“It does now...” She paused and lowered her hands. “Wait, Carl?” She burst out laughing. “If you’re planning on intimidating the guards, maybe you shouldn’t be the one leading the charge.” She looked me up and down. “This would be strangely adorable if half the club didn’t die every time you guys entered.”
“It’s even more embarrassing for us,” muttered Donut.
Clarabelle eyed Samantha, who was currently zipping around Louis, whispering in his ear. Her attention then turned to Lucia, who stood in the back. Lucia was now chewing on her nail, looking back and forth nervously, and I knew someone else was in charge of her body.
“Some of you are permanently banned,” Clarabelle said. “And a couple of you don’t even have a pass. The guards aren’t going to like that too much.”
“Oh, honey, we’ll take our chances. Won’t we, Louis?” Samantha said. “This is our favorite club.”
I didn’t respond as I pushed through the door.
Entering the Desperado Club.
The thirty of us moved in. The music blared, but it wasn’t the EDM beat it used to be. Instead, this was more of a frenetic jazz. In one corner, an entire band played. They were an eclectic mix of races, from a Naga drummer to a cretin upright bassist to a succubus singer woman wearing a cowboy hat. The rest of the band featured a guitarist, a drummer, a pianist, and multiple horn players who all bopped to the beat. All around, a group of NPCs in what appeared to be 1920s gear danced.
The generated NPCs were all different. They’d once been mostly young, mostly attractive humans and elves and other similar races. But now it was a strange mix of the monstrous, sitting at individual tables and dancing on the small redesigned dance floor. Smoke filled the room. They all looked up at our entrance.
There were multiple guards. It was no longer cretins and gnolls, though there were some mixed in the crowd of security personnel. This was mostly a mix of orcs and hobgoblins and trolls, monsters similar to those sitting at the tables but larger.
The guards all moved to block our path. Soon, we were surrounded by guards, though we outnumbered them.
Chris stepped forward. He held up a hand.
“Hi, Clay,” Chris said, looking at a cretin standing in the back of the crowd. This was the bass player from the band, and he’d put his instrument down at our entrance and stepped forward. The band continued to play without him, but the sound now fell into the background.
The cretin pushed past the guards and looked Chris up and down. “You different.”
Chris held out his arms. “I’m a werewolf now.”
“LikeAltered Beast,” Clay-ton said.
Next to me, Donut gasped. “Oh my god. Hi, Clay-ton!” She gasped again. “Wait, how did you get here? Are Sledgie and Bomo and Very Sullen here?”
The cretin shook his head. “No. Contract ran out. I don’t know where they is. I said I no more want to fight, and they let me be in band.” He turned to the other guards. “But I will fight today. Chris and Donut and friends pass. If you stop them, you stop me.”
“Yo, Clay? You need backup?” This came from the succubus in the cowboy hat behind the microphone.
“Maybe,” Clay-ton said.
The guards all looked at each other, confused.
“Hamed will kill us,” said one of the guards, a level 65 troll named Klonder.
“They are crawlers, and it’s tenth floor. If you try to stop them, they kill you,” replied Clay-ton. “I work as guard a very long time. Late-stage crawlers you don’t try to stop.”
Klonder looked back at his fellow guards, and he took a step back. He bowed to Chris. “Welcome to the Desperado Club.”
The casino was through the same door it always had been, but once we pushed inside, it was completely changed. The games themselves looked mostly the same, but the room now seemed a little more high-end than it was before. Strange gold leaf coated everything. Several murals covered the walls. The largest mural stood in the back, and it, strangely, showed a family of Bopcas standing in front of a mushroom house. The painting featured a Bopca couple, and the woman was clearly pregnant, but she also held a tiny swaddled baby. Just past them were dozens more similar families. They all cowered as they looked up in the sky. While the painting was ornate and well-done, it was completely out of place. The other murals featured random wartime scenes, mostly featuring orcs and Crocodilians. It was all very strange.
Everything was much fancier since the remodel. The decorative stairwell to the lower casino floor remained open, and even the balustrade appeared expertly carved. Multiple glittering chandeliers hung from the ceiling.
There was much more furniture in the room, almost like they’d cleared out another room and were storing things here. A line of antique-looking chairs took up an entire wall. A group of tables with no games on them stood in a line.
The croupier behind the Wheel of Fortune game was not the same guy as last time, though he looked as if he could have been that guy’s bigger and meaner brother. The simple table from before was now wide and long, made of some dark wood covered with gold leaf. Gargoyle-like patterns were etched along the sides. The wheel itself appeared unchanged, and it looked out of place in the room.
The description of the croupier was strange.
Mitch Fiorelli. Level 120. Desperado Club Wheel of Fortune Croupier.