Heart - Session 1
Our micro-campaign group is playing Heart: The City Beneath by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor! In these session reports, I'll share critical events and details from the game so far plus some notes on GMing. While I'll keep theses posts spoiler-free for players, I will share the occasional secret from Heart's canonical setting, so readers beware.
The Heart
Under Spire, the mega-city of the tyrannical Aelfir, is the City Beneath. Miles of corridors, caverns, and halls snake downwards into the depths, converging at the Heart.
The deeper you go, the stranger things get. Scholars have all sorts of theories about what the Heart is - a god-egg, an infernal engine, the dying core of the planet - but veteran delvers will tell you it exerts a twisting influence on the world around it.
Passages shift and mutate when you're not looking. Old memories come back, resurfaced by the Heart as newly-birthed homunculi. The Heart gleans your thoughts and projects them back to you, for good or for ill. Some say its trying to grant wishes, but just doesn't know how.
Still, there are people down there. Folks who can't or won't make it on the surface gather in havens that dot the City Beneath. They rely on delvers to brave the inchoate paths with news, mail, and supplies.
The Delvers
Jokingly called "The City Between" by the locals, Derelictus was the first and last stop for many who had made the descent from Spire. The town was built in the ruins of an old subway station. It was packed with people who couldn't go up but were too frightened or frail to go down. Rickety shacks were crammed into every nook and cranny, even down some of the adjoining rail tunnels.
The delvers gathered in a dive called The Third Rail. They were:
- Hulf, a human mage rumored to be a disgraced member of the secretive Cult of the Stone Chorus.
- Redfang, a gnoll pressed into the self-appointed group of lawbringers known as the Hounds as punishment for a crime.
- Bythebook, a gnoll mystic and self-made outcast on a quest to devour the heart and drag it back to the surface.
- Hastus, a devout drow dedicated to seeking the lost Oath of Grace, a divine magic of Damnou, the Moon Goddess.
The delvers have some history.
- Hulf and Bythebook collaborated on an experiment/ritual gone awry. Another acolyte, Jween, had died in the process. Now his remains were resurfacing, seemingly alive, in the surrounding area.
- Despite sharing a common homeland, Redfang has little to say about his origins. Bythebook finds this suspicious.
- Hastus regards Hulf's cult with a mix of intrigue and disdain. Their practices are clearly a hodge-podge of pseudo-theology, but perhaps they have misguidedly collected some clue he can use.
- Hulf looks up to Redfang. Maybe it's his roguish demeanor, maybe it's the way he stands up to the Hounds (long enemies of the Stone Chorus) despite his indenture.
The Job
The delvers had gathered to meet with Sykalayon Sova, an aged deep apiarist. The old man was ported with hexagonal holes, having given more and more of himself to a hive of runed silver bees. Sova was dying and wanted to make one final journey to Wardstone Nasyanov, a cairn deep beneath Derelictus. He claimed the wardstone was all that prevent the Heart from expanding onto the surface. He needed to make it there, dead or alive, and promised to make the trip worth their while.
The party hemmed and hawed a little bit, but eventually decided to take the job. Everyone wanted to go downward or to seek knowledge below. Why not be paid for their efforts?
The delvers made preparations, buying basic supplies and selecting a route. They knew of two (relatively) safe passages:
- A subway tunnel to Redcap Grove, a fungal orchard tended by druids. This would be a short trip, but relatively safe.
- A hatch downwards to the Tunnels of Wet Filth, a settlement spoken about in rumors by delvers and the occasional smuggler. This would be longer, but more direct.
They also knew about some locations further down.
- Resonance Chamber 5 was just past the Tunnels of Wet Filth. There the deep apiarists had constructed some kind of communication relay.
- Chollerous was a shrine to the Damnic virtue of Fury. It was located deep down and to the east.
- Ranvess was another shrine, deeper still, dedicated to the virtue of Vigilance.
Surprisingly, the party chose to head to Wet Filth. They figured it was quicker in the long run and they might be able to learn more at Resonance Chamber 5. Soon, they gathered at a sewer access hatch that led out of town.
Before they could set off, a group of four Hounds, nominal law officers of the City Beneath, approached the group. Their sergeant, Lisa, pulled Redfang aside and gave him orders from the top brass - Sova could not be allowed to make it to Nasyonov alive. Redfang protested, but eventually caved to the command.
Bythebook and Hulf tried to listen in on this conversation, but couldn't hear the details. Lisa noticed Bythebook snooping and didn't seem pleased.
The Hole
The party popped the manhole cover, revealing a vertical shaft descending about 40 feet with a freestanding iron ladder. The exact bottom of the ladder was bathed in light from magelamps hanging overhead.
The party considered just climbing down, but figured Sova would have trouble with the descent. Bythebook climbed down first to scout and with his keen darkvision made out the forms of twelve or so small figures crouched in the dark. Each had a rat-like head and carried a pipe, sling, or similar improvised weapon
Hastus asked a nearby gawker if rat-headed people were common in the area. The man shrugged and said that teens got up to all kinds of crazy stuff down in the nearby tunnels. There wasn't enough space in town for them to get up to any trouble.
Redfang bravely descended the ladder, followed by Bythebook. The gnoll brandished his badge, commanding the gathered throng to disperse under order of the Hounds. This didn't work and soon the crowd of rat-teens were throwing rocks and chicken bones at him. "Rat law! Rat law!" they chanted.
When that didn't work, Bythebook lunged and grabbed one of them by the throat with his fanged maw. He shook and the thing came apart like wet paper. It wasn't a teen, but some kind of rat-headed, too-soft homunculus. The others panicked and fled, covered in gore.
Hulf lowered Sova down with a rope. The old apiarist seemed taken aback at the gore. Bythebook still carrying the corpse for later dissection tried to spook Sova, but he just wheezed a laugh: "What are you going to do, kill me? I'm already going to my death."
The party saw two routes forward - two tunnels headed north and south.
GM Notes
Most of this session was spent making characters - roughly two hours of our three hour session. That's pretty much what I expected and I'm glad we spent the time on it. For some foolhardy reason, I opted to go through the character creation steps in the reverse of their printed order - first class, then calling (why become a delver), then ancestry. I still think the reversed order makes the most sense in terms of making the most impactful decisions first, but it also made things a little stilted.
At the end of character creation, I had folks pick their "beats." These are advancement goals that the GM is obliged to fold into each session. This is probably the most discussed and contentious system in Heart. From a survey of the literature, storygamers love it but think its a lot to juggle. Old school types tend to dislike it, preferring the emergent looting narrative you get from gold-for-xp and the like. I'll have more to say about it once we've gotten some reps in.
The beats did let me quickly cobble together a starting situation that the players graciously accepted. It was a little rocky at first, but once we started into an actual delve, it felt like play just settled into its usual rhythm, despite the unfamiliar system.
The only note I have for myself is on our first test. I asked Hulf and Bythebook to roll to listen in on Redfang's conversation. This feels like its in the spirit of the system, but in practice rolling what effectively amounted to a perception test rubbed me the wrong way. I'll probably hew towards a more old school approach here - information is always readily available (unless there is some direct barrier to acquiring it). That's how I adjudicated the rest of the session and it worked much better.