I heard the fissure before I saw it; the inverted, almost delayed, crackling pop-pop-pop of a rent in the multiversal fabric is unmistakable. As I slowly moved around the twist in the tunnel, I felt my exposed skin grow warm and my hair fray with static. Before me, in a shallow dugout as wide as a tall man, was a vertical gash of pulsating blackness in which I could see the deep time of the broken multiverse.
And there I was.
My color was off, all bleached out or covered in a fine, viscous scum, though I was seemingly wearing the exact same delve gear. Gooey strands of multiversal matter connected myself back to the fissure, as if I had just pushed my way through. And my movements… my movements were erratic, interrupted, as if I was flickering through the dugout, skipping actions between beats.
Although mostly quiet lately, we’ve been hard at work on a number of projects here at Superhero Necromancer Press, and now you can take a closer look at one of our closely held efforts.
We’ve released the beta version of ALTERITY (subtitle yet to be determined), a Forged in the Dark tabletop roleplaying game that uses the game system underpinning John Harper’s Blades in the Dark.
ALTERITY is a game set in the wreckage of a gloom-infested city during its weird ruinpunk renaissance after a multiversal apocalypse. You play delvers of an aetheric order, a radical guild or cell whose members scour glooms across the ruins of the Veiled City of Alteris in search of the multiversal aether they need to fuel their power, prestige, and protection.
There are dangerous delves into glooms; battles against gloomspawn and rival orders; gloom hunts and ruin rangings; secret conspiracies and hidden ceremonies; archaeological digs and searches for ancient technological artifacts, and aether-fueled multiversal shifts to prior historical epochs.
Character options from ALTERITY. Art by Alec Sorensen.
“To live is to die is to live,” say the Seated Stylites on their crumbling pillars in Upper Thelial Square–marble monuments of a solar dynast whose regnal name is lost to the swirling eddies of time and cataclysm. Hoods pulled forward so only their shaggy muzzles protrude, the Stylites stare keenly at the aristocratic bravos lounging around Belisar Fountain drinking matter juice and ginfruit bubble.
“To gloom with you, mange,” call back the bravos, courage fortified by breeding and liquor. No Stylite ever leaves their solitary perch but by plummeting after death, it is known.
Chortling laughter abruptly ends as a single Stylite, then another, then four more, pull shock blades from beneath their cloaks and bare pointed, bone-white teeth.
Every dog has its day, it is also known.
You can check out the beta for ALTERITY on itch.io, following the direct link here or the iframe below.
This has been in my head in one form or another for a long time. It originally started as a game using our long in development Skeleton Game System ruleset. I think my earliest notes for that version date to March 2019. But that all changed after I first read through Band of Blades around Christmas 2020. That quickly pushed me on to Blades in the Dark, which I had owned since 2018 but never read, and well, ALTERITY changed drastically then, for the better.
As a beta, it is incomplete, but only really here and there. In writing it, I’ve made some attempt to boil down the FITD mechanics of the game into something more concise. Your mileage may vary, of course, and also maybe FITD-type games need clear and detailed explanations of their mechanics for a reason. I’ll guess we’ll see if I accomplished my task.
So check out ALTERITY and let us know what you think. Follow us on itch.io or sign up for our mailing list to receive word when the next beta version drops sometime in July.