Common Cards

[MoonHunter]

Arth is the Interplay of the Five elements: Fire, Air, Earth, Water, Luminance (which is normally broken down into Light and Dark making six elements). Once you grasp the associations, making things for Arth are quite simple. If you are tuning in from the interesting magic post, take heed.

A Deck of Cards in the Known world are either 42 or 49 cards (if the deck has trumps).
Each of the six suits has six number cards and one court card.

Trump decks uses slightly different suits and adds one trump card to each suit, plus a joker. The trumps very from tradition to tradition. Some common ones are listed. Each person should have their own trumps based on their personal mythology and personality elements.

Earth's suit is Shields and court card is King . Its trump suit is Jewel and most common trump is Craftsman.

Air's suit is Disks and court card is Queen. Its trump suit is Wheel and most common trump is Mad One.

Fire's suit is Trees and court card is Warrior. Its trump suit is Sword and most common trump is Destroyer.

Water's suit is Hearts and court card is Princess. Its trump suit is Rainbow and most common trump is Healer.

Darkness's suit is Wands and court card is Mage. Its trump suit is Staves and most common trump is Archpriest.

Light's suit is Triangles and court card is Priestess. Its trump suit is Temples and most common trump is Demon.


Of all the blue misted peoples, only MaskLand had their own decks before coming to Arth.  It has 4 suits, of ten each, and a noble. It was quite easy for them to adapt to the Andoran deck.

[MoonHunter]

The design for the Andoran deck comes from the Elventi. The Elventi use them for games, but mostly they use them for magic.

Mages/ wizards and such use the cards as training tools. The patterns created by certain layouts of cards are mnemonic devices to teach key elemental associations and paths. With such interesting names as the Tree of Life, Phoenix's tail, Rythm of Heart, and Balance of the sphere, there pattern represent the matrices used by magic users to focus and present power.  Spell processes can be represented by a sequence of cards.  

Cards are used by Magic folks to predict the future (cartomancy). Since the present becomes the future through the interplay of elementally alligned forces, the tumble of cards can give clues to the way the pattern of elements will be in the future.  

Cards are also used to train legerdemain.  

In short, any classically trained (i.e. guild) magic user will probably have a deck of cards on them.  

Since they have cards with them, they frequently know how to use them.  Guild magic users often have a knack for fancy shuffles, palming cards, and a variety of card tricks.

[MoonHunter]

There are hundreds of different card games.

Most of these variations are of Solitaire. Many magic types (and those that fancy themselves educated) often seek the deeper meanings of the elemental interplay of the turned and buried cards.  


Poker, played with six cards to a hand, is the "man's" game.  Holdout, studs, and draw version exist.

Pokia is a poker like game. Instead of betting money, points are awarded by how the play goes.
Folding first round, 0 pts
For each round of "betting" +1
Losing the hand -3 pts -1 per round of betting
The quality of the winning hand determines points awarded: 1 to 12 points.
The game ends at 60 pts, or whatever value was set before.  

Hearts, Bridge/Whist, and Rook are common polite games, played by adults.

Pull out Hoyle's rules, and find hundreds of other games.  

There are dozens of children's games as well.  The Magic Guild occasionally gives decks out to children at schools and temple.  They use them as a testing tool.