Placing Prophesies

In the Bounty Kingdom taking bets is often forbidden, and those who do so risk pillory and imprisonment. To overcome this minor setback, the Knaves of Penumbria have come up with a solution that has spread through the Kingdom like wildfire. They don’t take bets: they make prophecies.

Placing prophecies is an optional way for Knaves to scrape together a few extra coins during a job. A prophecy is a prediction of something that will happen either before evening or on the following days, expressed in such a way as to be enigmatic and evocative, or not easily understood at the time it is placed.

Any prophet/gambler can place his prophecy with an oracle/ bookmaker, along with a stake, and collect the win if his prophecy comes true. The Cupola of the Criminese Dons, and the Malavita in particular, control the entire turnover of Penumbrian prophecies.

First, the Knave must find someone who takes prophecies: there aren’t many bookmakers outside Penumbria. Usually, they hang out in a few specialized dives or the most infamous districts of major cities in the Kingdom.

Once you find someone to place it with, your prophecy must be formulated. Each prophecy must contain:

• the verifiable time and place of its fulfillment (for example, “by evening, in Market Square…”); prophecies that are difficult or impossible to verify will either be rejected, or an extra cost will be added to the bet.
• 1 to 4 enigmatic elements, each formulated in a precise sentence. Each element must be cryptic in formulation, but its meaning must become clear when it is fulfilled. For each enigmatic element of the prophecy, the share of the prophecy will double the stake in a win, up to a maximum of 4 elements (x16).

Prophet’s Etiquette

On pain of being decreed invalid, prophecies are subject to very stringent rules of conduct, since ensuing discussions could lead to bloodshed...

• Each element of the prophecy must be enigmatic and symbolic; masks, shape-shifting, and disguises are not valid. For example, if you place the following prophecy: “Tomorrow at dawn a White Horse will fly across the sky over the city”, whatever zooms across the sky cannot be a real white horse, or the prophecy will not be valid. And it can’t be a flying something-or-other disguised as a horse, but it can be a white dragon that someone is riding.
• Depending on how simple or illogical the prophecy may seem, the oracle may also increase or decrease the stake’s percentage.
• The prophecy must come true in an indisputable manner, with all its symbols finally understood. When a prophecy is correctly fulfilled, to avoid being accused of fraud by other Knaves, no oracle must ever refuse to pay the agreed stake.

You cannot place multiple identical prophecies with different oracles, and you cannot place another prophecy before the previous one has been fulfilled or disavowed.