# Swords of the Serpentine tags: #game/rpg/swords-of-the-serpentine ![[Swords of the Serpentine (cover).jpg|600]] So, you want to risk your neck in a sinking city choking on its own corruption? **Swords of the Serpentine** is your ticket to Eversink, a fantasy metropolis that's one part Renaissance Venice, two parts Lankhmar, and three parts unsanitary swamp. Written by Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner, published by Pelgrane in 2020, it pitches itself as "sword & sorcery," which is a polite way of saying you'll be playing morally flexible Sentinels, Sorcerers, Thieves, or Warriors navigating political intrigue, back-alley justice, and the sort of bloody savagery that gets the cobblestones stained. You're not saving the world; you're trying to get paid, get even, or just survive until sunrise. ## Setting Eversink is the body of a commerce goddess, a city built on and into the corpse of a dead god whose body is slowly sinking — about eight centimeters a year. Every building sinks a little deeper, funerary statues dot the streets because destroying one might obliterate a soul, and the whole place reeks of wealth, worship, and rot in equal measure. It's a moral swamp as much as a literal one: the powers that be run on debts and favors, and the player characters are the sort of people who thrive on the edges. The game's sword & sorcery framing means you're not here to save the world — you're here to make sure your enemy's "unfortunate accident" can't be traced back to you. ## Mechanics The core of the game runs on a modified **[[Gumshoe|GUMSHOE]]** engine, which means the biggest challenge isn't finding clues — it's surviving what you do with them. When a task's outcome is in doubt, you roll a single six-sided die against a target number (usually 4). The snarky bit is that you're not entirely at the mercy of that little cube: you have pools of points tied to your abilities that you can spend to add to your roll, transforming you from a hapless victim of probability into someone who can strategically throw resources at a problem. Combat is a particularly charming affair, with **two tracks** to attack: **Health** (for stabbing) and **Morale** (for taunts and terrifying threats). You can also perform **Maneuvers**, forcing a foe to choose between suffering an effect, like being disarmed, or taking damage instead. The real gem of the system is its approach to magic. **Sorcery** is powerful, illegal, and always comes with a cost called **Corruption**. When you unleash your reality-bending power, you must choose to either *internalize* the foul energy — risking a failed Health test that results in a hideous physical mutation — or *externalize* it, scarring the world around you and forcing your allies to make a Morale test or be terrified by your sheer wrongness. Even wealth is an abstraction: you don't count coins, you gain points of **Wealth** which you spend on your **Lifestyle** between adventures. Live opulently and you gain "High Repute" to throw around; live in squalor and the GM gets "Low Repute" points to use against you. ## Editions & Supplements - **2020** — the *Swords of the Serpentine* core book, by Kevin Kulp & Emily Dresner. *In the library (core, a text-and-art-only copy, and a small-file-size copy).* - **Eversink** — the companion city sourcebook and setting detail. *World and Eversink maps in the library.* ## References - [Buy the game directly from the source — Pelgrane Press](https://pelgranepress.com/product/swords-of-the-serpentine/) - [A Review of Swords of the Serpentine — EN World](https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-review-of-swords-of-the-serpentine.689697/) - [Another take on the game — The Walking Mind](https://walkingmind.evilhat.com/2020/07/23/swords-of-the-serpentine/) - [SotS on DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/408716/swords-of-the-serpentine)