Novelty Dicemaker

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> NOVELTY DICEMAKER – It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...
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The **Novelty Dicemaker** or **Neha** is a character in *Disco Elysium*.

## Background

A jeweler and master craftswoman plying her trade out of the converted heating furnace chimney of the Doomed Commercial Area (DCA), the Dicemaker, as her name suggests, makes a living by creating custom dice out of special materials for the roleplayers of Elysium. She deliberately chose this business, as it had far less competition than usual jewelry. She also dislikes jewelers, after her first venture, a small jewelry shop, floundered at the DCA within a year. She made a small mourning ring to commemorate it and the loss of her inheritance, then tried again and again.

She is one of the only successful merchants to survive the DCA. This may be because her residence is actually the chimney of an old coal plant, which had a different address when it was built before it was repurposed as part of Rue de Saint-Ghislaine 10, and thus is not technically part of the DCA. Or she just chose a lucrative market sector, with motivated clients and enough money to spare on trinkets like custom dice. Either way, she's been doing it for 14 years and it gave her a safe, secure source of income.

She has a habit of listening to the radio while she works. It passes the time, but the headphones drown out all other noises, so she's prone to just drifting away and staring out the window into the Whirling-in-Rags' back yard.

## Interactions

* Meeting the Novelty Dicemaker is required to complete the Investigate Doomed Commercial Area task for Plaisance. She is located on the top floor, behind a security shutter. To get through it, you have to venture all the way down to the basement and interact with the heating furnace, then bellow into it (a Physical Instrument check). Startled, she will open the shutter and invite you in.
* Meeting her allows you to mention her to Plaisance and blame the curse on her (or not). Talking with Neha will result in her pointing out that the failure of the businesses at DCA is most likely due to market forces and capitalism, not some odd curse. Either way, this completes the task to Investigate Doomed Commercial Area.
	+ Completing the investigation leads to a Legendary 14 Shivers White check, allowing you to feel for why her business hasn't failed. Failing the test will lead to Harry trying to take off his pants, prompting reactions of horror and disbelief from both Kim and Nehma. Passing it will allow you to realize the reason she hasn't failed in her venture: The smokestack is *not* the DCA, but part of an old coal plant, whose smokestack was repurposed as chimney for the DCA's heating furnace.
	+ She will disagree, offering her view: That it's not a curse, but simply the effect of a precarious world we inhabit. This will unlock The Precarious World thought.
	+ After helping Soona Luukanen-Kilde discover the two-millimetre hole in the world, you can come tell Neha about it. This gives her a distinctly dimmer outlook on whether or not the DCA (and Martinaise and the world at large) is doomed.
* She can offer a bit of information about the lynching, but due to her limited view of the backyard, it's only a small part of the puzzle.
* She will also offer a breakdown of the fates of the businesses here.
* The Dicemaker can take a commission for a dice set from Harry, for ✤ 7.00 or ✤ 10.00. Purchasing a die requires waiting for several hours and can only be done once, but it will reopen white checks (this starts the task called Pick up dice from the Dicemaker). Available dice are:
	+ Standard Wirrâl Die
	+ Standard Anti-Wirrâl Die
	+ Cursed Iilmaraan Die
	+ Amber Die With a Mosquito
	+ Icosahedral Dice Set Sirens (Icosahedral Red Die with failed Hand-Eye Coordination check. These are available without waiting and do not count against the dice order limit.)
	+ The Magnetic Dice Set

## Behind the scenes

* The Novelty Dicemaker's portrait may have been based on the real-life oil painting 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer.