Heart: The City Beneath, Character Concept: Dapper Vengeful Detective
(Yes, I am a little bit obsessed with this game at the moment)
There’s a bit in the Heart: The City Beneath book that talks about reflavouring callings to be more specific, and the example it gives is reflavouring ‘Enlightenment’ to be less about the pursuit of an arcane secret and more about vengeance: “For example, if you wanted to make a character who was obsessively seeking revenge against someone who wronged them in the past, you could take the Enlightenment calling and replace the bits that refer to the occult or academics with vigilantism and uncovering the villain’s network of agents.”
Which. The Deadwalker class. Someone who has already died. That, that would be a reason to seek vengeance, no? I came to the Heart, the City Beneath, to track down my murderers.
And. The Deadwalker has a lot of abilities and flavour that lends to a detective sort of character. The Echoes major ability, psychometry, and Last Rites, the ability to interrogate spirits of the recently dead. You could make an absolutely stellar occult detective out of a Deadwalker. So let’s do that! Let’s make a dapper detective haunted by the spectre of their own murder, dirt under their fingernails where they quite literally dug their way out of their own grave, and a grudge beating beneath their breast. Their death whispers in their ear, and they have someone, or several someones, that they would quite like to introduce it to.
I went with a high elf, an Aelfir, because between the masks and the privilege and the hedonism, they give me the perfect ‘victorian spiritualist’, occult detective sort of vibes. A high elf who was murdered, who lost a lot of pretension to the indignity and desolation of clawing their way back to life, and who has come to the city beneath in search of the strange killers who so dramatically opened their eyes.
WHISPER CHARACTER SHEET
Name: Whisper-of-White-Smoke
A slim, cadaverous, dapper-looking elf on a theme of ‘grey’.
Ancestry: Aelfir
“Aelfir benefit from massive privilege; they rule the City Above and lead lives of bizarre luxury in their frozen palace of Amaranth. Some turn away from a life of power to seek meaning in the lawless city below, while others pursue the dark secrets whispered about in perfumed boudoirs.” (Pg. 14)
Being murdered has a way of reordering one’s priorities. There’s something about digging one’s way out of one’s grave that highlights the absurdity and artifice of privilege.
Calling: Enlightenment
“You’re looking for secrets hidden deep within the earth. You know that the Heart holds the answers to all your questions; no matter what it takes, you’ll get them.” (Pg. 18)
I was murdered. Not that unusual, maybe, but it was the way I was murdered. There was something strange about it, not the usual internecine politics of the City Above. I saw enough of my murderers to see the influence of the City Beneath. So. Here I am, in search of answers.
Class: Deadwalker
“But your initial fascination was nothing compared to what happened after you died for the first time. Nothing’s been the same ever since. You didn’t die properly; somehow, through willpower, luck or trickery, you stayed alive. Your tattered soul gives you a near-unique ability to step between the lands of the living and the dead with relative ease. Your constant companion – a spectral manifestation of the death that didn’t take – guards you jealously and whispers secrets from beyond the veil into your ear while you slumber.” (Pg. 32)
There truly is nothing to change your perspective like tearing through the fragile veil of the world and falling through into the desolation underneath. Perhaps, when I find my murderers, I should thank them. If nothing else, the experience has been … enlightening.
Skills: Discern (Enlightenment), Delve (Deadwalker), Hunt (Marked for Death)
Domains: Desolate (Deadwalker), Religion (Last Rites), Warren (Dirt Under the Fingernails)
Resources: Bag of interesting teeth (D6, Desolate).
Trinkets: Portable alchemy kit in a leather box (Enlightenment). Bone pipe and the dregs of a poppy dust bag (Aelfir). My brother’s preserved eye in a glass jar (Aelfir).
Abilities:
Core Ability (Enlightenment): UNORTHODOX METHODS. You blend together method and madness in pursuit of your goals. Gain the Discern skill. Once per session, before you roll dice to resolve an action, instead state that your result is a 6. You succeed but take stress.
Core Ability (Deadwalker): DEATH FOLLOWS CLOSE. You never knew anyone could love you as much as your own death. You are followed around by a manifestation of your death that is invisible and intangible to everyone but you – although when you are on the verge of dying, or in places that resonate heavily with death and sorrow, it might be visible to others. The exact appearance of it is up to you. The first time each session you suffer Major Blood, Mind or Fortune fallout, your death manifests to protect you and inflicts D8 stress on whatever caused the fallout.
Core Ability (Deadwalker): ENTER THE GREY. You know the trick of stepping sideways into the Grey: the space between the worlds of the living and the worlds of the dead. Roll Delve+Religion to enact this ritual. It takes around ten minutes of preparation, e.g. donning ritual garb, inhaling sacred smoke, communing with your death and so on. On a success, the smoke clears, and you (and anyone you bring with you) are in the Grey. Within the Grey, the world is a shadowy echo of its living counterpart. Some souls linger here, awaiting their eternal reward, but for the most part it is grim, empty and monochrome. (For more information on travelling and surviving the Grey, see p. 169.) Exiting the Grey is a simple enough task for a Deadwalker and those they ferry across; it’s a Delve+Religion roll for anyone else.
Major Abilities (Deadwalker): ECHOES. You can glimpse the remnants of what has come before. Roll Discern + Domain to witness ghostly recreations of the past in your current location. This will generally show the most interesting or dramatic thing that occured within recent memory.
Minor Abilities (Deadwalker):
DIRT UNDER THE FINGERNAILS. You dug your way out of your own grave. Gain the Warren domain. You can dig through earth and mud with your bare hands as though you had a shovel; your fingernails are always stained with a little soil, and you cannot clean it off.
MARKED FOR DEATH. Your death tells you stories of dark spectres that swarm the land in search of doomed souls. Gain the Hunt skill. In addition, you can mark prey. When you mark prey, you spend ten minutes or so observing your target from hiding and whispering words of death over your weapon. When you hunt prey you have marked, roll with mastery. Your mark endures until your target dies or you mark another creature.
LAST RITES. You know enough about death rituals to be sworn in as a priest in three major faiths. Gain the Religion domain. When you touch the brow of a recently dead person, you can ask their spirit a single question before it fades away.
Calling Story Beats:
Some of the Enlightenment story beats that might be interesting for our dapper, vengeful detective:
“Gain access to knowledge that someone tried to conceal.” “Dissect something or interrogate someone that can shed light on your task.” “Acquire an NPC bond who has access to useful information.” “Sell or sacrifice a D8 or higher resources to secure a secret.” “Put the acquisition of knowledge above preserving the lives of your allies.” “Kill someone who is trying to stop you from claiming knowledge.” “Gain authority within a faction that you can use to learn more about your goal.” “Find a source of knowledge on Tier 3 of the Heart.” “Find the final secret you have so desperately sought and destroy it so no one else can know of it.”
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Finally finished my Corpse Cart. This model was the most fun to paint but the worst I've ever had to assemble. I came way to close to just crushing the whole thing in my hand. Had to shave some of the bottom pieces down.
But painting all the corpses and gore was super fun.
I have motivation to say this, so I’m just gonna go ahead and say it.
Deadwalkers can have a variety of reasons for changing back to their dead hand form. Extreme hunger is the most common reason tho, other than shifting back at will. This can be used in an lu or something fanfic where a deadwalker Character gets lost, and is found as a dead hand.
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So, i thought of a concept, Deadwalkers. Dead hands able to shift into other, living forms. Basically if dead hands were skin walkers.
Combine that with the komodo dragon-like venom some dead hands have because of me {i gave it to them >:)}, and congratulations! You’ve made a serious problem!
We forgot this was coming back. Did you guys watch it? And or should we still react to it? #fearthewalkingdead #season3 #amc #walkingdead #forgot #zombies #baconinthemorning #flesh #deadwalkers
