Yesterday we played a one-shot of House of Cards, which a fun indie RPG based on Tarot (and is pay-what-you-want, so it's easy to check out). I've run it a couple of times, but it's been a decade (almost exactly, actually) since last time.
Our characters:
- Parsley, the Fool-Bearer (played by Michelle): Parsley is a drifter, a stoner, and just generally here for a good time, man. Her correspondences are stoners, puppies, bad life choices, optimism, and attraction. She loves the moment, desires bliss, fights for autonomy, and oppose responsibility. She has a dog named Snooters that accompanies her, but Snooters isn't actually a dog, it's a dream-thing she conjured and it disappears periodically (and sometimes is a couch or whatever as need be. It's the brains of the operation).
- Eleanor, the Death-Bearer (played by Flicker): Eleanor is an older lady who finishes knitting and sewing projects left behind by people's dead relatives. Her correspondences are endings, change, grief, unfinished business, and threads. She loves new starts, desires resolutions, fights for freedom to change or move on, and opposes confinement.
- Libbey, the Wheel of Fortune-Bearer (played by Megan): Libbey, like Parsley, is very much a free spirit, but she's marginally more focused, at least in the moment. Her correspondences are easy-come-easy-go, "that's just your opinion", upheaval, cycles, and luck. She loves friendship, desires novelty and fun, fights for adaptation, and opposes rigidity and stagnation.
- Jess, the Emperor-Bearer (played by Sarah): And then there's Jess. Jess is an alderman of the town and takes her responsibilities very, very seriously. Everything needs to be examined and happen according to the rules, and someone needs to make sure to get that done. Her correspondences are leadership, service, stability, the law, and responsibilities. She loves her community, desires control, fights for the betterment of others, and opposes neglect.
Our story takes place in a medium-sized city in California, with a park in the middle that has a great big pond (a little too small to call it a lake). A couple of days ago, five rings of water measuring nearly fifteen feet in diameter rose up out of said pond and started spinning in three dimensions above it. People have started gathering on the shores and an impromptu tent city has popped up as people marvel at "the Miracle of the Waters." This obvious display of magic, of course, has the Bearers interested.
Libby and Parsley are part of the crowd, naturally. Parsley gets a drum circle going, and Libbey sits down and starts drumming on Snooters' tummy ("eh, I've been worse things than a drum," he thinks). Eleanor, meanwhile, is sitting under a nearby tree, knitting and people-watching. Jess is trying to get a handle on this situation - the city council has made it clear to her that while, yes, camping in the park is not legal, rolling in and booting everyone out would be bad for business and these people are spending money. Besides, they're not hurting anything...Jess, therefore, is talking with some folks from the parks department and trying to get port-a-potties set up.
As Eleanor is watching, she hears a voice behind her faintly calling for help. She follows it, and a woman emerges from the brush, bleeding from multiple wounds on her legs and arm. Eleanor sits her down and starts bandaging her the best she can, and notices that her wounds look like bites. Indeed, the woman claims she was attacked by dogs in the wood. Eleanor also realizes that the wounds are sticky and covered...honey? The woman has flower petals stuck her, and Eleanor recognizes them as amaranth flowers.
That would be strange anyway, given the time of year, but amaranth flowers also tend to grow when there's an open gate to the Beyond. Eleanor signals Jess, who summons EMS, and then the two of them decide to go looking for this gateway before anything else comes through. Jess calls up Dream-sense and follows her senses into the brush...and it isn't long before she hears growling.
The dogs are surrounding them, still hiding in the brush, and Eleanor summons a sword out of the air for the coming fight. But Jess calls upon her authority as the Emperor-Bearer and frightens them away, and the dogs retreat into the woods. The two of them keep looking for the gateway, but aren't having a lot of luck - they sense magic (probably from the dogs and definitely from the Miracle), but don't see where the dogs might have crossed.
Meanwhile, Libbey and Parsley note the woman getting tended to and wander over to ask what's happening. The EMT tells them, quietly, that this woman got attacked by a dog and animal control is on the way, but maybe stick to the crowds. The smell of honey and the residual amaranth flowers tell them that something is up, however, so they decide to split up (please do note Parsley's correspondences). Libbey goes back down to the lake to Mirror-walk and check things out from the Beyond, while Parsley goes into the woods.
Libbey falls into the reflective surface of the water and then "falls" out on the Beyond side. She notes that the water-rings look about them same here as there, and then heads toward the woods, looking for a gateway. She hears buzzing, and follows the sound to a beehive sitting on its own in a clear...but this hive is as big as her. She senses hostility from it, but it's hostile in the way that bees are - not malicious, but in a constant state of needing to defend themselves. As she approaches, a bee emerges, buzzes over to her, and falls to the ground. She watches it, intrigued, as it begins to change.
Its wings and middle two legs fall off. Its remaining legs elongated, it grows a nose - no, a muzzle - and its yellow and black fuzz turns into brown fur. In a second, it's a dog, and it lunges for Libbey and bites at her arm! Libbey calls on her power of luck to yank her hand away and heads back to the lake to Mirror-walk and find the others.
Meanwhile, in the "real" world, Parsley enters the woods and is immediately beset by the two dogs that Jess scared off. Parsley, however, loves dogs, and sits down and starts talking to them and making friends. When Eleanor and Jess find her, she's rubbing their tummies happily. "They're very sticky," says Parsley, "so be careful if you pet them."
Since they're still looking for the gateway, Parsley tells the dogs to go home, but they scamper off in different directions. The four Bearers meet up again (Libbey returns from the Beyond and explains what she saw), and they decide to go back into the Beyond and check out this hive. Parsley has an idea.
They all cross over (through the lake, of course) and Libbey shows them where the hive is. It...seems to have grown. That doesn't bother Parsley, though, who picks up Snooters and uses him as a bellows to pump weed smoke at the thing. The bees flying around slow down and then land, and the Bearers back off, figuring they've at least made things less dangerous for the moment. But where are they damn things crossing into the real world?
They figure that the only place they've seen to cross is the lake, so they go back and Eleanor pays closer attention. She feels something in the lake, something sad and confined, and those, of course, are situations she's familiar with. She dips her hand into the water and communicates with whatever is in the lake, and realizes that she knows who it is - Naseem El-Omari, the Hierophant-Bearer. She's not sure what he's doing down there, but he doesn't seem like himself. Maybe he's hurt or trapped.
Libbey calls on her powers of cycles to rewind time (at least in her own perception), and sees Naseem walk to the middle of the lake - on the water! - and raise his arms. The water-rings rise up and start spinning, but he himself sinks into the water, out of side.
The four of them dive into the water and swim to the bottom, and at the very bottom of the lake they find Naseem in a little bubble of air, frantically turning this way and that. They enter the bubble and he asks "which way is East?" Eleanor tells him, and he kneels down and begins to pray.
When he's finished, he stands and thanks them. He says that he was out walking in the park and saw a couple walking together get attacked by the Honey Dogs. He intervened but they attacked him, bit him repeatedly, and he doesn't remember what happened after that (but looking back, clearly he became Reversed, which for him meant losing his connection to his faith and desperately but fruitlessly trying to get it back). He created the water-rings in a vain attempt to bring something miraculous, and has been in the dark, trying to figure out where he is, ever since. He thanks them for giving him enough direction (literally) to right himself again.
But that still leaves the problem of the hive, and Naseem doesn't want to just turn off the rings - it would be so anti-climactic, and people are expecting a finale. The Bearers don't want anything too radical, though - they're not trying to start a whole new religion, here, just give people something to think about. They decide that they'll make the rings all burst together and Parsley will infuse them with bliss - not enough to put them into a stupor or make the blind see, but just make everyone feel good and connected for a minute.
The Bearers return to the lake's edge and call on their collective powers - Naseem makes the water rings come together and burst, spraying the gathered masses with a light dousing, Parsley infuses it with bliss, and Eleanor makes this an ending. And then Parsley yells "TACOS!" and everyone gets hungry, and they start moving away from the lake (Jess mentioned earlier that the food trucks show up at seven).
But that leaves the hive to deal with. Libbey calls on her power of ROTA, evening out the playing field (it's hard to explain that in story terms; I don't even know if it's a power the Wheel-Bearer would be using consciously). In any case, the Bearers hear a loud buzzing and the swarm of bees rises up from the woods and heads straight toward them.
Parsley creates a new hive, one with some more chill vibes. The Honey Dog Queen, a massive half-bee, half-dog monster, emerges from the hive and heads toward them, examining this new home, but seems reluctant to enter. Jess, suddenly an expert on all things bee-related (thanks to her Crux Ansata power), realizes that bees communicate through scent and dancing, and tells this to the others. Parsley and Libbey dance and twirl to show the Queen what they have in mind, and Eleanor eases the process with the power of transition. The Queen enters the new hive, and everything calms down, as the Honey Dogs are less aggressive (and less likely to enter the real world).
The Bearers step back across into the real world and see that the crowds are dispersing. Naseem offers to buy them dinner in thanks, and they head off to the food trucks.
