Overview

Rejoice, for in the light of the fourfold Sun, the sorcerous weaver-kings of Destera are slain, and the city of Spire is liberated, to join the allied nations in their righteous war on the daemonic gnoll empire. Gracefully, the Everqueen in Her Endless Mercy permits the accursed drow to remain living in the city, free to cast off the yoke placed upon them by the false gods of darkness and sin, and step into the purifying light of the solar pantheon. Upon the age of their majority, all drow will be permitted to do their part to bring law and order to Destera, by serving a durance of four years in public service… 

For more than 200 years, the ancient tower city of Spire, once the capital city of the drow kingdom of Destera has been ruled by the Aelfir, the beautiful and terrifying high elves of the far north. They need it, for its manufacturing capabilities, as a trade hub, as a recruitment base to feed the Allied Defense Forces who die in the thousands in the southern deserts of Far Nujab. But some drow keep to the old ways and still resist the occupation. Among them is the Ministry of our Hidden Mistress, once the priesthood of Lombre, moon goddess of secrets and the dark, now a revolutionary organization of interlinked cells, slowly infiltrating all levels of drow and Aelfir society. 

What is Spire?

“Spire: the City must Fall” is a narrative, relatively rules-light game where the characters are dark elf revolutionaries in the city of Spire. A significant feature of the game is that due to the stress characters build up over a mission, things tend to go off the rails in catastrophic ways all of a sudden and the fallout is often brutal and explosive. Eventually, almost all revolutionaries die in the line of duty, flee the city, or get sold out by people they thought they could trust. But there’s always a chance that your small cell of smugglers and blackmailers could bring about real change in the city, if you’re cut-throat enough, willing to turn to black magic and forbidden gods, and to sacrifice anyone and everything for the Mistress. 

There are two things that people generally agree make the game very fun: the very unusual and intriguing classes and the setting. Every class in this game has something unique about them and most also fit a social role in the setting or are part of an organization. Even a relatively normal class like the Knight has a rich backstory, about how the Knightly orders of the drow lost their purpose as guardians of the rivers, and streets around the city, as it was conquered, and became brigands, including esoteric lore about the tap-gods of bars and fun abilities around drinking contests and knightly quests. This goes all the way to the Midwife - a spider-mutant who guards drow eggs and children -  or the Azurite, a priest of the god of trade, who can eventually learn to spend money to earn skills, social connections, or literally buy time. 

The setting of Spire definitely takes a lot of inspiration from weird fantasy, and the city is full to bursting of eldritch machinery, alien intelligences, political intrigue and weird cults, from the Signalbox Cultists of the extradimensional subway network to the deep apiarists who replace their internal organs with bees. 

What is this game?

Originally, we intended to have four players, but two vanished very quickly, so that we currently have two established characters who are just in the process of wrapping up their first mission of smuggling a cursed corpse across half the city without being caught. They are Diana, a socialite turned military commander turned vigilante with a small god bound to her axe, and Kaervac, a scholar of forbidden lore who escaped prison by fleeing into the city’s eldritch extradimensional subway network and then got mildly famous for worshiping a toad god. As we’re now just wrapping up the first mission, it seems a good point to do some re-recruitment. 

How are we playing?

Ingame thread will be here on Myth-weavers, but we also have a discord, where most OOC discussion happens. This is mostly because this game occasionally requires a bit of back and forth between players and GM to agree on which skills can be rolled and how an ability or fallout resolves. Which also brings me to the point of communication: I value open communication as a GM. I’m very aware that I occasionally make rules mistakes or perhaps write a scene that’s not engaging, and I’d much rather players tell me to do something else or move things along than just vanish. On the other hand, this is also a narrative game run through PbP, so you don’t have to ask me about every single detail, and people can make reasonable assumptions in their posts and invent minor NPCs or details when necessary (e.g. a market is going to have merchants, yes you can find a knife in the kitchen, feel free to describe what the nearest beggar looks like.) 

Requirements?

Preferably, prospective players would have the core book for Spire: the City must fall and have at least leafed through it to get an idea of the rules, character classes and the setting. I’m willing to do a bit of coaching, and a lot of the setting is kept somewhat vague, so I’m certainly not demanding that anyone memorize all of it. 

Character creation? 

I have all published books for Spire and players who know the material can certainly draw from the big expansion books Sin and Strata, as well as the Magister’s Handbook for extra advances. Other material is scattered throughout other books as well, most of which should be okay. I would prefer if characters however not start out as part of an organization too opposed to the ministry (e.g. the Crimson Vigil, the Vyskant, the Intelligence) or with magic that is too wholesale destructive (i.e. Eidolons, Demonology). Preferably, we’d also not double up on any classes, meaning Bound and Vermissian scholars. The next mission is likely going to involve infiltrating a noble house with some social engineering and blackmail, so you can plan your characters accordingly (or plan to play a fish out of water, that’s fun too.) We’ll do some juggling around personal bonds later, those are weird because of dropped-out players later. 

Content: 

So far, we’ve stayed away from sex and gore and I’d like to keep both implied, not acted out. This is a game about revolution, so there’s going to be oppression and betrayal however, including crime, racism, police brutality and religious bigotry, that’s unavoidable just due to the themes of the game. Dark and forbidden magic is also a theme, so there may be occasional light body horror and other such weirdness.