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EIDOLON SKY
A campaign frame for Spire RPG
By Grant Howitt & Christopher Taylor
Copyright © 2018 by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor.
Published by Rowan, Rook and Decard Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical meth-
ods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and
certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For
permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.
Rowan, Rook and Decard
113 Forest View Road
London E12 5HX
www.rowanrookanddecard.com
Writing and design: Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor
Illustrations: Adrian Stone
Layout: Alina Sandu
Proofreading and copy-editing: Harry Goldstone
Production: Mary Hamilton
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to
Eidolon Sky.
Here you’ll find the setup
for a
Spire
campaign, which you can expect to play
for between six and ten sessions. At the end of the
document there are five pre-generated characters that
come with story hooks to draw them into the adven-
ture so you and your group can start playing right
away; or if you’d like, you can play the campaign with
characters of your own creation using the rules in the
core book.
Unlike many pre-written adventures you might
have read before, we haven’t written a set series of
events for the players to work through.
Spire
is an
open-ended, character-led game by design, and we
can’t predict what your players will do. Instead, we’ve
given you a setup featuring several factions, all of
whom are connected – tangentially or directly – to
a major new development in the city around which
the game focuses. Your city of Spire will be different
from ours – at least it will once the characters start
changing things – so it’s up to you to use as much or
as little as you want.
To help you get started, though, we’ve suggested
some jumping-off points for the story before each
of the main three events that trigger the start of the
adventure.
opportunity they can find. The players’ cell is led into
a conspiracy that goes far, far above their heads, and
that could change the face of Spire forever.
[Stop reading aloud now!]
WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON?
OVERVIEW
[Read, or paraphrase, the following section aloud to
your players to bring them up to speed on events sur-
rounding the campaign.]
There’s trouble in the streets of New Heaven
and the creaking shanties of Perch: addiction to a
new drug known as dreck is hitting epidemic levels.
Drow are being snatched from the streets and not re-
turning. A serial killer who calls himself The Swan
is vivisecting his prey and writing cryptic letters to
the Torch, taunting the guard to catch him before he
claims another victim. And last week, rumour has it,
a demonic incursion tore apart a tower of silence and
drove everyone nearby mad.
Enter the Ministry – sworn to protect the dark
elves of Spire and take advantage of every possible
Juasha Rime-Cracks-Beneath is dying. She has been
dying for the last ten years, but only known it for the
last two; she has a sickness of the blood which will
take her life within months. For any other wealthy
inhabitant of Spire, the physicians would be sum-
moned and their passing would be made as painless
as possible – she is too ill to survive the process of
undying surgery.
But: Juasha is one of the greatest demonologists
Spire has ever seen, taught by the legendary blood-witch
Molly Duval, in addition to holding a well-respect-
ed role within the University of Divine Magic in
the fields of applied aetherics and theoretical math-
ematics. She has a will of iron, vast resources, and
a burning, almost frantic desire to
not die.
Normal
demonology would be able to extend her life, perhaps
indefinitely, but she does not want extended life. She
wants to
not die.
So she has made a bond with a demon known
as the Fourth Sister, a wicked thief, through a spe-
cially-made eidolon – a tool which is used to sum-
mon and contain demonic energies – in the shape of
paired silver rings linked by a section of chain. By
creating further eidolons in sweat-shop laboratories
in New Heaven and sacrificing them to the sister, she
is strengthening her bond ever deeper.
(Demonology is one of the most illegal things you
can do in Spire; quite aside from the moral failings
of making deals with demons, the potential risk of
incursion – the opening of a demonic rift – means
that the authorities make a habit of publicly executing
known demonologists when found. Of course, if you
have enough money to bribe the authorities, or you
are the authorities, then demonology becomes just
another tool in your arsenal. The aelfir make exten-
sive use of it in their wars with the gnolls, far away
from Spire, where incursions can be covered up by
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burning the twisted ruins and mind-blasted survivors
to ash.)
Here is her plan: she intends to bind the rings and
chain around her failing heart and become one with
the demon, and therefore the most powerful individ-
ual in Spire (and, she reckons, immortal). She has the
rites and rituals, stolen from ancient tombs in Nujab
sacked by specially-hired mercenaries, none of whom
survived with their sanity intact – all she needs now
is power.
So she has stepped up production on lesser eido-
lons, turning out several by the day, funding her op-
erations by selling sulphur – a powerful and exclusive
narcotic made as a byproduct of demon summoning.
(Dreck is simply a more affordable version of sulphur,
cut with all manner of chemicals, making it easier to
sell on a mass scale.)
She has recruited gnoll prisoners of war, experts in
demon-summoning from their time in the armies of
Nujab, to run her sweatshops and increase efficiency
at the cost of a few bodies here and there. She has
authorised the distribution of dreck to a wider mar-
ket to increase her cashflow, because making eidolons
isn’t cheap and neither is bribing the officials – and
she’s taking more risks when it comes to transporting
materials, such as transporting them in the open or
commandeering skywhales to deliver the goods. She
has a pet serial killer: a two-bit actor and success-
ful idol who calls himself The Swan. She’s hooked
him on pure sulphur, and he kills whoever she asks
– mainly her enemies, but also the odd sacrifice for
demonic magic.
She has retreated from public life, ostensibly to die
in peace, taking a mansion in Ivory Row to serve as
her base of operations. Her husband and son are clue-
less as to her obsession with demonology, but know
that she is dying, and she cares for them a great deal.
Now, she is in a race against time – against be-
ing found out by the authorities, or the Ministry, but
also against her own blood. She has weeks, maybe
months, to live, and she is getting sloppy and desper-
ate. She is making mistakes.
ADVENTURE SETUP
GM, you’ll notice that each sample character comes
with a hook in their description that should get them
involved in the adventure. Each hook gives the player
a little piece of information that connects to the wider
mystery at play and a lead to explore. The first scene
you should play out is one where the characters meet
up somewhere secure (ask them where) and discuss
what they know, having agreed to come together be-
forehand. From here, the players can share informa-
tion and work out a plan to try and get to the bottom
of the situation
Once the players work out their plan of attack,
there’s no defined structure to the adventure; Spire
isn’t the sort of game where you have maps and
clearly-marked ranges, and we’re not the sort of
GMs who try to predict every single action the play-
ers might take. It’ll make for a far better experience
for both you and your players if, instead of trying to
second-guess the actions of the characters, you stay
flexible and react to what they do. The factions out-
lined are the power blocs at play – when the players
do something, try to answer these questions to work
out the next scene.
1. Who’s going to try and stop the player characters,
and how?
2. What are they going to do if the player characters
succeed at their aims?
3. Who is going to view this as an opportunity and
try to take advantage?
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THE STORY
We’re not going to give you a series of linked scenes
in chronological order, because games tend not to
work that way in practice. Instead, here’s a list of the
three most important plot threads, what you should
communicate to the players, and a trigger scene for
each thread to get the players involved.
We’ve also included write-ups on non-player char-
acters (or NPCs) who are involved in the story – use
as many, or as few, of these as you like. In fact, just
to make it clear: don’t try to use all of them, because
that will lead to confusion and slow the game down.
Instead, pick three or four.
The players won’t be able to take down Juasha
head-on, so they’ll need some allies – whether they’re
aware of the player characters’ Ministry status or un-
witting dupes – on their side.
After each NPC, we’ve written a short list of sug-
gested scenes to spark your imagination. As with al-
most everything in this adventure, they’re all optional
– use them as inspiration, and as ever, listen to your
players and put them in situations that you think
they’ll find interesting.
ill-gotten gains and disappear into the winding streets
and crooked minarets.
To really underline the problem, have the robbers
shoot someone in the gut (not a player, an NPC) and
let them bleed out on the floor. Bonus points if it’s
someone the players know.
THE CHARACTERS
INVESTIGATE DRECK
PLOT THREAD: DRECK
TRIGGER SCENE
HOLD-UP.
The dreck epidemic is reaching crit-
ical levels in Perch and New Heaven, and the city
guards (and the informal police forces operated by
the Bound, the Carrion-priests and the Morticians)
can’t handle the stress. While the players are doing
something unremarkable – chatting to a contact, buy-
ing supplies, staking out a target – the place they’re
in is robbed by a gang of three or four cackling dreck
addicts packing knives, clubs and a single rusty-look-
ing gun. Everyone inside will be asked to empty their
pockets, too. Assuming everything goes off without
a hitch (which it won’t, if the players are involved)
the robbers will high-tail it out of there with their
Dreck is painfully, horrendously addictive,
and
addicts will happily mug you for your spare change
in order to get some more. One or two characters
are cornered and accosted by knife-wielding dreck
addicts who won’t necessarily kill them but will try
to cut them and nick their wallets.
Dreck makes you cruel.
Kind of. It makes you find
everything tremendously funny, and it gives you a
sick sense of humour, so you’ll often see a group
of dreck users laughing at a crippled boy or an in-
jured bird. Players might have to break up an un-
fair fight between a gang of addicts and a beggar
on their turf, or lose face in their community.
Dreck is cut with something demonic.
The play-
ers follow a gang of dreck addicts on a high, and
they descend into the basements and tunnels of
New Heaven where they’re building a huge, rick-
ety labyrinth out of found parts. Maybe they pur-
sue the players through it, maybe not. A character
with the Occult domain will recognise this as the
beginnings of an eidolon – a device, item or struc-
ture that channels demonic energy.
Dreck is the dirty form of sulphur.
Push far
enough and you’ll find that sulphur, a drug de-
rived from demonic magic, is growing in popular-
ity in the Silver Quarter. (It’s a rich person’s drug;
you’d be lucky to find a single vial in New Heaven,
outside of the Morticians’ inner sanctums.) Dreck
has a similar makeup but it’s much less clean –
analysis of a sample (either in a lab or through the
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