Publisher: Stratics
Title: The Ultima Online Tarot Cards
Author: Lewis Moten
Earliest archived reference: February 7, 2003 (Wayback Machine)
THE ULTIMA ONLINE TAROT CARDS – BY LEWIS MOTEN
These cards were created by my in-came character, Sarot – a crafter of many things and more. I have finished my long journey and now will rest to see what becomes of it.
I would like to give credit to my wife, Angel, who came up with the designs for some of the more difficult cards such as the Hierophant, the Sun and Moon, as well – which she used her character, Fallen Angel (Keeper of Secrets, VON) to pose for. The High Priestess is also represented by my wife who resides on the shard Catskills.
Maintained by: Lewis Moten – because he loves an angel.
“The Ultima Online Tarot Cards” was a creative publication hosted on Stratics, one of the most influential Ultima Online fan communities of its era. Ultima Online was one of the earliest true Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, following Meridian 59, and it helped define what the MMO genre would eventually become.
Ultima Online was designed for modem connections, yet it could still create the sense that hundreds of players, NPCs, and monsters were sharing the world together at once. Battles felt massive. Towns felt alive. The world was persistent, social, dangerous, creative, and unlike anything most players had ever experienced online.
The game was presented as an isometric, tile-based world, creating the illusion of depth and a living 3D environment without being truly three-dimensional. Over time, the developers introduced selective 3D enhancements, such as paper-doll character equipment screens and eventually 3D-rendered characters and NPCs. Even then, the core world remained isometric, retaining the visual identity that defined the experience.
Ultima Online was not just something you played.
It was a world you lived in.
Players could place homes, decorate, craft, build communities, shape identities, participate in events, and leave lasting personal marks on the world. I joined the beta in the 1990s and even witnessed the pre-release wipe often remembered as “the end of the world” before launch. Even now in 2025, Ultima Online is still online and playable, which speaks to its legacy.
About the Tarot Deck
The tarot deck project was born from the culture of roleplay, storytelling, and imagination that Ultima Online encouraged. The deck focused on the Major Arcana. I created each card by capturing in-game screenshots and layering them digitally in Adobe Photoshop to form scenes, symbolism, meaning, and tone that aligned tarot archetypes with the Ultima world.
This project was also inspired by Ultima’s own history with tarot-like symbolism. Throughout Ultima Online, players occasionally encounter tarot card artwork in the environment, but they are not interactive objects. Their significance comes from the earlier single-player Ultima games that came before the MMO. In those classic titles, tarot symbolism was deeply woven into the story and character identity. In at least one of the games, your character’s moral path and virtues are determined through a tarot-based question sequence at the beginning of the story, with cards used to explore your ethics, choices, and personal character.
In that sense, tarot was already spiritually connected to Ultima. I did not introduce tarot to the world of Britannia. I simply extended it into a new form.
By the time I created this project, I had collected numerous tarot decks since my college years and had a working understanding of both Major and Minor Arcana, symbolic meaning, archetypes, and narrative depth. That background helped shape each card into more than an image. They were intended as thoughtful interpretations.
In-universe, the cards were credited to my character Sarot, described as a crafter who completed a long journey and released the deck into the world to see what fate and time would do with it.
At the time, my wife, known in real life by the nickname Angel, contributed significantly. Through her character Fallen Angel (Keeper of Secrets, VON), she posed for and helped conceptualize more challenging cards such as The Hierophant, The Sun, and The Moon. She also appeared as The High Priestess on the Catskills shard. The original Stratics page proudly credited:
Maintained by: Lewis Moten – because he loves an angel.
She is now my ex-wife, but her creative contribution remains meaningful and an important part of the project’s history.
The Shattered World and MMO Shards
One of the most interesting things about Ultima Online is how it wove its technical realities into its lore. Instead of simply saying the game ran on multiple mirrored servers, Ultima Online explained that the crystal containing the world of Sosaria had been shattered, and each fragment created its own version of the world. Each shard began as a mirror, but every shard developed its own stories, communities, politics, economies, legends, and personalities.
It was an extraordinary piece of storytelling wrapped around a networking necessity.
Even today in 2025, programmers and network engineers still use the term “shard” to describe mirrored or parallel environments that start identically but eventually diverge. Ultima Online did not just build a virtual world. It shaped the language used to discuss network environments.
Why It Matters
This was more than a fan project. It represented storytelling, symbolism, artistic design, personal history, collaboration, and community participation at a time when online gaming culture was still discovering its creative potential. It reflects an era when virtual worlds inspired people not just to play, but to build, imagine, interpret, and contribute to something living.
The Ultima Online Tarot Cards remain a small but meaningful part of that history.
