Divination

the Tarot-driven RPG

The Road of Two Lands

posted by
Filed Under: Setting, Tarot, The Game, Worldbuilding series

This is the fourth post in a series on the creation of Divination’s setting and magical universe as defined by the tarot. The first post in the series is Making a tarot-defined setting, and you can find the entire series linked at the bottom of each entry.

The Road of Two Lands (The Chariot)

Direct Source: Temperance (Transmutation)
Value: Willpower
Practitioners: Students and Paragons

Upright: Self-Confidence
Inversion: Hubris

Students of themselves, and of powerful forces, compelled to master difficult skills and their potentially monumental egos.

The way of willpower, which attracts ambitious Artists and rewards them with a taste of the Divine Flower, granting knowledge before turning them loose on the world to acquire more. With great discipline, this Road’s Students may be allowed to return to the Flower for a second taste of its gifts. These Artists prize hard work and motivation above all else – but with the incredible things they learn, they must struggle to keep their grip on the forces they wield. These Artists must fear the consequences of their power’s misuse, and the hubris they may develop as they grow.

In the Chariot card I read willpower, ambition, and self-control in the face of power. In Temperance I see the changes one has to make in order to maintain balance.

Meditating on what kind of Road the Chariot might be like, and what kind of fun I wanted to have with the change- and balance-making features I was imagining for Temperance, I arrived on a version of “classic” wizardry—one informed by alchemy, a concept still in vogue in occult circles at the time the Pixie deck was published.  

The germinating idea was that the classic magician might pursue classic interests: turning worthless matter into gold, making things seen or unseen, changing the weight of something, or transforming something into something else. 

These feel like some of the most iconic tropes and concepts we have of magicians. We have the images of figures whose intelligence is matched by their mad desire to fool around with forces other people are wise enough to avoid. We see Icarus types balanced by the inevitable downfall associated with reaching too far, and Prometheus types balanced by the eternal punishment following their aspirations.

I see that in the Chariot. The Chariot passes through two cities on two steeds of opposing colors. They have to master twin forces—just and unjust, selfish and unselfish—in order to maintain a divine balance.

So too would the Artists on the Road I was making—for them the Art has to be a stunt per se, the same way chariot-riding is a stunt. It’s a balancing act. To the Road of Two Lands, pursuit of the Art is like that, meaningful for its own reasons, the way any display of skill is.  

The Road says: Acquire power. Demonstrate its use. If you’re reading it deeply, it also says, You may fall. You must be careful of your ego, not to let yourself believe you’re above falling. 

I began to see a culture; what a hundred years of this urge would create. I saw secret schools and libraries emerge—ones where Artists could pursue their command of the Art safely and with support. I saw that these Artists’ virtues might match the capitalist ones of our own society. These Artists are promised a vision of success for hard work, but suffer the dangerous consequences of the misuse of the Art. 

The Road leads to the talent of Transmutation, symbolized by Temperance. Temperance is about maintaining balance in your mind, in your world, and in your emotions.

I daydreamed a relationship between alchemy and Temperance early, partly because the card seems to depict a divine act of change. The angel in Pixie’s image is pouring liquid from one vessel to another, suggesting a balancing—or an intentional unbalancing.

In either case, the Angel is making a shift. In the world behind them, we see a crown. They’re meant to have good intentions making this shift.

I spent a lot of time thinking about changing one thing into another, and how Temperance, the cooling of passions, the heating of ideas, is suggested by its depth. I began to see a way we could offer the player the ability to use the Art to do really fun, dramatic things, playing with matter, changing their shape, and making reality behave differently. All of this would be so they could better be able to make the changes they want; to establish the balance they want.

This power itself would have to be balanced, of course. Offering this much range in what an Artist might be able to do to achieve balance, is fundamentally unbalanced, and another classic shape emerged, along the lines of that careful-what-you-wish-for aesthetic.

The idea of ugliness, a kind of Artistic chaos, crept up. A force that balanced the unwary Artist, or the one who had grown too proud. It’s what happens to the chariot-rider when they lose control of their steeds and fall. It’s what happens when you make intemperate changes; ones that don’t lead to any kind of balance at all.

The permanent, deep, and frightening consequences of biting off more than you can chew in this world sprang into a million terrifying stories in my mind. An Artist who loses their connection to their body after astral projection. An Artist who traps a demon, but then must live with its voice in their ear at all times. An Artist who creates a lightning storm, but can’t get it to stop, and it always follows them.

All of these concepts are baked into the Road of Two Lands and Transmutation. As an Aspect, you’ll preside over a Hero who learns to change the raw matter of the world, and you’ll face the challenge of keeping them using it in a way they never come to regret.

>> Read the next post in this series: The Unwritten Road

Find the rest of the series here: