A lovely piece done by  rubbersmith won in an raffle. Thanks again to them!



Feron watched carefully over the top of his cards, his eyes narrowed as he watched his two opponents. The three had gotten lucky stumbling across this derelict ship while out searching for salvage, and for some reason had decided that a friendly poker match would be a good way to decide how to split whatever profit they made, before they even explored it. So a small table had been set up on the old deck, and the game was on. Things were starting to get rather intense, though, given what each thought the vessel could be worth. At the moment, they were all fairly even, with Leo trailing just a bit behind.

His two opponents laid their hands on the table, and Feron grinned, throwing his down. "Read 'em and weep, boys!" he laughed. The pot was his! His opponents stared at him in horror as he scooped in the pot, giving him 70% of the future profits. He heard them shifting around as he collected his winnings, his attention solely focused on the little plastic chips. When he looked up however, his two crew mates were running with their backs to him, sprinting back towards their ship as one of the chairs tipped over and fell. His mouth opened in surprise, before he shouted after them: "Hey! Where are you going?!"

Then he heard it, a pair of heavy footfalls behind him. He slowly turned in his seat, his eyes widening, mouth gaping open as his head tilted up towards the massive beast that stared down at him. The gray quadruped looked back at him with an eyeless face, saliva drooling from its mouth as Feron tried to cram his terror down. The beast slowly opened its massive maw, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth. "Room for one more?" came the rumbling, baritone voice, making the poor kobold fall backwards out of his chair.

---

An hour later, the kobold stared in disbelief at the evident card shark sitting across from him. The eyeless creature wore a wide grin... and Feron's bandanna that he had lost in the game.

"I don't believe it!" he exclaimed, throwing yet another losing hand down in exaggeration. "I lost the salvage, the ship, even my clothes! How the heck did you get so good at poker?!" he grumped at the thing. It didn't even have thumbs!

"Lots of free time" the beast rumbled with a grin, the crew's new captain scooping up his winnings, and getting up from the table. "Now, I believe we have a galaxy to see!"