The Sewers and the Stars - Zine PDF

The Sewers and the Stars is a standalone expansion for The Hidden Isle, our recently funded tabletop role playing game.

For those unfamiliar, The Hidden Isle is a pen-and-paper RPG that uses Tarot cards instead of dice, set in the sixteenth century. Focusing on roleplaying and collaborative storytelling, the game takes players on swashbuckling adventures across Europe and the Middle East as Agents from the secretive island of Dioscoria. No Tarot experience is required. 

The Sewers and the Stars brings us two new settings, the city of Rome, and the island of Zanzibar, two new pre-written scenarios set in those locations, and two new character classes: the Swindler and the Scholar. Aspiring Agents can look forward to conning Portuguese troops on the shores of Zanzibar, sensing the greed of corrupt Roman cardinals, giving rousing lectures or speeches, and demonstrating their encyclopedic knowledge of obscure facts.

Two additional settings

• Rome: Once the heart of a vast military empire, Rome is now the heart of the Catholic faith and the center of the Renaissance: an empire of a different sort. Ancient sewers, shrines and ruins butt up against renovated Roman temples, monumental churches and gold and marble statues and fountains.
• Zanzibar: A bustling merchant island off the East African coast, Zanzibar has been blessed for millennia with excellent trade winds. In the last century, however, it has come under the boot of European colonizers. It is a center for merchants flush from Asiatic trade, as well as folk magic and spiritual power; its people are eager to shake off their Portuguese shackles.

Two pre-written scenarios

• A Death in Zanzibar: Investigate a mysterious death in Unguja Ukuu , overcome otherworldly foes and confront the schemers responsible for an outbreak of occult violence.
• The Strokes of Genius: Find a stolen shrine-relic, investigate rumours of a hermit-priest haunting Rome’s sewers, and decide whether to prevent a massacre.

Two additional classes

• The Swindler: Honing the arts of negotiation and guile in the Guild of Coins, Swindlers embody the Dioscorian love of risk and chance. These merchants could sell you their own mother, then buy her back at a significant discount.
• The Scholar: Tirelessly studying within the libraries of the Guild of the Candle, Scholars value knowledge and information above all else. They believe that only through learning can humanity rise above its worst impulses and avert its most terrible follies.

May the Fates guide you, trusted Agents, like feathers in a storm.