SPOILER What (The Major Arcana Of) A Wynn Tarot Might Look Like

Spoilers. All of the spoilers. Every single one.

I went absolutely buck-wild in a discord server for five hours describing a theoretical Wynn Tarot. I do not possess the art skills to make an actual Wynn Tarot. In lieu of that hypothetical killer Your Work post, here is my tirade, near-verbatim:

0 The Fool: The Hero of Wynn
...gonna be a riff on the shot from the website. It's got a lot of symbolism already baked-into it, and also has a vague resemblance to the RWS version, so that's always good.

The things I'd change about it are:
- ditch the spear, and cape,
- add an oak wood stick model slung across the player's back
- make the armor visibly the Morph Set

The stick is a classic tarot tool of realization, and Morph as the placeholder set for a player that's not yet begun to explore their final shape is a wonderful thought. Instead of the midday shot of the site, the sun is just beginning to rise behind the mountains.

I was thinking of putting the Talking Mushroom up in here, but that dude'll get his own entire card so -

I The Magician: Amadel
I mean, who else? Mans literally draws power from four primal elemental crystals in order to reshape the world in his preferred image.

Or, rather, he's about to, interrupted only by the events of the story. Frozen forever in that state of potential.

In his portrait, Amadel reaches for the cosmos in order to gain dominion over the world below him, and you can interpret "the cosmos" as either the literal cosmos or the influence of the Dern Beast - either one works.

His card's illustration would be the moment he begins his "apotheosis," the crystals beneath him, the world in one hand, and in the other a black & white rod with a connection of red in the middle.
In a second set of arms below, he would hold a chalice overflowing with blood in a third hand, and in his final hand a blade, representing WynnEx.

II The High Priestess: Ava
Mfers love her, but she's also got a lot of good symbolic reasons to make it onto the Major Arcana.

(no Maxie did not make it onto the major arcana, though i wanna try and see if i can fit him to a face card)

The realization of the will to create and change, she's both literally and symbolically set in opposition to the hierophant in this (hypothetical) deck.

She stands between a totem of the avos and a corkian drill. she and these two objects are backed by a brick wall beginning to crack, perhaps even collapse.

III The Empress: Qira
A slightly darker take on the Empress than usual, but I think it fits.

Qira stands in her hive surrounded and empowered by her creations. Absolute dominion over her domain, which exerts her influence across all of Gavel.

A side view watches as she sits upon a throne in shadow, the majority of (dim, stark) lighting in the frame provided by the thrumming furnace of the Solar Vanguard kneeling before her. He is joined by the rest of the division guardians. The frame is littered with cobwebs, and Qira herself holds the only other source of light in the illustration - a dim, flickering lamp.

IV The Emperor: The Overseer
Yeah well duh. Their shadowed form dominates the card, which otherwise lies in pitch-darkness.

V The Hierophant: Efena
Def the least-major character to make it onto the major arcana, but she was picked because of how perfectly she fit the role.

Her card is a mirror of Ava's, though unlike the former (who stands) she sits upon her presidential throne within the council chambers of Corkus. The wall behind her is the same brick-pattern cracking apart. While Ava's card had the bricks cracking in a uniform manner, Efena's wall is cracking from left-to-right.
Massive, uncontrolled plant growth invades the chambers from that left side, completely shattering one of the pillars flanking her throne. The other remains stately and pristine - for now.

VI The Lovers: Gale & Ohms
Gale lies ascendant and translucent, dominating the frame. The card doesn't even begin to try and contain the massive, spectral, angelic wings sprouting from her back, which is turned to the viewpoint.

An outpouring of light, she shines forward, banishing an inky black darkness before her. the negative space between the rays of light she casts resemble a spider, though what lies at the center is blocked by Gale's light.

She's not looking at that, though. Her neck is bent as if she's beginning to look over her shoulder, towards the nearside of the frame, where in her shadow of light lies a simple grave.

VII The Chariot: Siegfried
This and the next might raise some questions. They were both kind of a stretch, this one more-so than Strength.

All who have played The Hero of Gavel know that Siegfried is a fraud.

However, in the end, Siegfried is a symbol of the Gavellian people's victory over injustice and cruelty. He represents the ability of the Republic to triumph over seeming (or even literal) impossibilities, yet at the same time embodies the comfort and stagnation that the very same republic has fallen into.

Though Siegfired represents an initial triumph for all those who know the creed of An Gavellien - "To Gavel, Glory!", the fight's not over. Not by a long shot. Darkness yet festers in Kander, in Gavel as a whole.

He appears within the card as his statue, a night shot of the monument to the conquering hero. Despite it being at night, the stars offer plenty of light, and the statue is awash in vibrant, energetic colors. In one hand he holds a sword, in the other a rod. Hanging off his shoulders lies a majestic hero's cape in tricolor.

The shadow of the cape and pedestal lightly obscure the pedestal itself, which is carved to on closer inspection look like a pile of corpses.

VIII Strength: Lari
The second of the strange picks.

Though maybe not, if you take the most literal reading of Strength possible? I certainly did.

Which is to say, strength of spirit. Lari's personal devotion to her moral code is in the extreme. It's not a very far-fetched reading to call her the main antagonist of The Realm of Light (Dulla and a third of the playerbase would agree lmao) and this status is entirely due to her completely unshakable convictions.

This does in fact lead to bad things. Her steadfast adherence to her pacifist moral code dooms countless innocents to decay and death.

The lesson she must learn is the trolley problem - when must she be flexible with her will? Yes, it is indomitable, but she must learn when to adapt to her situation in order to live by her principles as truly as she possibly can. Lari currently lives in Strength, but her character - even as of now in canon - is still on a journey.

The card's illustration depicts the moment she failed to kill the parasite. Her serene face as she concentrates on holding it within a cage of light is contrasted with the abject horror upon Dullahan's. The landscape is devastated and warped with both pure influence and corruption, a result of their earlier battle. The parasite is obscured and unreadable, emerging from and remaining mostly within the darkness, completely ignoring the illumination that its cage of light should provide.

IX The Hermit: Old Man Martyn
Martyn stands in full light of day, arms crossed as he looks upon Time Valley. The sun is either rising or setting, judging by the sky, but the sun itself is not visible and the coloration is ambiguous. Time itself is strange here, after all.

X Wheel of Fortune: Talking Mushroom
This guy.

Though he's Wynn's comedic sociopathic bit character, the Wynntheorists who've gazed into the lore long enough have verified that this dude's lore is some of the deepest and craziest stuff in the game.

The Talking Mushroom has been though multiple incredible changes over the course of his life. Not just literally the bit where he ended up a mushroom able to talk, but also his circumstances. This dude has been everywhere, and even after entering our company has followed the Hero of Wynn through all the classic mind-bending madness that a heroic character goes through in a lovecraft-lite story. He has gone from being nearly cooked to complaining about public safety violations to being one of the few who were there on the day of the ancient seer's blinding.

He sits at the center of a really, really abstract representation of the satchel he's currently squatting in, a circle containing a large wallet, a human skull, several mana potions, a few photographs, a bunch of unidentified boxes, and a pair of shears.

Outside the satchel lies a rapid-fire kaleidoscope of scenes from Cinfras, the top of the Eldritch Outlook, Ragni, the Molten Heights, the Sky Islands, and a laboratory.

XI Justice: Axelus
It was either this or Draani, but Axelus was the one fighting from the very, very beginning. Mans a king, deserved better than he got. 10/10 would commit terrorism against the dwarven state with him again.

He lounges upon a seat in the Coalition's secret base, weariness with a hint of rage clouding his face. The seat's clearly not a throne, but the image is framed as if it is one. He wears a bladed crown.

One of his hands is loosely gripping a sword, its point touching the ground. His pillars are out-of-place for the picture, figments of his imagination, one of rock and one of metal. The rocky one has lava seeping out of it, both pillars are on fire.

Despite the weariness of his features, the fire is reflected in his eyes. Behind him, on the wall, there's both his shadow and another coming from the point of the viewer -- Garaheth.

XII The Hanged Man: Bob
This one was rather tricky.

Bob casts such an overwhelming shadow upon the story that not putting him in the Major Arcana would be a massive disservice to one of Wynn's most iconic characters.

Even so, despite his massive influence, he still hasn't shown up in the flesh once in this story, and what little character we have through sheer force of pressure could put him in a lot of different places. My first thought was The World - he would make a nice thematic double with the Hero of Wynn at the Fool, and a large part of Bob's character is that he's already successfully navigated the Hero's Journey. Like, twice.

...but it's very strongly hinted that he's gonna show up. And we still don't know the results of his showdown with the Big Bad, which we'll only presumably learn when we have our showdown. He may even still be alive.

So, instead, I wanted to look at his character through the lens of an ongoing journey. Bob may personally be fully realized, but he's still not completed his life's work. His mentors are long-gone, and though he has not yet attained a final victory he and he alone is left with the tools to achieve it.

Or is he? Lore implications as well as simple narrative sense predict that his life's work will only be able to move forward when the Hero of Wynn (The Fool) reaches him and he can finally resume his journey. Though he has the power, he is still bound to the world.

As with Gale, he appears facing backwards, his hanging form mostly obscured by his kinda-gravity-defying cape, upon which his animal companions are embroidered. Four arms grasp to his one outstretched leg, while the area below him eschews a solid ground in favor of an inky black pit. His five blades float around him.

XIII Death: Veretel
Was a runner-up for Hierophant, but hey, she works here too. Also like the Hierophant, a rather minor character.

I find it very delicious that the change she symbolizes is the road to peace, btw. With her force behind the treaty the majority of the senseless bloodshed of the villager-greenskin wars come to an end, and with them, ideally, can come the death of the equally-senseless prejudice the villagers hold towards any of the greenskinned peoples.

Maybe. Veretel is deadly serious when she reminds you that it is the villagers who began this war, dishonored their treaties, and laid waste to their homes. She explicitly reminds you that a movement towards peace comes more from them (AND YOU) than it does her Orcs.

Great character, great quest.

She is depicted upon her card holding a banner of the four seasons, walking next to the river Sage. The army behind her carries weapons, but they're all sheathed.

XIV Temperance: Seaskipper Captain
(the meme pick, of all of them)
This man's brothers made away with the countless riches of inheritance. This poor sailor got his own boat, I guess? With that small boat, he did some big things, now being worth well over 600 stacks of LE.

He does nothing but sail the same routes day in and day out, occasionally being witness to and later telling the insane stories that one can only pick up out at sea.

He is content.

He is pictured standing upon the deck of his ship in the same default MC villager pose he always has, a serene, inviting expression on his face. The bell is visible behind him, as is the gentle cresting of the waves. It's a bright, sunny day.

XV The Devil: The Nameless Anomaly
Another weird card, but hey, Greg is an interesting twist on the usual Devil formula.

The Nameless' devotion to the material comes from a place perhaps alien to it: its current existence is that of a metaphysical entity, and its current position inside of the Blueshift Archipelago is as to provide it with a vantage point to reach the material. What makes the Nameless interesting is that it represents a sort of reverse-inverse of The Devil as it normally is.

Greg's chains bind it to the deep, and its desperate struggle to attain physicality is a struggle of escape from the oppressive spiritual into the freedom of the material.

It is fully knowledgeable of the realms of influence, the missing half being its understanding of the material, and Greg conquers and destroys only in the name of the greater evil that has so far loomed over six cards of the major arcana, apparently.

Wynn is a cosmic horror.

Anyway, The Nameless is trapped and desperately wants to escape but it can't escape it can't escape

Pictured in its iconic arena-entry stretch pose, the environment of the Blueshift Archipelago is interrupted by a circle of pure pitch black behind it, rimmed in light purple. Countless dark chains emerge from the hole, binding The Nameless at the arms, neck, and multiple spots on its torso.

Countless unidentifiable spirits claw at and do in fact seem to be loosening the chains, while near the ground yet more spirits do battle with an endless swarm of Dernapiens, Repurposed Hosts, and other fleshy horrors with too-wide grins.

Man created the Devil, but not the Deep from whence he came.

XVI The Tower: Bak'al
two-face mfer.

Hey, look, the Dern Beast has been looming over this entire deck despite not appearing once.
They've got an oppressive presence over the story. Their influence has destroyed civilizations, and they're not planning to stop. Indeed, DB is a fantastic BBEG.

Yet there are some who are more afraid of Bak'al.

He began, nearly a thousand years ago, as Just Some Random Guy, his only mark of fame being the first victim of the portal. What returned was more a force of nature than a man. Heading endless armies of the corrupt, his only goal was to burn human civilization to the ground. He's got multiple Wynn Plains world discoveries and two quest sections which are just him making good on that promise.

His only main questline appearence is to barge in at the last moment and make things considerably worse for literally no reason. He works for the Deep, but is clearly planning to backstab it at some point, because above all the only thing that Bak'al serves is himself.

In an ironic twist, the card depicts the Tower at his lowest point. A side view sees him standing atop a crumbling pillar of Ragni's wall, the city burning behind him. A dark spear pierces his chest, Bob's weapon thrown from somewhere outside of frame. Only his dark eye can be seen, its wideness normal but in this situation rather accurately depicting what he'd never allow to show on the rest of his face, even at a time like this.

The Army of the Corrupt, visible in scattered pinprick pockets across the city, are being destroyed by volleys of arrow and magic. The city's defenders rally.

XVII The Star: Garvan
*hefty pause for this man's everything*

The most debatable placement of a character in this entire list, an order of magnitude moreso than Siegfried and Lari.

I want to stay lightly on the spoilers for the second best quest in the game (nothing can compete with Point of No Return), but Garvan's story over the course of Hollow Serenity is of a man desperately trying to reach the point of the Star. He spends centuries trying to attain that point of serenity, but I mean, look at the quest's title. It doesn't exactly work out. He leigt tries to motivate himself by the ideals of kindness, health, and generosity, but in the end he as a person - mentally, morally, physically - is just not enough. He falls prey to the ever-decaying influence of Kander, in both mind and body.

As the story continues, it becomes obvious that at least a seed of that decay was always within him - Garvan is a deeply twisted man. As such, he is represented on the Star with an inverted portrait. The trick of this card is that the way the lighting works is too inverted. He reaches above him for a spotlight of darkness, while beneath him the three Faltachs gasp in horror from his shadow of light. The Dark is studded with a thousand stars of every color, and water drenches him, running towards his head, running a deep, inky black. His face is hooded, but you can make out a slight smile.

XVIII The Moon: Aledar


Here's some text directly from my main reference when it comes to the Tarot. It's AJF and AHC at the same time it's great.
The card is a night scene from the end of A Journey Further, depicting the full moon gazing upon Aledar and the Hero of Wynn as they walk forward towards the gates of the tower. Sacrifice is imminent.

XIX The Sun: Orphion
@Kiocifer already made this card:

Spoiler: The Card

I mean.
Orphion.
The Sun.
There's no deeper meaning here.
I don't think there can be.
The entire point of Orphion is that there isn't.
The Beast of Light is entirely realized, and if it wasn't for a little setback known as The Main Conflict of The Game would be a clincher for The World.
Yeah, good stuff.

XX Judgement: Ragni's King
Where else to go on the cusp of the end, but back to the very beginning?

The Magician is felled, surpassed. The Fool does not yet stand at the end. In fact, you could say that their both their meetings with the King take place at the very start of their journey, just two different ones. But, in a sense, your audience with the King is the bookend of a story.

The crystals burn, and what was potential is made manifest. He stands, nearly in silhouette, the lava of the crystals' burning behind him. He looks into your eyes and judges you worthy.

XXI The World: The Canyon Colossus
Not once over its entire presence in the story is The Canyon Colossus treated as anything other than the inevitable wrath of the earth itself.

Not once is even a hint given that there is any difference between this construct and an earthquake, or a hurricane, or any other natural disaster.

When the Colossus moves, ruin comes. It cannot be stopped. To bargain with it is always at its gain. It is, presumably, sentient, but it is the sentience that has made its will synonymous with reality.

To fight it is to fight the seasons, the tides. To fight it is to fight the wind, or the light of the sun.

What does it mean, then, when our Fool lays it low?

The Colossus is painted in its full glory, its blades in violent motion, the world cracking underneath its mere presence. Near its chest is a tiny glint of light, but let it not distract you. Until the moment it very quickly and suddenly stops being so, this is a portrait of the Colossus.

 

*inhales* Is this a J--

 

Kinda cool I guess… I have no idea what tarot cards are

 

cool stuff

 

this is awesome

 

Hey that's me xP

 

sheeeeesh. *watch thread with receiving email notifications*

 

Very nice thread. Although, what are these supposed to be? Is it a part of an update or is it just cards?

I'm not really familiar with tarot cards...

 

This is really cool, kinda want to see more of these drawn

I like the picture of Amadel reaching out to gain unfathomable power, I've always thought that Amadel should be more powerful, really his only power is tanking

As much as you hear about gale, which isn't really all that much, there's even less about ohms, at least to my knowledge. I'd be interested to know more about him.

I really think Siegfried is a pretty good fit for this. Even if most of his adventures are lies, there was an original siegfried at some point who had to gave acted heroically, and even disregarding that, he's a symbol of power & hope to all of gavel.

This definetly makes less sense to me than siegfried. I can see her fitting that somewhat well, I suppose.

We don't get to know enough about Martyn. He seems to be basically an omniscient being watching over the flow and usage of time, yet he's only ever important in 2 quests.

I like veretel too, but why not... death... for death... I dunno, just a thought, although it'd be low-hanging fruit

as much of a meme as he is, seaskipper captain is a really well-rounded character, with a surprising amount of personality in the lines that he has. [/QUOTE]

 

yo this is cool

 

Spoiler: a slightly-less edited excerpt from the discord rant. flashbang warning.

 

Isaac and his mother lived alone in a small house on a hill

 

Isaac kept to himself, drawing pictures and playing with his toys as his mom watched Christian broadcasts on the television. Life was simple, and they were both happy. That was until the day Isaac's mom heard a voice from above...

 

the nameless (the nameless)