The Lovers
Love (Actually), Relationships, Asking Your Partner if They Would Consider an Open Relationship With a 12 Foot Tall Angel, The Garden of Eden, Forbidden Knowledge, Raphael1, Pairs, Twins, Gemini
This one’s pretty easy. Love, dummy!
Not lust, so much — the express train to bone-town is more accurately represented by The Devil2. This is a gentler, “draw a picture of their face in your high-school notebook” love.
Of course, every Tarot card needs some easy outs in case the mook getting a reading doesn’t fall in love, so The Lovers can also mean any relationship, any pair of people, and it contains a bunch of open-ended critical backup symbolism3. The Lovers are related to the astrological sign, Gemini, so the twin/pair motif is present and something to work with.
These lovers are chillin’ in the Garden of Eden, with the archangel Raphael behind them4. Given the coiled snake and fruit tree, that solidifies the connection to forbidden fruit or forbidden knowledge.
Friends & Foes
The Star-Crossed Lovers are scions of two warring families. These two want to be together, but fate conspires to keep them apart.
The Buddy Cops hate each other because they are so different from one another, but are forced to work together until each sees the merits of the other one’s methods, and grudgingly earn one another’s respect.
The Thunder and Lightning5 are a pair whose abilities perfectly complement one another, dangerous individually but nearly unstoppable when together.
The Meat Lovers are cannibals won’t rest until they’ve tried every kind of meat. Every kind.
Mr. Grim and Mr. Derby are a pair of polite but depraved criminals who’ve always worked together, who enjoy their work and are very good at it.
The Good Twin and Evil Twin might make it immediately clear which one is the evil twin, or it might be impossible to tell at first.
a Dr. Jekyll seems nice enough at first, but what you don’t know is that they harbor a terrible monster within.
Hooks
The players are being forced to work with an odious, difficult, unpleasant NPC who’s only upside is that he’s devastatingly effective at one small, crucial thing.
There’s a wedding planned, and the bride-to-be and groom-to-be have hired your players to head off any nonsense before it begins - oh, but there are so many things, small and large, about to go wrong.
This humble librarian has stumbled upon forbidden knowledge, and is slowly going mad while parts of the library fold in around them.
Locations
The Palace Gardens are rife with young nobles plotting against and falling in love with one another.
The Statues Facing One Another were constructed long ago and their purpose is not immediately clear.
The City in the Trees is interconnected within the boughs of toweringly high, healthy, long-lived forest trees.
Treasures
The Teleporting Pyramids are melon-sized glass pyramids, each allowing the holder to instantly teleport to the location of the other pyramid, bringing the pyramid along with them.
Things That Could Go Wrong at a Wedding
The Best Man has lost the rings. The last time he had them was just before a night of drinking at a run-down tavern.
Something has happened to all of the food. Your players will need to find and prepare enough food to feed a hundred people on short notice.
One of the betrothed is having a panic attack.
One of the betrothed is pregnant and trying to hide it from their stern, judgemental relatives, but one of their party guests knows this and intends to spill the beans.
The wedding is outdoors and the weather is awful.
The two families have dramatically different wedding traditions, some of which are dangerous or insulting to the opposed family.
“Is the officiant going to do the thing where they ask if someone objects? I need to know for, uh, personal reasons.”
Names
Romeo, Juliet, Bonnie, Clyde, Alexander, Cleo, Paris, Helen