Ex Stasis Games

OK, eight days late I’m starting Fiona K.T. Howat’s #CharacterCreationChallenge – making a new character for a game I want to play, every day in January. If I do two a day for a while, I can totally catch up. For sure.

I’m only sort of playing by the rules: these aren’t just going to be games I want to play, they’re going to be games I want to play more. Like this first one: Heart: The City Beneath. Technically I played a bit of Heart… shit, years ago. I don’t even know when. Like, a session. Not enough that I remember it.

Also, is it cheating to pick games made by the company I work for? MAYBE. But I know Heart is going to be a quick process, and it’s going to work, and I’m playing catchup here. Besides, I really do want to play a lot more Heart. (Boss, if you read this, I’m trying. I keep wafting it at my Call of Cthulhu group…)

So here we go. Let’s make a Heart character. For reference, I’m working from the 2024 printing, aka The Delve Edition, which got some bits and pieces finessed, and a few extra pages that are completely irrelevant to character creation.

Let’s Do This

It’s got the steps listed, so we’re already starting strong. I love a step-by-step, and it’s weird that not all games have one.

Step 1: Ancestry

I like that these have no mechanical impact, just cultural. More variation within than between, etc. Anyway, I’m having an aelfir – a bastard high elf – because you can’t play them in Spire (Grant and Chris’s previous game set in this world), and also because they’re hot. Aelfir who go to the Heart immediately surrender immense privilege, so I already know I’m playing someone who walked away from money and power in favour of pursuing a dream that will kill them.  That’s my type of bullshit.

Huh. There’s nowhere on the character sheet to record ancestry. Did you do that on purpose, Grant? I’ll have to ask. Also the form-fillable sheet on the RRD website doesn’t appear to be form-fillable. I’ll, uh, let someone know.

OK, a couple of minutes of Acrobat-ics later, I have a form-fillable sheet and have written “aelfir” in the notes. The name I’ve come up with – Grace-Provides-for-the-Innocent – is a dead giveaway anyway. Couldn’t be anything but an aelfir. Call him Grace.

When I pick an ancestry, I have to answer one of three questions based on it. I choose “You still cling to one luxury that keeps you centred – a habit, a style of clothing, a drug, etc. What is it?”

My immediate thought is an elaborate, eleven step skincare regime. I briefly fucked with the possibility of something more meaningful but actually, no, the first idea’s a good ‘un: it means I’m either making someone vain as all hell, and I really enjoy the idea of someone slogging through living dungeons who is determined to look good while he does it, or someone who knows the only thing they can control in the Heart is themselves (haha. Idiot.). Por que no los dos, as they say.

Ooh! I also get two trinkets! The first one I roll is metal teeth. Obviously, they’re not just metal, they’re a beautiful gold and silver pattern. They were designed to go with his mask, which all aelfir wear in Spire, but he no longer has – so they look incomplete and, dare I say it, a little mysterious.

The second is “a stunted tree that grows sour fruit.” Why does he have this? How is he carrying it? Does he have a little handcart? I’ll figure out why this is significant later, but damn I will have a good time doing so.

Step 2: Calling

This is the reason a Delver enters the City Beneath to begin with. It’s really what defines them. Adventurer would be easy – a bored up-city nobleman in over his head – but it’s too easy. Let’s see what else is on offer.

(Oddly, Class is above Calling on the character sheet, but you don’t fill it in first. It’s trivial. Mostly I’m noting this as something to remember when I make character sheets for my own games.)

Oh yeah. Here’s the one. The Heart is in Grace’s head. It calls to him. He can’t not be here. Nothing else moves him. I think, based on this, that he’s old (many aelfir are. It doesn’t show.). He wants to feel something.

I get my core ability, which is a certain amount of tolerance to the Echo resistance (the warping effect of the Heart’s uncanny energies).

Some questions:

Which three images, symbols, people or creatures do you repeatedly see when you dream?

• Veins like ivy, creeping across surfaces and approaching him, never quite touching.
• Songs that, underneath their melody, all have the same steady, cardiac rhythm.
• A stag made of heartsblood, visceral and slippery, with a crown of bone antlers. He pursues it, but can never catch it.

What signs do you look for to recognise where the Heart is strongest?

• That steady pulse he hears in dreams, underlying conversations and playing in the backbeat of settlements’ sounds or caverns echoes.
• A stag’s hoofprint.
• The fizzing, electric feeling in his veins. Hope.

You recently witnessed an unearthly sight with another player character. Who was it, what happened and how did they react?

• Skipping this, since there aren’t any other characters.

Your connection to the Heart has touched you in some way. How does that manifest?

• His heartbeat is audible when he speaks.

Step 3: Class

If Calling defines why you do this lunatic thing, Class is the skills that stop you immediately dying in the process.

Everybody who’s ever encountered Heart knows you can be a train-summoning knight, or a person made entirely of bees, but other options exist. I toy with Witch – someone infected by the magical virus, feared and respected – but nah, this is my blorbo, and I really love the Junk Mage: a magic addict. That fits how Grace is coming together in my head: a dilettante, never really sticking at anything but going where the fancy takes him, picking up careers on a whim. This one stuck, just like the Heart itself did. He’s found something he loves, and it’s this, and it’s because he believes every act of magic brings him closer to the Heart. Actually, I think there’s something else going on here, too. He picked up magic thinking it might help him resist the call of the Heart, but he no longer wants to.

Which is good, because it didn’t bloody work.

I grab my core abilities: RAVENING KNOWLEDGE, which means I’m a better spellcaster when I’m on the edge of madness, and SACRIFICE, which means I can destroy anything vaguely magical to stop my own magic from completely breaking me. This is a destructive – ruinous – style of play that I adore. I have made good choices.

Next I get to choose one major and three minor abilities. Hehehe.

Minor: Frontier Etiquette (know how to hold a conversation, and get the best out of people; all that time in the City Above was good for something); Mark of Hunger (Grace can smell magic – handy for replenishing occult items he can then Sacrifice); Back Pocket Arcana (pockets full of useful shit – he largely regards anything not nailed down as his by right, and tends to wander off with interesting things).

(This is a really great class. It does exactly what I wanted it to, and every ability looks like I’d have fun with it. The Heart provides.)

Major: oh no these are all so good. The one that feels right is Frenzy of the Sky Court. Grace can empty himself out, becoming ethereal and untouchable (kinda). He also can’t concentrate for shit. I like the idea that he gets so high on his own magic he’s unstoppable, but also reckless and a damn liability.

Step 5: Equipment

Huh. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to do this yet, but I already chose my class-based equipment – two old-fashioned pistols. They’re family duelling pistols, but they’ve been adorned with sigils and amulets to the point of being unrecognisable. They used to match, but that was long ago.

Oh! Wait! There’s another table of Stuff in my Calling! I choose “a bag of bitter stimulant pastilles”, because Grace has two loves: the Heart, and magic, and sometimes he has to postpone the call of the Heart, which he hears in his dreams, to pursue more magic.

Step 6: Beats

Beats are both how you gain XP and how you tell the GM what you want to do. They’re neat. These are back in Calling, and I skipped them when I chose mine, which it turns out was the right choice.

Every session, you choose two beats. Which is weird because Major Beats take multiple sessions to fulfil. Whatever. I know what they mean. I’m sticking with Minor ones because they’re usually fulfilled in a session, and that way I can change them out quickly as I get to know Grace better (as if I’m going to play him…).

From the Heartsong list, I choose:

• Perform a rite at a place of power (Tier 2 or deeper). I’m playing a Junk Mage. I want to do magic. Unclear whether I should figure out what the rite is, or leave it to the GM. In reality, it’d be by mutual agreement, I think.
• Witness an emissary of the Heart Itself. This, I think, will inspire Grace to go deeper – to be even more curious, more hooked.

Step 7: Calling Questions

I, uh, did this earlier too. Listen, lads, if you want people to go step-by-step, you gotta make the character creation chapter follow the steps. (I say, as if I’m not guilty of much worse sequencing in my own stuff.)

Step 8: Finishing Touches

There isn’t, as far as I know, a section for this. It’s whatever you need to do to make the character feel done. I guess, technically, this is where I should have named Grace.

I think I do know Grace well enough to start playing him and see how he turns out, so I’m calling it good.

Maybe – maybe – I’ll finish this off by sketching the boy.

And here he is: one obsessive Delver, who has given up every luxury and comfort (except good skincare) to chase the high of something magical and impossible, even though he knows – perhaps hopes – it will be his undoing.

Next up: Deathmatch Island. It’s here.