This is Spire. A mile-high plus city in the land of Destera, ruled by cruel high elves, in which the drow – you, your family, and your friends have been oppressed for centuries. A nightmare warren of twisting passages and structures, built and rebuilt, atop itself. A city of a thousand gods. The furthest bastion of a terrible and burgeoning empire. A structure of unknown make that houses a blistering, rotten hole in reality at its centre where the sane dare not tread.
You have joined the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, a paramilitary cult that worships a forbidden goddess, and sworn an oath in blood to avenge the wrongs placed upon you and your people. You have made an vow to fight the high elves, to subvert and capture their resources, and to take Spire back into dark elf hands once more.
It is a cruel and thankless task, and your family
would most likely report you to the city guard if they ever found out what you did at night. But it is a task you have sworn to perform, and you will kill for it. You will most likely die for it, too.
The story of Spire is one of rebellion. You and your friends will become drow freedom fighters, clawing back their city through covert subterfuge, sedition and brutal violence. They will have to risk relationship with their community to save it from the cruel overlords of Spire – what are they prepared to lose to liberate their people? Who are they prepared to hurt, or kill, to see Spire under drow control once more?
The World of Spire
Spire is a mile-high impossible city, older than anyone can remember. Two hundred years ago, the high elves – or Aelfir, strange and beautiful masked creatures from the far north – took it from the dark elves after a brutal and
bloody war. Now, they graciously allow dark elves, or drow, to live in the city if they perform four years of service to an Aelfir lord once they come of age. From Spire, the Aelfir continue their conquest down to the south, and are caught up
in a bloody struggle with the hyena-faced gnolls of far Nujab that they fight with armies of drow conscripts and legions of ingenious human mercenaries.
The land of Destera
Destera, once ruled by the drow noble house of the same name, is largely made up of temperate highlands and black-grey slate mountains. In spring and autumn, rains roll in from the mountains to the north and drench Spire and the surrounding farmland; in summer, it is baking hot; and winters are short but harsh.
To the north, the high elves still hold their ancestral homes – great fortresses of ice and thorn, defended by legions of devoted warriors – and the land is trapped in a perpetual winter, and time itself grows slow and brittle in the cold. Far across the inland sea is the Eastern Domain, ruled by the Wanderer-Kings of the humans, who build homes around ancient arcologies and plunder them for secrets to defend themselves against the beasts that plague their lands.
To the distant south, the gnolls maintain a desert
civilisation, the crown jewel of which is Al’Marah – a cosmopolitan city that stands fast against the heat of the sands – and closer to Spire, the mountain region of Nujab sees weekly skirmishes between gnoll outlanders, nomadic drow from the neighbouring lands of Aliquam, and the armies of the high elves.
And to the west, the Home Nations of the drow
burn, wracked with a civil war that has spanned
generations and killed hundreds of thousands of dark elves. Refugees spill out from the splintered borders and flood into Spire on the promise of safety and security – but few, if any, find it upon arrival.
The Drow
The drow live in underground cities and covered
towns to the west, for thanks to the ancient curse
that span them apart from aelfir, they are burned by sunlight. Their skin (which is dark black, ashen grey or alabaster white – they are a monochromatic race) blisters and weeps when exposed to the sun. Those who wish to go outside during the day must don hats, headscarves and cloaks, and smoked eyeglasses, or risk sustaining rash-like burns and searing pain.
Rather than bearing a foetus until it is fully developed as most mammals do, drow produce two or three small, fleshy eggs that must be carefully tended to and nurtured over six months until the baby within is grown enough to survive outside. The job of nurturing the unborn falls to the parents and a caste of spider-blooded drow known as Midwives, who hold moderate political sway within Spire. It is in part through this communal raising process that drow derive their strong sense of community, which is rein-forced through aspects of their most active religions.
Drow form an underclass in the city, subjugated
by the aelfir, and work in a variety of menial roles, either for a pittance, or unpaid as part of their Durance. The majority of drow live and work in the
cramped environs of the Works and the Garden District, but some have mastered the art of ascending in an aelfir-dominated Spire and live comfortable lives in the Silver Quarter or serve as experts in the centres of academia towards the top of the city.
Drow Traditions:
What follows is a loose collection of traditions
practiced by drow in Spire – a mix of Home
Nations customs and modern culture.
Wearing clothes that cover the skin, and dark
glasses that protect the eyes, is a necessity for drow who wish to spend any time outside during the day. Wealthier drow, usually those in league with the aelfir, will use parasols or shades to hide from the sun. Many drow choose to cover most of their skin whenever they are out of their homes, whether it is day or night.
Artificial light is important to the drow, and most make a habit of carrying a candle and matches with them wherever they go.
Taking malak, a mild depressant, after work or
before sleep is commonplace among the drow, but recent aelfir legislation has made it a serious crime to possess or deal the drug.
The traditional drow diet consists mainly of fungi, algae and the sort of scuttling insects that spend their lives living in the stagnant pools found in caves. Given that Spire is a more cosmopolitan city, the average drow will consume bread, meat, rice and spices on a semi-regular basis.
A customary drow greeting is to ask after the
health of a person’s family (or “fanmi,” in the
patois) before you ask after their own. Not many
folk respond with a full list of symptoms – usually
they just say they’re “well” and carry on – but it’s
considered polite to ask.
In the Home Nations, and definitely in the
Duchy of Aliquam, women are regarded with a
higher esteem than men. In Spire, drow are largely
egalitarian with regards to gender.
The Aelfir
No-one can say for sure what led the high elves to
curse half of their number millennia ago and turn
them, over time, into the drow. But meet a high elf
and talk to them for a while and you’ll see that such arcane cruelty is entirely in their nature.
The aelfir – as they prefer to be called – have magic running through their veins. They are creatures of blazing and beautiful colour whose feet barely touch the ground when they walk and whose perfect hair flows as if caught in a gentle wind. While some deign to spend time among the populace of Spire at large, most of them live their lives in walled districts of perverse and audacious luxury.
Aelfir Traditiond
The aelfir are a proudly traditional people, and
they can afford to be, because they’re in charge.
Here are some common aelfir customs, although
radical high elves might refuse them:
Always wear a mask in public. The more of
your face it covers, the better.
Pay your respects to the Solar Pantheon, not
the Old Gods, who were weak and powerless
before their might.
Take regular ice baths to cool the blood and
soothe the mind.
Never lower yourself beneath a creature of
another race; to do so is an affront to your majesty.
Make beautiful things and display them
prominently; improve nature with your handiwork.
The Curse.
Some say that the drow are not cursed – that they were never aelfir, that they could never endure the touch of the sun’s light, that they were born underground as a different species entirely. But these radical drow historians are rare in Spire, because they are often persuaded to say otherwise and reinforce the accepted wisdom that the dark elves are changed, deformed high elves – and wind up dead if their evidence to the contrary becomes too compelling. No-one can say for sure where the race originated from, but the aelfir seem keen to maintain the status quo.
The Humans
Humans die young – at the age of sixty, or so, compared to the drow who stay vital until around their hundredth birthday and then quickly turn to dust, and the aelfir who extend their lives with sacred rituals and dark surgeries well into their second century.
This short lifespan has filled humans, the aelfir reckon, with an insatiable desire to discover and build, to create and leave marks upon the world.
The humans, originating from a vast island far to
the west, discovered the ancient arcologies of those who came before – and unlike the aelfir and drow who kept the strange artefacts found down there as curiosities and trinkets, they broke them down and retro-engineered the technology into their own inventions.
As a result, humans invented the gun, and things
have never really been the same since. They form the bulk of the aelfir mercenary armies, and can commonly be found in Spire.
The Gutterkin
Not a term of endearment but the collective moniker used to cover the 'undercity' street vermin races of goblinoid critters, throwback pygmy neanderthals, warty troll-kin, gremlins, kobolds, skaven, faeries and impish aberrants that inhabit the sewers and cisterns, under floorboards or in attic dovecotes; stealing, gnawing, diseased riddled and mind addled.
The official consensus is to exterminate the vermin on sight but they are common sight in the poorer districts and in truth often fulfill tasks that even the most desperate and hungry drow turn their noses away from.
