The Gambling Diviner

He'd been rolling heavy all night long. No matter the odds, it was like he knew exactly which cards awaited in the deck, and which number was going to turn up when the ball was spinning round the track. No matter how much gold was on the line, though, he just sipped his drink, and waited, then collected his winnings.

That was bad enough. The casino had big winners from time to time... and a lot of them met with unexpected accidents. But everyone who came to try to take the evening's bounty away from him just couldn't seem to find him. He went out the wrong door, he wandered down a mostly empty hallway, and somehow managed to be right where every member of the pit boss's crew wasn't.Salivar "Aces" Maron had gone deep into debt to finish his education without a patron or a legacy admission to the Arcane College. While most diviners seconded themselves to nobles or trade families, Aces had found another way to pay off what he owed. He just had to make sure he kept collecting before he ran out of gambling dens and card houses to swindle.

A Dose of Divination

Diviners are one of the standbys of specialist wizards, but so often they fall into the trope of the flighty mage who is so distracted by the threads of fate that they don't always notice the world around them, or the crystal ball gazer who is far more of a voyeur than they are a participant in the world.

The gambling diviner, though, has two facets to them as a concept.

The first is the professional. Gambling diviners tend to use their unique skills as a way to game the system, and to cover all their monetary needs. Because intuition and odds-making are still, in the end, no match for those with actual magic on their side. Several of them might even act as one of the point men on ripping off a gambling den, hoping to get gold in their pockets and their feet out the door before someone realizes what it is they're doing.

The second interpretation, and one that can add some spice to this idea, is the idea of a diviner whose skill in foreseeing events make them crave excitement, unpredictability, or a real challenge in beating the odds. Such diviners might seek out dangerous heists, but they might also be drawn to the thrill of cursed ruins, lost treasures that no others could find, or similar hunts where finding the loot is almost secondary. The real thrill is putting their lives and their skills on the line, and coming out on the other end of things having defied the odds one more time.

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That's all for this week's Unusual Character Concepts post!

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