Heart - Session 7
Our micro-campaign group just wrapped up a game of 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. You can find the last entry here. While I'll keep these posts spoiler-free for players, I will share the occasional secret from Heart's canonical setting, so readers beware.
The Plan
This week our delvers were:
- Bythebook, a gnoll cleaver who dreams of devouring the Heart and dragging it back to the surface.
- Hulf, human junk mage and penitent acolyte of the Stone Chorus.
- Blossoms-Falling-Like-Blood, a high elf "witch" afflicted with the rare blood disease that lets her manipulate the energies of the Heart.
We rejoined the delvers in the Penrose Stair, a tavern in the settlement of Labyrinth. They debated what to do about the "Minotaur." The huge creature expanded to fill any space it was released into. Currently it occupied the huge cavern that contained Labyrinth, meaning the sky was filled with pink flesh and the occasional bent elbow or knee. The only reason the entire town hadn't been crushed was its maze-like construction.
They had agreed to perform a ritual - the same ritual that had fragmented the acolyte Jween, led to Hulf's penance, and given Bythebook his monstrous gut. Originally used to make sacrifices to the Stone Chorus, the ritual required them to draw a four-pointed star around the subject in spireblack (this setting's gunpowder equivalent). Then someone would need to read an incantation at each of the four points. If successful, the Minotaur would be sent to the Stone Chorus, unified with the Heart, or potentially just obliterated. The exact results were unclear.
Blossoms suggested trying to move the ritual down to the Plaza of Silicate Flowers, a gnoll haven located below Labyrinth. There would be less bystanders there and maybe more ready access to supplies. The delvers considered this, but couldn't think of a good way to get the Minotaur down there.
In any case, they'd need more hands to prepare the ritual site, more spireblack to draw the star, and Hulf would need to adjust the ritual to be performed in this manner.
The Preparations
Bythebook went out into the streets, preaching like an apocalyptic doomsayer. He said the Minotaur was a sign of the end of Labyrinth, that the Heart was upon them, and that only by banding together would the people be saved. The local Labyrinthians took this to heart and soon were mobilized to provide materials, clear passages, and help navigate the corridors of the town.
Blossoms went to see if her blood magic could be used to aid the Minotaur. Her theory was that the creature's curse was related to Heartsblood and that a fresh transfusion might let her use her powers to manipulate its body. She found a secluded corner of Labyrinth and drew on the Heart's influence to make a fleshy spot to draw blood from and gathered the necessary needles and surgical tubing. Unfortunately, this backfired and soon the corridors were running red with a seemingly endless font of red blood.
Worse still, Blossoms became afflicted with the "Labyrinth Disease." It turns out that the people of Labyrinth don't make mazes out of a desire to tame the unknown, but rather out of some kind of neurosis. No one knows whether the illness is bloodborne, airborne, or psychological in nature, but Blossoms found herself compelled to convolute.
Hulf took Golbahar, the gnoll they had met in the tunnels on their way here, to look for texts related to transubstantiation that might be relevant to the ritual. Together they found what looked like an old second hand bookstore, tucked in one of Labyrinth's many alleys.
The junk mage had an ulterior motive. His theory was that the ritual did not transport the sacrifice to the Stone Chorus, but rather dematerialized it here then rematerialized it there. He thought that he might be able to use this rematerialization process to bring back Jween, his fellow acolyte.
An initial search of the store found little, but with the help of Golbahar's Heart activity detector, the duo found a strange boney shelf in the back of the store. There Hulf found just the materials he was looking for, as if the Heart had materialized them to help.
The Spireblack
With initial preparations complete and the people of Labyrinth beginning the work of preparing for the ritual, the delvers reconvened to source the spireblack they would need. They considered looking for an arsenal here in Labyrinth, but before they came to a decision, Golbahar intruded. He asked them to meet him in a remote alley in half an hour.
When the delvers arrived, they found the unassuming old gnoll flanked by four figures in black platemail. Their helmets had leering canine faces flanked by rebreathers and each had a cannon-like blunderbuss slung at their hip. Golbahar was the handler for a team of commandos sent to infiltrate nearby settlements and he said they might be able to provide the spireblack if the party could make it worth their while.
Blossoms suggested a trade. They theorized that the Plaza of Silicate Flowers had appeared in the City Beneath thanks to their first ritual. Perhaps they could use the second to send the settlement back to the surface? Whether that was actually achievable or not, the gnolls bought it and Blossoms was tasked with escorting them down to retrieve the necessary supplies.
In the meantime, Bythebook led the work teams in preparing the ritual site. He was surprised by how easy it was. He had expected to have to demolish walls to allow for the star form to run cleanly through the settlement, but it seemed as if it had always been laid for this purpose. The gnoll laid an adhesive trail using his sticky spit.
In the meantime, Hulf began transcribing the incantations that would be required. Eternal Bitter Winters, the aelfir witch, was recruited to read at the fourth point - a task she volunteered for with obvious excitement.
The Plaza
The gnoll fireteam led Blossoms down the corridor they had carved between Labyrinth and the Plaza of Silicate Flowers. The path meandered in the way any passage through the City Beneath did, but there was something strangely inert about. Every dozen feet, the gnolls had placed one of their detector-urns and they seemed to be working - the ground felt dead under Blossoms feet.
They arrived at the Plaza without incident, emerging onto a veranda overlooking a sea of twinkling glass. The settlement was composed of one five pointed plaza surrounded by knobby, onion-like buildings. Over the area, half decoration and half deterrent, were strung nets of jagged obsidian cherry blossoms. More elements from the witch's prophetic dreams.
Looking down from above, Blossoms realized the plaza formed another star, directly under the one they were drawing above. This one, however, had five points. She insisted to her escort that she would need to visit each of the five corners if the ritual were to transport the Plaza. They grudgingly agreed and she went from point to point, daubing each with a bit of her blood. Nervous gnolls watched from windows overhead, obscured by the floral screen.
Her work concluded, she and the gnolls went to an armory near the heart of the Plaza and retrieved several kegs of spireblack.
The Ritual
When she returned, the delvers made their final preparations. The people of Labyrinth fled into the surrounding tunnels or battened down the hatches for whatever would happen next. The powder was spread down the pre-prepared hallways and the delvers split up to head to their positions.
On her way there, Blossoms flagged down Golbahar and asked him to take her spot, saying she would be needed at the center. The gnoll agreed. She then moved to a fifth point that she had quietly added to the spireblack glyph without informing the others.
Rather than standing just outside of the glyph, Bythebook planted his feet on the spireblack itself. His plan was to act as a conduit for the rituals energies and use that contact to glean knowledge of the Heart.
At the appointed time, the delvers began their incantation and the response was almost immediate. First, the call of the Stone Chorus like the sound of grinding tectonic plates. Then, a massive aperture began to open in the center of Labyrinth, masonry and loose debris falling away.
The Plaza of Silicate Flowers was not translocated to the surface. Instead it careened downwards, falling into a newly opening channel directly to the Heart below. As the hole in Labyrinth opened, the Minotaur was sucked in, tumbling down into the abyss below.
The delvers had opened a direction channel to the Heart and it was ready to grant them their deepest desires.
Hulf, watching the ritual unwind, knew he had erred in breaking his penance and attempting to pervert the rites of the Stone Chorus. He let himself fall in the gap, but instead of dropping towards the Heart, he fell into still blackness. He had been sent to the prison beneath the earth where the Stone Chorus reigned.
Bythebook was transformed. The Heart's power unmade him and remade him, replacing his gnoll form with an undulating red body. Was this the knowledge he was looking for? Immediately, he began to climb towards the surface. As he moved shafts spilled out above him. New limbs grew to find handholds that had only emerged moments before. He made it to the surface in minutes, then began to climb the Spire itself, hurling chunks of masonry and the occasional startled elf as he tore at the side of the tower. Then, his willpower spent, he fell back into the waiting shaft, the Heart ready to put his material to good use elsewhere.
Blossoms, the only survivor, cackled. She danced at the precipice as gore and rubble rained.
GM Notes
And so concludes our run of Heart! We had a good long debrief after the session and everyone more or less agreed that we really figured out the game in the last few sessions. My early attempts to shoehorn dungeon delving into the game (partially prompted by the game, I'll say!) just weren't aligned with the Resistance system in the way these kinds of bigger swings were.
I ran this session based on a procedure I wrote for GLoG a couple years back - breaking the ritual into a set of goals, rites, and tools. Instead of using a skill challenge, this became a sort of abstract "delve" in the parlance of Heart. This structure worked really well and I heartily recommend it if your players ever want to try something similar.
When it came time to actually see what happened with the ritual, I put my cards onto the table for the players: Heart didn't have a system for handling this, so let's come up with something. We talked through what each character wanted to do and found that there weren't any direct conflicts in outcome. They all had a selfish goal they were trying to achieve and didn't even specify what exactly would happen to the minotaur besides potentially being sent to the Stone Chorus. In the end, I just gave each character one last resistance roll (with Echo as the risk of course) to see if their particular objectives came to pass.
From there, we moved into outro montage, where I mostly let the players just say what they wanted to happen. Both Hulf and Bythebook used their zenith abilities, though strictly for narrative effect.
We discussed briefly some ideas for future Heart games. We generally agreed that in the future we'd want a stronger campaign frame that gave the characters a strong reason to work together from the start - an expedition gone awry mid delve, a shared haven that they all called home, something that would help wed the characters together from scene 1 in the same way the Jween subplot did later.