UNKNOWN ARMIES - THE GRAND SUPREME

 The thrill-seeking gambling addict wizards of Level Die get a missive:

To the sorcerers of Level Die

A challenge:

Come to Caesars Atlantic City and I will kill you.
I have a spectacular Roman cage cup dating approximately 100 years before the fall of the Republic. Its value is incalculable. Since I only charge using vessels I make myself, you are welcome to it. Come to the Toga Bar. I will be waiting there to take your skulls. If you survive the goblet is yours.
-Your buddy, Three Bear

The danger is self-evident. And for the Entropomancers of Level Die, so is the appeal:

• Tarma, the racer, is fixated on the thrill of the near-miss, the feeling of death rushing past you. Played by me.
• Caroline, the robber, wants to rob dangerous people and get away with it. Played by Magnificentophat.
• Klayman, the gambler, is there to do exactly what you think he's there to do. Played by Lithobraker.
• Vanessa, the brawler, just likes a good fight and expects nothing less from the skull-taker. Played by Tormsen.

Level Die show up to Caesars Atlantic City; nestled between the grey expanses of the Atlantic Ocean and Atlantic City itself, and infested with drug addicts and gambling addicts, the place is no palace. Crime, homelessness, and all kinds of urban decay squeeze in on all sides, threatening to breach into the tourist district. The New Jersey Casino Reinvestment Development swear it won't spill over. Level Die immediately set about proving them wrong.

Tarma finds a good, convenient place to park his dented-up but frighteningly hot-rodded Lincoln Town Car for an easy escape once things get too dangerous to be fun. He scopes out the grounds from the outside, spotting a man in a cowboy outfit handing out coupons at a neighboring casino. He takes one, and moves on. Vanessa, meanwhile, is already spoiling for a fight and fiending for charges. She slaps the cowboy's prop gun out of his hands and tries to plunge her hand down his jeans to yank on his dick, only to be foiled by him wearing a belt. A brief brawl ensues; he hits her with his fake pistol, she pummels the shit out of him, and he runs off to go find some real cops since casino security aren't inclined to fight people who can throw a real punch. While this is happening, Caroline runs out into traffic on purpose to build up charges, and her gamble is quickly obliged by the hood and windshield of an oncoming car. When the guy inside steps out of the car to cuss her out, he notices the bizarre melee and realizes maybe this woman has a reason to be running away. He turns just in time to see Caroline climb up the roof of his car and do a cool backflip on to the hood of the next car up in the traffic jam, playing a game of "will I get a traumatic brain injury" with the universe and just barely winning. With the threat of police arriving becoming clear, her and Vanessa make themselves scarce.

Klayman cuts to the chase and immediately enters the casino, followed shortly by Tarma. 

The main floor of the casino is a desolate portrait of tacky faux-Groman decor combined with hotel beige. On the slots, an old man on oxygen marinates in his piss-soaked stool. At the blackjack table, a pack of middle-aged men with hot dog necks argue drunkenly while their little-leaguer kids sit around bored; the dealer takes their accusations of cheating with a rictus grin, his thin gloves doing their best to keep his sweat off the cards. A waiter, fresh from carrying another tray of the Bread and Circuses special (peanut-flavored beer), chugs a Monster energy on her way back to the kitchen, not even bothering to hide the pistol tucked into the back of her waistband. Dionysus the Liberator, as naked as the day he was born save for his clay mask and wine-dark cloak, hurls handfuls of chips into the air to promote drink specials at the casino's numerous gastropubs. This induces a stampede of people, which freaks Tarma out enough to get him to run to get out of the way- nearly hitting Vanessa at the door.

Klayman, with ten thousand dollars of cash burning a hole in his pocket, follows the waiter into the kitchen to see if he can buy her gun- "what gun," she says, before Klayman feels something slam into his lower back. He lands in a heap on the ground, and notices an empty bottle of soju lying on the floor where there previously wasn't one. Then he notices the big red-faced drunk in a raincoat looming over him, reeking of Bread and Circuses. "It must have been a heart attack," Three Bear says to the oddly pliant bystanders in the kitchen, who all just stand around watching. He picks up Klayman in a fireman's carry and makes for the elevator.

Tarma, meanwhile, is busy pissing off the red-faced dads at the blackjack table. First he insults the performance of their little league kids, which gets things up to yelling and finger-prodding levels, but doesn't escalate to a charge-worthy rage until Tarma curls his scarred lip into a sneer and hits one of them with a slap to the face. Given that he's missing two fingers, it's all palm. A chase ensues in and around the building, and Tarma notices all too late that Klayman is being carried off, unable to stop thanks to the avalanche of angry fat dudes pursuing him like frenzied Maenads.

Two Atlantic City Police officers come swaggering through the steakhouse, fresh off a free meal and on the search for Vanessa after her random assault on the cowboy handing out coupons. Her immediate response is to sprint at them screaming, and when they go for their guns, she goes for both of their guns at the same time. This ends better than you would imagine, in that she manages to grab one gun and isn't immediately shot, but gets a nightstick to the ribs (and a significant charge) for her trouble. When it seems like death is inevitable, Tarma comes running past, leading his angry horde of little league fathers to collide with the officers like stampeding cattle. One officer hits the ground, and the other sees Vanessa point his colleague's gun at his face. After a few tense seconds, she throws the gun into the nearest crowd and runs the opposite direction, losing them both.

Caroline finally enters the casino, and immediately uses her sightline on Three Bear to hit him with a significant blast spell, which he narrowly avoids by ducking into the elevator to break line of sight; he takes no damage, but is forced to leave Klayman behind. The robber and the gambler come together to finally go visit the Toga Bar while the other two members of Level Die are busy fucking around and getting in trouble. The bar is dead even with the DJ and strippers out, but a reserved sign on the central counter calls attention to three cups waiting there. The green glass goblet with the man trapped in a bush is an easily-identified fake, and the silver leaf chalice with elaborate handles is a valuable forgery, but the yellow beaker with a gold base is the real deal. Klayman grabs it, then immediately gains a significant charge because he just made a terrible mistake. Someone else is in the driver's seat of his mind, now- or rather, the saddle, because he's been possessed by the spirit of a Horse Diver who would love nothing more than to leap from a high place one last time.

The best reason to do anything: just to see what happens.

Caroline is more intrigued than disturbed by Klayman's change of behavior, and decides to follow him up to the roof to see what he's going to do. They stop briefly to get some alcohol on the way up, with Klayman bribing a miserable showgirl to empty out her minibar in exchange for a fat wad of cash. May as well have one last drink before one last dive.

Vanessa flees the casino grounds to go disguise herself with whatever tacky tourist clothes she can pick up from the boardwalk, trading out her tank top for a gangster SpongeBob airbrushed t-shirt and he shoes for a pair of flip-flops. Add a pair of sunglasses and a face mask, and the disguise is complete. Tarma slips into the casino to go see the Toga Bar at last, finding only two cups. He pockets the valuable forgery, then asks the bartender if he's seen anybody pass by. The bartender tells him about Caroline and Klayman coming through, then sings the praises of a "Henderson" who provided the cups and is overall just the coolest guy anybody knows. Tarma heads for the elevator, as ready for a showdown with Three Bear as he'll ever be. Vanessa takes another elevator not long after. 

On the roof, Klayman is cagey with Caroline about what he's trying to do up here, handing her the cage cup and insisting she have a drink. When she does, he grabs her by the arms and tries to drag her over the side, only narrowly failing to send both of them falling off like a horse and rider. It is at this point that Three Bear slams the rooftop access door open and nearly hits himself in the process, stinking drunk and ready to take another skull for his collection. In one hand he carries a fire ax with a rich Tyrian purple head, and in the other he holds his significant drinking vessel, a Tibetan-style kapala filled with sloshing wine.

Annoyed at having her fun interrupted, the Horse Diver in Klayman's head makes him hit Three Bear with a significant debuff. Klayman reaches an agreement with the spirit possessing him: he won't resist going over the side if she'll let him use his Magick to survive. Horse Diver agrees- given the choice, she'd prefer the horse survive every time. They jump off. While Tarma jogs in place on the ascending elevator, Klayman uses his Magick to turn a lethal fifteen story drop into a Buster Keaton-esque comical descent through several cloth awnings, stopping scarcely an inch from the ground. With his possessing spirit dispelled, the gambler dusts himself and heads back inside. Caroline, alone with a serial killer, hits him with the significant blast he avoided earlier. ALAS POOR YORICK ALAS ALAS ALAS ALAS ALAS ALAS DEATH POWER DEATH POWER DEATH POWER DEATH POWER DEATH POWER scribes itself across Three Bear's skin, wounding him gruesomely but failing to keep him down. He stumbles and drops his skull cup, but that leaves him with the axe and two hands with which to use it.

Tarma finally comes sprinting up to the roof just in time to intervene, but Three Bear just stops and tells him to "stay out of this," and enchanted by the sorcerously trapped cup he took, Tarma is forced to oblige. He strolls past Vanessa on her way up, not sure why. With nobody to stop him, Three Bear swings his axe right into Caroline's collarbone, and is left holding her head up by the hair by the time Vanessa finally reaches him, admiring his prize. As rain pours down over Caesars Atlantic City, they duel on the rooftop. Vanessa blasts Three Bear with the power she acquired from her failed suicide by cop, burning more Shakespeare quotes into his skin, but a protective amulet on his neck shatters and erases most of it. He drops his axe to pay her blasts back in kind, and the two exchange magickal blows. Still, Three Bear is wounded right out of the gate, and once it seems like victory is impossible, he staggers to the edge with his hand on his heart and falls from the side- right onto an apartment balcony, where he runs inside. Tarma manages to break free of his enchantment just in time to see this happen. Vanessa can't manage to give chase, but Tarma takes up the dropped axe and springs across the penthouse below, through the hallways, and fiy into the stairwell after Three Bear. The skull taker is a killer in combat, but he's more accustomed to attacking than being attacked. When Tarma comes up behind and shoves him down the stairs, both Three Bear and the rolling suitcase he put Caroline's head in go tumbling down two flights of hard concrete. Two Atlantic City Police officers enter the stairwell just in time to see their dear friend "Henderson" crack his skull and die, then look up to see the scar-faced maniac with an axe looking down from a story above. Tarma runs, and with the blind confidence of a man who is determined to leave death in the dust, swan-dives out of a third story window. His magic fails, but his actual athleticism lands him relatively safely in an exotic reptiles stall on the boardwalk. He jogs away, axe in hand, with only cuts and bruises from another scrape with death.

Klayman, not entirely certain of what happened while he was gone, takes an elevator to the roof to see what exactly he missed during his possession fugue. Vanessa stands near the edge, cage cup in hand, ready to throw it off and risk its destruction just to ensure her own survival from the encroaching police presence around the casino. Klayman isn't interested in potentially ruining the cup, the reason he's here, but his attempts to convince her that this is a stupid idea fall on deaf ears. She throws the cup high and dives over the edge, falling fifteen stories to the ground below. The cup arcs down after her, right into Klayman's reaching hand.

The cowboy mascot from earlier, already having a bad day, has his day made significantly worse when Vanessa lands on him, breaking many of his bones and none of hers. With the last bit of defiance he has left for a world that has designated him the loser, he calls out "IT'S HER," to the police and singles out Vanessa with a finger that is now capable of pointing around corners. With all hope lost, Vanessa calls up a disembodied spirit in her mind, surrendering her body in exchange for an escape from the police. Unfortunately, Atlantic City has enough dead mobsters floating around to cast a Scorsese filmography. An Italian-American stereotype with a grudge takes the wheel, and that's the last we see of her.

In spite of two deaths and no shortage of mayhem, Klayman strolls out of the casino with the cage cup in hand, having avoided being connected to the insane crime spree that just occurred. Him and Tarma meet on opposite sides of the hot rod Lincoln. Exchanging nothing but glances, they drive away while gunfire flashes behind them. Half's not bad. After all, it's basically everything if you just round up.

Drink, live well forever.

Special thanks to mellonbread for running.