Cort (Playing Cards)
Cort is a set of playing cards originating in Enamella (where it is pronounced with a silent 't', phonetically like cour), but has spread across most of the world as the primary card game deck. Outside of Enamella, most pronounce it like 'court', as that is the way that Hizp'en and Astrean pronounce it as the premiere languages of the western world. In the east, due to contact with these languages, they have also adopted this pronunciation, although it depends on the language.
The deck consists of 60 cards with 5 suits, traditionally with two black, two red (since those dyes were cheapest), and one blue. The Black suits are Swords and Feathers/Leaves depending on exactly which version, and the red suits are flowers and Hearts/Spades, also depending on the version. Historically, they were spades, and still are in the Enamellan language, everywhere else, they call them hearts. (Authorial note: the heart symbol in this world is upside down compared to our world, which is similar to how they sometimes would draw it before the 1500s.) The fifth suit is the celestials, cards represending stars or planets, with the two face cards being the sun and moon. These are printed in blue usually, although some variants occasionally print them yellow or green, namely because green dyes were a lot cheaper during the industrial era, although that particular shade has been discontinued due to the presence of arsenic, although not terribly dangerous once the paint has dried, it was damaging to those who manufactured the product.
The face cards for the black suits are Emporers as the highest card and Kings as the second highest. The reds gender flipped them to Empresses and Queens, they are of equal value (Which may mess with our predisposition as earthlings). As stated before, the two face cards for the celestials are the sun, being the highest, and the moon, being the second highest.
There are a large variety of games that can be played with the deck, as that is how card games go. The most popular are gambling games, where you bet to try and beat the other players' hands. (Hint: like poker) The simplest and most popular game in Enamella is 6 card draw (HInt: it works like 5 card draw, but with different winning hands), where you start by dealing 5 cards to each participant, where they select any number from their hand to exchange with the deck. Highest hand wins.
A more interesting game is where the name of the cards comes from. Card in Enamellan is Corte, which, although similar to cort, should not be entirely mistaken, although the difference in the modern day is mostly negligible. Cort, the game, first deals all of the cards to the players. They then bet on how many plays they can win. In this game, the ones, commonly known as "The Sword", or "The Heart" are high, and beat all other cards in their suit. They start with the Two of Swords and continue from there, playing within the suit the leading player plays. The player who wins the play gets to start the next one. You have to play within the suit unless you are out of cards in that suit, with the exception of Celestials, which cannot be played until you run out of one of the other suits. When you play these, they beat all other suits, however, one of your opponents can still play a higher celestial, which could still win the hand. (They're basically the trump). Celestial is also the exception to the ones rule, with the sun still being the highest in the suit.
Mechanics & Inner Workings
60 cards.
Significance
Cultural
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