What this blog is for




Hi! Welcome to Seventy-Seven Vicious Princes. This blog is going to contain mostly posts about Zarkany, the setting for The Devil City & Its Seventy Seven Vicious Princes, a game about being a scheming prince in a haunted city.

The text of the game is available here along with several tools to help in its running.

I'll be supplementing the game on this blog by posting a codex of rivals--rivals are potential antagonist princes, and the engine of play in 77 Vicious Princes. As a dungeon is to an adventurer, so a rival is to a prince.

I might post other things here also. But mostly: Princes.


The 77 princes rule Zarkany. Zarkany is the largest and most famous city in the world, and its strangest:
  • It was built halfway into the Red Mountains, beyond which is Hell.
  • The sun shines for seven days and then it’s night for seven more. The sky at day is a sunset orange all the time; at night it’s purple.
  • The city is haunted by devils and magic. Devils range in size from small as rats to large as elephants, and cause mischief and terror. No two are alike.
  • The city has princes, who have Blood Patents, tiny reliquary scrolls hidden in their hearts, which give them literally royal blood. They bleed violet.
Zarkany’s fourteen Great Lords are the most powerful men and women in the world. Below them, vying always for their favor, are the seventy-seven princes of Zarkany. The players are those princes, as well as their blood-oathed knights.
  • A prince has one of the 77 Blood Patents of Zarkanian Royalty, and a physical mark somewhere on their body of their house crest.
  • A prince can use a Zarkanian Blood Oath to bind a knight to their service. A knight must swear to be loyal until release or death. Knights and princes can hear one anothers’ thoughts.

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