Halt shuffled all the game pieces that Crowley had nearly shoved off the table back on to the board. The first things Crowley picked up were the cards, which he passed down to Gilan, who was still on the floor.
"Spilt up the cards for me? There are People, Item, and Room Cards."
"Okay." Gilan said, shuffling the cards loosely in his hands before he began throwing them into three loose piles.
"Will, throw Gilan the envelope with the question mark on the back."
Will picked up the envelope and considered actually throwing it at the tall ranger on the floor, before realising how stupid that would look and handed it to him instead.
"Oh, put your character piece on the square with their name on it. They're also colour coded." Crowley added, almost as an afterthought, as he put his red piece on the red square.
"My character looks like he'd walk very suspiciously." Gilan said, peering over the edge of the table and awkwardly placed his token where it belonged.
"Someone needs to pick one card out of each of the card piles." Crowley said, not looking up from the instructions, which he was flipping rapidly through. "Don't look at them."
Gilan, finishing sorting the cards, gestured for Horace to come over, before offering her one of the card piles, held spread open like he'd seen those magician fellows do. Horace chose three cards as Gilan lifted the piles to him, before slipping them into the Question Mark envelope.
"What do I do with the rest of the cards?" Gilan asked, holding them awkwardly.
"Shuffle them," Crowley said, putting the instructions down, "then hand them to Alyss."
Alyss gracefully accepted the cards from Gilan, who had to stand up (much to his annoyance) and lean over the table to reach, until she realised that she didn't know what to do with them either. She calmly waited for Crowley to stop fiddling with his character piece, and, when he did, he turned to her and said, "Oh yeah, start with Horace and go around the table, deal everyone a card until you run out of cards."
As she did, Will reached to peek at his cards, but Halt slapped his hand from across the table.
"It's rude to touch your cards while the dealer is dealing." Halt frowned. "It's considered cheating."
Will looked at him with a since when did you care about being rude look. Halt ignored him.
"Okay." Crowley smiled. "Now we're ready to start."
