Arcana

The cards never name you and never tell you what to do; they fix the verbs, and you fix the object, the direction and the scale.

The chart

• The home screen is the chart: six slots, three across and two down.
• An empty slot opens the casting table to lay a new reading.
• A slot with a reading opens it again; the answer cards you had turned are still turned, and the rest wait face down.
• A reading is final. It is kept the moment it is dealt and fades after six hours; there is no redraw. When all six slots are full, wait for one to fade.

Laying a reading

• The casting table runs four decks down the top: WHO (the players at the table), WHAT (a held, placed or living thing), HOW (the verb) and WHERE (the place and its mood).
• Click a deck to fan its cards across the width; click a card to choose it, or click the deck again to restack it without choosing.
• You may lay up to three cards, never two from one deck. The status line counts what you have laid.
• A card laid in a reading that has not faded rests: it lies darkened in its deck and cannot be chosen until that reading fades.
• The question itself is never typed: the witness cards are the question.

The deal

• ASK centres your witnesses and deals the answers.
• One answer card is dealt face down onto each witness, laid up and to the right of it.
• Click a face-down answer to turn it, and read it in the panel below.
• Each answer reads four ways. Which four is yours to learn.

The codex

• The ? on the chart or the table opens the codex: every answer card you have turned, and everything it reads.
• Click a neighbouring card to step to it, or a pip to jump. From the table, the codex opens at the card you are reading.
• The codex's own ? opens this page.

Controls

Click a deck        fan it out, or stack it again
Click a card        choose it, or turn a dealt answer over
ASK                 centre the witnesses and deal
?                   the codex (and, in the codex, these rules)
Exit                back a page, or leave Arcana