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aci: The Deck of Dragons
universe: MZ · Malazan
domain: the frame
class: The Living Tarot of the Pantheon
emergence: ethereal
what: The world's living tarot — cards of the High Houses and their roles, shifting as the pantheon itself shifts.
how: A reading does not predict the powers, it touches them; new cards appear when new powers rise.
why: It is the gods' org chart, always being redrawn — and with a mortal named Master of the Deck, the pantheon gains a mortal arbiter.
who: Bound to the High Houses — Life, Death, Shadow, Light, Dark — and to Ganoes Paran, Master of the Deck.
seal: "Shuffle carefully — the cards do not show the gods, they reach them."
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# The Deck of Dragons · the living tarot of the pantheon

The Deck of Dragons is the world's living tarot. Its cards belong to the High Houses — Life, Death, Shadow, Light, Dark — and to the roles within them: King, Queen, Knight, Assassin, and the rest. Unlike any fixed deck, these cards shift as the pantheon itself shifts; the Deck is not a record of the powers but a mirror that moves with them.

That is why a reading is dangerous. The Deck does not predict the powers — it TOUCHES them. To lay the cards is to put a hand on the pantheon, and the pantheon may put a hand back. And the Deck is never finished: when new powers rise, new cards appear. The House of Chains forced its way in, unasked and unwelcome, and the Deck made room because it had no choice.

With Ganoes Paran named Master of the Deck, the arrangement changes again: the pantheon gains a mortal arbiter, a man with standing to rule on what the cards — and so the Houses — may be. The Deck is the gods' org chart, and it is always being redrawn.

Its nature is ethereal because the Deck is exactly the half-real made functional: paper that is also pantheon, image that is also contact, a thing that exists in the space between depiction and the powers it depicts.