Magick: the Twelve Seals (Card Game)

A popular collectible card game native to Gaea, it was inspired by and developed from a range of different mystical cards associated with the legendary Wayfarer known as the Grand Summoner.

Play revolves around the use of various color-coded cards associated with the twelve major (and various minor) Elements of Gaea’s Mana. These include Creatures, Lands, Spells (and other, similar powers), Items, Events, Locales, Traps, Conditions, Resources, and Blessings. Players take turns drawing and playing various cards in an attempt to take control of another’s Lands and defeat their Creatures, symbolically waging a war against one another or multiple foes. While the standard game revolves around two dueling players, there are a multitude of variations, including a popular Everwar style in which two teams, one representing Heroes and another the Overlord and their generals, seek to defeat each other.

The game's design is such that it functions as a storytelling device and incorporates a wide range of powers. Many different editions have come into use, primarily since the widespread advent of the printing press. Powerful cards can be quite expensive, with only those bearing an authenticating seal provided by the Church of the Twelve and One being considered legal for official play in most regions. However, there are a large number of forgeries and fake cards in existence, and many areas have their own variants of the game that are sometimes compatible.

## Origins and History

Magick traces its origins in Gaea to a semi-mythical Wayfarer known only as the Grand Summoner in the modern era. Little is known of this figure, though he is generally assumed to have been male. What *is* known is that he was a child and that he found himself stranded in Gaea while in possession of a variety of unusual game cards, having participated in a large tournament shortly prior to his transition. While completely mundane on Earth, the process of transferring to Gaea imbued them with properties akin to those they depicted and how they functioned, allowing the child to summon various creatures to defend himself, from vampires and goblins to dark magicians to electric mice, to say nothing of conjuring raw Mana and creating demiplanes that contained distinct landscapes, ruins, and structures and could be drawn upon for magical energies. While the ultimate fate of this figure is unknown, the Grand Summoner left a profound mark on the landscape of Gaea, creating a number of unique Monsters that should not previously have existed, as well as scattering countless demiplanes, many of them interconnected, and filled with a multitude of islands, swamps, mountains, plains, and forests, populated by all manner of strange creatures and people. The power that the Grand Summoner's cards could unleash were extraordinary and remain largely impossible to reproduce even to this day... but that has hardly stopped people from trying.

The first attempts to recreate the effects of the Grand Summoner's cards were carried out by various mage enclaves working independently or for nobles and royals. These early attempts were crude, handmade, and often more akin to Scrolls than the reusable cards of the Summoner. when the worked at all Most were utter failures, despite the fact that they were often created by studying the artifacts of the Grand Summoner directly. A few did function, but nowhere near the capacity of those possessed by the Summoner himself, infused with Mythic Power as they were. Time went on, failure piled upon failure, until eventually a few frustrated arcanists began to use the cards they'd produced to play their own games, just as they Summoner had with his. These early attempts at play were just as flawed as their attempts at recreating what were essentially miracles in physical form, but over time they built up rules of their own, systems of their own that reflected the realities and fantasies of Gaea rather than the fictionalized worlds depicted in the original games that had inspired them, and from there, the first edition of Magick was born.

Named after the primary set of cards the Grand Summoner was known for, but altered to reflect the dominant elemental theory at the time, Magick: the Twelve Seals, began as a niche game played primarily by its creators and their fellow researchers, slowly spreading from there to their highborn patrons and peers abroad. Rules and systems were codified and the appearance of the cards standardized, slowly spreading across the world through the complex web of connections created by international politics and edifices of magical education. It became a popular alternative to Chess and other, more traditional games, in part because of the higher element of chance... and the impact that greater investments in the game could have on it. Creating such cards was an expensive endeavor early in the game's history. However, the popularity of the game made it worthwhile, and that very cost made it a way for wealthy individuals to flaunt their money, just as lavish feasts and celebrations were.

In these early centuries of play there were few hard rules to the game and a host publishers churning out their own game-breaking cards. It was a lawless time in the game's history.