered the dice once more inside one of his many coffers, which lined the walls of his manse’s Underhouse, and gave the dice a roll and thus sealed his own fate, for inside the pair of carnelian dice, danced and rattled the soul of Old Rat.
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I dont know how to finish this, or what "powers" the dice may have.
