dismallyOriented

[Originally posted on cohost, August 2024]

So back in like, 2021-2022 (exact end date no longer clear), I was in a Spire campaign run by an internet friend of mine. It's one of the few campaigns I've ever managed to play to completion, and I fucking loved the system and the game we made together.

I was recently reminded of one of the standout sessions we had, so here is a recounting of that session, recreated from some old discord logs at the time. Generalized plot spoilers for the pre-written campaign Kings of Silver to follow

Spire: the City Must Fall is a game by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor about drow revolutionaries in a mile-high city run by high elf overlords. It's an incredibly flavorful and dramatic game, which I highly recommend to anyone with adjacent interests. Our campaign so far had been trying to unseat one of the major powers in the financial/gambling district. After 8-ish sessions of info-gathering, sneaking, and subterfuge, we landed ourselves at a party with 3 of the major boss NPCs.

To start with, I should mention that we rolled 9 fucking crits across the entire session between the entire table. This included skill checks by the players, but also fallout tests from the GM. Part of the system involves slowly accruing different kinds of stress over time, like Blood, Mind, or Silver, and then rolling to see if you take a penalty. The GM rolls a d10 and if they roll under your current stress total, you take minor, moderate, or critical fallout, which kills or almost-kills you. This will be important mechanical context for the rest of this story.

Our starting goals were just to schmooze and gather intel on the three bosses - one of which we were plotting to kill, the second we were trying to overthrow, and the third seemed like potential leverage on the second. Me, my gf, and an NPC try to sneak up to the private quarters of boss 2 and 3. Gf's class is the Inksmith, which is basically a reporter/genre fiction writer who wields the power of tropes to gain limited narrative control from the GM.^[1] She spreads some rumors that boss 3, who's notorious for her debauchery and scandal, picked us three for a private hookup. She crits on the rumor spreading, and then Again when she talks her way past the guards into the premises. (Crit counter: 2/9) This is the point at which the GM had to take a breather.

Meanwhile, our Bound (vigilante fighter with tiny gods in their equipment), gets a tip from two of their fellow vigilantes that there's some sabotage going on at the party that they wanna investigate, and ask them to create a distraction. They choose to literally run up to boss 1, vault over the entourage that tries to stop them, and crits on a flying punch to the man, knocking his mask off. (Crit counter: 3/9)

Now this boss is a high elf. Part of high elf society is that their faces are never to be seen in public, hence the constant ornate mask wearing. Enraged by this humiliation at a high society party, boss 1 immediately challenges the Bound to a duel to the death, which the Bound accepts.

Our Azurite (priest of the commerce god) cast a spell to buy him a temporary connection to boss 1's entourage, so he's in the crowd when the duel commences. He tries to schmooze boss 1 but the player flubbed the title of address and gets immediately and angrily told off for it. This social snub will be important later.

Soloing this boss is Difficulty 2, meaning each time you try to act against him, you remove two d10s from your dice pool. Bound takes a d6 of Blood stress to roll with Mastery and make their weapon Brutal. This gives them 2 additional dice to their roll, and damage rolls are "roll 2 dice take the highest". They're still only ever rolling 2d10 every time they take a swing, but they keep rolling 8-10s, which means their character is not taking any stress aside from when the boss lands a hit. (Crit counter: 5/9)^[2]

Meanwhile we've snuck into the private chambers - bc we crit on the roll to get in, boss 2 and boss 3 just miss us on the way to the main floor of the party, so we have full reign except for the guards inside. (Crit counter: 6/9) Gf gets the ally NPC to distract the one guard in the living room with makeouts (NPC is a spy love interest, it's kind of her deal), and then fires a narrative power to make the guards drunk off their asses (schlocky pulp tropes ahoy). We're fully uncontested when we make our way to the office and bedroom - I, the Lahjan (priest of the drow moon goddess), cast a scrying ritual which points me directly to the filing cabinet we need, and all we gotta do is pick the lock to the door and rifle through the contents.

I am rolling with 1 die to pick the lock. I fucking crit.

I am rolling 2 dice to rifle through the files. I crit again. (Crit counter: 8/9)

Everybody at the table is having fucking conniptions, but the GM returns to the duel so he can drop the big reveal at the end.^[3]

Azurite has been literally placing bets on the duel; he banks 6 Silver stress on the Bound in exchange for a valuable resource. Meanwhile the Bound has been dealing serious damage, including disarming the boss, but the boss finally lands a solid hit on them and they're at 8 total stress. If you hit 10 and take fallout, it's critical, so they're getting fucking up there. GM rolls and they take a Moderate fallout. He offers the Bound a deal - they can either Pass Out from blood loss and be taken out of the scene, or be Heavily Bleeding (take d6 Blood stress each time you act). Bound is waffling until the GM says the boss is at 30% health. And then the Bound just keeps fucking swinging.

They land one hit, rolling 5 damage, meaning boss is Literally on 1 health. But they miss the second, and boss had meanwhile invoked his own god and gone fucking wolverine mode. His final blow is to bite the Bound directly in the neck.

The Bound is at 10 stress, and we're all hoping GM rolls a 10 on the fallout check, because they'll still be safe if they tie. He rolls an 8.

Bound dies and is tossed into the river - but the critical fallout they took was not Death, but instead getting indentured to a god, specifically the god in his axe. So they did survive to complete the campaign. Azurite, having lost the bet, takes 6 silver stress. He tries to cast a spell to create a cursed coin, that he can slip to boss 1 as part of payment for the bet, under the guise of apologizing for his earlier social slight. This also takes him to 10 stress. But this one the GM does roll a 10 on. (Crit counter: 9/9) So the Azurite gets away scott free, passing the bag with the cursed coin onto boss 1. Who shortly thereafter begins to burn to death - the coin will burn him until all wealth and finery is removed from his body. And boss 1 is a very wealthy man. The GM rolls exactly 1 damage and he dies on the spot.

So yeah. This was such a batshit session I spent the next two days yelling about it to anyone who would listen. And now it is here to be told to you. Go play Spire maybe. Game good.

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[1] One of the things that makes Spire so fun is how strong and narratively flexible some of the class abilities are. This is an amateur's read but I do legitimately think it's one way they balance how punishing the game is. Each of the classes in our party had the ability to exert slight narrative control in the game via one core ability or another, for stealth or inventing an NPC and things like that. The Inksmith's was the most powerful, however, and was a constant source of delightful chaos across the entire campaign. Long live the Inksmith.^[return]

[2] Did not record the two specific crits in this fight unfortunately, but I am going to take past-me's word that there were 9 total crits. Considering what the hell else went on in this session, yeah a combat crit probably would stop mattering after a while, lol.^[return]

[3] Big reveal will be saved for a separate reblog of this post, as that would be straight up a plot reveal of the module itself. AN - never actually wrote that followup post, oh well. That secret will die with me (or you can just go buy the Kings of Silver module yourself.^[return]