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"One crow brings you sorrow
Two crows bring you mirth
Three crows speak of a wedding
Four crows announce a birth
Five crows will bring you silver
Six crows will bring you gold
And seven crows remind you of the secrets that should never be told
Eight crows come from heaven
Nine crows ascend from hell
And ten crows you should avoid, for they are the devil himsel'"

—variation on old crow rhyme



LONG AGO, in a time most had forgotten, lived a crow. And the crow lived in a forest that bordered a field. And in this field was a house where a man lived. He was a good man, who worked hard all day, keeping his home well-kept and his fields well-tended. He was a handsome man too, and the women in the village hoped that one day he would take one of them to wife. It was this man that the crow loved with all her heart. So much so that she desired to be a mortal woman, which were two things the crow was not. The man needed a woman he could grow old and die with, and the crow wished she could give him this. She wished to give him happiness. She wished to be happy. She wished to live with the man and be forever happy until they died.

AND SO she petitioned the makers of the worlds to give her what she wanted most: to live life as a mortal woman. They granted her request, but in their own way. They made her a woman but they did not make her mortal. For there was no way that they could do so, as she was as the forces had made her to be, and they could never unmake and remake her into something she never could be.

THE CROW was, unbeknownst to all but her kind and those who made her, one of the tarot cards, and she could never be mortal. Her life would be an eternal one; never beginning, never ending. So it was and so it should be. The crow would have to content herself with being human, albeit an immortal one.

NOW THAT she was human, she chose to give herself a human name, so that she could have a human identity. Humans place so much stock in names, they'd said, and one's name was one's identity, so a name she gave herself. She would be Tristeza. And she thought the name good.

BUT NAMES are one's identity, and she would come to learn this in time.

ON A bright sunny day, Tristeza made her way to the village. She was beautiful, fair of face and clear of eye. How could any man not love her? The good man, it seemed, did not. He had come into the village to begin a courtship with the daughter of a baker who had caught his eye and set his heart to fluttering. Tristeza was disappointed. This was not how she had envisioned things to turn out and she became angry.

"HOW DARE he not love me?" she said to the makers of the worlds. "How dare he choose another? Am I not beautiful; a sight to behold?" But there was no answer for her.

A YEAR later, the man and the baker's daughter were wed in a church, and Tristeza was there. When the priest asked for those who objected to the union to speak or keep their peace, Tristeza did not speak up. This was the house of God, and the words she wished to speak could not be spoken here. So the man and the baker's daughter became husband and wife.

SO TRISTEZA begged the makers of the worlds to turn her back into a crow, and they did so. And every day she would fly up to the house where the good man lived, and watch with sadness as the baker's daughter gave her husband three sons and a daughter, and they all lived together, as happy a family as anyone could want, while the crow cawed out her sorrow.

YEARS PASSED, and once again the crow saw a man and she fell in love with him, and as before she asked the makers of the worlds to make her a woman so she could marry him and live a happy life. They granted her request and she was made into a woman. She became Tristeza again, and she went into the village to claim her husband.

THIS TIME, the man fell in love with her, and after a year had passed, they were wed. But the marriage was not a happy one, for the man was unfaithful to his wife, spending more time with the whores in the village than he did at home, and Tristeza was left to cry out her sadness and loneliness, until one day she begged the makers of the worlds to turn her back into a crow. They did so and the man returned to find his wife was gone. There was nothing but a crow, sitting on the roof outside.

A CENTURY had passed, and the crow found herself again yearning for a human's life, and again she petitioned the makers of the worlds to make her a woman, and as they had done before, they did so again, and she was a human woman. But this was a dark time, full of death and sorrow, and every man she tried to take as a husband died, and she was left alone and full of sadness.

THE MAKERS of the worlds saw all this and took pity upon her and turned her back into a crow. And when they did they spoke to her, and told her that from now on, whenever she appeared, sorrow and misery would soon follow in her wake. That whenever humans saw her they would become sad and lonely and full of hopelessness. She would be One Crow.

THE FIVE of Pentacles would now be known as "One Crow".

FOR EVER and ever, until the makers of the worlds' work was finished and the universe ended.

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It's now the present day, and once again One Crow walks the world, bringing with her her usual brand of hopelessness and woe, moving about seen and unseen, observing the sentients as they go about their daily business. Sometimes she is a woman [having long ago been granted by the makers of the worlds the ability to go from bird-shape to human-shape and back again], and sometimes she is a bird, but wherever she goes somebody somewhere will find themselves experiencing a period of loss and setback.

Don't go looking for Misery; she'll find you.

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Five of Pentacles

"Another famous card. Two poor folk sit outside a church with five pentacles on its stained glass window. This is a card that predicts loss, financial loss, bad luck, a set-back in health. It is a difficult time, as all fives are. "How can I deal with this loss?" asks the Querent. And the answer is, "By realizing that it is no real loss at all." The Querent must understand that while they may have lost material things, the spiritual is still with them. Where there is life, there is hope. They should also be advised that this too will pass. Though it may seem like there is no end in sight, there is. We all go through lean and lonely times. Things will get better."

The Five of Pentacles is a card that represents all those who are either lonely or who have experienced loss, and its physical personification in Misery is the embodiment of this. Known by many names—chief amongst them "Tristeza", "One Crow" as well as "Misery"—she comes whenever hopelessness and despair visit the mortal peoples of the worlds. It's hard to say if such things summon her, or if she brings them with her, but either way her presence is not a happy one, and sooner or later the one she visits will experience some kind of loss in their life, whatever that may be.

The Five of Pentacles can appear as a crow, or she can appear as a woman. As a woman she is pale with black hair and dark eyes, and a permanently sad look on her face, even when she is smiling [Misery is prone to crying a lot]. Upon her back is a tattoo of five pentacles arranged in a pattern akin to the five side of a standard die, and it's this that identifies her as one of the tarot cards, specifically one of the suit of Pentacles. Carried with or worn about her in human form is a cape of black crow feathers. This is her "second skin" and the sole means she has of assuming bird form. Without it she remains a human until she can recover it and change into a crow.

SPECIAL NOTE! PLEASE READ!: The Five of Pentacles is one of those characters where it's strongly encouraged that anyone wishing to play with her should contact the mun [contact info is provided for this purpose] prior to anything "plotty" [or even just casual interraction] being done. This is because Misery is likely [at least, in those prone to such emotions] to induce feelings of loss, hopelessness, loneliness, etc in the other person. If your pup's particularly "breaky", is very prone to mental disorders, or just can't possibly be depicted as having "down days", the mun [Tiger, Stripenfoxen, whatever-she's-calling-herself-today] would encourage that pup to avoid Misery altogether, unless that pup is so positive—or immune to such external stimuli—that Misery's psycho-emotional influences will just slide of them like water on a duck's back.

Thank you and happy plotting.

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For the purposes of RP, Misery uses the Hanson-Roberts tarot deck, which is published by US Games, Inc. whenever she does readings for people.

Side note: if a reading is requested by a character, please note that the reading will go slow because of the time it takes to go through all the cards in the spread. To make up for this Misery [as well as Strength and Wheel] use five-card spreads for ease of use and simplicity.

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[Disclaimer: the Five of Pentacles—regardless of name—is from the minor arcana of the tarot, and is the property of public domain. She appears here solely for the purpose of role-playing in milliways_bar, from which no profit whatsoever is being made.

Misery also appears at sages_of_chaos and dear_multiverse. Because it is only natural that tarot cards gravitate to places where they can dispense sagely advice to everyone in the nexus.]

[The mun behind the Lady Tristeza is terminal_frost AKA stripenfoxen.]

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