There are a couple of steampunk tarot decks (or designs) but Dieselpunk Tarot has been hard to track down. However, i have done it. There is a very dark, but definitely Dieselpunk Tarot deck designed around an occult WWII setting.
If you’re wondering why the hell anyone would design such a thing as this (other than, you know, it’s fracking cool as frack) there’s a game called Sine Requie Anno XIII. Sine Requie Anno XIII is a role playing game that takes place in an alternate post WWII dystopia where nazis and the living dead are rampaging the world.
The game is produced by an Italian company Dreampainters. It was begun in 2003 but the current version is from 2008. The game has won several awards but what makes it even MORE interesting is instead of using dice to execute actions, it uses tarot cards. Hence this deck.
However, the deck, available as either a 22 set Major Arcana or the full 78 set, is an fully functional tarot deck on its own right. It’s actually quite sought out by certain tarot collectors.
I’ve talked about my thoughts on tarot, which are basically i love the tarot system, but not for the reasons most other people. I don’t care about the whole divination thing so much, i’m more fascinated by the use of archetypal imagery to suggest stories and relationships to the mind. In other words, forget the psychic stuff, i love the creative Jungian story maps.
But enough chatter. More pics:
Here’s some info on the game:
Setting:
The game is set in an alternative 1957, 13 years after what is remembered as “The Judgment Day”: the 6th of June 1944 (also known, in the real world, as D-Day), the day in which human history changed forever.
While WWII was raging, the Dead rose from their graves to devour the living and to wreak havoc on them. Many nations did not have the strength to counteract the violence and crumbled before the insane hunger of those that were once living beings. Only a few survivors lasted in those wastelands, where “life” had changed her name to “nightmare”.
Lost Lands
The Lost Lands are by now rotten deserts where gaunt bunches of men and women, either bold or on the brink of madness, live from day to day. It is a place where finding water or provisions can costs one’s life, and the ground is scratched by the crawling steps of hordes of undead and other dreadful creatures. Some nations with strong leaders were able to hold out, establishing totalitarian regimes.
Third Reich
The Third Reich, claiming victory in WWII, took the name of IV Reich (The Fourth Reich). In these territories, ruled by the Nazi regime, life is regulated by rigid and cruel laws, and personal liberty is only a dream. The cities, surrounded by fortified walls, are the same as they were ten years before, and nothing appears to be different. People live unaware of the horror that crawls outside the cities borders. Gestapo soldiers patrol the streets to maintain public order, instilling an atmosphere of terror and suffering. Ferocious SS Platoons deport more and more citizens to the Reeducation Camps, from where nobody ever returns. In the name of a new religion risen from the ashes of Christianity, churches are desecrated and converted to shrines of the new Führer-Messiah who will once again lead the Reich to global conquest.
Sanctum Imperium
In Italy, after the fall of the fascist regime, a rigid theocracy was imposed, ruled by Pope Leone XIV. This new state has returned Italy to the medieval period. Most modern technology has been abolished or is only in the hands of a privileged few. the Italian territories appear to be anachronistic places, where old cars stand beside pyres of a new inquisition. Templars in shining armour fight alongside Hunters of the undead, veterans of the world war, to defend the population. In the Papal State, the fervent religious fanaticism has brought a ferocious fight to heresies and to all that is “anti-papal”.
Z.A.R.
The Russian civilization survived the horror but at the cost of extreme changes. Giant metal cities, immense mazes of towers and corridors extend from the depth of the earth to the sky, while, from the untiring factories, the first bio-machines were born, the monstrous forefront of a new humanity.
This is the realm of Z.A.R., an inhuman dictator of a technocracy that had decreed the end of concepts like family, religion, peace and rest. Not even sunlight is granted to the slave citizens of the Calculator, and the days have lost their value and changed their length to submit to the rigid and precise rhythms of the bio-machine factories.
