What does the Dragaeran Tarot represent? In the real world, Tarot operates on several levels. At the highest level, it's a symbolic guidebook of the stages of life and enlightenment and a kind of philosophical teaching aide. At the middle level it's a semi-magical apparatus full of arcane symbology (how much depends on the agenda of the publisher of any particular deck) which lends itself to divination of various sorts. At the lowest level, it's simply a fancy deck of playing cards. It's rather amusing to look through a modern Tarrochi deck because the cards are duplicated vertically in the same fashion as a deck of standard playing cards. The Hanged Man, for instance, becomes nothing more than two pairs of disembodied legs joined at the waist. I can only recall one instance of divination in the stories and I don't recall whether the fortune teller was using cards for it or not. In any case, a Dragaeran Tarot would have to symbolically cover the philosophical questions that a citizen of the Empire would find to be both important and enlightening. The number 17 would clearly be an important one in such a deck. The more mundance uses of the deck to play Shereba, for instance, would be a consequence of the design rather than a driving force behind it, much like Tarrochi is a poker-like game (or maybe bridge-like, I forget) that happens to be played with a Tarot deck. I guess the biggest question to answer is whether this is to be truly a "Dragarean Tarot" or if it's simply a standard Tarot illustrated with Dragaeran imagery. The latter would be easier to create, while the former would be of more interest though to a possibly narrower audience. (There are plenty of people who collect "standard" Tarot decks who might be interested in a Dragaeran Tarot.) If we're talking about a true Dragarean Tarot, then I'd have to firstly recommend bugging Steve for some input. The Major Arcana is where the meat of a Tarot deck lies. The typical illustration of this is to take the Major arcana and deal it out in order in the shape of an infinity symbol, half to the left, half to the right. The path laid out this way begins with the Fool, intersects with, I believe, The Hermit, and ends with the Fool again. On one level, the cards symbolically describe the stages of life as one grows from childhood to old age. On another, it represents the growth of the soul and the enlightenment of the soul that manages to shed its cares, worries, and illusions in order to understand the universe in its true state. The Fool is two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, he's the uneducated lout with no knowledge of a higher state who's oblivious to his place in the universe. On the other, he's the enlightened soul, free from the bondage of earthly limitations and desires and, therefore, of the conventions that make the unenlightened view him as someone who is frivolous and otherwise unmindful of the niceties of society. An Easterner would be unlikely to be depicted as the Fool in this case. I'd imagine that the seventeen Houses would be represented, but I wouldn't expect them to each have their own card. Each of the Houses is defined by a set of concepts - a set of colors, a defining personality trait, a defining profession. I would expect portraits of those Houses to appear on cards that deal with the underlying symbology of the House itself. The Major Arcana would probably consist of 17 cards rather than the 22 that make up our earthly Tarot. The Wheel of Fortune is a rather direct analog for The Cycle, which would certainly be embodied in its own card. Death could be replaced by The Paths of the Dead, which in itself is also very analagous. Fortune tellers aside, Death in the Tarot is more commonly understood to be Transformation rather than corporeal death. The Paths likewise represent transition from one life to another, one state to another, and the actual Paths themselves are a kind of symbolic struggle to make that transition from one state of being to the next. The Tower could be represented in some way by The Cataclysm, referring to Adron's Disaster if this is a recent deck. If the symbology is assumed to be ancient then a more general symbolism of Amorphia or Chaos might be appropriate. The Halls of Judgement would replace Judgment and the meaning would obviously be rather different given that the Christian symbology of Judgement Day and the Ressurection don't really apply to a world where reincarnation is a scientific fact. One method of condensing the Major Arcana would be to replace all of The Empress, The Emporer, The Heirophant, and the High Priestess with simply The Emperor or possibly The Orb. Here again, the symbolism would have to change as well because the symbolism of these four cards is rather different that what one might expect the Orb to represent to Dragaeran society, especially since the Emperor/Empress, Priestess/Heirophant dichotmies include a great deal of Christian vs. Pagan symbolism that isn't really appropriate to the Dragera cycle. I could see an argument, however, in favor of replacing the High Priestess with The Enchantress illustrated with a depiction of Sethra Lavode. Sethra's status as a living legend would certainly lend itself to such commemoration, and I'd imagine it could be a rather amusing story point as well. Of course, the cards illustrated during Vlad's divination would have to be incorporated as well. I don't remember what those were at the moment. Given that in Dragaera magic is real and the Lords of Judgement are likewise accepted as being both real and powerful, I'd expect images and symbols related to the most important of them to appear scattered throughout the Lesser Arcana, more or less subtly. The lesser arcana depicts on a simple level the structure of society in Europe at the time of its creation. Swords are the military/rulers, coins/pentacles are the merchants, staves are the peasants/farmers, and cups the priesthood. In Dragaeran society we seem to have three strata. The aristocracy, the merchants/seamen, and the peasants. Merchants and Jhereg are ostensibly aristocracy but in practice they are treated rather differently than the landed nobility so it seems fair to treat them as a class unto themselves. I think it's fair to lump the Jhereg in with the Merchant class, particularly given the prevailing attitude that a criminal is actually more admirable than a merchant, due to the criminal at least being honest about his thievery. I could see going a couple of different directions. The lesser arcana could be either three suits (Jhereg subsumed within the others) or four (Jhereg its own suit). I'd be inclined towards a three suit lesser arcana consisting of seventeen cards each, depicting the seventeen houses symbolically. This something Steve really should tell us, since he's got to have a basic idea of the composition of a Dragaeran tarot deck.