It's 2016. Ivanka is a collector of paranormal ephemera and travels around researching various indigenous folktales and acquisitioning magical objects from all over the world. She rents her cabin in the mountains as a way to fund her travels, but since it's her only home, it's also where she has to store a lot of her possessions, curiosities included. These possessions include a pet bird by the name of Roscoe and a pet cat by the name of Luna, who mostly stay at the cabin pampered by guests while Ivanka travels.

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As part of her rental requirements, she asks that her renters respect the curios in the cabin, and Ivanka also locks up the ones she doesn't want anyone to mess with--which includes an old Tarot deck she has come into possession of, which she secures in a jewelry box. Suspecting the deck to be valuable, she puts the key on Luna's collar as a way to keep it safe. 

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A group of young renters, spearheaded by confident and bullheaded Lee, rent the cabin on Halloween while Ivanka is in Estonia. Lee booked the cabin after being tempted by its spooky outlandishness, and with the childish intent to mess with Ivanka's stuff. He manages to get close to Luna and takes the key from her collar, and uses it to open the jewelry box, and finds the Tarot deck inside.

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Hoping to have some spooky fun, Lee has everyone convene at 3am, at which point he attempts to use the deck to read the future. Unfortunately, the deck is cursed, and he awakens the cards with his meddling, and the entire group is spirited away into the nether realm. Womp womp.

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Ivanka returns from her travels a day later, planning on living at the cabin for a while, but finds the renter vehicles still in the driveway, and the cabin is a mess--and the renters are missing. Seeing the Tarot cards on the floor, and feeling the crushing presence of spiritual enmity, she quickly purifies the area with a sacred candle in order to banish the evil pressure and quickly surmises that the renters are beyond saving.

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Knowing she has little time before law enforcement starts sniffing around, Ivanka quickly reaches out to her librarian friend Garrett, hoping that he can help her research the cards in order to learn more about their origin and how she might defuse them, since he is often her pipeline for local mythologies and has access to all kinds of useful literature.

 

While waiting for Garrett's input, Ivanka works fast and draws on her own understanding of magic to seal and destroy the Court cards and the pip cards, leaving only the Major Arcana behind, which are too virulent, too powerful, for her to destroy. Meanwhile, Garrett mails Ivanka a folio of papers from an old fairytale involving a witch in Hungary back in the late 1700s who used Tarot cards, but who also became a dark and feared symbol of revenge.

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The story goes that there was a young woman by the name of Zsófika who raised her son Ambrus on her own and provided benevolent services as a local witch, herbologist, and midwife. She is taken to the estate of a Duke who hears of her powers and desired for her to be his advisor, and to take advantage of her powers; however, when Zsófika gives him a reading of bad news, foreseeing that his wife and newborn son will die in childbirth, he flies into a rage when the worst comes to pass, blaming her for the tragedy. As vengeance, he takes Ambrus and burns him at the stake, taking from Zsófika what was most precious to her, and banishes her to the fields. 

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However, Zsófika is not content to persist, and chooses instead to curse the Tarot deck she used by drawing a magic circle, arranging the cards on it, slitting her wrists and bleeding into the circle so that her blood touched every card on its journey through the symbol, effectively infusing the deck with her rage and thirst for vengeance. Whoever found the cards and tried to use them for their own benefit would instead be torn away from the living world, joining Zsófika in eternal suffering.

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Ivanka reads the story and concludes that the only way to purify the cards is to invoke the spirit of Ambrus in the form of holy fire, with a sanctified candle, like how Ambrus himself became a candle. However, the families of the renters have since reported them missing, and Ivanka's cabin is their last known location--detectives are going to descend upon the cabin with search warrants any minute, putting their lives at stake.

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Ivanka doesn't have time to make sure the spell is perfect. Knowing that, she understands that the evil influence of the remaining cards will most likely overwhelm her if she tries to burn them with magical fire while in their direct presence, so she plans instead to go into the woods and attempt to call the fire down from afar. 

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She sets Rosco and Luna free, hides the sealed (asleep) Major Arcana cards in the grandfather clock as a way to ensure they are hidden from prying eyes, and writes a note of warning to whomever happens to come across them in the event she fails, envisioning losing control of the fire and burning down the cabin.

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Since she would rather lose the cabin and not her life with it, she instead goes into the woods and attempts to call in sanctifying fire, pleading with the spirit of Ambrus, but, having rushed the ritual and not prepared properly, Ivanka, herself, is set afire, and dies.

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You stumble across the cabin ten years later. Law enforcement, lacking now both victims and suspect, have exhausted all leads, and the property is left to go fallow, the incident just another cold case in their file cabinets. Looters and adventurers have combed up and down the property here and there, and if some of them happen go missing under suspicious circumstances, the public is none the wiser, since most of the adventuring souls are solitary creatures to begin with.

 

However, the evil influence of the cards persists, even while they're locked away in the clock...and nobody has touched them in the ten years since Ivanka sealed and hid them away. Until you!

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You uncover the cursed deck, use Ivanka's remaining purifying candle to banish the miasma holding you captive in the cabin, and manage to escape!

 

Halloween is the anniversary of the incident--the perfect time to try to put this deck to rest, once and for all.

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You and the rest of your camping friends decide to spend the remaining months preparing yourselves for the ritual. The only answer to death is life--the only answer to suffering is joy. This Halloween you'll finally end this curse, and maybe even make a treasured memory in the process...something precious to take with you into the dark.