From Beyond

In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. Some simply live free of the stifling Aelfir control, whether by means lawful or unlawful, others are driven to beyond the Undercity, delving ever deeper into the bowels of the world in search of the fabled Heart, or perhaps their heart’s desire. There are also those who use the Undercity as a sanctuary, as a base of operations, from which they lead the rebellion against the Aelfir. They are members of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, both a faith and a revolutionary movement, and outlawed for both reasons. As the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress foments and funds rebellion and unrest in the Spire above, it sends cells of its black ops paramilitary wing, Throne Division, scurrying up the Spire to conduct assassinations, acts of sabotage and blackmail, abductions, extractions, and more. The City Beneath then, is a home to many, sanctuary to some, a base of operations to others, a stepping stone to elsewhere for a few, and a thorn in the side for even fewer. What though, would happen if the City Underneath was threatened from somewhere else, perhaps a means of escape?

Doors to Elsewhere is a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, a roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., like the other supplements for Heart: The City Beneath—Sanctum, Vermissian Black Ops, and Burned and Broken—it explores other ways in which to roleplay in its world underneath. Where it differs is that it actually takes the Player Characters away from the City to explore another place and from there, potentially, whole new dimensions. This opportunity comes when dozens of doors that were not there before suddenly appear and open. On the other side is a strange land between the dimensions. This is the City Elsewhere, home to untold numbers of people, who live in buildings that reach four or five storeys into the sky, the upper levels connected by wrought iron bridges, their homes connected to markets and workshops by warrens of alleys and streets. By day, the vast city is a blaze of colour, noise, and light, but at night, only the light remains, fizzing and fizzling in the streetlights that provide sanctuaries against the dark. And such sanctuaries are needed, for no one walks the streets voluntarily now. Between the light of the lamps and darkness beyond, there is no shadow, there is only a darkness that is home to the Interstitials, pools of liquid darkness that smell of curdled milk whose mandibles click at locks to unpick them, whose claws clack on the cobbles and so make you realise that your companions number more than you can count, and who want to eat you and spread the darkness. They abhor the light and something or someone is stealing the Power Crystals that fuel the lights of the City Elsewhere. Citizens of Elsewhere remain inside and lock their doors at night, but many have begun fleeing the city, leaving via the many passageways that lead to doors to other dimensions—and that includes the City Beneath. Can the City Beneath provide them with sanctuary as it does others, or now that the doors are open, will the Interstitials follow and bring their eternal death and darkness with them?

This is a campaign framework which begins in the City Beneath rather than away from it as do the other supplements for Heart: The City Beneath. Its set-up presents an immediately intriguing mystery, one almost on the Player Characters’ doorstep. The framework really consists of that beginning and its possible endings, leaving what happens in between in the hands of the Game Master and her players. This includes the culprits behind the theft of the Power Crystals, Doors to Elsewhere suggesting multiple options, some of whom might be surprisingly close to home for the Player Characters. After that, it explores the nature of the City Elsewhere, the main factions in the city and their notable personalities, various locations or landmarks that the Player Characters might visit, the dimensions that the Player Characters might find themselves in if they take a wrong turn, and a set of tables for bringing the City Elsewhere and its inhabitants to life.

Some of the flavour of the difference of the City Elsewhere comes through in the small details. For example, one possible door from the City Beneath to the City Elsewhere is described as a corpse, slumped over, through coral has blossomed to form a doorway, whilst potential means of overcoming the language barrier is solved by everyone smoking from the same hookah to temporarily understand each other or a book, when handed to the Player Characters by an NPC, reveals in exact detail, the conversation they would have if they spoke the same language. At the Crowdswallow Market—where the bustling crowds over seven streets never quite seem to buy anything, the Player Characters might want to buy a Fighting-Rope, since bloodshed is forbidden in the City Elsewhere or a Light Bomb, as it is one of the few things that harms the Interstitials. Other locations include the Café De L’Autre Monde, which always remains a café no what happens in the City Elsewhere and serves a delightful menu of cakes; the Desert Maiden, a ship lost at sea that crash-landed atop an artist’s workshop and become a bar; and the Street of Doors, the City Elsewhere’s central street lined with stable doors to other dimensions, allowing travel to and from Approved Realms—if the toll is paid, of course.

The City Elsewhere’s major factions include the City itself and only the one guild, the Guild of Cartographers, which seeks to catalogue and control every portal. Surprisingly, the Vermissian Collective has a presence in the City Elsewhere. The group of scholars and explorers who map and examine the transport network which runs up and down the Spire to the City Beneath and beyond, maintains an embassy in the City Elsewhere. It has become much busier since the doors to the City Elsewhere began opening. Not all of the factions are happy to see the Doors open. The Hounds—or the Glorious 33rd—are dedicated to finding every door, closing the ones they can, and boobytrapping the ones they cannot.

Doors to Elsewhere also has discussion on ‘Dimensional Theory’ and descriptions of some of the major dimensions that have multiple, stable links to the City Elsewhere, along with several minor ones that are harder to reach. A favourite from the latter is ‘The Place Where Cats Go When No-One’s Watching’, a constant twilight labyrinth of rooftops, alleys, airing cupboards, bins with fish in, and more, that all cats can access if nobody is watching. Sadly, non-cats are not allowed and to them it is anything other than a feline paradise. The SS Freebird is ship that sails on the aether between dimensions, the collective of shamans, magi, fringe scientists, de-frocked priests, and occult oddities that make up its crew working to maintain and improve their vessel when not docking at other dimensions and partying hard—really hard!

Rounding out Doors to Elsewhere is a list of the (story) beats—minor, major, and zenith—that the Player Characters can hit whilst in the City Elsewhere and the advances available. There is some advice on how running as different a campaign in the City Elsewhere compared to the City Beneath, but it is relatively light. It is backed up with a set of random tables for creating details in play at the table.

Physically, Doors to Elsewhere is a slim, very well-presented book. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent and the book is easy to read and understand.

Much as with Sanctum, Vermissian Black Ops, and Burned and Broken before it, Doors to Elsewhere presents a different campaign focus and set-up for Heart: The City Beneath. In fact, a very different campaign focus and set-up for Heart: The City Beneath, one with an external rather than an internal focus. It enables to the Player Characters to explore and contrast their existence in the City Beneath with the City Elsewhere and beyond, but as much as it is filled with lovely little details and intriguing secrets as you would expect for a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, ultimately, Doors to Elsewhere does feel like an outlier.

—oOo—

Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

Spurned and Splintered

In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. Some simply live free of the stifling Aelfir control, whether by means lawful or unlawful, others are driven to beyond the Undercity, delving ever deeper into the bowels of the world in search of the fabled Heart, or perhaps their heart’s desire. There are those though, who find themselves exiled to the city below, cut off from the world they once knew and they once fought for. Once you were members of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, both a faith and a revolutionary movement, and outlawed for both reasons. As the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress foments and funds rebellion and unrest in the Spire above, some it casts out and if they are lucky, they find themselves in the City below. Perhaps someone made a mistake. Perhaps someone took more than they gave. Possibly secrets were revealed. Perhaps by someone else or perhaps by you. It does not matter, for then the misgivings began to spread. Rumours about betrayals and bribes and worse, and so you became a hindrance rather than a help. Your only use to the cause was as something to placate the authorities, and so you were betrayed.

Were you sent on a mission, your handlers knowing you were going to fail? Were simply traded away to give the high priests of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress an advantage? Were you set up as a lesson to others? Does it matter? You became a traitor and you ran.

Burned and Broken is a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, a roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., like the other supplements for Heart: The City Beneath—Sanctum and Vermissian Black Ops—explores other ways in which to roleplay in its world underneath. For Burned and Broken, this is to translate the spies, killers, and revolutionaries of Spire: The City Must Fall to the lawless nightmare of Heart: The City Beneath. This, though, is not done by simply adapting the Player Characters’ stats from one roleplaying game to another. Instead, Burned and Broken will chart the events that lead to the collective fall of the ex-operatives of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, which ultimately, will prepare them for life in the City Below.

First though, Burned and Broken expands upon Derelictus, described as the ‘City Between’ Spire and Heart. In Heart: The City Beneath, this is just one Landmark that the Player Characters can visit, here it is broken into multiple Landmarks, beginning with Haven Station, the starting point for most people’s entry into Heart, and multiple Delves, like a Pig Farm that the Player Characters accidentally wander into, a warren of half-starved pigs that feed on who knows what and the pigs know the Player Characters are just something to feed on, although a very mobile something… Neither Delves nor Landmarks are safe, especially for newcomers, but Delves are far more dangerous. For the Player Characters from Spire: The City Must Fall, ‘the burned and broken’, their progress into Heart is tracked via Fall. In Heart: The City Beneath, the Player Characters each have Callings, which keep them in the Heart, but also push them to Heart. ‘Fall’ in Burned and Broken is shared between the Player Characters, who each pick a story beat from one of three categories—‘Leave’, ‘Acclimatise’, and ‘Become’. These respectively, get a Player Character out of Spire, help them adapt to its unfamiliarity, and lastly, begin to make connections with the peoples and places of the City Beneath. Fulfilling a beat first gets a Player Character a Calling as per Heart: The City Beneath, and then the abilities and advances from the selected Class.

If the first two sections of Burned and Broken take the Player Characters into the City Beneath and chart their progress, the third looks at their beginnings. Consequently, ‘Origins’ feels out of place, as if should have been at the start. It presents several packages of skills, domains, equipment, and abilities that each represent why the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress recruited a Player Character and what a Player Character brought to the City Beneath. These are not direct adaptations, as various abilities do not fit the realm of Heart: The City Beneath and not all of them work as well below as they do above.

Despite Burned and Broken telling the Game Master that it is not designed to simply present a means of adapting a Player Character from Spire: The City Must Fall to Heart: The City Beneathh, it does actually give such a means! This, though, comes towards the back of the book and it is a very quick-and-dirty method that will definitely require the adjudication of the Game Master to fix potential issues. The advice on running a Burned and Broken campaign is decent though, highlighting the fact it is designed to tell a particular story, one of translation and change, that predominantly takes place in Derelictus, in the upper part of Heart. After all, the Player Characters are not ready to, let alone capable of surviving, a further descent beyond its confines. Plus, the Game Master is given some adversaries who will be hunting the Player Characters, including the Spire City Guard and Ministry Silence Operative.

Although the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress is very much focused on fomenting its rebellion and resistance against the Aelfir masters of the Spire and so reclaiming the Destra home, it does maintain action operations in the City Beneath. Most obviously for Burned and Broken, this would actually be to track down agents of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress which have gone rogue or it deems to have turned traitor. Of course, the other option would be for the Player Characters to be seen to be disavowed by the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress and then transition into agents still working for it, but in the City Beneath rather than the Spire. Several ideas are suggested as what operations they might be sent on, including some that involve the weirdness of the Heart: The City Below, such as breaking into the Slumbering Depths to assassinate an Aelfir before it is born in the mortal world and descending to the Maw where anything that is undestroyable elsewhere can be got rid of here! Lastly, Burned and Broken includes Minister as a Calling. This enables the creation of a Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress agent from the start in a Heart: The City Beneath campaign, equal to that of the other Player Characters.

Physically, Burned and Broken is a slim, very well-presented book. The artwork is excellent and the book is easy to read and understand. The order of the various feels slightly odd, but this is a minor issue.

Much as with Sanctum and Vermissian Black Ops before it, Burned and Broken presents a different campaign focus and set-up for Heart: The City Beneath. Unlike those supplements, it sets out to tell a specific story, one of betrayal, survival, and adaptation. It is a classic espionage tale, but here there is little chance of the ex-Minsters—the Player Characters—coming in from the cold. It allows though a campaign to transition from Spire: The City Must Fall to Heart: The City Beneath and gives opportunities for the Player Characters to grow and change in ways they would never have imagined in telling its one story.

—oOo—

Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

The Sanctum Sufficiency Guide

In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. Some simply live free of the stifling Aelfir control, whether by means lawful or unlawful, others are driven to beyond the Undercity, delving ever deeper into the bowels of the world in search of the fabled Heart, or perhaps their heart’s desire. Yet even life in the City Beneath is enough for some. Together with like-minded folk, they seek out refuges away from both the oppression and the conformity of the Spire and the chaos of the City Beneath, where their shared values and ideals can build a community of their own. There is hope in this effort, but ultimately horror, for there are dangers down there that have been hinted at in rumours, and when written about, dismissed as the mitherings of a cheap hack!

Sanctum is a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, the roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons, published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. In Heart: The City Beneath, the Player Characters are concerned with what lies beneath, delving ever deeper below the City Beneath, closer to the Heart, exploring a wild frontier and a desire to know what is out there, if that is, the wild frontier is the equivalent of a mega-dungeon and the desire to know what is out there, is the yearning to know what calls to you far below. What Sanctum does is take that idea of the frontier and shift it from being somewhere to explore to somewhere to settle, but again if that frontier is the equivalent of a mega-dungeon. And then, have the Haven and its inhabitants face threats from without, threats that come to them, rather than the Player Characters going out on long Delves and facing threats along the way as they would normally in Heart: The City Beneath.

A campaign revolving around a Haven begins with its creation. This is a collaborative process between the players and the Game Master. Together they decide on its Domains, Tier, its unique feature, its Art, the Faces within the Haven, the Role that each Player Character will undertake as inhabitants of the Haven, what Threats it faces, and ultimately, what Ultimate Questions remain to be answered through play… Domains represent experience of an environment or a knowledge of some kind and consist of Cursed, Desolate, Occult, Religion, Technology, Warren, and Wild. The Haven will have one or two of these in addition to the Haven Domain. The Tier indicates how close the Haven lies to the Heart, the closer it is, the weirder the surrounding terrain. Most Havens are found on the upper Tiers, but they are sometimes found between Tiers, as well as possibly being mobile or found in extra-dimensional fractures. The Haven will also have something unique about it that makes it stand out and also be the reason why people visit the Haven or even why the Haven is threatened. The Faces within the Haven are its primary NPCs, primarily presenting those who support the status quo, who wants to shake things up, and who represent the bulk of the populace. These need not be NPCs, as Player Characters can fulfil their positions within the set-up, but their primary role is to establish tension within the Haven. The Art can be art, or it can be craftwork or entertainment, that represents the Haven and adds to its uniqueness. The Roles are functions that the Player Characters and their Classes perform in the Haven, whilst Threats—tied into one or more of the Haven’s Domains—are the dangers that the Haven faces. Penultimately, a Haven requires a name, and lastly, the players define what they want to discover during play, the questions which remain unanswered.

The creation process is simple and straightforward, and it is supported by suggestions and ideas throughout and then a fully worked out example, that is essentially, ready to play. Altogether, this is a very well written process and engagingly encouraging.

Mechanically, a Sanctum campaign differs from a Heart: The City Below campaign only slightly. The Haunts, locations where a Player Character can obtain healing and resupply in exchange for resources, to remove Stress or downgrade Fallout are moved within the Haven and so flesh out the Haven. Not all of the Player Characters’ Haunts need be placed within the Haven, and like Resources, can be located outside of it, thus presenting a motive for the Player Characters to leave their Haven, conduct a mission, and return. This is how a Sanctum campaign is intended to be played. Not just to go to remote Haunts or the sites of Resources, but also to go to deal with threats and actually Delve down to Landmarks (probably more than once) as in the standard play of Heart: The City Beneath. Landmarks also need to be added to the surrounding terrain as part of the creation process, but this is a task for the Game Master rather than the Game Master and her players. In the long term, there is guidance too for how Fallout, the consequences of Stress suffered by the Player Characters, can affect the Haven itself. Again, there are numerous examples. One last option given for a Haven is for it to have its own story beats, such as repelling attackers who after the valuable resources held within the Haven or creating communal art which enhances the Haven and its sense of community. These provide objectives for the Player Characters and reward them by enabling them to remove stress which they have shifted onto their bonds in earlier play. These range from simply being in danger and being infiltrated to the Haven having fallen and no longer being habitable and someone that the Player Characters care about being killed.

Penultimately, Sanctum presents the Game Master with a set of major threats to any Haven—Angels. These are emissaries of the Heart itself, so they can also appear in a standard campaign of Heart: The City Beneath as well. Encountering them though is rare, and they are usually only spoken of as myth and rumour. Sanctum introduces four new Angels in addition to the one in the core rulebook. These are protoplasmic, bone-clawed ink-blackness of the Blossom Angel, the chitin-armoured Cacophony Angel whose approach is heralded by the razor-sharp songs from its dozen mouths, the lurker in the cupboard that almost does not want to be known that is the Locos Angel, and the one that walks amongst us in the skin of another whispering dissent, the Penumbra Angel. These are major threats, dangers that ultimately cannot be destroyed, only temporarily defeated.

Lastly, Sanctum includes a selection of equipment and items that the Player Characters cannot purchase, but might be able to find. These all belong—or belonged—to Gris Hanneman, a pulp fiction author in the world of Spire: The City Above and Heart: The City Beneath, who fled into the City Beneath after his novel sales dried up and went looking for inspiration. In the resulting book, Beyond the Edge of Madness: A Year in the City Beneath, Hanneman claims he spent time in various Havens and encountered and discovered new Angels. Excerpts from the book pepper the supplement, providing an in-game commentary on Heart: The City Beneath and on the new Angels described in Sanctum. In fact, they are the only descriptions given of them besides the raw stats. The fiction adds plenty of flavour as well as a more nuanced view of the setting. The items to be found that once belonged to Hanneman include ‘The Pistol that Cris Pulled from a Corpse’s Hands in Redcap Grove’, (anti) ‘Angel Bullets’, and ‘Gris Hanneman’s Fingers, Conspicuously Missing From His Hand When He was last Seen’. Using his gear nicely brings Cris Hanneman into the world even though he is dead!

Physically, Sanctum is a slim, very well-presented book. The artwork is excellent and the book is easy to read and understand.

Sanctum presents a different campaign focus and set-up for Heart: The City Beneath, but whereas Vermissian Black Ops takes the Player Characters back into the Spire above, Sanctum is firmly set in Heart: The City Beneath, or rather, below the Heart: The City Beneath. However, rather than follow the transience of a campaign involving a series of ever longer Delves as in Heart: The City Beneath, what Sanctum does is shift play to a campaign where permeance and survival of community and family comes to the fore. This is no less dramatic than the delving of Heart: The City Beneath, only that the stories are different.

Sic Transit Sicariorum

In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. Some simply live free of the stifling Aelfir control, whether by means lawful or unlawful, others are driven to beyond the Undercity, delving ever deeper into the bowels of the world in search of the fabled Heart, or perhaps their heart’s desire. There are also those who use the Undercity as a sanctuary, as a base of operations, from which they lead the rebellion against the Aelfir. They are members of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, both a faith and a revolutionary movement, and outlawed for both reasons. As the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress foments and funds rebellion and unrest in the Spire above, it sends cells of its black ops paramilitary wing, Throne Division, scurrying up the Spire to conduct assassinations, acts of sabotage and blackmail, abductions, extractions, and more. This is done via the Vermissian, the great public transport network that would have bound the Spire and the City Beneath together. Throne Division takes advantage of its non-Euclidean magic to access every level of the Spire, but there are dangers to travelling its length, let alone the dangers to be faced in the execution of its missions.

Vermissian Black Ops is a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, the roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons, published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. In Heart: The City Beneath, the Player Characters are concerned with what lies beneath, and very rarely will they concern themselves with events in the Spire above, but in Vermissian Black Ops, the reverse is true. They will be conducting missions in the Vermissian and in the Spire, thus going up rather than down. This requires some significant changes to the rules of Heart: The City Beneath to account for this change. Thus, Player Characters gain advancements not from hitting story beats related to their Calling, but from completing missions; Domains, which represent experience of an environment or a knowledge of some kind, can be found in the Vermissian rather than just the Technology Domain; and in stead of using Haunts to remove Stress and Fallout from a character, the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress has numerous safehouses and access to doctors and spiritual guidance! To reflect the more combat oriented nature of a Vermissian Black Ops campaign and that the Player Characters are working for a proscribed organisation, the Combat and Ministry Fallout and Resistances are detailed.

Notes are included for combining Heart: The City Beneath and Spire: The City Must Fall via Vermissian Black Ops, essentially in troupe style play with players making characters for both roleplaying games and switching back and forth as necessary. Spire: The City Must Fall can also serve as a setting supplement for Vermissian Black Ops. That said, Throne Division operatives are advised not enter the Spire outside of their missions as they are wanted terrorists with a price on their heads, their time in the City Beneath has changed them enough that they stand out, and exposure to the Heart, even at a relative distance, means they leak weirdness…

Game play in Vermissian Black Ops is conducted as a series of operations, beginning and ending with using the Vermissian to get and from the target. In between can be many scenes, including the actual execution of the mission. Mission creation is intended to be co-operative, the Game Master as the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress assigning a mission and the players outlining together the objectives involved in completing the mission. One-shots are slightly different in that it is suggested that the Game Master creates the mission and its objectives herself. Numerous example operations are given here.

A list of Throne Division equipment is also detailed, such as the Coffin-Crawler, a multi-legged lead-lined box capable of automatically ferrying an operative juddering and lurching shielded from the invasive energies that flood parts of the Vermissian and the Witch-Hunter Railgun, which fires fizzing electro-magnets inscribed with runes designed to rip a magician’s soul from his body and pin it in place. Pride of place, of course, goes to the descriptions of the five lines of the Vermissian, from the Loft Lint atop the Spire with its access to the connected cathedrals to the Aelfir gods and the Autumnal Vaults, sanctified murder corridors where the masked adherents of the Harvest Church ceremonially hunt the Drow, to the Pulse Line which snakes underneath the City Beneath, all the way down to the Heart itself… Bar the Pulse Line, all of the lines are accorded a general description so as give each one a different flavour and feel, and numerous stations and accessible locations are detailed so that the Game Master can bring the transit from the Vermissian to the Spire and back again to life as well as the places that the Throne Operatives will be targeting with their Operations.

Rounding out Vermissian Black Ops is a selection of NPCs and enemies ready for the Game Master to use in her campaign. Arrayed against Throne Division operatives and the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress are the Paladins, the mighty army of one hundred killers sanctified by the Solar Church, which also uses the Vermissian to navigate the Spire and interdict against intrusion by Throne Division operatives, and the Spiral Council, the rulers of the city above, including each of its seven members and its elite guards, the Black Guard of Amaranth. Directing Throne Division operatives is the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress itself, the most successful and possibly maddest of the revolutionary fronts against the Aelfir in the Spire, with possible motivations for joining listed. Between them are the Vermissian Collective, a group of scholars and explorers who map and examine the transport network as much as they collect and hide the secrets of the Drow, and Gutterkin—Goblins, Kobolds, Trash Fairies, Toadgirls, and others—which form a secretive underclass in the City Beneath, but flourish in the Vermissian.

Physically, Vermissian Black Ops is a slim, very well-presented book. The artwork is excellent and the book is easy to read and understand.

Vermissian Black Ops essentially inverts Heart: The City Beneath and sends its players and their characters in the opposite direction, that is, up into the territory of Spire: The City Must Fall, rather than down towards the Heart. Thus, it focuses on campaigns that are not ‘traditional’ to Heart: The City Beneath, and not necessarily of use in Heart: The City Beneath, more episodic in nature given the operation style structure and emphasis on action and combat, whilst the expanded details of the Vermissian will be useful in a Spire: The City Must Fall campaign. Otherwise, Vermissian Black Ops enables the Game Master and her players to bring the revolutionary fervour of Spire: The City Must Fall to Heart: The City Beneath and send it all the way back up the towering city from a different direction.

—oOo—

Dagger in the Heart, a full length scenario for Heart: The City Beneath written by Gareth Hanrahan is currently funding on Backerkit.

What Lies Below

If there is revolution and repression above, there is freedom below. Freedom to be who you are. Freedom of expression. Except freedom from desire. Except freedom from your heart’s desire. Or is that what your desire from the Heart… or the Heart desires from you? No-one knows what the Heart is—inquisitive god-cocoon, time-travelling alien terraformer, unknowable world-engine, the land of the dead, the root of all magic, faith, and the occult across the world, or the manifestation of all the sins committed and considered in the Spire far above. In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow through them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. The former are hyena-headed people from the far south, renowned for their demonology-driven mechanoccultism technology, those in the City Beneath free to be close to the Spire despite the cold war between the Aelfir and the Gnolls. The latter are renowned for their interest in the past, retro-engineers and tomb robbers who have developed their rediscovered technology into an arms industry, those in the City Beneath, free to delve and explore as is their wont. Some simply live in the City Beneath, but others are Delvers, driven to survive and delve deep below the Spire and the City Beneath. Here they will the remnants of the Vermissian, the great public transport network that would have bound the Spire and the City Beneath together. Then caves and tunnels, first of stone and rock, then of bone and teeth. The archaeological remainders of lost civilisations. Pockets where science and the occult are what they once were or are somewhere else. Realms lit by the stars of another world. Lost worlds home to mythic predators. The closer the delver gets to the Heart, the more the unreal the City Beneath becomes… In between are landmarks, perhaps points in the darkness where sanctuary can be found, more likely danger and death, but they are always stable points by which delvers can navigate ever closer to the Heart, a “rip in the holes between worlds”, and what drives them deeper…

This is the setting for Heart: The City Beneath, a roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it would win multiple Ennie awards in 2012, including for Best Writing, Best Setting, and Best Layout. It is both a sequel and a companion roleplaying game to the publisher’s Spire: The City Must Fall. If Spire is punk anarchy and revolution, Heart is the wild frontier and a desire to know what is out there, if that is, the wild frontier is the equivalent of a mega-dungeon and the desire to know what is out there, is the yearning to know what calls to you far below. As a dungeon-delving roleplaying game, it puts the desires and wants of the Player Characters first and foremost, shifting from the simulationist play style of the dungeon-delving roleplaying game to a narrative play style, focusing on story, and the repercussions of the Player Character actions with the Game Master expected to undertake a minimal approach to preparation beyond a location—or Landmark—or two and the elements of their characters that the players want to explore. This shift does not mean that there is any less scope for action and heroism, but rather there is more freedom to interpret and describe how it happens. Although Heart has the feel of a mega-dungeon, or at least, a dungeon frontier, it is really designed to played in short campaigns, roughly ten sessions or so. This does not mean that Heart: The City Beneath is a ‘one-and-done’ roleplaying game, that is, once the Game Master and her players and their characters have delved deep into its bowels, everything that it offers has been played. Heart: The City Beneath offers numerous options within the types of Player Characters it includes and numerous sample Landmarks, as well as a handful of campaign ideas beyond the simple delve, that give it a high replay factor.

A Player Character in Heart: The City Beneath has an Ancestry, a Calling, and a Class. Together, these will determine his Skills, Domains, and Knacks, as well as Abilities. He also has Resistances. Ancestry—either Aelfir, Drow, Gnoll, or Human—does not provide any mechanical benefit, but suggests backgrounds and reasons why the Player Character is in the City Beneath, along with trinkets he has with him. A Calling, either Adventure, Enlightenment, Forced, Heartsong, or Penitent, develops the reason further. The Adventure indicates that the Player Character is looking for excitement, Enlightenment for secrets and answers, Forced that the Player Character is not in the City Beneath by choice, Heartsong that he is somehow connected to the Heart, and Penitent that he is making amends for betraying the trust of the organisation he belongs to. Each Calling gives a Core Ability, some questions to answer that explain why the Player Character is in the City Beneath, and a list of Beats to choose from. These consist of Minor, Major, and Zenith Beats, and the higher the tier of the Beat selected, the longer it takes to complete. A beat is used to signal to the Game Master what the player would like to see his character do in the next session or so. For example, a Minor Beat for the Adventure Calling could be ‘Defeat a powerful foe one-on-one’ or ‘Kick someone off a tall structure (they really deserved it)’. Of course, this forewarns the player as to what could happen in the forthcoming session and the Game Master is going to be enabling it, but not only does completing it grant the Player Character an Advancement within his Class, but it also gives the player a roleplaying and storytelling opportunity in both anticipating and completing it!

Heart: The City Beneath has nine Classes. Each provides a Resource, some equipment, and two core abilities as well as a list of Minor, Major, and Zenith Abilities. A Player Character will begin player with three Minor Abilities and a Major Ability, and will earn more through fulfilling the Beats from his Calling. Zenith Abilities mark the Player Character’s apotheosis, and their use the end of the Player Character’s story when used as they transform the City Beneath around him. The Cleaver is a hunter whose body warps in reaction to wilderness beyond the City Beneath and consume his prey to fuel his untamed powers. The Deadwalker is caught between life and death, having already died once, is never alone from that first death, and can walk between the worlds of the living and the dead. The Deep Apiarist has become a living hive for bees and together, they help him manipulate the magics of chaos and order. The Heretic is a member of the Church of the Moon, driven out of the city Above when the Aelfir first invaded. The Hound is a mercenary who draws upon the reputation and will of a lost regiment which was sent to a pacify the Heart sometime in the past. The Incarnadine was driven into debt so catastrophically deep that Incarne, the Crimson God of Debt, marked as her own, still paying off the debt, but drawing on its divine power too. The Junk Mage is a pioneering wizard who has become addicted to the dreams and thoughts of the godlike things slumbering in the City Beneath and is driven near to madness by both the knowing and the wanting to know. Wearing unique suits of armour scavenged from the wrecks of trains leftover from the creation of the Vermissian, the Vermissian Knight guards and patrol the transport network, as well as explore the routes the network takes deeper into the City Beneath. The Witch carries a blood disease, each of a different lineage, but all from the heart itself, and uses both blood and disease in ways feared and loved.

A Player Character will have Skills, Domains, Knacks, and Resistances. The skills are Compel, Delve, Discern, Endure, Evade, Hunt, Kill, Mend, and Sneak. The eight Domains, which represent experience of an environment or a knowledge of some kind, are Cursed, Desolate, Occult, Religion, Technology, Warren, and Wild. A Player Character either has a Skill or a Domain, or he does not, but if he has a Skill or Domain twice, it becomes a Knack, which means he can roll with Mastery. There are five Resistances—Blood, Echo (representing warping influence on body and mind of the Heart), Mind, Fortune, and Supplies—and these track the amount of Stress the Player Character is suffering in that aspect. Suffer too much Stress and there is the chance of Fallout, consequences which can have temporary or permanent effect on the Player Character.

To create a character, a player selects an Ancestry, a Calling, and a Class. He answers the questions posed by each and then from each Class selects three Minor Abilities and one Major Ability. Our sample character is Redeye. She was a healer serving in the Gnollish military captured by the Aelfir of the Spire. Escaping into the City below following a prison breakout, she fell ill, thinking she was going to die… Then she heard a song and when she awoke knew it was her blood infected. Now it sings to her. She misses being under the moon and being to run under the stars. She dreams of the moon running with blood and believes that the Heart is strongest where diseases touches—for good or ill. Her fellow delver, Urwain, a Vermissian Knight recently recovered from Gnollish Scrofula, which is known to kill a human, so she thinks him strong enough to lead him to the heart. When she blinks, her eyes turn blood red, but then drain back to her normal colour.

Redeye
Ancestry: Gnoll Calling: Heartsong Class Witch
Skills: Compel, Discern, Kill, Mend
Domains: Occult
Abilities: Crucible, True Form, The Old Blood, Witch-Spit, Heart-Wise, Crimson Mirror
Resistances: Blood, Echo (Protection +1), Mind, Fortune, and Supplies
Resource: Tattered Finery (D6 haven)
Equipment: Spyglass built by her lover, painted dog skull, ink-blotted dream journal with maps of the places seen in your dreams, Sacred Blade (Kill D6, Bloodbound)
Beats: Let your curiosity lead you into danger, terrify or intrigue an NPC with your obsession.

Mechanically, Heart: The City Beneath uses dice pools of ten-sided dice. Whenever a character wants to undertake an action, his player rolls a ten-sided die. To this, he can add another die for a relevant Skill, relevant, Domain, and Mastery—the latter from a Knack. Once the dice have been rolled, the player removes the highest die if the task is Risky, two if it is Dangerous. The highest die is counted. The result ranges from Critical failure to Critical success, and the Player Character can fail and suffer Stress, succeed and suffer Stress, succeed without Stress, succeed dramatically and increase the Stress inflicted on an NPC or opponent. The amount of Stress suffered by either the Player Character or opponent will vary. It can be from an Ability, a weapon, the environment, or generally how close the Player Character to the Heart. This is measured by Tier, and the higher the Tier, the closer to the Heart and the greater the Stress die rolled. Stress is marked off against the appropriate Resistance and at the end of situation, the Game Master rolls to see if the Player Character suffers Fallout, which the actual consequences of the Stress, which itself only has a narrative effective. For example, a Minor Blood Fallout could be Bleeding or Spitting Teeth, but Minor Echo Fallout could be Buboes on the skin or a Strange Appetite. Blood, Mind, and Supplies Stress is easier to remove than Echo or Fortune. NPCs only have the one Resistance, also called Resistance, meaning there is less mechanical complexity and nuance to them, leaving the Game Master and her players to narrate the effects of Stress and then Fallout upon them.

Combat in Heart: The City Beneath uses the same mechanics. It primarily uses a combination of the Kill skill plus the Domain where the fight is taking place and Blood as the primary Resistance used. This will vary depending on the situation. Notably, it only has optional rules for initiative, included if the players are used to turn-based combat. Instead, combat, including initiative, is handled on narrative basis, as in, does this narratively make sense? Combat in Heart: The City Beneath runs to a single page and even that is impressively comprehensive for a narrative roleplaying game!

Beyond the rules, there is excellent advice for running Heart: The City Beneath, whether as your first roleplaying game, your first storytelling game, or simply the first time running Heart: The City Beneath. The specific advice includes the fact that the Player Characters can change the world, that the Game Master need no longer plan, drop the idea of balanced encounters because no fight is ever fair—though here is some advice if the fight is too hard (or too easy), she should ask questions of the players and give them and their characters what they want—typically tailored to each Calling with the Beats, and so on. It handles the adjustment to the storytelling style fairly well, though it often feels as if it wants to scream out, “Yes, we know you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons. This is like that, but different, and really intense, okay?”

Two fifths of Heart: The City Beneath is devoted to describing the nature of the City Beneath. Although it discusses the main society to be found near the surface, its main focus are the Delves that the Player Characters or Delvers will be undertaking. A Delve consists of a journey between two or more Landmarks, in general the deeper the Delve, from Tier 0 down to Tier 3 and beyond. A Delve has its own route, a Tier, one or more Domains, its own Stress that will be suffered if a Player Character fails an action whilst there, possible events that can occur there, and a Resistance which must be worn down via collective action upon the part of the Player Characters. This typically means using equipment, such as rope to climb down cliffs and crevasses, a compass marked with a fifth cardinal direction—‘H’, a crowbar, and so on. The nearest equivalent are the journey rules in The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings and Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World and they are tough. There is even the possibility that the Player Characters suffer so much Stress and subsequent Fallout that it is not actually worth continuing on the Delve. Some Abilities and having the right equipment can alleviate that, but it may be less frustrating for the players if Delves are handled in this fashion when it is narratively important. Perhaps if the Player Characters have used part of a Delve before, to have them learned its dangers, and so be better prepared? In that way, their experience comes into play and deeper Delves can still be dangerous.

A Landmark has a Domain, a Tier, it can be a Haunt where resources can be exchanged to remove Stress or downgrade Fallout, but it will have its own Stress that will be suffered if a Player Character fails an action whilst there, resources to be found, harvested, or stolen, and potential plots to involve the Player Characters. Heart: The City Beneath describes some forty or so Landmarks, starting with Derelictus, the City Between, the link on Tier 0 between the City Above and the City Below, followed by the God of Corpses, worshipped via its Seven Sacred Ailments which the physickers are more interested in than the patients and which a sect wants to see resurrected; Redcap Grove, a stain of fungal growth over the ruins of a cathedral, home to criminally mad druids from it is possible to purchase hallucinogens; Grin Station, a decrepit folly of an amusement park, which seems to be regenerating; and the Hoard, a vast, predatory library that seeks out books and knowledge, its librarians under the mind control of a maggoty dragon larvae at its centre. Beyond the Landmarks, there are Fractures, including Eight Heavens—each a different afterlife, and time and space seeming to bend this way and that, until finally, there is the Heart itself. If the Player Characters can reach it… There are numerous suggestions as to what the Heart is, all of them true, all of them false. Getting there though, seems beside the point. The journey seems to matter more, and the Landmarks are all brilliant and the Game Master is going to want to use all of them!

Fortunately, she need not do so. Heart: The City Beneath suggests mapping the locations of the Landmarks out on a superhex of hexes roughly seven or eight hexes across. Each ring of hexes out from the centre represents a higher Tier, the hexes being populated through play as the Player Characters extend themselves out in Delves. It is very unlikely that a single play through of Heart: The City Beneath would use all of the given Landmarks and many are worth using more than once, as the various monstrous and legendary creatures given in the bestiary. Thus, whether the Game Master is running Heart: The City Beneath as one-shot Delve, a standard Delve campaign, or perhaps having the Player Characters operating or defending a haven, there is still plenty of content for the Game Master to use.

Physically, Heart: The City Beneath is stunning. The book is well written and well presented, but Felix Miall’s artwork really brings the dark, desperate feel of the City Beneath to life, often bruised and bloody, if not brooding, and if you look for it—just like the Player Characters—also wondrous and wonderful.

Heart: The City Beneath is the antidote to the dungeon-delving roleplaying game, to the first style of roleplaying game we knew. It provides a nonet of fascinating Player Character options that twist and change who we expect to be dungeon-delving and maps their progress through what they want and what their players want to see told as part of their story. They are desperate despite the danger, heedless of the horror, careless as to the consequences, and despite the grim dark nature of the City Beneath, they are heroes—at least in their own eyes. Heart: The City Beneath brings a fantastically decrepit and dangerous world to life and lets the players and their characters drive their delving ever deeper, hoping for divine divulgement, more likely to their doom, but always intense and dramatic from start to finish.