Hal'looq

Hal’looq is the game of choice in most taverns and gambling houses in The Aval. At its heart Hal’looq is a trick taking card game that utilizes a 78 card deck. The player who plays the highest valued card takes the trick, and the player who has collected the most cards by the time the last trick is taken wins the game. The deck is divided into four Standard suits of 14 cards (usually Shields, Spears, Beasts, and Birds), a 21 card suit called the Divine Court or more commonly just Divines, and a single card called The Wanderer. In a Standard suit there are 10 pipped cards which are numbered 1-10, and four face cards called the Knight, Count, Duke, and Monarch. The lowest value standard card is a 1, and the highest is a Monarch. The Divines are numbered from 1-21 and have relative values proportional to their number, but even The Knights of the Abyss, the lowest value divine (1), is considered higher value than any standard Monarch card. The Wanderer has no numerical value and does not count towards a player's point total, but can be played to invoke a special rule called a Tale, wherein a trick is interrupted, a new trick is begun, and the winner of that second trick takes the cards played in both. 

The flow of play is as follows:

1. The deck is shuffled by the Dealer.
2. The deck is cut by the player to the Dealer’s right.
3. Each player is dealt a hand of 4 cards.
4. Players Buy In, adding money or other tokens to the pot, which goes to the winner of the game
5. Standard turns begin.
6. The top card of the deck is revealed, this is called the Turn.
7. Players lay bets, which are added to the pot, starting with the player to the right of the dealer, and then the player to their right, until play reaches the dealer. Players can Call the previous player’s bet, or Raise, in which case all players must Match the increased bet. At any time during the betting a player may declare a Push and retire from the trick. If all players Push, a Tale (See Above) is declared.
8. Players who have not Pushed place a card of greater value than the turn face down in the center of the table.
9. Everyone who played a card draws a card in betting order.
10. The cards are revealed.
11. The player who laid down the highest value card collects all cards played during the trick, including the turn. In the case of a tie, a Tale (See Above) is declared.
12. Steps 6-11 are repeated until the final card in the deck is Turned.
13. Players count their cards, the winner is declared, and the pot is collected.
14. The deck is reassembled and passed to the next player on the right, whereupon the game begins again.

Auguring:

Cartomancy utilizing the Hal’looq deck is one of the most widely practiced folk magic rituals, and is widely known as Auguring. A practitioner of Auguring is known as an Augury. In Auguring each card is assigned a summerwise or standard meaning and winterwise or inverted meaning, usually regionally accepted, and related to the most common types of artwork seen on that card in that region. Therefore, the meanings of individual cards can vary greatly from place to place. There are a few universally accepted principles, however. First; Equal weight is given to each card in a spread. Second; spreads must contain an even number of cards. Third; The Wanderer has no particular meaning of its own but its appearing in any spread marks the reading out as being particularly portentous. Anyone can learn to read the cards but it takes someone with real insight to tailor their interpretation of a spread to connect with someone, and a master showman to sell it. Grandmother Braefis, a noted Augury from Mossa wrote of the practice in a letter to a friend, “…Last Crux this jumped up wizard told me that Auguring doesn’t really predict things that have not yet come to pass! Something about not accessing The Work, and fate not working that way in the first place. I told him he was full of it, even if what he said was true. I’ve found that if you can make the seeker believe, they’ll take care of making things happen themselves”. Though not inherently an arcane practice, magic-users sometimes find that their Auguring is frighteningly accurate. 

In the Cÿraafan Empire, where magic is tightly restricted, Hal’looq decks are required to be decorated simply, in order to prevent their use in Auguring. Cÿraafan law demands that cards be painted only with plain pips, without any embellishments on numbered cards. Face cards must be standardized across suits, and may only depict characters from Cÿraafan history. These may be lightly embellished, but most are very plain. The Divines are referred to as Imperials, and must be adorned with bust portraits of previous Emperors or Empresses, ordered according to when they reigned. These imperials are depicted strictly without embellishments beyond their official busts. The Wanderer is replaced by The Lorekeeper.