Path of Exile - Divination Card Stories: The Tumbleweed

Posted: 06 Dec 2020 01:06 PM PST

We're continuing to share backstories of Divination Cards' creation by our supporters. This time we spoke with nasaboy007 about the story behind the Tumbleweed, a Divination Card from the Harvest expansion.

This card was for my two best friends' first wedding anniversary. I met them many years ago, back when they were still dating and lived separately. He lived in an apartment that was a stereotypical bachelor pad - no furniture and no decoration. Our group of friends, consisting of four bachelors, lovingly nicknamed that apartment "The Wasteland" because of how desolate and destitute it looked on the inside.

One day, my friend was walking home when he came across a tumbleweed on the side of the road. It was an unusual sight in the middle of a suburban area, and so he immediately decided to make it the new centerpiece of his living room to help reinforce the "wasteland" theme. Of course, this was appalling to his girlfriend (now wife), and it was sadly the first thing to go when they later moved in together. Now they own a lovely home together and have been happily married for over a year, but the tumbleweed will always live on in our memories.

The artwork and flavortext is a reference to her "saving" him from The Wasteland; most of the bachelors in the wasteland group would have continued their lifestyles if they hadn't met their current partners. The tumbleweed in the artwork of my divination card specifically has a few people wrapped up and trapped in its tendrils, representing how it keeps the bachelors, with my friend being closest to the outside as his wife saves him from it. I wanted the poses to draw inspiration from Michaelangelo's Creation of Adam since I felt it was appropriate for the overall motif of the card.

Since this was a surprise gift, I wanted to give them a physical representation of the card too, and so I decided to also take a shot at teaching myself vector graphics to design a card back. I was very happy with the result and so I got physical cards printed up with the front and back, framed them, and gave it as a physical token of the gift to my friends.

My friend was the one who introduced me to Path of Exile many years ago, and we still play every league together, taking the Friday off from work and blocking off our entire weekends from other commitments to play the new expansion. Being able to create a divination card that referenced the Wasteland Map and leave our mark on a game that has such personal significance to the both of us was too good an opportunity to pass up.