Moria on my Mind

Moria looms deep and long in our imagination. When we think of dungeons, we always think of Khazad-dûm, the grandest Dwarven city in Middle-earth, built into the Misty Mountains by Durin the First, which rose to be an ancient, thriving kingdom of Durin’s Folk. Only to be undone by a greed for the greatest of metals—Mithril, that would breach the home or prison of a beast or spirit, a thing of such evil that it once served the Dark Lord, Morgoth. This was the Balrog and it rose, climbing from the depths up the shafts and along the tunnels, even down the road that the Dwarves had the length of the city, burning to ash all before it, including those stalwart defenders who stood to protect the city and what it stood for, even as others fled their home and the Misty Mountains, to become refugees across Middle-earth. From the beginnings of its foundations in the First Age to the day Durin’s Bane killed or drove all of the Dwarves from the city, and killed Durin the Sixth, Khazad-dûm had stood for seven thousand years. It only took two for the Balrog to undo that in the years of the Third Age. The Elves named it ‘Moria’ or ‘Black Pit’ and it has stood for another two thousand years since, its halls once lit by Dwarven artistry and craftsmanship, now dark and cold, stained by fire and Shadow, infested by Orcs and Goblins and worse. It is the year 2965 of the Third Age. It will be another twenty-five years before Dáin II, King Under the Mountain, gives permission for Balin to mount his ill-fated expedition into Moria and another fifty before Gandalf the Grey will lead the Fellowship of the Ring through ancient Dwarven halls, but interest in what still resides inside is growing, if ever really went away.

Moria – Through the Doors of Durin is a setting and campaign supplement for The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings. Published by Free League Publishing. Funded via a successful Kickstarter campaign, it won the 2025 Gold Ennie Award for Best Cartography and 2025 Gold Ennie Award for Product of the Year. What it does is present a complete dungeon, but not in the traditional roleplaying sense of every corridor, every room, every trap, every threat, and every treasure being presented in detail. Instead, it presents Moria as a realm all of its very own, much like Rhovanion, the region East of the Misty Mountains or Eriador, the region to the West of the Misty Mountains. It has history—so much history, it has lore—so much lore, it has secrets—so many secrets, it has landmarks, it has monsters, it has factions, all of which the Player-heroes can explore, discover, confront, and plunder. If they dare. All of this has significant effect on why a Fellowship might come to want to enter Moria and how a Fellowship actually explores Moria, because above all, Moria – Through the Doors of Durin is unlike any other dungeon for any other roleplaying game.

Despite what Balin might have to say about it, Moria is not a place that can be reclaimed, since it is infested with Orcs and Goblins, poisoned by Shadow, and probably damaged beyond repair by current standards of Dwarven craftsmanship. After all, so much knowledge was lost when Khazad-dûm fell. Moria – Through the Doors of Durin suggests several Patrons—one of whom is Saruman, who at this time is very much known as Saruman the White, and several reasons as why the Player-heroes might want to enter Moria, whether for themselves, or more likely, their patrons. It notes that the more Dwarves there are in a Fellowship, the more likely it is that Fellowship will return to Moria and the more likely that its forays will be longer and deeper (whether that is up or down). The motives include searching for treasure, perhaps at the request of a patron; searching for mithril, Moria being only known source; rescuing those captured by the Orcs and held prisoner or forced to work in the mines; looking for lost lore—especially ring-lore; gathering information about the inside of Moria and its factions; and especially if one is a Dwarf, then vengeance. These are paired with Patrons, some as far away as Isengard to the south or Tharbad to the west, but others camped out nearby. They of course include several Dwarves, and their suggestions too as to which of the Patrons given in The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings might also have an interest in Moria. In some cases, these do tie in with the new Patrons given here, whilst in the case of Gandalf, he would brand the Player-heroes as fools. Lastly, there is the possibility of the new Patrons becoming rivals and even enemies if the Player-heroes do not enter their employ and possibly sending rival expeditions into Moria that the Player-heroes might encounter or even have to rescue.

For the Loremaster, there are tables of rumours to spread and advice on the themes of a Moria-based campaign. They are divided between themes of wonder and sorrow and fear. The former includes the intricate grandeur of Moria and its epic scale, its hidden places and secrets, the piles of gold and jewels—if not held in hidden caches, then in Orc hoards, and perhaps the possibility of reclaiming the city. The latter includes the long and lonely dark, the toil and hunger of exploring Moria since any expedition will need to carry all of its light sources and all of its food, the triumph of the Enemy with the city firmly occupied by Orcs, Goblins, and more, the lack of a safe place, and horrors beyond record. What is notable here is that the lack of safety (though there is a place of refuge to be found, though doing so would take luck and be a mammoth undertaking in keeping with the rest of Moria), the constant need for the expedition to carry its own food and light, the long and lonely dark which can sometimes be so oppressive that it quenches light, and the horrors without record, all point to the genre that lurks in the distant, darkest places of Middle-earth, but here moves centre stage for all the time that the Player-heroes spend in Moria.

Mechanically, this is enforced by the number of locations and great items that a Player-hero can pick up and so acquire points of Shadow, whilst there is the constant chance that the activities of the Player-heroes will attract attention of The Eye—in the Moria, the equivalent of ‘Drums in the Deep’—and trigger potential events including Dire Portents, Orc Assault, Terrors in the Dark, and Ghâsh. The latter is the Orc word for fire, and when it occurs, it indicates some sort of encounter with Durin’s Bane! Lastly, Dwarves can suffer from Moria Madness in place of other Bouts of Madness whilst in and around Moria.

Where Moria – Through the Doors of Durin does surprise is in its treatment of its foes, not once but twice. For the most part it relies on the bestiary from The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings core rulebook, so there are surprisingly few new entries added here. These include the three factions of Orcs—Orcs of Mordor, Orcs of Moria, and Orcs of Udûn that contest control of Moria, those wretched Dwarves who still slave in the mines for the Orcs and the Goblins, and then some quite foul monsters. The other surprise is not the inclusion of the Balrog, after all, a description had at least to be included, but the fact that its stats are included. For the most part, the Balrog will be a baleful presence, lurking somewhere in the depths of the mine, but sometimes stirring in response to intrusions and strange activities in the mine, triggered by Ghâsh.

Yet the inference of having the stats of the Balrog is that the Player-heroes can fight him—and the truth is, they can. Of course, this is likely to be fatal for them under ordinary circumstances, though not necessarily under extraordinary circumstances and extraordinary circumstances are only likely to be triggered in the only real ‘end game’ situation in Moria – Through the Doors of Durin. This end game allows the Player-heroes to be completely brave, foolhardy, and utterly heroic and do the impossible. And that is to defeat the Balrog. This is possible, not just because the stats for the Balrog are given, but also because there are legendary artefacts to found within the depths of Moria that would aid any warrior capable of fighting Durin’s Bane. Finding them would require an epic journey in its own right and in some cases, repairing them would require a feat of legendary craftsmanship. And then there is the fight. Whether the Fellowship survived or not, defeated the Balrog or not, it would be a campaign ending climax. And yet, if the Balrog nearly defeated Gandalf, why should the Player-heroes be allowed to do so? Well, Player-heroes are Player Characters and Player Characters like to do the unexpected. Plus, as pointed out in the description of the Balrog’s lair, Shelob, was a very powerful foe encountered in The Lord of the Rings, and she too was injured grievously by a simple gardener! Further, Durin’s Bane might not be a Balrog, but instead be the Witch-King of Angmar or a dragon or a betrayal. This would mean that the Player-characters could still win and still be legendary heroes, but leaves the Balrog to face Gandalf on Durin’s Bridge.

The heart of Moria and Moria – Through the Doors of Durin is mapped out across twenty-eight locations from Dimril Dale in the east to the mansions of Thrain I in the west, and from the Mountain Galleries atop the Halls of Khazad-dûm to The Balrog’s Throne in the Deeps. They are marked and the routes between them are broadly mapped out on a stunning map of the city and its outside environs that also includes a good cutaway away of the city that shows the depths between them. There is plenty of scope and room and tables for the Loremaster to develop her own sites, but the focus is upon the twenty-eight, each of which is given its own rumour, old lore, background, and descriptions of the particular places within that locale as details of any important NPCs and then their associated schemes and troubles. Plus, a delightfully drawn map of the location that depicts the grandeur and scale of Khazad-dûm and its despoilment over the millennia.

The locations include those inside Moria and out. The notable ones outside include Dimril Dale where there can be found the famous Dimril Stair that leads up to the pass over the mountain and the Mirrormere, the lake where the Dwarves come to look into the waters to seek wisdom, and then the Doors of Durin on the far side. Inside can be found the Second Hall and Durin’s Bridge, where in fifty years, Gandalf will face Durin’s bane, and the King’s Hall, where Durin the Sixth took his stand against the Balrog and in defeat laid a curse upon the hall. Throughout, the locations are populated by some fantastic NPCs—Orcs, Dwarves, Goblins, and more. They are all well drawn, none of them really trustworthy, but the Player-heroes can deal with and interact with them and that includes the evil, spiteful Orcs and Goblins. The more includes Mocker Crawe, a big crow who has learned the speech of men and Orcs and acts as a messenger over the mountains and beyond, but might befriend passing travellers or explorers coming to Moria before luring them into a trap. As his name suggests he constantly mocks others, but he is very partial to shiny things, and he is afraid of the Giant Eagles who have recently taken to flying over the mountains. Another interesting NPC is Har, a Dwarf far from the East in the service of Sauron, who leads the Orcs of Mordor and hopes to rule Moria in his master’s name.

The appendices to Moria – Through the Doors of Durin suggest further ways in which it can be explored and played through. It examines Balin’s expedition and how it was doomed to failure, and how that might be used as the basis for a campaign as well as looking at the search for Thráin II made by Gandalf and Aragon’s entry into Moria. The latter includes the possibility that one of the reasons why the Player-heroes might want to enter Moria is to enter Aragon, the rewards for which would be a wealth of contacts and even Gandalf as a patron. There are details too on mithril and some sample magical treasures, as well as a new Culture, that of the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost, representing Dwarves of another House to that of Durin.

However, the longest appendix in Moria – Through the Doors of Durin is on ‘Solo Play in Moria’. This expands on The One Ring – Strider Mode to provide the means for the reader to join Balin’s quest and undertake various missions as part of his attempt to reclaim Moria. This will be as a Dwarf who will command a band of six allies. As part of Balin’s expedition, it should be no surprise that ultimately, the efforts of this Dwarf and his allies will fail. Instead, the solo option is intended to tell the story of that expedition before bringing it to a close with one last, heroic mission into Moria. The player is encouraged to record the outcome of these missions in his own version of the Book of Mazabul, Balin’s own record of his expedition, the inference being that a future expedition might find it and so have a better understanding of what they face in Moria. Overall, this adds another unexpected dimension to the supplement, but one that has plenty of potential for telling stories.

Physically, Moria – Through the Doors of Durin follows the look of The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings with an almost parchment look upon which the pen and ink art sits stark, but still capturing the character of the many NPCs and the dark horrors below. The cartography is more art than maps, whether that is the individual locations or the map of the whole of Moria.

As a campaign, Moria – Through the Doors of Durin does not have a beginning, a middle, and an end, barring the almost impossible end game already mentioned. Much of its actual story will be told in the future and unless the Player-heroes work for multiple patrons and thus multiple reasons to enter Moria, it is unlikely that they will explore all of its heights and depths. As a campaign, it also stands alone from The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings. Whilst it can be used for one-off expedition into its halls as part of an ongoing campaign, Moria – Through the Doors of Durin is more intended for long term play and dedicated expeditions in and out of its halls, with the Player-heroes focused on what they encounter and find there rather than what might be going on elsewhere.

Mapping Moria and making it playable was an almost impossible task, but there should be no doubt that in Moria – Through the Doors of Durin, Free League Publishing has not only succeeded in achieving that task, but exceeded it too. It draws heavily on the lore to develop and present a gloriously impressive overview of a complete realm of its own in Middle-earth and then gives the Loremaster all of the tools necessary to draw the Player-heroes into the dark of Moria. This includes plots and machinations of allies and foes inside and out, and once they are inside, landmarks to not only explore, but ultimately, survive. Above all, Moria – Through the Doors of Durin is not only a superbly reverent treatment of its source material, but a great toolkit of multiple plots, numerous secrets, and far too many horrors to help the Loremaster, her players, and their heroes experience the magnificence and malevolence of lost Khazad-dûm.

The Little Book of Death ...in Spaace!

Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure is about survival. About making a break from the cell of the detention block of a vast space station where they have found themselves incarcerated. They have an opportunity to escape their imprisonment, but the route they must take, between the detention block and their spaceship, is fraught with danger. The escapees must find their way out of the Detention Level, through the Heart of the Station, and then the Forgotten Zones to their impounded spaceship—and escape! Published by Themeborne Ltd., Escape the Dark Sector is the Science Fiction sequel to Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure, which was inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books and also the dark fantasy artwork of those books. As with its fantasy predecessor, Escape the Dark Sector can be played solo or collectively and 

offered plenty of replay value and variability with six Character Cards, fifty-three Chapter Cards—fifteen of which form the encounter deck, and five Boss Cards. Then of course, there are game’s three expansions: Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome, and Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 3: Quantum Rift. Each of these provided players with new characters to play, a new mechanic—which meant a new challenge to overcome, new equipment, and of course, a new Boss standing in the way of the players’ escape. However, when it came to death—and there is no denying that Escape the Dark Sector is definitely about death, as well as escaping, if not more so—what neither Escape the Dark Sector, nor any of its expansions, or even Escape the Dark Castle, could offer was much mote than a mechanical outcome whenever a player’s character dies in the game.

The solution is Death in Deep Space, the Science Fiction equivalent of The Death Book for Escape the Dark Castle. This is a book of over one hundred death scenes, each corresponding to a particular Chapter or Boss. It is very easy to use. Whenever a character dies as a result of the events in a Chapter or the showdown with a Boss, he checks the relevant entry in the pages of The Death Book. This is made possible because every card in Escape the Dark Castle as well as in all three of its expansions is marked with a unique code. Cross reference the code with corresponding entry in the book, whether for a Chapter or a Boss card, read out the description provided, and so provide an unfitting, but final end for your character, followed by that of everyone else.

For example, the details on the Boss card, ‘The Alien Queen’ reads as follows:

“Die, humansss!”

The Alien Queen was lying wait! Jets of venom fly towards you as she pounces—YOU must roll two HIT DICE now.

If a player should die in the course of this final confrontation before he and his companions, always a strong possibility in Escape the Dark Sector, he picks up Death in Deep Space and after finding the entry for ‘The Alien Queen’, he reads aloud the following:

The Alien Queen

Once it enters your bloodstream, the paralysing venom of the Alien Queen works quickly – a spreading rigidity coursing through your entire body, locking your joints one by one until you are all but paralysed. Even your eyelids cannot close, and you are forced to watch in horror as the terrible creature captures your fellow crew with equal ease.

With a series of hissed commands to her countless, scurrying servitor spawn, you are all dragged back her vast, deck-spanning nest. There, a slick, black, fleshy membrane covers the walls and beneath the vaguely humanoid shapes of her decomposing victims are still recognisable. Their shallow breaths rise and fall in eerie synchronicity, an indication that their suffering is yet to be ended. Soon, you and your crew join them.

Once in place, your spines are sliced open. The shimmering spools of nerve fibre that spill out are intertwined with those of the other captives suspended around – the connection sealed with a sticky, mucus coating. In this way, you become part of the fabric of the hive, a sensory node in a living web, lining the walls as far as the eye can see, warning the hive of approaching threats and passing the news back through the biotic chain in an instant.

For the rest of your days, your pain is theirs and theirs is yours; you see what they see and hear what they hear, your collective existence painfully prolonged in service to your bestial captor.

Your adventure ends here.

Physically, Death in Deep Space is a neat and tidy, if plain affair. A page of introduction explains how to use the book and contains the book’s single illustration which shows where the unique code for the Chapter or Boss card is located. Then each entry has a page of its own. There is a degree of repetition to the entries, but only a little, and it really only becomes apparent when reading the book from end to end, which is not its intended use. A small and relatively slim book, Death in Deep Space fits easily into Escape the Dark Sector: The Collector’s Box Set.

Death in Deep Space is book of endings, but one that provides a final narrative and some context to that death. Escape the Dark Sector is an enjoyable game, but character deaths can feel little, “Is that it?”. With Death in Deep Space, it is no longer the fact that you died, but very much how you died. Grim and ghoulish, The Death Book brings the death of every character, and with it, the game of Escape the Dark Sector to a nasty and unfortunate, but fitting end.

—oOo—

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

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.

The Other OSR: The Hand of God

Troika! is both a setting and a roleplaying game. As the latter, it provides simple, clear mechanics inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books, but combined with a wonderfully weird cast of character types, all ready to play the constantly odd introductory adventure, ‘The Blancmange and Thistle’. As the former, it takes the Player Characters on adventures through the multiverse, from one strange sphere to another, to visit twin towers which in their dying are spreading a blight that are turning a world to dust, investigate murder on the Nantucket Sleigh Ride on an ice planet, and investigate hard boiled murder and economic malfeasance following the collapse of the Scarf-Worm investment bubble. At the heart of Troika! stands the city itself, large, undefined, existing somewhere in the cosmos with easy access from one dimension after another, visited by tourists from across the universe and next door, and in game terms, possessing room aplenty for further additions, details, and locations. One such location is The Hand of God.

The Hand of God is the second entry in a new series of scenarios for Troika! from the Melsonian Arts Council begun with Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. This is the ‘1:5 Troika Adventures’ series, which places an emphasis on shorter, location-based adventures, typically hexcrawls or dungeoncrawls, set within the city of Troika, but which do not provide new Backgrounds for Player Characters or ‘Hack’ how Troika! is played. The Hand of God lives up to these tenets, in that it is a dungeoncrawl that takes place in the upturned hand atop the tallest statue to a god in the temple district of the city of Troika. The Player Characters are plucked from their dreams and the scenario opens with them waking to find themselves atop the extended index finger, in the giant nest of THOG, the demon bird. It is a strikingly silly and utterly appropriate cold opening for the Player Characters and the scenario, and it makes the scenario incredibly easy to slot into a campaign. The Players Characters fall asleep one night and when they wake up, there they are. What the Player Characters can see below them is the fingers of the hand, a gondola spanning the distance between the index finger and the thumb, bridges between the other fingers, a tower on the middle finger whilst water rushes out of the tip of the finger to fall to a lake below, a ramshackle wooden town on the little finger, and far below on the palm, forests and mountains surrounding the lake, and even perhaps a way down. It is a wondrous vista, a sight unlike that in any other roleplaying game and The Hand of God never lets the Game Master or her players forget it. There are constant reminders of what the Player Characters can see throughout the adventure.

The Hand of God is a pointcrawl, consisting of locations linked by specific routes and connections, making deciding where to go from one location to the next easy to decide. It is literally laid out in front of them, like the palm of well, a god’s hand. As the Player Characters descend, they will encounter the denizens of the hand, like the Goblins at the Gondola Station led by Frenki, the elderly radical mazematician ostracised for his experimental maze design, and Skink, the priest from Jibberwind Temple, currently riding the gondola back and forth in silent contemplation, who could be provoked enough to start a fight—and would quite like it if you did. In a cave down the thumb, the sleazy, flat cap-wearing Crenupt the Undead, who has been thrown out of Jgigji, the tumbledown town of living dead on the little finger, who might have goods to sell that he very likely stole and if that fails, the means to take revenge by stealing everything from the town if the Player Characters will help him. All he wants is a lot of wine. A lot of wine. The index finger is scored and scarred by Sofia the Giant Serpent as she endlessly circumnavigates the finger, her iron scales cutting deep into the stone of the finger, whilst just above in the crags, three Harpy sisters all want food, but one also wants to hear fine music, another to see beautiful paintings, and a third to read beautiful words, and they all hate each other!

The hand has several major locations. They include Jibberwind Temple, which is home to the cult of the Perfect Fingers, dedicated to Thog, its looping corridors acting more as wind tunnels and its treasure vault the target of many an inhabitant of the hand, whilst Thark Village is being put to the torch by Automonous Arrests and Adjudication Inquisitorial sect of The Indelible Order of Allotted Idols as the villagers huddle in the crypts below and attempt a ritual which might save them. Elsewhere, there is Jgigji, the town of drunken undead, a wizard’s tower/folly where the wizard’s work is likely the actual folly, and a community of Parchment Witches—one of the signature character types in Troika!—who set snares and net traps for beast and intruders, using the skins of the former to create some of the best parchment across the spheres whilst squabbling about anything and everything. All of these locations and their various factions are interlinked and many of the people that they meet will share information or ask for help in return for it, pushing the Player Characters onwards in their exploration of the statue. The descriptions of the scenario’s many NPCs do vary in detail, but all are going to be fun for the Game Master to portray, some of the less detailed ones really leaving room for the Game Master to develop how she wants to portray them and make them memorable.

Escape is the ultimate aim for the Player Characters in The Hand of God. But there are also plenty of mini-locations and dungeons to explore, treasures to find or steal, and of course, there is the view to look at. Other options are suggested as to why the Player Characters might want to go to The Hand of God, whether that is find one of the treasures in the statue, locate a curse-eater, or discover their future from Vow, the Spider-God who can read the threads of fate. Many of these reasons might also explain why the Player Characters might want to return to The Hand of God in the future.

Physically, it all helps that the content of The Hand of God is presented in very accessible fashion. The maps are great and the adventure is decently illustrated. The scenario needs a slight edit in places.

The Hand of God manages to feel big, but is delightfully self-contained, more or less in the palm of a god’s hand, a pointcrawl as memorable for its location as its content, such that it is more of a ‘handcrawl’ than a pointcrawl. The Hand of God is fun, easy to drop into a campaign, and like any good Troika! scenario is weird and wondrous.

The Other OSR: Whalgravaak’s Warehouse

Troika! is both a setting and a roleplaying game. As the latter, it provides simple, clear mechanics inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books, but combined with a wonderfully weird cast of character types, all ready to play the constantly odd introductory adventure, ‘The Blancmange and Thistle’. As the former, it takes the Player Characters on adventures through the multiverse, from one strange sphere to another, to visit twin towers which in their dying are spreading a blight that are turning a world to dust, investigate murder on the Nantucket Sleigh Ride on an ice planet, and investigate hard boiled murder and economic malfeasance following the collapse of the Scarf-Worm investment bubble. At the heart of Troika! stands the city itself, large, undefined, existing somewhere in the cosmos with easy access from one dimension after another, visited by tourists from across the universe and next door, and in game terms, possessing room aplenty for further additions, details, and locations. One such location is Whalgravaak’s Warehouse.

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is the start of a new series of scenarios for Troika! from the Melsonian Arts Council. This is the ‘1:5 Troika Adventures’ series, which places an emphasis on shorter, location-based adventures, typically hexcrawls or dungeoncrawls, set within the city of Troika, but which do not provide new Backgrounds for Player Characters or ‘Hack’ how Troika! is played. Whalgravaak’s Warehouse lives up to these tenets, in that its dungeoncrawl takes place in a large, in places, impossibly large interdimensional warehouse that served as major import/export house for the city of Troika. Whalgravaak was once known as the cruel, but efficient logistics wizard who could get anything from anywhere and ship anything to anywhere, which made him and clients rich as the city became a shipping nexus between the spheres without the need or the expense of training staff to crew and maintain the golden barges that still traverse between the spheres today. However, Whalgravaak grew paranoid in his old age, destroyed the instruction manual to the great device by which goods were transported, and retired. When the device became a threat to the city of Troika, the Autarch ordered Whalgravaak’s Warehouse permanently closed and locked. That was centuries ago. Whalgravaak is long dead. His warehouse still stands, a looming monolithic presence in a bad part of the city. Nobody goes in and nobody comes out. Though some claim there is movement on the room. Now, someone wants something from inside and have decided that the Player Characters are best equipped to find their way in and navigate its darkened offices and deep storage bays with their vertiginously stacked crates, which surely must still contain something interesting after all that since Whalgravaak himself died?

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse gives one main reason why the Player Characters might want to break into and explore the warehouse. This is to locate a book called The Tome of Sable Fields, for which they will be paid handsomely, but there are others and the Game Master can easily come up with more. Finding a way into the warehouse is a challenge in itself, but inside, the Player Characters will find strange worm-headed dogs gone feral, creeping bandits and burglars looking for goods to fence or places to dump bodies, cultists who worship the still breathing nose of a titan, a clan of dustmen sieving the heaps of dust on the expansive roof of the warehouse where the air glows aquamarine like the Dustmen of Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, and more. There are rooms full of great lengths of rope that are mouldering into slime, a vegetable store where an onion has become an Onion Godlet, a room of sponges so dry it will suck the moisture from anyone who enters, and a set of employee records laden with bureaucratic despair… The roof is a post-apocalyptic hexcrawl of its very own, a separate environment that is essentially a desert of dust, marked only by the flickering head of one the giants that still work in the warehouse below and an Oasis of Tea, that will take the Player Characters days to explore. They had better come prepared for hot weather!

Locating The Tome of Sable Fields is a relatively simple matter and the Player Characters may do so relatively quickly, but actually getting hold of it is another matter. It is actually suspended over the very means by which Whalgravaak transported goods from one dimension to another by a crane. Unfortunately, none of the parts of the crane are talking to each other and the only way to get the crane operating is to get them to talk to each other. Essentially one bit of the crane is more noble than the other and the Player Characters will probably need to persuade them to overcome their individual problems and snobbery. This will drive them into exploring the warehouse further in the hopes of finding the means of getting each one to co-operate.

As part of the ‘1:5 Troika Adventures’ series and thus a dungeoncrawl, although one in a warehouse, Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is designed to be played like a dungeon and explored like a dungeon. Thus movement, noise, and resources become important, the Player Characters need a source of light and the scenario is played out in ten-minute turns in true Old School style Dungeons & Dragons. This also means that Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is played differently to other adventures for Troika!, with less of an emphasis on narrative play and more on environmental, location-based exploration. In keeping with the style, the adventure is perhaps deadlier and more challenging than the typical Troika! adventure, requiring more caution and care than a Troika! player might be used to.

Physically, Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is very well presented. The artwork is as weird and wonderful as you would expert, the cartography is decent, and the layout is clear and easy to use. There is also good advice for the Game Master on how and why she should use Whalgravaak’s Warehouse, and a clear explanation of what is going on in the warehouse.

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is a great set-up for an adventure. Take the warehouse of an interdimensional import/export house, abandon it for centuries, and then turn it into an industrial dungeon with weird Dickensian undertones. The result is eminently entertaining and constantly going to screw with the heads of both the players and their characters as they discover one example of industrial decline after another and just what happens when you leave a dangerous interdimensional magical industrial complex alone for far too long.

The Little Book of Death

Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure is about survival. About making a break from the deep dank dungeon cell you have been thrown into and working your way through the rooms and corridors of the dark castle until you can get to the main gate and escape. Of course, in between there is lots of uncertainty and plenty of death—the latter your own included, and that is all before you encounter the big Boss who will definitely try to kill you and prevent your escape. Published by Themeborne Ltd., inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books and also the dark fantasy artwork of those books, Escape the Dark Castle offered plenty of replay value and variability with six Character Cards, fifty-three Chapter Cards—fifteen of which form the encounter deck, and five Boss Cards. Then of course, there are game’s three expansions: Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 1 – Cult of the Death Knight, Adventure Pack 2 – Scourge of the Undead Queen, and Adventure Pack 3 – Blight of the Plague Lord. Each of these provided players with new characters to play, a new mechanic—which meant a new challenge to overcome, new equipment, and of course, a new Boss standing in the way of the players’ escape. However, when it came to death—and there is no denying that Escape the Dark Castle is definitely about death, as well as escaping, if not more so—what neither Escape the Dark Castle, nor any of its expansions could offer was much mote than a mechanical outcome whenever a player’s character dies in the game.

The solution is The Death Book. This is a book of over one hundred death scenes, each corresponding to a particular Chapter or Boss. It is very easy to use. Whenever a character dies as a result of the events in a Chapter or the showdown with a Boss, he checks the relevant entry in the pages of The Death Book. This is made possible because every card in Escape the Dark Castle as well as in all three of its expansions is marked with a unique code. Cross reference the code with corresponding entry in the book, whether for a Chapter or a Boss card, read out the description provided, and so provide an unfitting, but final end for your character, followed by that of everyone else.

For example, the details on the Boss card, ‘The Dark One’ reads as follows:

“Your pitiful trinkets are no match for my dark magic!”

As YOU enter the Dark One’s presence, any items YOU are carrying vaporise (other players keep theirs). Discard them now.

If a player should die in the course of this final confrontation before he and his companions, always a strong possibility in Escape the Dark Castle, he picks up The Death Book and after finding the entry for ‘The Dark One’, he reads aloud the following:

The Dark One

From the strange, clawed fingertips of The Dark One a terrible torrent of dark magic pours, crackling through the air and striking you down. The unrelenting stream intensifies, coiling around you and holding you in place like spectral chains. You roll and twist on the chamber floor, wracked with agony, foaming at the mouth. With a single motion of it staff, The Dark One sends you hurtling through the air. Your body slams into each of fellow prisoners, the impact knocking them from consciousness one by one. By an upward motion of the staff, you are now sent soaring high into the air, only to be released as The Dark One turns his back and glides out of the chamber. As quickly as rose you tumble helplessly downward, slamming to the cold stones and exploding in a shower of gore.

Your adventure ends here.

Physically, The Death Book is a neat and tidy, if plain affair. A page of introduction explains how to use the book and contains the book’s single illustration which shows where the unique code for the Chapter or Boss card is located. Then each entry has a page of its own. There is a degree of repetition to the entries, but only a little, and it really only becomes apparent when reading the book from end to end, which is not its intended use. A small and relatively slim book, The Death Book fits easily into Escape the Dark Castle: The Collector’s Box Set.

The Death Book is book of endings, but one that provides a final narrative and some context to that death. Escape the Dark Castle is an enjoyable game, but character deaths can feel little, “Is that it?”. With The Death Book, it is no longer the fact that you died, but very much how you died. Grim and ghoulish, The Death Book brings the death of every character, and with it, the game of Escape the Dark Castle to a nasty and unfortunate, but fitting end.

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.

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