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TINSAL

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In a society that could be ours, or not, in a time that was, or not, there hunkers a stone castle. Inside is Bronwyn, a woman ruined, a woman with a wooden leg. She has a tarot deck able to manipulate destiny, and a list of names. Her time for payback has now come.

Somewhere in the cold dark halls another stalks in stealth, cloak swirling, stripped of life, a man who waves crystals over a scarred table, binding each name to an attention-seeking card. Zanderin will play this game, for he, too, seeks something.

A card, after all, is just a card … until Zanderin delivers it.

The cards are dealt, the conflict begins. Karma rides towards the players via a swift carriage.

This is Tinsal, and this is cosmic vengeance.

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Teaser Tuesday: Flagon of Piss

The tavern owner is a scrawny individual with failing eyesight.

He peers at them from narrowed eyes. He seems somehow misplaced. More correctly, it is as if he is mismatched in personality and choice of vocation. How he keeps control in a tavern of rowdy drinking men is anybody’s guess.

Until one meets his wife. She wears the big breeches, so to speak. Clearly even the tavern cat is petrified of her. The feline, until the moment of her entry reposing peacefully upon the bar counter, swiftly slinks away.

“What do you want?” she demands brusquely of Kell and Rhodry. Massive jowls quiver with the action. You do not want to get on the wrong side of this one.

It is gloomy inside the rough place – just as well, given the suspicious glaring from the other side of the counter – and it stinks of sour ale and old vomit.

“We seek a tarot…” begins Kell, only to be interrupted.

“I told you! I told you!” the scrawny man screeches, his voice scratchy, no doubt from too much rough tobacco. “Folk want cards! Did I not tell you, Martha?”

She glares him into submission. “Not your cards, dog. You can barely see the table, never mind the rest.” She glares at the two men next. “Whatever this one claims, his cards are poorly worked. Not worth even a handshake. If it’s cards you seek, go to Hilda.” She slaps the scarred bar counter. “What you drinking?”

No doubt she will hogtie them if they do not buy something. Barely containing a spurt of laughter, Kell orders a flagon of sweet wine to take with them.

Mighty Martha eyes him up and down, and then bellows into the back. “Bring a flagon of that foreign piss!”

The Tinsal Deck

Your Tarot Card Name

Empress of Infinite Spirits!

The Tinsal Deck

A Tinsal Christmas

The Believer

“A Believer can be a layman enamoured of religion and God, but is also priest and sage, one who seeks to bring the holy down to earth. Me,” Jonah says. “Courtesy of Zanderin.” He wags an accusing finger at the two men. “You Rhodry, and you Folly, and now me. Already we three are a community and a sage is meant to bring peace to a community. What peace, I ask you?” He begins to gesture wildly. “I can think of nothing else that binds us except the Stone! We are paying for our sins!”

There is absolute silence.

“Stone?” Terra whispers.

And Folly vents.

Terra immediately realises he has needed to vent about this particular subject for some while; he has that pinched look to the eyes her father has when he tries not to say something, when all he wants to do is blurt it out.

“We were eighteen years old! We did not know better! We thought we were men when we were no more than children! How can that bitch come forward now, after twelve years, and exact retribution! If anyone should pay it should be my father, and yours, Jonah! And … bloody Kell! They were the ring leaders, they sent us in!”

See also:

The Sceptre

The Wisecracker

Al Kari Playing Cards

We are working on actual designs for these cards! In fact, we intend to create an entire tarot deck based on the book. More on that later ;)

The Sceptre

“It’s just a playing card.”

He gazes down upon her. “And you are isolated here in the country. It is more than a playing card. In the City they speak of decks that reveal the future, not that anyone is ruled by cards landing face up before them, but one delivered by Zanderin …? Never mind. Sweet Terra, this is not your problem. I must go.”

“Wait. A wand, I mean a sceptre, can change fate, Rhodry, for good or ill depending on how it is waved …”

He watches at her, eyes narrowing slightly.

She soldiers on, knowing she must sound like a lunatic. “What was your fate until you received the card?”

He clears his throat. “Marriage, heirs, assuming responsibility for the business.”

She frowns. “Pretty normal.”

“A choice I made recently, to be normal. Before that I intended to … do something else. Be someone else.” He adds the latter softly, an afterthought.

“Maybe you are meant to return to that,” Terra says, although she is unclear of her meaning.

Rhodry moves his hand to rest over the pocket where the card hides and smiles strangely. “I think you are right. You have a lucky escape, sweet Terra, from me. Thank Zanderin … but don’t say it aloud or he will be at your doorstep next.”

He turns and stalks to the carriage waiting beyond Lily Merripen’s lovely lichgate.

Terra loses all breath and sees the hills running with waterfalls. Gods in restful repose while their thoughts water the cosmos. Perhaps they are not so restful after all. She chooses then to pick her wand up. Wishful is now reality. This wand, different from the one she invited, comes into her space, when it could have waited until Rhodry Fairweather was in his home alone, and she will now ignore it? Thus it is also her wand.

Choosing a Castle!

Which one would you choose?

Destiny wants a sacrifice!

The Tinsal Deck is a mystical deck of tarot cards that effect the fates of many. Zanderin is the darkest influence haunting the streets yet his enigmatic charisma sets him apart, marking him as supreme. He has so many secrets, the greatest one of all is known by the witch Bronwyn. She desires him not just for his abilities as an occultist, but also for the blood flowing in his veins.

The victims run, hide, and converge, and ultimately destiny wants a sacrifice, but fate is not cast in Tinsal stone.

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