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Awesome! I've been reading a lot of (translated) Chinese webnovels lately and the concept of "the Cold Palace" comes up a lot, along with court intrigue, so it's been floating around my head for the last few months. When I saw the W&A game jam, I started digging through my brain box looking for "alone, powerless, and in peril" themes I was interested in exploring and it was the first one to pop up that I had a strong reaction to. In the webnovels, the heroine is usually in a bad position, but uses some secret advantage (often second-chance reincarnation, isekai other-world experiences, or a super power) to beat the odds. But without that advantage, it would probably play out badly for her.

One of the interesting ideas I'm exploring as I let things cook on my mental back-burner is an advantage with using the tarot - the major arcana. The minor arcana can map easily to a card suit (coins/pentacles to diamonds, for example), but the major arcana step outside of that and can be used for other things. For example, using the card Death for exactly as it sounds. Right now, my concept is to use the minor arcana as different "people" to put between Death and the Empress. Cups/Chalices represent those who are most loyal to her (family, friends, lovers, personal servants; etc). Coins/Pentacles represent people whose skills can be bought for gold (assassins, spies; etc). The more of these people in the "Tower", the safer the Empress is. But the Emperor card can order them to die, removing them from the deck permanently. 

Absolutely something I'm going to spend a lot of time playtesting to make sure it works out the way I want it to. Controlled, slow-burn tension at first, and then eventually more and more out of hand as human resources are lost to Death.

I'll definitely share the game as a playtest version if I get something that seems playable!