Marked Cards

I’m A Magical Cowpoke And So Can You: A Primer for Marked Cards

Hi! If you’re reading this, you’re probably interested in Marked Cards, the Battle Fantasia theme of Magical Cowgirls and playing cards! Or maybe you have no clue what it is. Well, this document is here to help you out!

What's a Marked Card?

Marked Cards is about cowboys and cowgirls. It’s about gambling, and it’s about ambition and the desire to be more than you are. And, most importantly, it is about being independent and seeking out the life you want for yourself, no matter what. Being a cowgirl is all about rejecting the mold others try to force you into and being fiercely individual.

Okay, so what’s the story?

All right, back in the 1800s, Clow Reed was doing his thing, unsealing the magical worlds. Well, not everything that came back was a good thing. No one knows who the House really is, or if it’s a who, or a they, or an it. But the House came into the world. Specifically, the American West.

The House presented a choice to several of the great cowboys and cowgirls of the West: play in the game known as the Dead Man’s Hand and win a chance of gaining a wish...or of utter destruction. Follow your ambitions or accept a life of mediocrity.

Naturally, many of them accepted. They fought each other, becoming more than men and women - becoming legends. They fought the monsters unleashed by the House, though history does not record those battles. And some of them became monsters, servants of the House.

Now, their souls are reincarnating, their power reappearing in Japan. Because, you know, it's one of the biggest magical nexuses.

The four great heroes, the Aces High, fight to protect the world from the House’s monsters and to shine a beacon for others to follow, to help them find their paths.

The Wild Bunch, the four greatest dark heroes, fight for themselves alone - to forge their own paths no matter what gets in their way.

The Jokers work to mix the pot, serving the will of the House in harvesting human ambition.

What’s this about independence?

Well, let’s drop some literary themes here! I mean, they’re not much, But basically: this is about being a cowgirl. (Or cowboy.) And that means rugged individualism. For good or ill, the Marked Cards aim to be themselves as hard as possible. If they have limits placed on them, they chafe. If they are forced into a mold, they break it. Ultimately, the theme of Marked Cards is finding who you want to be and what you want to do, and then going for it as hard as you possibly can.