TEXT: ILLUSTRATED BY FELIX MIALL
  GRANT HOWITT & CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR
  SANCTUM
  
  Sanctum
  WrittenbyGrantHowittandChristopherTaylor
  IllustratedbyFelixMiall
  Editedby HelenGouldandMaryHamilton
  LayoutanddesignbyMinervaMcJanda
  ProducedbyMaryHamilton
  Copyright©2020byGrantHowittandChristopherTaylor.
  PublishedbyRowan,RookandDecardLtd.
  FirstEdition(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,RookandDecard
  15TufnellCourt,OldFordRoad
  E35JJ,UnitedKingdom
  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
  •
  
  1
  INTROduction
  2
  GROUP HAVEN CREATION
  3
  RUNNING A HAVEN-BASED GAME
  14
  HAVEN FALLOUT
  15
  HAVEN BEATS
  17
  ANGELS
  19
  BLOSSOM ANGEL
  20
  CACOPHONY ANGEL
  21
  LOGOS ANGEL
  22
  PENUMBRA ANGEL
  23
  GRIS HANNEMAN’S PERSONAL EFFECTS
  24
  
  2
  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.
  THE UNFORTUNATE TALE OF
  GRIS HANNEMANN
  Gris Hannemann, a human writer, was famous for
  hisworkonpulpperiodicals.Hepurportedtobean
  explorer of some note, and detailed his exploits in
  sensationalised reports such as The Lustful She-
  GnollsofNujab,TheSilverSongoftheIceNymphs,Death
  DrivesAVermissianCarriageandTheBloodthirstyAuto‐
  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 BeyondtheEdgeofMadness:A
  YearintheCityBeneath.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,
  machinesofboneandinterstitialfluid.Noonecan
  remember seeing them before, but accurate
  memoriesareascarceresourceintheCityBeneath
  – 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.
  Introduction
  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.
  
  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.
  3
  Group Haven Creation
  Group Haven Creation
  3
  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.
  
  RELIGION: Exiled from the Temple of the Moon
  Beneath, this splinter group (The Dominion of
  the Sunken Sun) offers succour to travellers
  along with reams of promotional material;
  they say an angel of Charnel, blood-caked and
  glorious, bathes in the waters here and heals
  the sick; a maddening place where loud bells
  are rung multiple times a day (and without
  discernible warning) to celebrate the majesty
  of a god they can only name through music.
  TECHNOLOGY: The haven walks unsteadily on
  many creaking legs to wherever the council of
  Engineers (a gnoll, two humans and a ghost)
  decides it needs to be; the Vermissian Collective
  built a thinking-engine here out of carefully-
  harvested consciousnesses, and feed it ques‐
  tions like an oracle; the valves and switches at
  the centre of this haven allow control of the
  environment and shape of the settlement, but
  three rival sects with different editions of the
  user manual are vying for control.
  WARREN: Tradition dictates that the church
  should be demolished every twenty years
  and a new one built on its ruins,
  and now the sub-basements
  extend over a hundred
  feet under the
  earth;
  standing up to your full height is bad luck
  round these parts,so the bent-backed inhabit‐
  ants build their ceilings low for good fortune;
  this place is a working mine where teams of
  excavators chip away at rocks to extract
  winged, humanoid fossils.
  WILD: The houses are built on stilts to keep them
  out of stinking water that fizzes with lumines‐
  cent insects; everyone has at least one hearts‐
  blood pet and fewer than the recommended
  number of fingers; huge and flightless mega‐
  corvids croak and lunge around the place in
  search of food or a sleeping spot, and the
  inhabitants view them as sacred creatures.
  4
  Group Haven Creation
  
  TIER
  Tiers are a rough guide to how close to the Heart
  Itself (and therefore how weird) your haven is.
  The deeper you are, the more creative you can
  become – but the harder you will have to work to
  retain a sense of humanity. For example, if your
  inhabitants are all songs trapped in jars, you
  might struggle to get the players to connect with
  them on a personal level.
  Tier 1
  Located on the outskirts of Derelictus, these
  havens still follow most rules of space and time.
  There aren’t any weird portals to otherworlds, the
  walls are mainly made out of wall rather than meat
  or intelligent crystal and the people basically look
  like people. Generally these places don’t rely on
  magic or weird technology to stay intact, so they
  look like real-world underground structures.
  Tier 1 landmarks are safer than deeper places,
  but they usually end up controlled by one or more
  existing power structures (e.g. the Vermissian
  Collective,the Hounds or the Church of the Moon
  Beneath). This can upset the inhabitants if they’d
  rather go their own way.
  Tier 2
  These landmarks have something definitely
  weird about them. Maybe gravity doesn’t work
  right, or the streets keep rearranging themselves
  when no-one’s looking or ghosts walk alongside
  the living. The inhabitants are similarly weird,
  having deliberately or accidentally severed them‐
  selves from normal society.
  Tier 2 is significantly more dangerous than
  Tier 1, so most havens at this level are carefully
  guarded. Walls, gates and defences are common‐
  place, and Hounds will take an active role in pro‐
  tecting the populace rather than trying to keep
  society on an even keel as they do on Tier 1. The
  folk who live here are suitably suspicious of out‐
  siders, but if you can prove (or fake) your trust‐
  worthiness, most will be keen to sell you a hot
  meal and trade stories.
  Tier 3
  Get as weird as you like. You don’t have to worry
  about making sense any more. Seas, woodland,
  alien skies, enormous pulsating organs, frozen
  caverns, cursed burial chambers of otherworldly
  sorcerer-kings, ghosts of entire settlements
  haunting other settlements; if you can make it fit
  the overall theme of Heart, go for it.
  Havens at this depth are much rarer. It’s hard
  to maintain any kind of stability, and doubly so if
  you’re trying to support a community. Any per‐
  manent landmark you find will have a trick of
  keeping itself intact, whether that’s a unique
  method of living, bargains with otherworldly
  entities, advanced (if not entirely understood)
  technology or changing their bodies to suit the
  environment.
  Tier 4
  The Heart Itself. There are no havens here...or
  maybe it’s one big haven! That’s up to you. (The
  latter is unlikely, though.)
  Rogue
  If you want to have a mobile haven that can move
  between tiers, giving it the Rogue tag lets you put
  it wherever you want whenever it’s narratively
  appropriate.Make sure that moving it is difficult,
  though. Give it some unusual requirements to
  get it started, make it need protection as it shifts
  between tiers or have elders in charge who need
  to be persuaded to move it at all.
  Fracture
  Fractures are extra-dimensional snickets that
  exist parallel to the standard plane of reality.They
  can be accessed from multiple locations, via
  ritual or through multiple specially-prepared
  portals. Fractures allow you to get creative with
  the makeup of the haven, but they’re hard to
  reach without trouble. Plus, their inherently
  strange nature means that they often lack some‐
  thing concrete for player characters to connect
  with, so be careful when building them.
  5
  Group Haven Creation
  
  SOMETHING UNIQUE
  Something marks your haven out as unusual: a
  rule it breaks (whether scientific or societal),a god
  theyworship,aspecialresource,someotherdefin‐
  ing mark. You’ll notice that in the havens detailed
  in the core book, each of them has one (or more)
  twists or changes that mark it out from the others
  – something big, usually visible from the outside,
  rather than just having different people in it.
  Be bold. Heart gives you a lot of room to
  experiment and make something interesting;
  even the place where you go to rest your head and
  knock back some malak should have something
  remarkable about it.
  Also: don’t be afraid to change the world around
  the haven itself. The Heart that your players will
  adventure through is yours and yours alone, and it
  can (and should) be different from the one in the
  core rulebook. For instance, we imply that there
  are multiple structures devoted to the Deep Apiar‐
  ists in the City Beneath, but maybe in your game
  they’re only allowed to operate in your haven. We
  don’t have any megafauna or walking villages by
  default, but maybe your haven is built on the back
  of a giant beetle that ambles between tiers on its
  own inscrutable schedule.
  Examples:
  The haven is grown from the flesh and blood of a single
  creature(whichpossiblyusedtobehuman)inabasement.
  Thecreatureispleasantenoughtotalkto,butithasitsown
  agendaseparatefromthepeoplewhoruntheplace.
  The haven only exists in our world during performances
  of an aelfir song. Not everyone knows this and it
  sometimes
  appears
  by
  accident,
  blending
  into
  Derelictus cabaret bars or juddering into view at a
  drunken campfire sing-song.
  Thehavenisalibraryandagraveyardatthesametime:
  people are buried here and slowly become books
  detailing their lives.
  The haven is obsessed with rebuilding an original
  Vermissian carriage and starting it up again.
  The haven worships the enormous toad-god Plür, and
  feeds items with magical resonance to his statue in the
  town square in exchange for divine protection.
  Twice a year, the haven feed one “lucky” inhabitant to
  the colossal carrion-pig buried underneath the town
  square. In exchange, the pig lets them slit open its belly
  and pull out armfuls of uncanny guts which they use to
  predict the future (as long as they put them back and
  suture the wound afterwards).
  Centuries of reliquary catacombs built on top of one
  another have collapsed, leaving the haven full of the
  jumbled bones of saints; on occasion, they animate into
  a hideous gestalt.
  The haven is built around an ever-burning candle in a
  circleofsalt:thefirstwardestablishedagainsttheHeart.
  Ifthecircleofsaltiseverbroken,thehavenwillfall.
  The haven is run by cannibals who treat non-cannibals
  as inferior citizens, and on occasion induct a new
  member into their congregation with a lavish feast
  consisting of an unpopular community member.
  6
  Group Haven Creation
  GRIP STATION
  The sages of the Vermissian are a strange
  lot; they are obsessed with what might be,
  rather than what is. They devote their
  existence to a single-minded pursuit of
  the possible, wandering this unreal
  network in search of - well, not answers,
  but certainly questions.
  Being around them for any length of
  time is exhausting. For a while, they
  believed me a simpleton and were happy
  enough to ignore me (and overcharge me for
  uncomfortable but broadly quiet lodgings).
  Then one of them saw my notes, and
  obviously began to view me as an
  intellectual equal.
  He spoke at length about the different
  “facets” of the Vermissian: all of its
  potential futures and alternate pasts,
  which are accessible through dimensional
  turntables. He spoke of a reality, fragile
  as spun glass, where the Incident did not
  occur and the trains actually work; a land
  of the dead where spectres are ferried to
  their afterlives by incorporeal engines;
  wild and lawless wastelands where mad
  machine-cultists carve out empires and
  harvest rival sects for parts.
  But why seek the unreal and barely-
  existent when what is already here,
  crimson and glorious, is so fascinating?
  
  FACES
  A haven can have anywhere between a handful of
  people to hundreds of inhabitants, many of them
  temporary, such as the Temple of the Moon
  Beneath and the surrounding areas on Tier 1.
  However, you don’t have to detail everyone that
  lives there – far from it. Think in terms of groups,
  and put a face to each one.
  A face is a representative of a movement, fac‐
  tion or idea within the haven. When the player
  characters interact with them, they’re interact‐
  ing with the group they belong to as a whole. You
  don’t need to limit yourself to a single face per
  organisation, but given the scope of Heart cam‐
  paigns (and how the rules are for modelling peril‐
  ous expeditions into the unknown rather than
  small-town politics) one should do just fine.
  Give players the option to be connected to
  these groups. Not everyone has to be best mates
  with the hard-bitten aunty who runs the settle‐
  ment, but if one or two players know her (or were
  raised by her after their parents died) it helps
  bind the story together.
  Who’s supporting the status quo?
  Every haven (even if they don’t want to admit it)
  has a caretaker. They’re responsible for all major
  decisions and take the blame when things go
  wrong, whether they earned their position
  through years of trust and hard work, underhan‐
  ded dealings or dumb luck. These folk are gener‐
  ally in way over their heads and struggling to
  keep things going, so they often want to keep
  things the way they are – even if that’s dangerous
  or inefficient.
  Whyismaintainingthestatusquoimportanttothis
  person? Who helps them maintain control? What do
  they lose if things change?
  Who wants to shake things up?
  All communities have a rebel. This face feels that
  it’s important to change the haven for the better,
  but is opposed by those already in control. They
  have a lot of work for delvers, but given their lack
  of resources, they often resort to persuading the
  player characters to undertake work on philosoph‐
  ical rather than monetary grounds –or by offering
  them a stake in the haven once they’re in charge.
  What does this person want to change? Who’s with
  them? What obstacles are in their path and how could
  the player characters help?
  Who represents the people at large?
  There’s probably a trade, faith or common goal
  that unites the populace. This face – the voice –
  represents that idea. Although the rebel and the
  ruler have authority, real power can only be sus‐
  tained if the voice’s people agree with what’s
  going on. When the player characters interact
  with the voice, they’re interacting with the settle‐
  ment as a whole. The voice will change to repres‐
  ent what’s happening with the populace. If the
  community sustained an attack, the voice will be
  wounded; if the community is starving, they’ll be
  gaunt and malnourished; if the people are celeb‐
  rating, they’ll be drunk and singing.
  What do the ordinary people in the haven do? What
  do they need from the player characters – and what can
  they offer in return?
  7
  Group Haven Creation
  NON-NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS
  The roles described in this section don’t have
  to be filled by non-player characters; there’s
  plenty of opportunity for PCs to take them on
  instead. It’s likely that the sort of motivated
  individual who becomes a delver would rise
  to prominence in a community. It also makes
  for a good story for the player characters to
  be directly rather than tangentially respons‐
  ible for the haven’s prosperity or downfall.
  
  ART
  Art is everywhere in the City Beneath. The inhabit‐
  ants create it obsessively as they attempt to under‐
  standthealienworldaroundthem,andyourhaven
  willbenodifferent.Whatsortofart,craftorenter‐
  tainment do they make,and how does it reflect the
  state of the haven?
  Examples:
  Black-comedy plays about legendary villains and
  beasts of the City Beneath.
  Community songs with a repeating refrain that
  everyone adds verses to; if someone teaches you their
  verse, it’s seen as an honour to sing it.
  Brightly-painted architecture in garish, clashing
  patterns designed to upset the viewer.
  Axe-dancing, which is like sword-dancing but slightly
  more dangerous due to the wild swinging.
  Semi-improvised plays where a set of stock characters
  tackle the challenges of the Heart; most die before the
  end of the performance.
  Fiercely-guardedgraffitispotswhereinhabitantslisttheir
  achievements and prowess (as fighters, occultists, priests,
  lovers,etc.)inincreasinglylargeandcomplexfonts.
  Catching a wild beast, adorning it with streamers and
  letting it run wild while several champions attempt to
  bring it down using only punching daggers.
  Elaborate portraits of Damnou, the drow moon-goddess,
  in triptych; your portrait is seen as an expression of your
  faith, and people will spend comparatively huge sums of
  moneyonpigmentsandornamentation.
  Getting fall-down drunk and trying to recite poetry; the
  longer the poem and the drunker the performer, the
  more impressive the feat.
  Organ meat pâtés flavoured with fearsome liqueurs.
  Weaving patchwork coats for people who leave the
  settlement to become Hounds; the haven has a strong
  tradition of sending young folk off to join the regiment
  and keeps a memorial wall for those who die in service.
  Creating systems of slang and cant that use complex
  rules and rhythms to confuse outsiders.
  ROLE
  Player characters are unusual people who are
  unlikely to live a quiet existence in the City
  Beneath.Encouragetheplayerstothinkaboutand
  discuss why they’re welcome (perhaps grudgingly)
  in the haven, and why people have chosen to build
  a community with them. Below are some ideas for
  roles in settlements broken up by the character
  classes, but don’t feel limited by them.
  CLEAVER: Hunting for food or raw materials to
  turn into supplies; advising on matters of the
  Heart Itself; protecting a frontier town from
  wild animals and raiders; guiding travellers
  through the local area; providing support for
  other Heartsblood people.
  DEADWALKER: Performing funeral rites and
  disposing of dead bodies; smuggling in sup‐
  plies via the Grey; acquiring unusual materials
  from
  otherworlds;
  bargaining
  with
  the
  undead; protecting the populace from ghosts
  and phantoms.
  DEEP APIARIST: Beekeeping (regular bees, not
  the magic ones) for honey and wax; building
  and maintaining stabilising wards against the
  Heart Itself; providing medical care; offering a
  sanctuary for other travelling Deep Apiarists.
  HERETIC: Leading religious ceremonies to celeb‐
  rate,mournormarkthepassingoftime;healing
  8
  Group Haven Creation
  
  the sick and providing for the needy; spreading
  the gospel of the Moon Beneath; offering spir‐
  itual solace to the lost and directionless.
  HOUND: Maintaining defences; training a mili‐
  tia to defend the town; keeping the peace and
  handling disputes over land or property; root‐
  ing out those who act against the haven and
  punishing them; offering support to travelling
  Hounds in exchange for service; providing a
  supply of arms and ammunition.
  INCARNADINE: Establishing and maintaining
  trade
  networks
  via
  Incarnadine
  shrines;
  extracting tithes from the populace on behalf
  of the ruler; managing day-to-day events and
  overseeing stocks; brokering disagreements
  between acrimonious parties; tracking down
  and killing those with a great karmic debt.
  JUNK MAGE: Acting as a Town Wizard of sorts,
  offering advice on the occult; running a magic
  shop; leading a clueless sect; doing something
  inscrutable with mystical bulwarks against the
  Heart Itself.
  VERMISSIAN KNIGHT: Protecting people in the
  haven and outlying areas; leading expeditions
  on delves to other landmarks; maintaining
  machinery; navigating the Vermissian, if the
  settlement is within its boundaries; hunting
  down big monsters for fame and profit.
  WITCH: Lending the haven an air of legitimacy
  due to their noble bloodlines; using scrying
  magic to gather useful information; offering
  medical care via surgery or potions; leading
  the Witch cult in worship.
  THREATS
  The Heart is a dangerous place,and one of the reas‐
  ons for forming a haven is mutual protection.
  Building a wall theoretically gives you an area that
  youcanlaycontrolanddevelop,buttherealityoflife
  intheCityBeneathmeansthatthisisn’talwaystrue.
  Create at least one threat that looms over the
  haven by drawing on your haven’s domains and
  unique trait. Here are some ideas for threats,
  broken down by domain:
  CURSED: The deeper a haven is, the more likely it
  is that the Heart will rise up and reclaim the
  land as its own; everyone’s heard of a haven
  collapsing wholesale into the ground as the
  City Beneath consumes it. Angels are a rare
  threat (most people will never even hear an
  eye-witness account of one) but they represent
  one of the direst challenges that a haven can
  face: the Heart Itself dispatching a fell-handed
  and untouchable agent to act in its service.The
  last section of this book details four special‐
  ised kinds of angels you can pit against your
  players, if you would like to.
  9
  Group Haven Creation
  HIGH RISE
  Plagued by legions of spectral undead, the
  inhabitants of High Rise have decided to
  fight the problem with sacrifice - to
  fight ghosts with ghosts, as it were.
  The settlement perches atop several
  twenty-storey buildings strung together
  with rickety bridges; from the seventeenth
  floor downwards, the phantoms are too many
  and too hungry to allow habitation.
  Something is keeping them from ascending
  to the upper levels.
  The priests of High Rise (who call
  themselves the Swanfall cult, though I
  doubt that any of them have seen a swan)
  believe that frequent sacrifices of their
  best and brightest youths is the key to
  protecting their homes. Every month or so,
  a handful of people leap headlong from the
  roofs to crush themselves to pulp below.
  This is a great honour, and they seem
  happy enough about it, so I am loath to
  criticise them. Many fools have done far
  worse things in pursuit of glory.
  
  DESOLATE: Mushroom farms become barren.
  Beasts farmed for meat such as pigs, eating-
  owls or deep-crabs catch diseases and wither
  away. Viruses spread unchecked through, and
  between, villages. Unfavourable pulses twist
  the Heart into arid wastelands, and given that
  travel between settlements can take days, one
  bad harvest can ruin a haven.
  HAVEN: One of the most common threats to a
  haven isn’t the Heart, but other people: rival
  havens or isolated pockets of desperate people
  will try to take what’s “theirs”. Even within a
  settlement, disputes over lack of resources or
  ideological differences can set people against
  one another – and when you’re a mile under‐
  ground with only mushrooms and hope to
  survive on, people’s irritating habits can really
  start to get on your nerves.
  OCCULT: Havens are often built on unstable
  metaphysical ground: bargains with dark
  entities, half-understood glyphs tattooed on
  the wrists of the elders and blood offerings in
  hidden chambers are the order of the day.
  Sometimes the wards break down due to lack
  of maintenance or expertise; other times, rival
  occultists wish to siphon power, access or
  resources from a vulnerable haven and begin
  an arcane war.
  RELIGION: Despite the prominence of the
  Church of the Moon Beneath in the Heart,
  there are temples to hundreds of other gods –
  and with deep-seated religious belief comes
  conflict. Rival sects worshipping other gods
  (or different forms of the same god) can spur a
  community to violence and exclusion. More
  than one haven has fallen due to attacks made
  in the name of a deity.
  TECHNOLOGY: The machinery of the Heart is
  badly-understood at best, and it can break
  down at a moment’s notice. If a community
  relies on technological elements to survive,
  then they also rely on the generosity of those
  with the skills to repair it and the availability
  of suitable materials. Retroengineers charge a
  high price for their expertise, and replace‐
  ments for broken parts must be scavenged for
  or painstakingly created. Those in possession
  of valuable or fascinating devices might find
  their home under siege from others who wish
  to possess them.
  WARREN: The Heart is riddled with passages
  and byways; some natural, some made by
  people. Defending a haven can be nearly
  impossible due to the twisting, overlapping
  corridors that surround it. What’s more, if
  construction in the haven is particularly
  aggressive, the inhabitants could find their
  homes collapsing under their own weight.
  10
  Group Haven Creation
  CLUSTER
  I wrote at length earlier in this volume
  about my fascination with predatory
  buildings - those structures of wood,
  metal and stone which are very much
  alive and hungry. They disguise
  themselves as normal buildings in an
  effort to lure in prey.
  In Cluster, a Heartsblooded fellow by
  the name of Sekh Drumford has (like
  those treacherous witches of Hallow)
  learned to control them. But unlike the
  witches, Drumford’s relationship with
  the buildings is not one of master and
  servant, but predator and prey.
  Cluster is a trap for traps. It is
  built entirely of predatory buildings
  that were lured there, and then
  aggressively remodelled - or killed, in
  other words. Of late, as the settlement
  has grown, Drumford has begun to farm
  the structures. Rather than immediately
  killing each new arrival, he is
  attempting to twist their growth and
  movements into something more useful.
  I am told there are currently eleven
  pubs, two tailor’s workshops, a
  boutique perfumery and a small covered
  marketplace, all roughly sutured
  together into the shape of a village.
  Drumford is currently attempting to
  grow a theatre, and is in need of meat
  to feed it.
  
  WILD: Beasts, monsters and particularly aggress‐
  iveterrainareacommonproblem.Thecreatures
  of the Heart range from disturbing to deadly,
  and they have no respect for town boundaries.
  As havens expand into their hunting, breeding
  or child-rearing lands,they will begin to venture
  inside for food, water and shelter (not that all
  heartsbloodbeastsneedfood,waterorshelteras
  people would understand them). Wild threats
  can’t be bargained with,but they’re less cunning
  and resourceful than people.
  RULES
  Most of a haven is represented through fictional
  material rather than game mechanics, but there
  are a few considerations before the creation pro‐
  cess is finished.
  Default stress is a rough indication of the level
  of danger for player characters when occupying
  the haven. The lower the dice size, the safer things
  are; a default stress D4 haven will feel very differ‐
  ent from a default stress D8 one.A high stress dice
  isn’t necessarily a symptom of chaos or disorder,
  though: a regimented camp of Hounds might
  have default stress D10, as any misbehaviour
  could be immediately met with violent reprisals.
  Haunts provide a means for player characters
  to exchange resources for healing and resupply.
  Each one has a non-player character, or at the very
  least an interesting concept, attached to it that the
  delvers interact with when they remove stress.
  Think carefully about which resistances your
  haven can cater to with regards to your player
  characters’ classes; if they can’t access healing at
  home, they’ll need to travel elsewhere to get it.
  Offering two or three haunts provides you with
  an opportunity to flesh out the haven with char‐
  acters and services, but keep the dice size around
  D6 to encourage the players to improve them (see
  Heart p. 131 for full rules on upgrading haunts). If
  you have a single haunt, it’s often interesting to
  put it at a high dice size to reflect something
  really special and worth defending.
  Resources are valuable items that can be found
  in or near the haven. In havens, a lot of resources
  are owned by the inhabitants,so player characters
  will have to offer something in return or steal
  them. The higher-valued and more varied the
  resources in a haven, the more prosperous it is.
  NAME
  Naming things is hard. We recommend keeping it
  simpleandstickingtoatheme.Herearesomeideas:
  • Pick a foreign language, translate a few
  important words and swap around a few
  letters. Mash them together until you’re left
  with just the sound and feel of the phrase.
  • Combine two nouns you like the sound of.
  • Steal the names of rural villages from the other
  side of your country.
  • Name it after the founder, a legendary heroine
  or a fateful battle.
  UNANSWERED
  QUESTIONS
  The final part of creating a haven is to work out
  what questions you want to answer through play.
  Working out every last detail of the settlement
  before you start your campaign will make it dry
  and unexciting to explore; the more details you
  leave vague, the smoother the game will flow. You
  can always define things in play, after all.
  11
  Group Haven Creation
  Additional Haven Questions
  •
  Why do people come here?
  •
  Why do people leave?
  •
  What’s the best thing about this haven?
  •
  What stories do people tell their children
  here?
  •
  What kind of animals and vermin are here?
  •
  What’s the secret here that they promise
  never to tell outsiders?
  
  WYRMPIT, AN EXAMPLE HAVEN
  DOMAINS
  We (Chris and Grant) have a chat through the
  domains for a bit and settle on Desolate as our
  option – we think it could be interesting to build
  something that primarily focuses on the land,
  not the people. That might change, though! We
  decide that the haven is in a pass in a great ravine
  that forms one of the only access routes in this
  part of the Heart, and all around it the land is
  scarred and dead from generations of battles.
  Chris suggests that the place is built on an old
  crumbling temple; Grant agrees and reckons that
  there’s something big and dangerous slumbering
  underneath there.
  TIER
  ThehavenprovidesapassagebetweenTiers1and2.
  UNIQUE THING
  What is slumbering under there? We talk about
  guardians to the underworld for a bit and throw
  out the idea of a three-headed dog (overplayed)
  before landing on the solution: a giant wyrm! We
  can’t quite decide if it’s annelid or reptilian, but
  it’s definitely massive and is slipping around a pit
  eating itself in a never ending ouroboros. People
  here think that it’s very wise; they listen to its
  sussurating writhings and try to discern mean‐
  ing from them. Also, if the haven ever comes
  under significant threat, they believe that the
  wyrm will arise to defend them.
  The ancient temple is built in a glass-floored
  tunnel, and everyone who passes through can see
  the enormous creature curling around on itself
  beneath their feet. The inhabitants, who run
  market stalls selling keepsakes and soft drugs,
  don’t even remark on it most days.
  FACES
  • Felicity the caretaker is the leader of the witch
  coven who runs the place and acts on the divine
  wisdom of the undulating wyrm. Weirdly, this
  wisdom always seems to benefit her and her
  order. She and the other witches are lavishly
  dressed and dripping in jewellery, with well-
  appointed apartments in the area above the
  temple. (We went back and forth on having the
  person acting as oracle as the caretaker or the
  rebel, but this seemed more interesting; and
  we’re
  not
  entirely
  sure
  if
  she’s
  actually
  interpreting anything or just making it up as
  she goes along.)
  • Lech the rebel is one of a handful of Hounds
  who work here, overseeing the town defences
  and
  training
  militia
  groups.
  Lech
  was
  dispatched here after upsetting their superior,
  and is convinced that the wyrm will not save
  the populace; they’re convinced that it’s going
  to wake up in a year or less and wreck the place.
  They have the calculations to prove it, which
  they can show you.
  • Vostair the voice is a market trader and
  occasional militiaman. He likes strong drink
  and strong lovers, prides himself on his
  sumptuously oiled body hair and has the
  honour of being one of the least crooked
  merchants on the temple floor.
  ART
  People paint and carve wyrms on to everything
  here. The militia get a twisting snake tattoo to
  represent their allegiance, and it grows longer for
  every year they serve. In the houses built into the
  cavern walls on either side of the gate, the inhab‐
  itants daub wyrms on their whitewashed walls in
  the most extravagant colours they can afford.
  PLAYER CHARACTER ROLES
  We don’t have a set of player characters because
  this is an example, but we made some up for the
  purposes of the exercise. They are:
  • A Vermissian Knight who escorts valuable
  cargo through the haven’s territory and patrols
  the borders.
  • A Hound who works alongside Lech in training
  the militia.
  • A Witch who’s been assigned to Felicity’s coven
  as a glorified serving-girl.
  • A Junk Mage who runs an occult tchotchkes
  stall in the template market with his snot-
  nosed cousin.
  12
  Example Haven
  
  THREATS
  We want to tie this in with the rest of the book, so
  we decide to draw on the Cursed domain and pit
  an angel against the haven.It approaches,march‐
  ing stoically from Tier 3 up to the gate. What does
  it want? That’s not entirely clear.It might not even
  be interested in Wyrmpit itself and only want to
  use it to access the surface world.
  The first game starts with the arrival of a mad-
  eyed traveller stumbling around Temple Market,
  begging for someone to escort him to the surface
  world before the angel arrives.
  RULES
  The default stress for the haven is
  D4 on the Tier 1 side and D6 from
  the temple onwards on the Tier 2
  side. We come up with two
  haunts – Temple Market (Sup‐
  plies D8) and Sascha,a witch who
  dabbles in medical experimenta‐
  tion
  (Blood
  D6). Finally, the
  resources available are Cave fungi
  grown in small farms (D6, Wild)
  and a variety of souvenirs and
  tacky art pieces (D6, Haven). If
  you decide to break into the
  witches’
  apartments,
  their
  finery is (D8, Haven) and their
  books of blood-sorcery are
  (D10, Occult, Beacon).
  NAME
  After much discussion, we
  decide to combine two old-
  fashioned nouns (“Worm”
  and “Pit”, on account of
  the large worm in the
  pit at the centre of the
  town) into a name.
  We
  then
  changed
  “Worm”to“Wyrm”
  because it sounded more appropriate for the
  weirdness and mystery in the place. It does
  sound a little like “armpit,” but not enough for us
  to change it.
  UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
  What does the angel want? Is the wyrm actually
  dispensing wisdom or are the witches making it
  up? When is the wyrm going to wake up, and
  what’s going to be left standing when it does?
  And what are those
  strange markings
  on the temple
  walls about,
  anyway?
  13
  Example Haven
  
  14
  Rhythm
  The typical rhythm of a haven game goes roughly
  as follows:
  1. The haven is under threat.
  2. The player characters set out on a delve to find
  something that will help.
  3. They overcome obstacles when they reach the
  landmark and get what they need.
  4. They return to the haven and see how it has
  grown or changed in their absence.
  5. Repeat until the threat is defeated or the
  haven falls.
  You don’t have to follow this exactly, of course –
  that’s just the central loop of the game. The details
  areuptoyouandyourplayers,whateverfeelsright
  at the time and the cruel whims of fallout.
  Neighbours
  You’ve created a haven for the focus of your game;
  now it’s time to sketch out the City Beneath
  around it. Choose or create three or four land‐
  marks and put them adjacent to the central
  haven. One of them will have a connection, so
  reduce the resistance of the delve by half. The
  others will operate as standard delves.
  Each of the landmarks has something that the
  haven needs (or would at least be beneficial to the
  inhabitants) and a problem that must be solved
  before the player characters can access it. Take a
  look over your haven, paying particular attention
  to the Threats, and have a think about what would
  help them negate or overcome the challenges
  ahead of them. Using Wyrmpit as an example,
  here are three landmarks broken down by what
  they can offer and what stands in the delvers’path:
  Chollerous, an offshoot of the Church of the Moon
  Beneath founded by a violent splinter sect, is located on
  the Tier 1 side of Wyrmpit. They have a strong Hound
  contingent, so their support in defending the haven
  could be invaluable. Problem is: someone’s stolen the
  undying martyr they kept locked underneath their
  sanctum, and the temple is starting to crumble. They
  think it was an inside job and they need answers.
  Hallow, the spiritual and political home of the witches,
  lies beyond the Tier 2 side of Wyrmpit. The delvers can
  utilise their power to help defend the haven against the
  Vermissian or get them onside if they want to oust
  Felicity and her coven. The witches need a favour: one of
  the spies they’ve placed in Felicity’s employ has gone
  rogue, and they want you to track her down and bring
  her in for questioning. They’re not sure which one it is,
  though. The regular traffic between Hallow and
  Wyrmpit means that there’s a connection established
  between the two landmarks.
  The Red Market, a great shifting war-torn souk devoted
  to a hungry deity of debt, is accessible through ancient
  ductways and crawlspaces on the Tier 2 side of
  Wyrmpit. One of the Incarnadine lords there offers the
  delvers a chance to access their valuable and occluded
  trade networks in exchange for helping them carve out
  some new territory in the market.
  Running a Haven-Based Game
  MARSH-HALLOW
  Here, the bones of saints and martyrs were
  heaped atop one another until the piles
  collapsed. Sepulchre on ruined sepulchre
  was built; mausoleum on top of crumbling
  mausoleum; gravestones were stacked to make
  sarcophagi, until the foundations of this
  place formed a scattershot reliquary. The
  ghosts of the faithful scratch and moan
  from beneath every floorboard and slab.
  The people here have a thousand minor
  observances that they go through each day
  to appease these phantom saints, but it is
  not a one-way trade. On occasion -
  especially when the settlement is under
  threat - the spirits form an amalgam
  creature of bone and masonry to defend the
  village, growing to easily twice the height
  and width of a man.
  I am also told that the spirits sometimes
  do this when the settlement is not under
  threat, which is significantly less useful.
  
  HAVEN FALLOUT
  A haven doesn’t accrue stress or have a resistance
  score.Only the people inside it (and the player char‐
  acterswhosupportit)do–andultimately,thehaven
  relies on its inhabitants to exist. When running a
  haven-based campaign, you can reflect misfortune
  on the settlement through Fortune or Supplies
  fallout marked against the player characters.
  You’ll probably find that players are keen to
  establish connections between nearby landmarks
  – it’s assumed that they’ll have to undertake each
  delve at least twice. You’ll also probably find that
  taking these connections away due to Major
  Fortune or Echo fallout will really impact them,
  so make sure to do that at least once – show them
  that the Heart isn’t stable and that any attempt to
  build
  something
  permanent
  outside
  of
  a
  landmark is futile.
  As the game’s story focuses around a single
  threat (or multiple threats, if the players are par‐
  ticularly unlucky), you can make good use of fal‐
  lout to reflect things getting more dangerous for
  the haven. We’ve mentioned a few examples
  below, but it bears repeating here: fallout
  becomes a ticking clock, ranging from Minor
  (rumours about an enemy gathering power) to
  Major (strikes or raids against your haven) to
  Critical (the haven is destroyed, or its very exist‐
  ence hangs in the balance).
  Below are some example fallout results that
  you can choose from.
  MINOR
  APPROACH[FORTUNE]: Whoever or whatever’s
  threatening the haven moves one step closer
  to fulfilling their goals – maybe they acquire
  valuable resources, claim some territory or
  simply walk inexorably closer to the settle‐
  ment gates. The player characters will see
  evidence of this or hear tell of it before the
  session is over. [Immediate]
  IN DANGER [FORTUNE]: Someone you care
  about is in trouble, and it’s your fault; or it’s at
  least your job to rescue them. [Immediate]
  INFILTRATED [FORTUNE]: Enemy agents have
  managed to insinuate themselves inside its
  borders. They will act as spies and saboteurs,
  and the player characters will have to work
  hard to root out the threat. [Ongoing]
  LACK [SUPPLIES]: The PC has taken too greedily
  from the supplies that support the haven
  (food, medicine, water, fuel) and now people
  have to go without. Next time they arrive in
  the landmark, they are confronted with the
  consequences of their actions. [Immediate]
  MAJOR
  AT
  THE
  GATES
  [FORTUNE]:
  The
  haven’s
  adversaries act against the settlement. Most
  likely this takes the form of a raid for supplies,
  but it might also be a blockade or an attempt to
  destroy buildings or resources. [Immediate]
  CUT OFF [FORTUNE/SUPPLIES]: One route into
  the haven has been severed due to environ‐
  mental change,bad luck or enemy action.Until
  the characters restore the connection, their
  spent resources count as one dice size lower
  when they use haunts in the haven. [Ongoing]
  DEAD [FORTUNE]: Someone you care about is
  dead and it’s your fault, or you manage to con‐
  vince yourself that it’s your fault. Or: everyone
  else thinks it’s your fault,despite what actually
  happened. If they’re a bond, lose them; if they
  run a haunt, either remove it from the haven
  or halve its dice size as unskilled apprentices
  take over. [Immediate]
  INFORMATION LEAK [FORTUNE]: Spies inside
  the haven have been reporting on your move‐
  ments, and when you attempt to pull off
  something difficult (securing a rare resource,
  establishing a trade route, repelling attackers)
  you notice that your plan has been under‐
  mined by their actions. The next action you
  make after discovering the subterfuge is Dan‐
  gerous; after that,assuming you survive,you’ll
  need to come up with a new plan.[Immediate]
  Running a Haven-Based Game
  15
  
  SABOTAGE [FORTUNE]: A vital element (prob‐
  ably a haunt, a defence or a device that the
  haven relies on) has been sabotaged – maybe
  beyond repair. [Immediate]
  SEEKING SHELTER [FORTUNE]: An influx of
  refugees from a destroyed nearby haven
  stretches the settlement to the limit. Tempers
  flare and accusations of theft fly. Can the
  player characters stop the situation develop‐
  ing into mob justice, or at least pin the blame
  on a disposable scapegoat? [Immediate]
  CRITICAL
  FALLEN [FORTUNE]: The haven is so damaged
  and the people so demoralised (or dead) that it
  can no longer function as a settlement. It is
  abandoned, and though it could be rebuilt in
  future, protecting the refugees and finding
  safety is a much bigger immediate concern.
  [Immediate]
  HUNGER. [FORTUNE]: The haven has run out of
  food; people are leaving, and those who stay
  fightoverwhatfewscrapsremain.Youcan’tuse
  any haunts and bonds are either missing or
  function at half efficiency (marking two stress
  for every point of stress removed from your
  character). Unless you do something soon, the
  haven will cease to function. [Ongoing]
  KILLER[FORTUNE]: Maybe it was a stray shot or
  some tragic magical backlash –or perhaps you
  meant to do it and choked the life out of them
  with your bare hands. Anyway: someone you
  care about is dead and you did it. Now you
  have to evade detection, hide the body and
  come up with an alibi lest you’re hung in the
  town square at the next bell. [Immediate]
  16
  Running a Haven-Based Game
  OUR LADY OF
  PERAMBULATION
  CHURCH
  If a nomadic life is sacred to you,
  where do you congregate to worship?
  Apparently, you pick up your church
  and carry it around.
  The followers of Our Lady Of
  Perambulation number in the
  hundreds, and they are always on an
  endless pilgrimage to nowhere in
  particular. The most devoted are
  permitted to carry their high
  church, an angular building made of
  wood and bone. They move it
  throughout the undercity on a route
  determined by a mad oracle who sits,
  wreathed in narcotic smoke, in the
  central chamber of the church.
  The faithful offer lodging in the
  back rooms of this church. It is
  cheap and the worshippers are
  friendly enough, but the pungent
  smoke creeps in everywhere and their
  perpetual warbling hymnal (which I
  am told has been continually sung
  for the last twelve years) can set
  one’s teeth on edge.
  
  HAVEN BEATS
  You may want to give players the option for
  haven-specific beats in addition to beats associ‐
  ated with their calling. Unlike calling beats, these
  don’t give access to advances when they’re
  achieved – instead, they give access to a new
  bond or remove stress from an existing bond.
  Make three or four haven beats when you
  make the settlement, keep them visible to all
  players (either in the centre of the table or in a
  shared document/webpage) and let them mix
  and match. You can update haven beats as you
  play to reflect the changing state of the haven.
  This is a great way to direct your players and
  reward them mechanically for interacting with
  the haven; and if they’re regularly coming home
  and offloading stress onto their bonds, they’re
  going to need to use them.
  For more information on bonds and how they
  acquire stress, see Heart p. 98.
  Here are some ideas for haven beats:
  � Repel attackers who want to steal valuable
  resources from the haven
  � Listen to the Rebel’s concerns and offer them
  your support
  � Build up the haven’s defences
  � Hunt down a murderer who’s hiding in the
  haven
  � Act against the Rebel on behalf of the
  Caretaker
  � Rescue the Voice when they're in trouble
  � Bring new inhabitants to the haven
  � Rebuild the temple in the centre of town
  � Evacuate the survivors of an attack
  � Acquire materials to reinforce the town’s
  wards against the Heart
  � Lay a ghost to rest
  � Steal supplies for the town’s militia from some
  dodgy mercenaries
  � Redeem old Farmer Asharam’s soul
  � Go on a nice date with someone
  � Create some communal art that adds to the
  haven’s appearance
  17
  Running a Haven-Based Game
  TYPHON
  Legends tell of a portal to a dark and
  cruel dimension beneath the inn at the
  centre of Typhon. It is a place of
  writhing horror and infinite monsters,
  where the greatest warriors test both
  their strength of arm and strength of
  spirit. It is said that it is from
  here that pitchkin crawl; here that
  the Great Minotaur dwells; here that
  the restless guardians of the dead,
  bejewelled and gold-clad, keep watch
  over the slumbering bodies of undying
  deities. The innkeeper whispers that
  treasures beyond the ken of man, elf
  or gnoll await those brave enough to
  venture into the tar-black labyrinth.
  It is all bunkum.
  The inn at Typhon is just that: an
  inn, perhaps with a slightly larger-
  than-normal basement. The owner is a
  liar who is quite happy to get
  foolhardy adventurous types drunk off
  their heads and send them downstairs
  to be robbed by six of his distant
  cousins. Besides, the rooms are
  overpriced and the beer is watery.
  .
  
  18
  Running a Haven-Based Game
  
  Angels are the emissaries of the Heart Itself. They
  are considered by many to be the most dangerous
  creatures of the City Beneath, and they are so
  rare that they are spoken of as legends. The Heart
  moves at a geographic scale and views the people
  who dwell within it as irritating but ultimately
  unimportant parasites. It’s only when the inhab‐
  itants break one of its inscrutable rules that it
  acts directly.
  When you kill an angel – carving open the
  uncanny cocoon of flesh that barely contains its
  roiling unreality and spilling its hissing blood on
  the ground – it does not die. It is reborn miles
  beneath you, in some distant stone womb. You
  cannot fight an angel forever, because it has
  forever and you do not. The best you can hope for
  is to gain an understanding of what it wants by
  interpreting the gutted havens it leaves in its
  wake and change your behaviour appropriately.
  But people are stubborn. Perhaps you can out-
  kill an angel until it gets bored, or until whatever
  intelligence governs it decides to try something
  else; maybe you can hide from it, or convince it to
  go somewhere else instead of your family home.
  In this chapter, you’ll find four different vari‐
  ations of angel: three that are less dangerous
  than the default Angel in the core book, and one
  which is significantly more dangerous. They are
  artfully described by the mad travel writer Gris
  Hanneman, and as the Heart has the trick of
  changing the imagined into the real, it is hard to
  say and entirely immaterial whether he was
  making it all up.
  19
  Angels
  
  NAMES: Synsthreethseis, Culcationarian, Geoch
  DESCRIPTORS: Inky-black and hard to look at,
  as though there’s too much condensed into a
  singular space; Quivering and lost, clawing
  apart a stone wall to escape an open space;
  Lowering itself down a long shaft above a pop‐
  ulated haven
  MOTIVATION: To travel through tunnels and
  enclosed spaces in order to reach a designated
  landmark, then embed itself in the walls to
  blossom
  DIFFICULTY: Risky
  RESISTANCE: 25
  PROTECTION: 2
  RESOURCES: Fistfuls of sopping protoplasm
  (D8, Cursed, Mobile)
  EQUIPMENT: Black bone hooks (Kill D6, Pier‐
  cing, Point-Blank)
  SPECIAL: The first time you see a Blossom angel,
  roll Endure+Cursed and mark D6 stress to
  Fortune on a failure as it projects hooks from
  itself that limit your movement and pull you
  off balance.
  If you can reach the “top” of a Blossom angel,
  you can attack the exposed organ that con‐
  jures the Heart Itself. Such attacks negate the
  creature’s Protection.
  IftheBlossomangelmanagestohookitselfin
  place and expand to its full size,the landmark it
  occupies
  gains
  the
  Cursed
  and
  Warren
  domains and loses any existing domains.
  DOMAINS: Cursed, Warren.
  20
  Angels
  “Blossom”, as in “bloom”, as in
  “unfold:” a dreadful thing to
  witness. It is more suited to life on
  the sea bed than on dry land; a
  singular lump of muscle in a slug-
  like configuration, without eye or
  mouth or ear. Blind and furious, it
  knows only that it cannot be where it
  is, and must instead travel towards
  where it will be: a destination
  whispered sleepwise into it by the
  Convocation. That sole thought echoes
  around its blunt and cavernous mind.
  It propels itself by ejecting
  fleshy hooks from its central mass at
  tremendous velocity; these hooks then
  anchor onto the surrounding terrain
  and provide purchase for it to yank
  itself onwards. It is fastest in
  tunnels and confined spaces: it seems
  to fly through the air within them,
  eerily silent save for the ft-thunk
  of hooks and the twitching song of
  contracting muscle fibres. On open
  terrain it is slower, and makes do
  with writhing on the ground like an
  animate tongue cut from a man’s head
  - but it dislikes open spaces, and
  even seems to be hurt by them. It
  bleeds and squirms most unpleasantly
  when confronted with the open air of
  a large cavern, and seeks shelter
  somewhere more suited to its method
  of perambulation.
  When it reaches its target
  location, it will burst into a storm
  of hooks, piercing anyone close by
  and pinning their corpses in place.
  It attaches itself to the walls,
  ceiling and floor before tensing
  every muscle and hanging, quivering,
  in the air.
  Then: it blossoms.
  A rapturous thing, this angel; it
  unfolds with the promises of the
  Convocation, heralding the arrival of
  a new crimson world to supercede the
  dull plane on which we fritter away
  our handfuls of moments. It expands
  from within like a bonemarrow flower,
  flooding the space with new fecundity:
  walls of meat and teeth, a heavy pulse
  in the darkest lizard recesses of the
  mind, an interstitial roar of birth.
  The original place is no more, save
  for the echoes of a structure here or
  there. It is replaced with something
  sharp and wet and new.
  FALLOUT: HOOKED [Minor, Blood/Fortune]
  Multiple
  barbed
  spears
  of
  bone
  plunge
  through your armour and latch into your flesh:
  you are pulled towards the roiling muscular
  centre of the angel and are unable to flee. In
  this position, the point-blank tag on the
  angel’s bone hooks is always considered to be
  active.An ally can free you by hacking away the
  fleshy tethers; this inflicts no stress to the
  angel but removes this fallout from your char‐
  acter. [Immediate, Ongoing]
  BLOSSOM ANGEL
  
  NAMES: Hymnal, Bray, Tumultuan
  DESCRIPTORS: Wrenching a pillar out of the
  ground and hurling it into a group of defend‐
  ers; Clambering atop a belltower and howling
  a song of endings; Moving with an inhuman
  grace, in time to a distant drum-beat
  MOTIVATION: To utterly smash apart defences,
  reduce the works of mortals to ruin, show
  dominance and destroy everything in its path
  DIFFICULTY: Dangerous
  RESISTANCE: 30
  PROTECTION: 5
  RESOURCES:
  Cracked
  armour
  plating
  (D8
  Cursed, confers the BLOCK tag when fash‐
  ioned into armour)
  EQUIPMENT: Calcified bone mauls (Kill D12)
  SPECIAL: When you hear the song of the Caco‐
  phony angel, roll Endure+Cursed to with‐
  stand it; if you fail, mark D8 stress to Blood.
  DOMAINS: Cursed, Desolate.
  21
  Angels
  The Cacophony angel stands twenty feet
  tall, bedecked in shimmering chitin.
  Unlike many of its kin, its approach is
  not one of a slow surreal unpicking of
  the real, but a bellowing roar that
  rattles the very foundations of a haven.
  It would seem it is designed (if
  “designed” is a word that can be applied
  to the Convocation; perhaps “dreamed” is
  more apt, or perhaps our minds cannot
  fathom the actual word and attempting to
  understand their machinations is
  fruitless to any but the most brilliant)
  for direct assault. During the invasion
  of the Heart half a century ago, the
  aelfir commanders of the Damned 33rd
  regiment brought their strange magic to
  bear against the Convocation's monstrous
  fruit: humming lanterns that projected
  reality-stabilising patterns of glyph and
  sigil, razorsharp songs that pierced the
  brains of their troops to make them
  fearless and more besides. They began to
  take ground; but this imbalance could not
  be allowed to continue.
  The Cacophony angel’s dozen mouths
  herald its arrival with a shuddering
  song, at once atonal and harmonic, that
  makes men’s noses bleed and their vision
  swim. When it makes contact with those
  it was fashioned to destroy, they are
  often already scattered and
  disorganised; one in three does not
  survive hearing the song, simply
  collapsing into mad spasm.
  This brute-force ram of a creature
  proceeds to smash apart defences with
  ease and rip regiments to shreds. Even
  sustained rifle fire cannot overwhelm
  it, and offensive sorcery is all but
  impossible thanks to its unceasing song,
  which twists and rakes the brains of
  those who hear it.
  In its wake it leaves carnage
  unthought of, even by those who have
  witnessed the effects of other angels.
  Where it touches the earth, the ground
  is scarred brimstone-yellow and smokes
  perpetually. Buildings are reduced to
  splinters and dust; defenders are pulped
  to paste by its fistlike appendages,
  each the size of a fully-grown man.
  Where its kin move through the Heart
  with alien grace and reshape the world
  around them, the Cacophony angel’s
  rampages are direct displays of force
  that I speculate are to show those who
  would trifle with the Convocation that
  it can fight on the invader’s terms.
  Cacophony ANGEL
  
  NAMES: Itch, Restrict, Yondarian
  DESCRIPTORS: Folded up inside a cupboard,
  entirely filling the space and waiting until you
  fall asleep; Charging towards a marketplace to
  get enough people to notice it so it can become
  invisible and intangible; Licking empty book‐
  shelves to try and absorb the memories of the
  books
  MOTIVATION: To taste everything about you and
  then move on to the next person; to get away
  from danger and hide until things blow over
  DIFFICULTY: Standard
  RESISTANCE: 16
  PROTECTION: The protection value of the angel
  is equal to the number of people who are
  aware of its location or actively hunting for it;
  if it reaches 6 or more, it can no longer be seen
  or interacted with.
  RESOURCES:
  Mind-dulling
  chemicals
  (D8,
  Cursed, Harmful. Use on a Mend Blood or
  Mind check to roll with mastery.)
  EQUIPMENT: Soporific spit (Kill D4, Ranged,
  Point-Blank); Perfectly-timed pounce (Kill
  D10, One-Shot. This weapon inflicts stress to
  Echo.)
  SPECIAL: The first time you witness a particular
  Logos angel, roll Endure+Cursed; on a failure,
  mark D6 stress to Echo as it looks back.
  DOMAINS: Cursed, Haven.
  22
  Angels
  The Convocation is curious. Our world is
  unlike theirs: it is cold and dark and
  strange to them, a reality viewed
  through smoked glass which they struggle
  to comprehend with their alien senses.
  This is why the Logos was born: a
  living, ambulatory sense organ.
  I am not entirely sure what the Logos
  looks like, for when it is observed, it
  becomes less real. It is so scarcely on
  our plane of existence that a small
  group of people looking at (or for) it
  cause it to stop physically manifesting
  altogether. It has a location, but not a
  presence; its very existence defies
  understanding.
  But, from what I glimpsed during our
  expedition into an abandoned village and
  the eyewitness accounts taken from
  survivors, here is a rough outline of
  its appearance. It is small for an angel
  - roughly the size of a horse - and
  constructed of many clawed, bony limbs.
  On the underside of the creature, a huge
  tongue-like protuberance hangs twitching
  and pallid; I do not believe that it is
  capable of retracting it.
  This angel, unlike others, hides. It
  secretes itself in basements, attics,
  abandoned rooms or on derelict rooftops,
  and waits for a person to approach.
  People are its absolute favourite thing.
  When one falls asleep near the angel, it
  will unfold itself and creep ever so
  quietly over them. It will drip a
  sticky, soporific fluid from its maw and
  render the unfortunate target unable to
  think straight or move with efficiency.
  Then, slowly, inquisitively and
  completely non-maliciously, it will
  press down its tongue and taste.
  I believe it tastes in a way quite
  unlike us. It tastes the entirety of a
  person from their skin alone, absorbing
  a world of information from their sweat.
  It tastes their past, their family and
  companions, the fears they won’t admit
  even to themselves and the terrible arc
  of misfortune and obsession that brought
  them to live in the Heart and fall
  asleep in some abandoned building.
  After a few sessions of tasting the
  angel moves on to a different target, or
  perhaps a different haven entirely. But
  the victim (if they’re aware of the
  situation) has the uncanny sensation of
  being seen in a way that they have never
  before been seen: the semi-conscious
  realisation that someone is staring at
  them, but writ large. The Heart knows
  their name.
  FALLOUT: NIGHT TERRORS [Minor, Echo/For‐
  tune] The next time you wake up, your head
  aches as though you’ve been drugged and your
  bedclothes are covered in weird, sticky spoor.
  You have been tasted by a Logos angel,but it isn’t
  done just yet. All actions against the angel
  become Risky until you get a good night’s sleep
  where it doesn’t pay you a visit.
  FALLOUT: SPIT [Minor, Blood/Fortune] You
  catch some of the angel’s dripping fluid on your
  skin or lips and your vision swims. Using Hunt
  or Evade actions becomes Risky until this fallout
  is removed. [Ongoing]
  FALLOUT: KNOWN [Critical, Blood/Echo] The
  Logos angel absorbs the entirety of you and
  passes that data back to the Heart Itself. The next
  angel you meet will kill you and you will be unable
  to harm it in any way; at best,you might be able to
  use your death as a distraction.[Ongoing]
  Logos ANGEL
  
  NAMES: Penumbra – each of them is named the
  same, and may all be extrusions of the same
  creature
  DESCRIPTORS: Hovering a quarter-inch off the
  ground, as if no-one would notice; Has eyes
  that change colour every time you look away;
  Terrifying a pack of feral dogs into cowering
  obedience by their mere presence
  MOTIVATION: To contact someone the Heart
  has marked as a potential recruit and steer
  them towards revelations
  DIFFICULTY: Risky
  RESISTANCE: 12
  PROTECTION:
  1
  (in
  humanoid
  form),
  3
  (uncloaked)
  RESOURCES: Person-skin suit (D10, Occult,
  Taboo.Made from a real person.If you wear it,
  you look and sound just like the person.)
  EQUIPMENT: Ruinous shadow (Kill D8, Brutal,
  Obscuring); Words of power (Kill D8, Ranged,
  Piercing. This attack inflicts stress to Mind.)
  SPECIAL: You can witness the Penumbra angel
  in its cloaked form with no ill effects, although
  a successful Discern+Cursed check will reveal
  that it’s not actually a person. If it chooses to
  unveil itself (usually in response to attack or
  discovery), make an Endure+Cursed check to
  withstand the shock and mark D8 stress to
  Echo on a failure.
  DOMAINS: Cursed, Occult, Haven.
  23
  Angels
  I spoke with the Penumbra angel. It
  kissed me with lips of glass and spoke
  riddles under my skin. It whispered to
  me of the Convocation and spoke words
  like silver scalpels that slit me open
  to a new and staggering world; words
  that exposed the naked bones of me to a
  truth the likes of which I had never
  before experienced; words that echo in
  my head still; words that phantom-fizz
  at my fingertips and beg to be written.
  (I cannot write them. I am clay and
  dirt, a wretch of a thing. My mind is
  puddle-deep next to the roaring,
  tempestuous ocean of the Convocation.)
  It met with me in High Rise during my
  time with the Swanfall Cult. It walked
  amongst the people of the haven as
  though it were one of them: it wore the
  skin of a drow, but to my experienced
  eye it seemed a poor fit - as though
  the creature underneath were pulsing
  against it, just outside the realm of
  normal sight. I followed it to an
  abandoned apartment two storeys below
  the great fire on the central
  structure, and it was waiting for me.
  The Penumbra angel spoke my name
  like burning phosphor; not the name on
  the front of this book, not the
  childlike assembly of syllables that I
  respond to, but my true name. It alone
  has seen me. It told me that it was not
  part of the Convocation, but that it
  was the Convocation. It showed me,
  peeling my skin apart like paper to
  reveal the glistening muscle
  underneath, that I was the Convocation,
  too. Or rather, that I could be; that
  the process had already begun.
  FALLOUT:FALSEBLESSING [Minor,Mind] You
  are convinced that someone in your immediate
  vicinity is a Penumbra angel, ripe and riddled
  with secrets of the world beyond. You might
  even be correct; their protestations at not being
  an angel could just be another test. [Immediate]
  FALLOUT: BLESSED [Major, Echo] You are
  approached by a Penumbra angel and your mind
  is forcefully expanded with visions of the Heart
  Itself. As long as you possess this fallout, you roll
  with mastery when interacting with angels or
  investigating their whereabouts. If you mark
  stress as a result,the dice size is increased by one
  step. [Ongoing]
  Penumbra ANGEL
  
  24
  What follows is a list of equipment used by Gris Hanneman (or equipment
  that his book claims he used). Stats are included for the fictional and the
  actual version of items where appropriate – the artefact mentioned in the
  book is displayed first, and the less-impressive true item is shown second.
  Gris Hanneman's Personal Effects
  The Hanneman Family Pistol
  Kill D8, Ranged, Reload, Good-Quality
  The pistol that Gris pulled from a corpse’s
  hands in Redcap Grove
  Kill D8, Ranged, One-shot
  Confers Knack: Robbery.
  Angel Bullets
  As weapon, Limited 6.
  When the user inflicts stress on an angel, the
  angel’s Protection value is not subtracted from
  the stress.
  Mind-sharpening pills found in
  Hanneman’s lodgings
  Limited 6.
  Inflicts D6 stress to Mind when taken, but confers
  Knack:LocateAngels until the end of the session.
  My primary mission is to document
  angels, not hunt them, but I am well
  aware of the need for a measure of
  self-defence. To that end I have
  brought with me a pistol of fine make:
  a gift from my father, himself an
  explorer, who granted it to me on his
  deathbed when he realised that it was
  time to pass on the torch. Crafted by
  the gunsmiths of House Gryndel, this
  pistol boasts a prodigious punch (with
  appropriate accompanying recoil) and
  never let me down - until it was stolen
  by a sticky-fingered wretch during my
  time in The God of Corpses.
  During my time in the Heart, I
  developed a concoction with which to
  treat my ammunition so the bullets
  would better deter angels from further
  attack. It consisted mainly of
  materials harvested from the creatures
  themselves (or the cosmic spoor left
  in their wake) rendered into a powder.
  This is then added to the lead during
  the bullet-making process.
  
  The Finding Bones
  Delve D8, Wyrd, Excellent Quality
  Atangleofbloodstainedbird-bonesandstring
  Delve D4
  Confers Knack: Breaking and Entering.
  The Mother of Meat
  Mend Blood D8, Potent, Wyrd.
  Once per session, use it to remove a Minor or
  Major Blood fallout; the person healed marks
  D6 stress to Echo.
  Gris Hanneman’s Fingers, conspicuously
  missingfromhis hand when he was lastseen
  Delve D6
  Three fingers that point in the direction of the
  nearest angel, haven and narcotic in the sur‐
  rounding area.
  Proud Bociferous, Canid Corvidae
  Delve D8, Good Quality
  Wretched Bociferous, a mangy half-dog
  that believes it’s a crow
  Delve D6, Expensive (in that it eats your sup‐
  plies when you’re not looking)
  Gris Hanneman's Personal Effects
  25
  A rogue blood-witch who had turned her
  back on the backstabbing sorcerers of
  Hallow taught me the secret of making
  scrying-bones during our brief (but
  eventful) affair. My own set of bones
  incorporated occult findings outside her
  sphere of understanding; I believe this
  is what set her against me and precipit-
  ated her departure.
  I lost three fingers from my left hand
  following an altercation with some ne’er-
  do-wells. Luckily, I was taken in by a
  Heartsblood enclave and shown their
  strange healing arts. Strangest of all
  was the Mother of Meat: a jar of writh-
  ing, semi-living mince that is mixed with
  plant matter and used as a sort of poult-
  ice to be applied to wounds. My fingers
  grew back much stronger than before,
  though I could no longer bear to look
  upon their fingerprints.
  It was in High Rise where I met my compan-
  ion Bociferous - a dog of some kind, or
  perhaps a distant relative of one. Boci-
  ferous had acquired the traits of the
  albino crows that perch on every railing
  and window sill in the place: yellow-white
  feathers, pinkish eyes and a beak. He
  retained a dog’s general form and subser-
  vient demeanour in spite of his avian
  mutations, and his feathers gave him the
  ability to glide (though not to achieve
  true flight). I adored Bociferous, and it
  was with real, genuine sadness that I ate
  him when our party ran out of food and
  disposable team members.
  
  SANCTUM
  Build fantastical, tragic settlements
  under threat from within and without
  Do your level best to defend them and keep
  the people inside alive and prosperous
  Watch, broken, as an emissary of a vast alien Mind
  arrives and tears apart the walls like paper
  Sanctum is a sourcebook for the Heart RPG. Inside, you’ll
  find a guide to building havens with your group to create
  the basis for an exciting campaign. You’ll also find advice
  on running haven-based campaigns,special fallout results
  that reflect your settlement's trials and tribulations, and
  ways to create and reinforce bonds with the people within.
  Finally, you’ll find rules for four new types of angel, the
  fell-handed messengers of the Heart Itself which infiltrate
  and smash apart havens. You'll also enjoy in-character
  ramblings on them from washed-up pulp fiction author
  Gris Hannemann who, potentially, invented them to sell
  more copies of his books. But they’re real now.
  AcopyofHeart:TheCityBeneathisrequiredtousethisbook.
  ISBN: 978-1-913032-10-4
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Heart - the City Beneath/Sanctum-Web-e1-v1-cplkmg.pdf