A few months ago I made a diviner character. I went back and forth between cartomancy, haruspicy, and astrology. In the end, I made a circle of stars druid who’d been training in tarot reading: Skips.
He’s never been self-confident, never really exposing himself for fear of making the wrong choice and ruining his life. To avoid that, he never made any significant choice, until he was kicked out of the house and ed the druids to learn a trade. Being a druid could have become his new comfort zone, he thought: mixing ingredients all day and at the end of the day going to sleep with his belly full with food provided by the circle. So he put little effort in his training, just what was enough to not be kicked out from the circle like he was from his house, but not enough effort to gain promotions of sorts and as such more responsibilities. He lived in the comfort zone he was looking for until he was assigned a mentor who sent him to “find himself”, whatever that might mean. Skips was sure he never would have found himself: he doesn’t believe he can be good. Even if he were to have some character development, I know he would have never been self-confident enough to recognize it as development. And to be honest, I didn’t necessarily want to push for character development: Skips’ insecurities made him fun to play, if he had became the stereotypical heroic character I would have lost what made Skips special.
The tarots resemble a journey: going from the lowest- to the highest-numbered card, you can notice an evolution. Somewhere in the middle there is often a reflection about the past, or an acknowledgement of the struggles faced. Skips is enough of a blank slate that I would assign it a low number. This makes me look at the role of the Fool, the first card in a tarot deck. Not even numbered 1, the Fool is number 0. It “tells the story of an individual’s path towards completion. Being the first card, the fool therefore is a blank slate, a representation of purity and innocence of a child that knows nothing of the world.”. The Fool also “does not know the dangers that can beset him during his travels, and thus he stumbles forward with complete optimism”, which I don’t think fits Skips all that well. I would say Skips has complete pessimism, and regards everything as possible danger.
Yes, this is Skips’ most relevant trait. Complete pessimism. That’s why I’m choosing the IX of Swords to represent him. “The nine of swords represents someone that is trapped by their own negative thoughts. There is not necessarily a situation that warrants the worry, and this card hints that over-analysis leads to crippling indecision and feelings of helplessness”. Perfect.
Let’s say I played Skips forever and eventually he “finds himself”, as assigned by his mentor. What card would he then become? Something happened during the campaign that made me come to an answer.
Being an adventurer of course put Skips in situations where he had to make a choice he would have never thought of making if in his comfort zone. In these times, he would ask the tarots. One time something really sensational happened. We were in a dire situation and he consulted the tarots.
I asked the DM what card I got. I was completely fine with a deus ex machina in that situation: drawing a card is an aleatory phenomenon, but it was a serious and campaign-defining moment and I thought the randomness of the cards wouldn’t have done the situation justice, hence why I wanted the DM to tell me what card I got. Instead, the DM told me to draw, and I drew the most appropriate card for an existential crisis. The cards told Skips “what the fuck are you doing”, basically.
I drew the King of Wands. “A person having great vision and leadership, and all the drive and understanding to create his vision. He leads and inspires others with his unconquerable ion”. Skips asked wh-wh-what should we do and the deck responded “leadership, inspire others, ion”. Skips was aghast. He began questioning himself, if maybe he should let go of his insecurity. Of course no change comes so quick, and we didn’t play enough for Skips to have some significant character development in this regard (not that I would have necessarily wanted to, as I said before). But had a few years ed, I would have liked Skips to return to his druidic mentor and show him the King of Wands cards as a sign of “yes, I have found myself”.
Art from labyrinthos
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