An urban fantasy RPG built on who owes whom
You pour drinks for things that are not people, in a bar where the peace holds because you keep making it hold. The city above has no idea, and several parties would like to change that.
Play Midnight in Vael City free →
No account, no card, nothing to install. The world's lore is already built, so it starts in seconds.
Neutral ground only exists while everyone believes in it
The courts, packs and cabals of the city are on file with what each of them wants from you, so a favour granted to one is a debt the others can see. The truce is a position you hold, not a setting the story starts in.
The world
Beneath Vael City's neon ordinary, vampires, fae courts, and werewolf packs keep an uneasy truce. When a fae envoy is murdered on neutral ground, the truce—and the city—starts to burn.
Vael City looks like any sprawling modern metropolis, but its night belongs to the Hidden: old powers in human skin who keep their war off the front pages. The fragile Accord that holds them apart is enforced on neutral ground—and the neutral ground is a bar.
Who is in it
- The Crimson Accord
- the vampire houses that rule the city's nightlife and money.
- Court of Thorns
- the exiled fae who trade in bargains and grudges.
- Greywood Pack
- the werewolf clans who patrol the city's forgotten edges.
Where you go
- The Last Call
- a backstreet bar that serves as the Hidden's only neutral ground.
- The Hollow Market
- a fae bazaar that appears only between midnight and dawn.
- Spire Sanguine
- the gleaming tower from which the vampire houses rule.
What already happened
- The Envoy's Murder
- the killing of a fae envoy on neutral ground, breaking the Accord.
- The Last Accord War
- the bloody conflict the current truce was built to end.
Who you can play
-
Rowan Vale Half-fae broker
A guarded, quick-tongued broker who keeps the peace because no one else will.
At the start: the reluctant keeper of neutral ground in a city about to ignite.
-
Detective Mark Sable In-the-know cop
A grim detective straddling two worlds, trusted fully by neither.
At the start: the only human badge the Hidden will tolerate—barely.
Or write your own character — the setup form takes a name, a background and what you are good at, and the game master works from that instead.
How a turn works
- You say what your character does, in your own words.
- What you attempted is weighed against your character sheet and the state of the scene — and the outcome is settled before the scene is written, so the part telling the story does not get to decide that you succeeded.
- The game master narrates what happened, grounded in the world's own characters, factions and places, and remembers it for the rest of the run.
Start playing Midnight in Vael City →