"I'll come for Mao but I don't want to gamble mana, seems risky with all the maleficers in our year for some reason. Besides, I still owe Suze interest and the point is to wind up with more than I started with, isn't it?"

Marcy approaches the table, takes a second to make sure that what's about to come out of her mouth is correct English rather than broken German, and says, "Hi! Is this where extremely difficult card games are happening?"

"That's the plan! I think we probably shouldn't do gambling ones? Not till we can all buy in with snack bar tokens or something."

"A respectable preference! Mao it is." They will likely need to hunt a bit for an appropriate nook, unless anyone has the enclave-clout to share a reading room or coveted library corner. Does Boston want in, perhaps? 

"Sure, we can use our and Philly's reading room."

Julian is – still there, actually, putting the finishing touches on his essay. "Oh, sorry, was I supposed to leave?" 

"Hi Julian, we're going to play Mao and see how it is for mana-building." She does not opine on whether he's supposed to have left, it's not her room.

"Want to join in?" She hopes he does, because then she'll look a bit less silly for starting something else before her essay is done.

"Sure!" Which hopefully makes it a bit less awkward that he totally zoned out and finished his essay after his host left. 

"Awesome." She plunks back into her same chair from earlier because why not. "So, how does one play this 'Mao'?"

"Well, that's half the fun, see. Quote, 'the only rule you may be told is this one.'" With that cryptic warning, he starts shuffling cards. 

"...huh."

A game where you figure out the rules by observation? Interesting. It does sound like the sort of intellectual activity that could build mana. It might also be useful practice for learning spells, in a very abstract way.

Theun is also still in the room, though currently he's in the corner meditating. Who knows how long that will last - resisting getting drawn out of meditation by amusement is an unfamiliar challenge. He's already anticipating the chaos, but trying to stay out of it and keep building mana.

Alexius flips over the top card of the deck (two of spades), deals three cards to each player, and declares, "This game of Mao has officially begun." 

Bella: two of hearts, three of hearts, eight of spades. 

Marcy: jack of hearts, queen of hearts, six of clubs. 

Julian: ten of spades, three of diamonds, nine of diamonds. 

Alexius: four of spades, two of diamonds, queen of diamonds. 

He'll watch for mals at the same time since he isn't desperately trying to figure out rules. 

Marcy waits to pick up her cards until she sees someone else do it with no consequences.

Bella picks up her cards, looks through them, arranges them numerically with the eight on the left, watches Alexius. (Concentrates on her ruby.)

Alexius does not react to either Bella or Marcy. Man, if only he could find an excuse to penalize Julian for picking up his cards last...

He does, however, pick up his cards. 

Marcy picks up her own cards and keeps staring at Alexius staring at them.

Marcy wants to do something and see what happens, which means that her continued motionless staring is getting her mana.

Eventually Bella tries putting the two of hearts down.

Miraculously, this does not incur the wrath of the dealer! Alexius continues staring. This is fun. 

Marcy doesn't have any twos, and this game could totally be designed to follow the exact opposite of normal card game patterns, which she barely knows anyway because when would she have had time to learn card games. Still, at some point you have to experiment. Queen of hearts?

Huh. Two correct guesses. Except..."Penalty. Give the lady of the night her due." Alexius deals Marcy a queen of clubs. 

Marcy nods and puts the card in her hand.

And after a suitably long expectant pause..."Penalty. Failure to thank the dealer." Now Marcy has two queens and a king of hearts. 

Long expectant pause. 

"Thank you."

Man, who knew torturing people could be so fun. Pity he can't malefice or he'd be a shoe-in for evil cackling warlock. 

Hmm, will Julian catch that it's his turn?

At 'thank the dealer', Theun stifles a giggle. Well, adding insult to injury is certainly on-brand for Mao.

Lily is a little late finding the room, but it looks like she's not too behind. She steps in and waves to Alexius. Is there a spare chair?

There certainly is! Alexius waves back and gestures to a chair but does not say hello because Rules. 

She takes a seat.

So many people not shunning him for potion mistakes! It's frankly astounding. He's not complaining in the slightest, though.