Sanctum-Web-e1-v1-cplkmg.pdf

(5793 KB) Pobierz
SANCTUM
G R AN T HOWI TT & C HRI STOPH ER TAYLO R
I LLUSTR AT ED BY FELIX MIALL
•
Sanctum
Written by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor
Illustrated by Felix Miall
Edited by Helen Gould and Mary Hamilton
Layout and design by Minerva McJanda
Produced by Mary Hamilton
Copyright © 2020 by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor.
Published by Rowan, Rook and Decard Ltd.
First Edition (2020)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior
written permission of the publisher, except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain
other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
For permission requests, write to the publisher at the
address below.
Rowan, Rook and Decard
15 Tufnell Court, Old Ford Road
E3 5JJ, United Kingdom
www.rowanrookanddecard.com
Content warnings:
Heart is a horror game, and as such,
there are some unpleasant things in the text. These
include but are not limited to: violence, drug use,
addiction, ghosts, unwanted bodily transformation, and
monsters that used to be people. We can assure you that
there is no rape or sexual assault in this game.
2
INTROduction
GROUP HAVEN CREATION
RUNNING A HAVEN-BASED GAME
HAVEN FALLOUT
HAVEN BEATS
2
3
14
15
17
ANGELS
BLOSSOM ANGEL
CACOPHONY ANGEL
LOGOS ANGEL
PENUMBRA ANGEL
19
20
21
22
23
GRIS HANNEMAN’S PERSONAL EFFECTS
24
1
Introduction
Introduction
2
An abandoned underground station, rebuilt and
reinforced with ramshackle defences to keep the
wild creatures of the Heart at bay. A collection of
skiffs and barges lashed together that scuds
across the oily surface of a subterranean lake. A
twisted lighthouse perched on the edge of a cliff,
surrounded by pallid, cawing birds and crewed
by two desperate families.
The core game of
Heart
assumes that the
delvers are going to do just that: delve.
Heart
is
primarily a game about pressing on into the
unknown in the City Beneath in search of
answers – but it doesn’t have to be.
In
Sanctum,
we’re going to focus on a different
style of play: a campaign set around a single cent‐
ral landmark that the players create with help
from the GM. We’re going to guide you through
the process of building a haven and structuring
the world around it. Then – and this is the most
exciting part – you can smash it to pieces (or try to)
with one of four different kinds of angel, the
nightmarish and unreal agents of the Heart Itself.
Havens
When we say “haven”, we mean “landmark with
the
Haven
domain”, which means that it’s a
stable location within the Heart where people
have banded together for the sake of com‐
munity rather than a single purpose.
There are plenty of places where people live
that don’t qualify as havens: research stations,
guard posts, cult hideouts, treacherous temples,
hermitages and so forth.
THE UNFORTUNATE TALE OF
GRIS HANNEMANN
Gris Hannemann, a human writer, was famous for
his work on pulp periodicals. He purported to be an
explorer of some note, and detailed his exploits in
sensationalised reports such as
The Lustful She-
Gnolls of Nujab, The Silver Song of the Ice Nymphs, Death
Drives A Vermissian Carriage
and
The Bloodthirsty Auto‐
mata of Magwan Porth.
When sales of his novellas
dried up and his creditors came knocking, he fled
to the City Beneath in search of a) inspiration and
b) somewhere to hide from the organised crime
syndicates that had called in his debts.
He heard of angels while he was in the Heart,
and something about them sparked his imagina‐
tion; he would trek for days on end, often unac‐
companied, trying to glimpse one. Half a decade
after his first expedition, he returned to Spire a
changed man, clutching reams and reams of
notes on these uncanny creatures.
He proclaimed to have created a taxonomy of
angels, to have drunk their stuttering unreal
blood and gleaned insight on the worlds beyond
light and shadow from something he called The
Convocation. He brokered a deal with his old
publisher, who insisted that he sex up the notes a
bit, and released the largely unremarked-upon
and critically ignored
Beyond the Edge of Madness: A
Year in the City Beneath.
The book didn’t sell and his
creditors tracked him down; his body was found
floating in the canal the morning after his barely-
attended release party in the Silver Quarter.
The very act of looking upon an angel can drive
a man mad. Given the unstable reality of the
Heart, it’s not clear whether Hannemann actually
discovered several entirely new types of angel, or
whether he just experienced multiple three-day
benders with whatever drugs he could scrape
together in the wilderness. Unfortunately for the
denizens of the Heart that survived him, it
doesn’t matter.
The Heart does make monsters to his specifica‐
tions: better ones, single-purpose creatures,
machines of bone and interstitial fluid. No one can
remember seeing them before, but accurate
memories are a scarce resource in the City Beneath
– maybe he was just the first to write it all down.
Hannemann’s notes on havens and the more
prominent types of angel are spread throughout
this book.
Group Haven Creation
Group Haven Creation
If you want your players to feel connected to a
haven, your best bet is to have them create it
themselves. Get together around a table (or a vir‐
tual table, if you’re playing online) at the begin‐
ning of your campaign and lead them through
the creation process. We’ve boiled it down into a
series of questions to make it as simple as pos‐
sible, but don’t feel limited by them. You can go
into as much depth as you like; just make sure to
leave some mysteries to explore through play.
It’s important to remember that what you
come up with isn’t set in stone. You can go back
and change it as the idea evolves; for example,
maybe you realise that the haven needs the
Warren
domain, or that it’s on
Tier 3
rather than
Tier 2.
Feel free to swap things about to make it
fit your vision.
DOMAINS
The first consideration when building a haven is
what domains you’ll attach to it. It will have the
Haven domain as a matter of necessity (other‐
wise it isn’t really a haven to begin with), but con‐
sider what other domains will influence the
haven and pick one or two to give it some flavour.
Below are some examples of how each domain
might influence a haven.
CURSED:
The pub basement has a huge and
hungry mouth growing out of the wall, and
local kids sneak in and dare one another to
stick their hands in it; the Hounds here have
made a moat of something which looks (and
smells) like stomach acid, with cilia writhing
under its surface; there’s a large heartsblood
enclave within the settlement, and travelling
cleavers often visit to pay their respects.
DESOLATE:
A forgotten civilisation used this
platform to extract something vital from the
earth, and now trackless blasted wastes sur‐
round it; the settlement is pinned to the walls
of a chasm and the people shelter in caves,
trying to ignore the rumblings in the dark
below; this place used to be a temple, but gen‐
erations of pilgrims hungry for souvenirs have
scraped all the iconography from the walls.
OCCULT:
The haven is a school, of sorts – stu‐
dents come here if they want to learn real
magic, and some even survive the process; at
the centre of the settlement is a shifting brass
and iron plinth of enormous complexity which
attracts meditative occultists; the haven is an
ongoing, centuries-long magic ritual, and few
of the inhabitants are sure of its purpose.
HALLOW
All shut doors and shuttered windows,
cackles from shadowed alleys, and eyes -
always watching, always judging. The
disease-riddled witches who run this place
seem to think that they have a monopoly on
the Convocation, and refuse to answer my
questions.
Indeed, they refuse to speak candidly
to the uninfected at all, and with bluster
and bluff they have cobbled together a
cult of fear and worship around
themselves. The blood-sickness they share
grants them a measure of prophetic power,
and it seems there is no shortage of soft-
minded cultists ready to throw their lot
in with the Witches of Hallow.
Following a disastrous confrontation, I
left soon after I arrived. I believe that,
as dismissive as they were, they are now
tracking me; no doubt they are interested
in learning more about my methods and
research. It is my understanding that they
have the trick of befriending the
predatory buildings that exist here. I am
sure that the boarded-up dressmaker’s shop
I have seen repeatedly in four other
locations is part of their schemes. I am
no fool: I will not attempt to gain
access. But I shall torch the place to the
ground if they dare interfere with my
endeavour.
3

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin