I made a wiki page on YHL's hexarchate tarot app, a fun and very doomy thing, but know very little about tarot and all I know about the terminology is contextual.

Does anything spring out as worded wrong, unneeded, or annoyingly omitted?

(In my article, tbc, not in the app. XD)

Any input is appreciated. ^^

I can look! I love me some tarot

One quick thing is that in the blurb it says it's a 78 card deck but in the deck section it says 72

Hm, other than that I'm not seeing anything that jumps out at me that doesn't look like it's app-specific

like in regular tarot deuces tend to just be called twos, but if that's what the app calls it then that's what the app calls it, y'know? It wouldn't be an error on your end

This is so neat to look at though, seeing people put their own spins on tarot is always cool

Oh, thank you! I'll change it in a moment! Instances Of Numbers Looking The Same To Me~

I figure these are called deuces to align with the Deuce of Gears (the very infamous card used as an emblem by the historical murderous arch-traitor whose ghost shows up in the books).

The irony is that it was chosen to mean "cog in the wheel", because he comes from the sneaky spy/assassination faction and wanted the straightforward military faction to trust him, but since The Massacre it's indelibly associated with his treachery.

There, all fixed!

As someone who's canonblind but knows a lot about reading tarot that doesn't sound too weird to me! Tarot is all about the cards around the card you're reading, and the circumstances around whatever you're doing a reading on

like with that context, you could take the phrase "cog in the wheel" to indicate like, trying to blend in and be inconspicuous

Yeah, that's how I read it. It's mentioned like that in the series too.

I didn't include all the suite card meanings because nope, that's too much, but you can see the author's meanings with each card in a spread.

If it's something that's known in the canon, it might be worth including what each of the four suits represents even if you don't do the individual cards

like for example in tarot the basic version of the suits is

cups - relationships
pentacles - money/material things
wands - creativity/passion, esp in terms of projects
swords - intelligence/conflict or hardship

there are more associations than that, but that's like, the bare bones basics of the minor arcana

!!

I did do that a little with the Gears suite, which used to be associated with the math/technology faction but is mentioned more because of Undead Traitor Guy, but the other suites aren't really mentioned in canon except when the cards themselves come up.

There's a little more on the jeng-zai page (a game played with the same deck). "Roses" are easier because the kniferose signifies the decadent art/culture/diplomacy Andan faction, and I'm not sure what's going on with "eyes" because eyes are usually associated with the spy/assassin Shuos

(their watchwords are "the more eyes the better") but now the Gears are associated with the Shuos because of (again~) Undead Traitor Guy.

The Doors would probably align with the Swords, since they're associated with the Kel (military, conquest, control) and maybe the Roses with Wands (art, culture, diplomacy), but the Andan (Roses) are also the wealthiest faction because of their utter control of culture and the arts.

Ohhh wait I see

it sounds like all of the associations are with different parts of a society/city

Yep! The six factions essentially provide the governmental functions of the huge galaxy-spanning realm. It was called the heptarchate when there was still a seventh faction, but that one (philosophy, democracy) was excised as heretical when the realm became more evil.

Each faction has specific functions and specialties, and the realm is ruled by the hexarchs, the highest-ranking individual of each faction.

And They Are Terrible.

technology for gears, military/conquest for doors, the arts for Roses, so maybe like. without knowing what the canon factions are...my guess would be something related to diplomacy/interpersonal relationships for Eyes? :|a

That would have been my guess too! The Shuos (spy/assassin/intelligence-gathering) and Andan (art/culture/displomacy) used to be a single faction (they hate each other and disagree on which came first). But now Gears is associated with the Shuos so idk what's going on with Eyes.

that's actually really fascinating, because Tarot tends to be kind of internally focused, but this sounds like it's designed more to bounce ideas off of for Actual World Problems and that's so interesting

It's a really intricate and fascinating worldbuild.

That's really cool, because the Liozh (the seventh heretical faction) have the spread focused on interiority and self-knowledge, but after they were wiped out, the hexarchate is a lot more about external conformity.

Gears should still focus on the Nirai because they are the math/science/tech faction, leaving the Eyes for the Shuos, despite the indelible associations now attached to the Deuce of Gears. Hang on, looking something up.

Ok, the quote from Raven Stratagem is The second image was the Deuce of Gears, but done up in the traditional colors, silver on black. Like every other card in the suite,

it had been associated with the Nirai before Jedao happened to it. [...] most jeng-zai artists drove themselves crazy trying to do something to the card to compensate for the connotations Jedao had stapled to it.

(Jedao being the aforementioned Undead Traitor Guy)

So I'd interpreted that as every other card in the suite also having Shuos Jedao associations now, but it could be only the Deuce.

And "the traditional colors" could easily mean "the usual colors" rather than "the colors used before the infamous massacre."

OH WAIT I misheard what the author said in this interview -- the Eyes are mostly Shuos stuff!

!! Nice!

So yes, your intuition is correct!

The two factions that don't get a suite are the Vidona (disseminators of Doctrine, punishers and reprogrammers of heretics, ritual torturers for the festivals that make the technology work, and educators up to age 17, because that's exactly who you want teaching your children)

and the Rahal (judiciary, setting Doctrine, and maintaining the high calendar, which contains said torture festivals; the realm's participation in the high calendar creates the consensus reality in which their tech works).

And the Liozh, I guess, but they're gone.

What are the face cards in a regular tarot deck? The ones here are Page, Book, Knight, and Master.

And the "minor arcana" is all cards that aren't major arcana?

Looking at what you mentioned about diplomacy/interpersonal relationships, the Shuos and the Andan really are an edge case because they used to be the same thing, but the Andan now carry out the realm's open diplomatic relations with other polities and focus on maintaining powerful families while the Shuos do espionage and interpersonal manipulation.

But the Andan are associated so strongly with big flowery artistry that they have to be the Roses.

They control the entertainment industry and set fashion trends and all that stuff.

(Other factions hate them because they have the biggest budget. XD)

lol we INVEST in the arts here

THEY SURE DO

and they specialize in consolidating financial and cultural power, so that has added up over the realm's thousand-or-so-year history

Anyway, thank you for this! I'll take a look at the four relevant factions and think about how to add more in-article indications of what that means for each suite.