From Vortex Verlag, the minds behind The Straight Way Lost, comes Serenissima Obscura, a chilling new role-playing game setting. This 400-page guide and modular adventure invites players into a world blending Venetian intrigue with occult horror and surreal beauty.
Set in a fantastical 1507 Venice, Serenissima Obscura is designed to be largely system-agnostic, offering stats for 5e and its own universal shorthand system, with additional compatibility for Ars Magica.
A separate Kickstarter will offer several dozen resin-ready 32 mm STL files.
The game, featuring 27 interconnected or standalone adventure modules, is slated for a Backerkit launch on May 27, 2025, and will debut at the UK Games Expo. Key creators include Melina Sedó (main author, Artistic Director, Project Manager) and Andreas Wichter (Co-Author, Game Developer).
Vortex Verlag will be at stand 3A-758 and offer lore previews, art and a first look at some of the secrets in the setting.
Teasers for the game have gone out, and we have some early glimpses of flavour text and lore from Serenissima Obscura through those.
They are called i Vuoti – the Hollowed.
You see them sometimes in the gray hours before dawn, standing barefoot in the shallow waters of the canals, their small bodies swaying, eyes wide and unblinking.
There are whispers that something stirs beneath Venice – older than stone, older than salt, older than song. Some say it calls to the children in their sleep. Others claim the canals are alive, and take their due.
The Vuoti do not scream or struggle. They simply go to the water and return… changed. Hollowed. Their laughter gone, their fear quieted, their eyes empty as low tide. Whatever lived behind them has ebbed away, leaving only the shell.
But no one remembers them for long. The city is thick with forgetting – an enchantment that settles like fog over the senses, softening sharp edges, smoothing over what should not be seen. Most call it a mercy. Fewer ask why it’s needed.
At night, when the streets fall silent, the Whisperers walk. Hooded, tireless, they perform their rites beneath the moonless sky. Few know what they guard, or what they serve – but their steps keep the forgetting in place, and ensure that whatever writhes just beneath the surface remains politely out of sight.
Sometimes, for a moment, a fisherman spots a silent child beneath a bridge. Sometimes a lullaby echoes from an empty courtyard, sung in a voice that no longer belongs to anyone.
And then the city forgets again.
Because forgetting is easier.
Melina Sedó told press;
We wanted to explore not just fear, but deliberate forgetting – the idea that a city can survive horror simply by refusing to remember it. Serenissima Obscura is beautiful, corrupt, and haunted by things its people are forbidden to name.”
