Death's Table

## Overview

Death's table is a location in the Mojave desert of Nevada. It is enclosed within an abandoned casine with the faded letters, "Desert Casino of the Hearth," with letters faded to spell, "death".

## Discovery

### Initial Discovery

Jules Klein and Cassidy Williams, after Jules' recovery from Acemodonian Dissent, ventured into the desert to rediscover the facility within which Jules Klein exited out of the Lexicon. She and her colleague from the Klein Institute of the Unknown found the casino after two days searching. The Casino was dilapidated, in ruin and disrepair but was still shelter from the extreme heat of the desert in July. The casino was, in the words of Jules Klein:

> We approached it - it was stark compared to the land around it. The paint, though sunscared, stood green, in direct opposition to the landscape around it. The wind blew into its walls, biting it, yet never managing any damage. It stood out of the ground suddenly - seemingly giving no physical warning of its presence, without a parking lot or any sort of surrounding organizational structure. Inside, the air was frozen, frosty and filled with despair. As we wandered the huge expanses of broken playing tables and slot machines and stained old carpet, there seemed always to be a sort of a life to the place. A totally dead place would have sat there still, but wherever we found a hole in the ceiling for the sun to peek through, it illuminated a column of dust stirred from its resting place on the tables.
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--Jules Klein, Insanity's Plea
The casino was estimated to be nearly one hundred thousand square feet, spread out over two stories. The second story was a maze of violently place corridors with hotel rooms strewn about, the apparently-dead bodies of their former inhabitants still lying within them. The bottom floor was mostly one large playing floor with upwards of three hundred playing tables, alongside dried fountains, restaurants and a theatre seating seven hundred. But there was a final room that Jules Klein and her colleague found only after searching all the rest. In the back left corner of the casino rested an old wooden door, its hinges rusted but silent. Jules Klein describes the encounter in *Insanity's Plea:*

> "The door was old - older than the rest of the casino and I recognized it as the door I'd come from when exiting the Lexicon. But the symbol I remember so horribly was gone. Inside was a playing table no different from all the rest in the casino - covered in a layer of dust half an inch thick, a dull gray green, with polished, if ancient, wooden supports. A seemingly-frozen ash tray say near the center of the strangely-shaped table. It seemed to be designed to fit one on its far end, as it tapered to a head no more than two and a half feet wide, and on the other end seemed to be prepared for two to sit, with almost double the space allowed. The sides of the table not designed for people to sit were covered by small blocks of polished gray wood, seeming to block anyone playing from there. Cassidy and I took our seats on our end of the table - no one else was in that room."
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--Jules Klein, *Insanity's Plea*
Jules is describing a sort of table that has never been made on a larger scale than on a custom request-demand basis. In *Insanity's Plea*, she draws the table from above, displaying it as a trapezoid, the legs of which were builts so that no one might play at them. With two stools at their end and one at the other, each empty, Jules and Cassidy sat. Jules continues:

> "We had sat there for perhaps an hour - warming ourselves and discussing normal things when we locked eyes. The moment was one of horror as we both felt the presence across the table. We turned in sync, seeing the cloaked and hooded figure that sat across from us. Its black cloak covered all its body, but I couldn't shake the feeling that beneath the cloak he was only bones. He sat there moving as if in a mocking breath; he was pretending to breathe. Cassidy and I sat there staring at him in stunned silence while he shuddered there. He brought his hands slowly from below the table, letting two boned hands reach out from beneath his cloak - in his right hand there rested a deck of cards - worn, almost leather in their appearance. On the back of each was an ex pressed into flesh of the card. He spoke to us, telling us that he'd like to play a game, to try any of the card games we knew. My immediate response was to tell him that I wouldn't put my life on the line - Cassidy agreed. But the creature let us know, while we trembled in our stools, that we could play a game for fun, if we wished. We obliged. I can tell you that you've never seen such dextrous movement as in a hand as old as the end of life shufflinf a pack of thin leather cards. Such flourishes and flutters did fly that I lost some of my edge. We played a game that I did not know, but seemed simple enough. He won the first three games but then Cassidy ran away with it - Death was proud to have taught her so well and bid us leave with a small box each. Upon questioning it about its powers, we were told that he controls who lives and who dies, and for how long those states last."
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--Jules Klein, *Insanity's Plea*

## Theoretical Uses

Miranda Ann - It is thought that Jonathon Baker played a hand at Death's Table for his lover's life. He was granted, not only her life, but also her immortal undeath and the powers of a *Lich.* It is noted that the casino gave Jules Klein subjective reason to believe that Death's Table is connected somehow to Shadowy Dissent.