Case 09.01,
the case of "Dice of Fate"
or
"Mr. Die and a very bad, horrible, no good roll."
Well well well. If it isn't an honest, good old fashioned statement. Fancy seeing it here.
Not much left to puzzle out, we have it all laid out very nicely.
The Dice make a comeback. When we've seen them last in nineteenth century, they were sitting pretty in the sack of the Gentleman (the mystery man in the woods, quite preoccupied with luck).
By nineteen-nineties they somehow came to be in possession of a young man named Gary. (Double meaning intended).
As is their nature, the dice brought Gary luck when rolled. Good luck with high rolls, bad luck with low rolls.
Gary eventually decided that bouts of good luck were not worth the inevitable dive into misfortunes, which varied from leaky pipes to broken legs. Finding himself incapable of simply NOT rolling, he fell back on time-honoured tradition of making his problem somebody else's problem.
Somebody else, we'll call him SG (short for Statement Giver), has recently been dumped by his boyfriend Carl (CaaAAAaaarl! That hurts people!) and really needed something to cheer him up. So when an old high-school friend called to invite him over for a game night, he made his way to Gary's place in West Didsbury, where he got tricked into taking over as the Dice Bearer. The dice changed hands and SG felt it as the ownership transferred to him.
SG was much smarter about rolling that Gary had been. Just like a certain violinist before him, he figured out that he needn't be the one to pay the price for the fortune his cursed object brought him. And he figured out the system (or so he thought. He should have remembered that the House always wins, in the end).
He started passing the bad-luck-rolls to random strangers on the street.
After a time, he started to also let strangers roll high.
And then… well, for someone who had the gall to talk shit about D&D, SG turned out to be SUCH a nerd himself.
He assembled a whole-ass Grim Dicer costume, grew a goatee, he was even doing the voice! Go you, Mr. Totally-not-a-theatre-kid! Rock that Dice King persona!
He was well on his way to becoming a full blown urban cryptid, when alas, he went too far. By chance (chance?) he run into Gary and made him (made him?) roll one last time.
It was the lowest roll yet.
Snake eyes. 1+1.
You couldn't go lower if you tried.
It seems that the Dice did not appreciate being disposed of, and they disposed of the previous Bearer in return, with extreme prejudice, via runaway truck to the face.
After that, SG lost his nerve and tried to get rid of the Dice which… Buddy. You've just seen how that ends. What did you think would happen?
SG thought he was being smart. He gave the Dice to Magnus Institute, who, as paranormal research facility (or whatever they were known as), were bound to accept them and presumably able to handle them safely.
Too bad he believed that rolling was a matter of choice*. Too bad the Dice were still within reach when the urge hit. Too bad he died right there, at the statement giving table.
RIP, statement giver (????-14.10.1998). You could have been great.
So that's that. What more to say? Let's see.
I feel quite confident in saying that SG was actively becoming a supernatural creature. That feeling of increasing disconnect from the world was not just in his head. And the rolls that he took for himself, that kept getting more and more abstract, until he couldn't tell what changed, just that something did? It was you, SG. You were changing. Such a damn shame your rise to power was cut short by your own folly.
I'm equally confident that he was unwittingly creating a brand new urban legend. I bet that at the time there were people in Manchester who'd talk in hushed whisper (or at high volume in a crowded bar) about the Grim Gambler, the Dice Devil, the Lord Luck, the Horrid Hatman. (Coincidentally, for no reason whatsoever I need somebody to draw SG in full Mr. Die costume with Alex J. Newall's face). Some would warn against touching his dice, others would swear up and down that he'd bring luck and prosperity. (Imagine the discourse at cryptid message boards!). I wonder if the legend still lives, even if SG doesn't.
*About rolling the dice, even knowing the odds… It sure as hell wasn't free choice, no sir. What was it then, compulsion, or addiction? Was that need to see the dice clutter over one's future coming from without, or within? Both options are equally appealing to me, to be honest.
The statement and the Dice were given to MI in October 1998. This means two things:
a) Arguably, events surrounding death of SG could have been one of the 'weird stuff' that Sam saw with no context as a child, and:
b) The Institute burned down little over a year later. Do you think somebody was rolling the Dice bit too much?
'Recommend referral to Catalytics for Enrichment Applicability Assessment'. To me it sounds like: "hey, Catalytics, check if we can use this thing for enrichment." And I'm having a bad thought. They were studying kids, Sam among them, for some purpose, almost certainly related to supernatural stuff. Did they give the kids cursed artefacts to play with, to boost development of their otherworldly skills/trait/whatever? Because if so, so help me… 🔪🔪🔪🔥🔥🔥
Lastly, for completion's sake: viability as subject (none), agent (low), catalyst (medium). I've no idea nor theories what these are about, I'm just leaving them here for future reference.
