It was a fair day in August when Samson walked into the small town of Jimena. The people of the town were going along, minding their own business - almost to the point where it seemed like they were ignoring him. It seemed as if everyone were upset over some tragic incident which had occured recently - but Samson had no idea what it was, and was not getting any indication of what it could have been based on the people of the town.
     Samson wandered into a small shop, where the people seemed to be in mourning.
     "What’s going on here," he said, "why is noone in this town speaking to me?"
     The man behind the front counter of the store lifted his head after a long pause, and started speaking. "We are in mourning over the death of my brother. Tragically, he died having not paid many debts, and the people of the town refuse to honor him or bury him until those debts are paid."
     Samson thought about this for a while. "Where’s his body now?"
     "Right now, the body is in his bed, where we found him dead. Because we knew he was not going to be honored and buried, we didn’t bother to move the body."
     "Would it be all right if I took a look?"
     "Well, I guess so." What was the worse that could happen? Nothing.
     Samson ascended the steps up towards the bedroom where the seemingly nameless brother lay dead. He wanted to find out exactly what kinds of debts this man could have accumulated, and why he died at all - the store owner seemed like a young individual, around in his twenties, and so the cause of death could not have been old age, for sure.
     As Samson approached "the third door on the left", as he was instructed, he reached to knock but then remembered the circumstances, and so opened the door. Just as Samson entered the small room, he noticed the body of what seemed to be a young man of about eighteen on the bed. Obviously the entire family had been poor. They didn’t even have the money to pay for a bed sheet or a blanket for the bed.
     Samson looked up and down at the body of the young man, and noticed a large, multi-colored tatoo which wrapped around his leg. He looked okay, but of course, this was not the case. He was, after all, dead. But why? The body was seemingly unscathed. The boy died in his sleep.
     Having given up on finding out how the boy died, Samson decided to find out from the storeowner exactly what kinds of debts the boy had acquired, and from where. This might explain, somehow, why he had died. It was well known that if you wanted to get a message accross to a family, you would rub out one of the family members by poisoning them.
     The store owner was in the same position that he was in when Samson had walked into the store a few minutes beforehand. Samson approached him and said, "Excuse me, sir. Exactly what sort of debts could a young boy such as the one upstairs have?"
     The old man looked up, and said, "The boy never borrowed money from anyone in his life, not in the normal sense. He had a problem, you see. That boy Johnny liked to gamble. Anyway, all of the money he owes, which is quite a lot of money if you ask me, comes from the gambling hall. He owed them about two thousand gold pieces when he died."
     This definitely explained how the boy, Johnny, had died. Samson walked out of the building and headed toward the center of town. He felt that it was his mission to pay the debt for Johnny and therefore see to it that Johnny had a proper burial. Johnny’s soul would never be at rest until he wass buried properly.
     Samson felt his coin pouch, and realized he had only the equivalent of five hundred gold pieces on him. He walked into a pawn shop that he happened upon. The store owner looked at him with disgust. "Yeah, what do you want?"
     Samson reached around his neck, and removed the diamond-embedded gold necklace that had been a gift to him, many years back, as a reward for slaying a two-tone multi-beast which threatened to eat all of the crops of a nearby town..
     "I would like to sell this necklace," said Samson.
     The store owner looked at the necklace, and then looked at Samson with a new interest. "This is quite a necklace you have here. How much do you want for it?"
     "I was thinking two grand."
     "Well, son, I’m sorry to say that you thought wrong, but you did. This necklace isn’t worth a gold coin more than one thousand two hundred."
     "One thousand nine hundred!"
     "One thousand three hundred!"
     "One thousand eight hundred!"
     "One thousand three fifty!"
     "One thousand seven hundred!"
     "One thousand four hundred!"
     "One thousand six hundred!"
     "One thousand five hundred, and I won’t give you any more. If you want more, you can try someone who hasn’t been in the business for thirty years. Try a local idiot."
     "Okay, one thousand five hundred. It’s a deal."
     The storeowner paid the money, in platinum coin tender, and thanked Samson. Samson took the money, and left the store. Now all he had to do was to find the gambling hall, and pay off the debt.
     Walking around town, Samson found out that it wasn’t as easy to find a place in an unknown town as he might have thought. He asked some people walking around, and finally, he managed to get himself to the gambling hall. After asking around, he found the bookkeeper.
     "I’d like to settle the account of a boy named Johnny," Samson yelled, over the sound of all the people who were in the hall yelling about having won, having lost, having the want to go to the town brothel, etc.
     The hall grew very quiet. The bookkeeper stared intensely at Samson and said, "Did you just say that you wanted to pay off Johnny’s debt?"
     "Yes, I want to pay off Johnny’s debt. Here it is, two thousand gold pieces, in platinum."
     The bookkeeper, and the rest of the hall, watched in shock as Samson took two thousand gold coins, in platinum pieces, and placed them on the table. The bookkeeper opened up his accounting book and erased Johnny’s name from the book.
     "Just give me the page with Johnny’s account on it," Samson said. Johnny was dead, after all, and would not need it. The man tore the page out of the book and gave it to Samson.
     Samson went back to the store where he had first found out about Johnny, and told the storeowner that the debt had been payed off, in full. The store owner stared in disbelief, but Samson showed him the page of the account, and it was truly that of Johnny.
     A few days later, at the town cemetery, Johnny was given the burial he was due.
     Samson decided he had experienced enough in this town. He was now completely broke, and needed to get money somehow. The best way, of course, was to go out into the wilderness and to fight a few rich trolls that lived up on the hills. His other option was to seek out a quest of some sort. Samson wasn’t expecting any compensation for what he had just done : he did it out of honor, and respect to the need that any man has, to be buried upon death.
     As he walked towards the great wilderness, and great it was indeed (spanning many miles in all directions), Samson was stopped by a cloaked figure. "Wait. You must return to the gambling hall. You left something there. Come with me."
     Samson accompanied the cloaked man to the gambling hall. When they got there, Samson turned to him and said, "What did I forget here? I don’t remember forgetting anything." He grinned. One doesn’t usually remember forgetting something.
     The cloaked figure turned towards Samson. "Take these platinum coins, and bet them all on the roulette wheel, number twelve red."
     Before Samson could ask him why, the cloaked figure placed ten platinum coins in his hand, which was an equivilant to one thousand gold pieces. Samson wondered what was going on, but walked over towards the roulette wheel. "Any other bets?" the man running the wheel asked.
     Samson put all ten platinum pieces on red twelve. Red twelve was a special number. Unlike all the other numbers, which had several duplicates around the wheel, there was only one red twelve. It returned a thousand times what the person had put on. Therefore, if he won this, he would get a million gold coins!
     The other gamblers looked at Samson as if he were an idiot.
     "Twelve RED!"
     Samson had won! The table operator gave Samson a slip of paper and told him to go to the bookkeeper. Samson went over to the bookkeeper, gave him the slip, and was given a large bag filled with platinum pieces. It was one million gold pieces worth.
     Samson started to walk towards the cloaked figure. As he approached him, to ask him how he knew to bet on the right number, the cloak figure turned away. Samson called out for him, but he would not stop. Walking outside, a breeze lifted up the cloak a little, and Samson noticed a very familiar tattoo around the leg of the cloaked figure.

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