The Moon
Mirror Images, Illusions, Lies, Fear, Anxiety
Some people say that they see a face in the moon. There’s no face in the moon. These dogs are getting very agitated at the face in the moon that doesn’t actually exist.
This is the card of seeing things that aren’t there.
It’s kind of funny: our tendency to take random noise and weave it into patterns and stories, even when they don’t exist? That’s how the Tarot works, too! There is no card that better captures the Tarot than The Moon.
It’s easier than you might think to create media that feeds into this mindset. Lots of details, all interconnected, all rich in symbolic meaning, all open-ended, specific enough to seem like they mean something but vague enough that that something can be whatever one wants it to be.
Some might even point out that most things in life are concepts that don’t actually mean anything outside of the context of a gigantic made-up pattern we’ve all agreed upon. Love isn’t a tangible thing that exists, and most money is just electricity dancing around on a computer somewhere. Why, what you’re looking at right now is just squiggly black lines.
Friends & Foes
The Quixotic has deluded themselves into the impression that they are a grand and impressive hero. They are probably going to get themselves killed.
The Lovelorn is willing to go to hell and back for a romantic partner who... actually, isn’t all that in to them1.
Ox is Short for Oxford seems to be a big dumb lunk, but they are actually very intelligent, preferring to come off as huge and dim-witted to throw people off their guard.
A Munchausen Knight is committed to protecting their ward from all manner of threats, even though they appear to be concocting most of the danger themselves.
The Mad Conspiracist believes in something that is utterly absurd. In a twist of fate, it turns out to be completely true.
An Arch-Enemy is a dark mirror representation of one (or all) of your players’ characters — their nemesis, a reflection and amplification of their worst qualities.
The Absurdist Demigod has become so powerful that they have ceased to think of individual lives as meaningful in any way, and simply acts to entertain themselves.
Hooks
Every time your players are about to find the Big Boss, the villain at the end of a quest or major arc, they find them already dead, their eyes gouged out and replaced with opals.
Locations
The Potemkin Village is a fake village, constructed on stilts and hastily painted to look impressive from afar — perhaps to impress visiting nobles, or perhaps as a trap.
The Hall of Mirrors confronts people with dozens of their own reflections. The deeper in that they get, the more that these mirrors reflect.
The Mirage looks like a beautiful watery oasis in a dry, sandy desert, but it was just a trick of the eyes, and nothing.
The Fool’s Paradise is a ratty resort filled to the brim with cheap entertainments, watered down liquor, and luxuries that are easy to tire of, crowded with scammers eager to fleece patrons with extended stay packages.
Treasures
The Illusory Crystal2 allows its holder to project an image of themselves, with sound, for a short distance.
Names
Lua, Luna, Selene, Europa, Titan, Ganymede, Callisto, Dia, Ersa, Rhea, Tethys, Helene, Atlas, Tarvos, Fornjot, Kari, Titania, Oberon, Ariel, Miranda, Ophelia, Max, Deimos