Character Creation: Heart: The City Beneath

Buh-bump. Buh-bump. TEAR UP THE FLOORBOARDS.

The Game: Heart: The City Beneath
The Publisher: Rowan, Rook and Decard Ltd
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Heart is a spinoff, I guess you'd say, of Spire. Whereas in that game, you play dark elves acting as revolutionaries against the high elves in the City Above, here you're either a dark elf, a high elf, a human, or a gnoll and you're in the City Beneath for some reason. The City Beneath is alive, and it gets more abstract and less logical the deeper you go. There are some vibes of Belly of the Beast here, but it's not quite as thoroughly biological. 

I've been wanting to try Spire out for a while now (like, years) and it's just never happened. I think Heart might be more my taste - it seems like it emphasizes horror/investigation a little more, which is a space I'm very comfortable in. But in any case, let's make a character and see where we land.

So, we start off choosing an ancestry. There's no mechanical difference here, all it really does is provide some stereotypes that I'm free to ignore. I think I'll be a human, how about. There's not even a slot on the sheet for it, that's how unimportant it is. It does, however, invite me to answer one of three questions and generate or choose some stuff I'm carrying.

One of the questions is: You were kicked out of a retro-engineering or magical college thanks to your unorthodox beliefs and practices. What did you do? I think I'm gonna take that a backstory, but I'll wait until I get a little further in the process to answer that question. As far as the stuff goes, however, I'll just roll 2d20 and pick a couple of things. I've got matching charm bracelet made from shell casings of different calibers, and three unopened cans of cooked eels. Yum. 

Ah, but calling is important! Calling is the reason for venturing into Heart to begin with. I want to go with Heartsong, basically I dream of the Heart and I can't ignore its siren song any longer. (Not to be too predictable, but I like the idea of the Heart as an oceanic analog.) We could tie that into why I got kicked out of magic-school. Let's make it a kind of Flatliners or Brain Storm kind of thing (or Altered States, actually) in which my character discovered a way to plug himself into the Heart on a conscious or subconscious level and got kicked out of school when it was discovered that he was attracting psychic attention. 

Neat! My core ability for Calling is in the blood. I get extra Echo protection, and I can shunt other kinds of stress off to Echo. And then I get more questions to answer!

1. Which three images, symbols, people, or creatures do you see when you dream?
2. What signs do you look for to recognize where the Heart is strongest?
3. (skipping this one, as it's about another PC)
4. Your connection to the Heart has touched you in some way. How does that manifest? 

Ooh. First off all, let's name this guy. One of the human example names is Raffid, and I like that. So Raffid dreams of the Heart, and when he does, he sees depth. The ground falls away and drops down into pits. He hears rhythm. It's cliché to say he hears a heartbeat, but he hears a regular thump, tap, or dripping sound whenever he dreams. And he sees a symbol that looks like a hexagon with an X drawn over it. He's not sure what it means and he's never seen it in any book or text.

When he's looking for where the Heart is strong, he checks for feelings of vertigo. The Heart is immeasurably deep, and even if you can see that depth, you can feel it. 

Finally, how does the Heart manifest? Let's say Raffid sweats blood, but only if he's sweating because he's afraid. If he's just warm, it's normal. 

I get to roll a d10 for another thing I carry. I get a bag of stimulant pastilles, which a quick search tells me are basically pills. We'll say he got those from his college; they told him to either take them so he didn't sleep as deeply or sod off. He chose the latter.

Class! As with Spire, this game passes the Chupp test with flying colors. I'm tempted by Cleaver, because they get to eat things and take their power and it'd be interesting to say that Raffid ultimately wants to eat the Heart (or be eaten by it, either one). Let's look at the others, though. Oh, Deep Apiarist is so tempting (you're a bunch of bees in a skinsuit), but I do that kind of thing a lot and it doesn't really fit here. Heretic is tempting...nah, I think I like the visceral counterpoint of Cleaver. If we're continuing the "Heart-as-ocean" metaphor, maybe I'm more like a shark.

Right, so I get the Hunt Skill, the Cursed Domain, a heart that still occasionally twitches as a Resource, a hunting knife, and my choice of a cleaver, bone charms, or a heavy-draw bow. I think I want the charms. I get Heartsblood (I get higher resistance as I go deeper into Heart) and The Red Feast (I can eat a resource and gain any Domains associated with it). 

I get one major and three minor class abilities. Hmm. Oh, darkling eyes, hell yeah (I can see in pitch dark). I'll take Dominion and get the Occult Domain. And hell yeah, I want Symbiotic (I can touch the wall and get +2 Fortune protection). For my major ability, I'll take Chimeric Strain - I can spend Stress and grow horns and go berserk and so on. 

And everything else I think I've already done. I'm not gonna do beats because that would matter in play...eh, actually, let's have a look. I think I'd want "Consume something of the Heart" and "undergo a trance-like vision that lasts for hours" as my initial beats.

And that's it! Raffid is kinda scraggly because he forgets to groom, but he's got a little pot belly going. If he cleans up, he really doesn't look like a Cleaver (which is one reason he doesn't; he's not ashamed). He has a habit of pressing his face to the walls in the Heart.