Ace

"Stop cheating!" the dealer told the card player. "I'm not!" claimed the player. "You must be," said the dealer. "That is not the hand that I dealt you."

**True Name:** unknown

**Path:** Acanthus

**Order:** Apostate

**Cabal:** The Hanged-Man

**Appearance:** Despite a few laugh lines and silver hairs, she still appears youthful, and her age is hard to pin down. She isn't prone to tipping her hand in the matter either, not when a merry laugh will serve. Her frame is usually trim, but her hips are beginning to hint at her love of the local cuisine. Her deep brown eyes and long black hair would be unremarkable enough, if they weren't topped by an unmistakable cowgirl hat. She speaks several languages, and her accent trips as merrily from place to place as she does.

*"Luck's a fickle bitch, who'll love ya and leave ya before y'c'n finish bragging 'bout baggin' 'er. Luck's a lady, sure, but no lady likes bein' taken for granted. Any fool sap c'n beat the odds once, but th' odds 'r always stacked in favor of th' house. Play any of their games long enough, and th' house always wins. Naw, there's no fun in jus' gettin' lucky. (leaning in) Th' fun's in cheatin' th' system. Count th' cards, stack th' deck, pit your wits against th' odds an'* *outsmart th' house - now* that's *a game worth playin'! Don't rely on Lady Luck; listen for Mr. Opportunity to knock on your door an' take* him *f'r a spin. (leaning back) We're all gamblers. Life's a gamble. Which game are you playin'?"*

*"Full house."*

As Ace will admit readily enough, her weather-worn clothes are testament to how she arrived in Venice: she walked. As far as anyone can tell, Ace has been hitchhiking and backpacking through western Europe for years. She can always trust Fate to find an interesting place to be, she says, and most times that's all she needs. Everything she owns fits in one battered pack, including the Peacemaker she picked up on a long-forgotten World War II battlefield. That Colt .45 now resides on the bottom of a canal following a battle with Seers, but Ace is intent on recovering the gun, with a bit of help from Space and Fate.

Ace is a crack shot, but profoundly uncomfortable with the thought of taking human life. While she admits the theoretical necessity of it at times, she prefers to view it as a last resort. Most times, there is another option. This principled stance (innocence? naivete?) has made her the conscience of The Hanging-Man cabal, a conscience they sorely need. Of course, it could well be that she has maintained this view only by not sticking around long enough in any one place to need to fight. She has killed for the first time in Venice, and, though remorseful, the odds are good that if she sticks around long enough, she'll have to kill again.

Ace makes her living in Venice as a tour guide. As out of place as her cowboy hat may be, it does ensure that she's easy to find in a crowd. Her European ramblings have given her a fair grasp of German, Spanish, and French, as well as Italian and her native English, which serves her well in finding customers. A tour a la Ace may not be conventional, but it is always interesting. Her Acanthus charm also serves her well; it's not the first time she has odd-jobbed while traveling, and she doesn't expect it to be the last. Wherever possible, she prefers to use her shadow name among Sleepers as well. It's a simple enough nickname, and her personality (and a few hands of poker) are enough to win over most who might question it.

Gregarious by nature but secretive about details of her past by necessity, there is one intensely personal story Ace seldom hesitates to share: her Awakening.

As she tells it, she was in a Vegas casino, playing in the semi-finals of one of the first poker tournaments to catch the rising wave of popularity. Suddenly, her vision shifted: instead of looking at people and tables and cards, she was looking at probabilities. If you remember Neo's epiphany in the Matrix, with 100:1 and 543,325:1 replacing 1's and 0's, you'll have the idea. The whole world seemed made of probabilities stacked on probabilities, constantly flickering and changing, and hidden by a thin veneer of skin and felt from all eyes save hers.

Reading the odds, Ace *knew* that she could win the tournament. She could ride this new talent to victory. She also knew that the moment was fleeting; the epiphany could never last. If she followed her sight to a win at the table now, she would lose her chance at something...more. She would be trading away a Great Mystery, indefinably precious and rare, for a mere fortune in cold cash. No one who knows the Acanthus will be surprised to hear that, without hesitation, she threw her next hand, and walked away from the table stone broke. To all appearances "dazed" by her sudden, catastrophic loss, she wandered away, following the odds.

Casino patrons saw a drunk, shell-shocked, bankrupt player, but Ace wondered through a fantasy land where castles of ifs and maybes were built and crumbled on a single roll of the dice, and sweeping turns in fortune flashed fairy bright. Cascades of consequences scuttled swift as spiders on grand cobweb threads that connected all, and questing knights were torn ragged by the innumerable, inexorable thorns of weighted odds that mounted high above them like enchanted briars guarding the tower and treasure they sought. And all of it was composed entirely of shining probabilities.

Ace sought a path between the thorny odds, and they let her pass. She ignored the banquet spread to tempt her into a trap of indulgence, and ascended a hill where the allure of intriguing encounters called with the seduction of fairy princes, and desperation howled like voices on the wind. She climbed until she reached the base of a tower, where, for the first time, she paused.

This, she knew, required more than following a whim. This required her to commit to insanity, and if all this glory was a schizophrenic break or a spiked margarita, committing might damn her mind forever. This was "all in," and the point of no return. But she found the courage to knock, and called to the porter. To enter the silver tower of all possibilities, she would need her name. She pulled her name from her pocket, took one last long look at the truth and symbol of all she was, and fed it though the door...

...falling straight into the all-too-mundane arms of the surprised woman whose top-floor suite she had just entered by picking the door lock with a credit card. The card reader on the lock turned out to be malfunctioning, (and what were the odds against that happening?) Fortunately, (and isn't that how it goes for an Acanthus?) the woman was an Acanthus herself, and recognized the signs of a fresh Awakening. If Briar Rose had read the Loom of Fate to be here at this moment, she never would say, but she immediately took the drifter in as her apprentice.

Someone who pays close attention to Ace when she discusses magic or Fate may notice an odd dichotomy. Occasionally, amidst all the talk of odds and probability, in will slip the vocabulary of threads and weaving. Ace herself typically does not notice the slip, but it is evidence of her first instructor in the Ars Magica. Briar Rose was full of the usual Arcadian imagery, but Ace felt constrained by the notion of Fate as predestination. She preferred a model drawn on quantum physics and uncertainty principles: likelihoods without certainties, unknowable until observed, and changed by the very act of observation. This difference in paradigm eventually grew to separate the pair, although it is likely that the peripatetic Ace would have left eventually in any case.

An inveterate gambler, Ace is genuinely unafraid to lose big, at the table or at life. But she doesn't bet blind. To her, relying on dumb luck is, well, dumb, even for a Fate mage. The real thrill is in outwitting the odds, not winning the probability lottery. To that end, any skill that helps her read or manipulate the odds is fair game - from a card sharp's eye, to a con man's nimble fingers and tongue, even Fate magic. In her eyes, using Fate to outwit Sleepers is no more "cheating" than bluffing a rookie player too green to know better. And, of course, against "the house," the gloves are off.

Still, in keeping with her high Wisdom, Ace is too kind-hearted to bleed any one victim too badly over small stakes. If she's got a meal and a place to lay her head, and maybe a few Euros for a new shirt or a train ticket, she has all she needs. This lack of greed may well be what has kept Fate from inflicting the usual backlash against those who abuse its powers. Ace can win 100 Euros from an arrogant hostel bunk-mate one moment, and drop it all in the cup of a homeless woman the next. As with many Acanthus, it's easy come, easy go for this easy-going gambler.

*"This uh, this card game is a kid's game. Oh yes, yes. I wouldn't waste my time. Where I'm from, they play a real game. Of course, the cards are different, but not too different. The name of the game is called 'Fizbin.' Are you in?"*