SPIRE: A Time to Remember

SPIRE, the impossible city from the frozen crown of Amaranth down to the warrens of Derelictus. A structure so massive that the impossibility of it has curdled reality at its core in the seething heart. Tonight the barrier between the Heart and the rest of SPIRE grows weak. Through the cracks come spectres and old ghosts to haunt the living. It is Heartsnight The denizens of SPIRE meet this event the only way they know how.

They’re throwing a party.

In masks and costumes ostensibly to ward away the more dangerous of the phantoms they walk the streets, sharing sweet treats and drinking copiously. Up in the Silver Quarter the Aelfir have imported perfumed mists from far Nujab and the wealthiest and most important don costumes extravagant and terrible to prepare for the only Heartsnight party worth going to: That of Lisivia Weeps-Drowned-Wishes where it is said she will be visited by the ghost of her mother on the eve of her taking up her position as a Captain of the Paladins.

The Players

The Knight, Ser Estaban Papillon, played by David Maltman, with his squire Chenille

The Azurite, Francoise Javet, played by David Longbottom, with his bodyguard Impella

The Firebrand, Ezbet Gousteau, played by Amanda Hewitt

Dramatis Personae

Lisivia Weeps-Drowned-Wishes, hostess of the party and soon to be Paladin Captain

Parafal Dust-Whispers-Still, the Mortician Remembrancer

Mx. Coin-With-No-Sides, A dilettante.

Arak Neufaux, barkeep of the Barrelwright Sorrowdrown

Visions-Transpire-Nightly, A minor lordling, taken to the Grey

Falcone, A “Legitimate Businessman”

Livet, A Minister of Our Hidden Mistress, she looks like Natalie Dormer

A Time to Remember

The job, as Livet explained it, in the coiled smoke of a seedy tavern called The Milked Platypus, was easy. Lisivia Weeps-Drowned-Wishes is to be promoted to Paladin Captain. Given her well known hatred for the Drow who killed her mother she promises to be a brutal leader for the order. That The Ministry could not abide. Killing her, however, was a last resort. It would only galvanise her followers. The cell therefore needed to enter her manor, floating on an artificial lake at the crossroads of many of the Silver Quarter’s canals, and either stop her from joining the Paladins or soften her position toward the Drow.

For Francoise Javet, the owner of Javet’s Opulent Emporium of Knick-Knacks this was not an issue. His invitation had already been secured. As a trader in secrets he was well known to the kind of Aelfir who would already be attending. His bodyguard Impella would be joining him. This left three more people who would need a way in, and Ezbet had just the thing.

At a certain jetty in the Silver Quarter she approached a Drow who doffed his hat and spoke words only he would understand. He nodded, told her and her friends to wait there and walked inland towards where the faded magelights of the casinos showed through the mists. A few minutes later a gondola arrived, punted by a Drow wrapped in dark cloth who steered them down the canals, beneath a bridge and into a tunnel where he left them outside a door on a small stone jetty.

A minute later the door opened and they entered a chamber coiled with cigarette smoke. On a table were ledgers showing the results of Luge races, Javet noting that they were for dates that hadn’t been yet. They met Ezbet’s ‘uncle’ Falcone, a “Legitimate Businessman” who she made doe eyes at and knelt beside in a display that onlookers would later describe as ‘creepy’. He agreed to have an associate of his meet them at the Serpent’s gate into the manor later that evening. He would be wearing yellow and he would know them. They were then dismissed, leaving by another door and out into the kitchen of a Drow family who looked like they knew better than to ask questions.

Ezbet was happy attending as one of the serving staff, but Ser Estaban resolved that he would attend as an Aelfir, requiring a mask to disguise himself. He knew of a nearby pub turned Aelfir hookah bar known as the Barrelwright Sorrowdrown, run by Arak Neufaux. He slipped in via the back and passed into a room of coiled green smoke which filled his lungs and worked on his mind. Through the smoke he could see the silhouettes of the Aelfir, decadent, entirely at ease. He deserved that, he deserved to live like one of them. On a night of masks and hidden identities a resolve gripped him; he would become one of them.

Arak found him, dragging him into a back room where he and his staff removed their gasmasks. The room had been filled with condensed Envy, one of the many mood mists employed by the Aelfir to experience the full range of emotions denied to them. Arak is sympathetic to Ser Estaban and so lends him a gas mask and leads him up to the second floor, past rooms filled with melancholy, a room that gives on the desire to have an emotion and finally to a room of grey, where Aelfir with many masks wear only one without expression and do nothing to stop Estaban taking a mask of sorrow, that looks like tears are flowing off it, from the prone form of Visions-Transpire-Nightly.

At the estate the party had already started as Javet entered, robes of magnificent blue wrapped around him, his gilt lines train carried behind him by Impella as he handed over his invitation and entered a foyer where dark roses had been grown into bushes resembling great Aelfir heroes, each of them completed with a mask so that none may mistake their noble identities. He passed to the right, lining up with the other Drow as the Aelfir went left and walked directly to the garden where the party was taking place. At the Serpent’s Gate Ser Estaban arrived with Chenille carrying a large duffel bag, Ezbet leads them across the bridge to the gate where two guards were ready to stop them. From the shadows stepped a man dressed in yellow, the guards hesitated and in that moment the man in yellow struck one, cutting his throat and sending him falling backwards into the canal. The other guard was apparently another of Falcone’s creatures as he grumbled but offered no complaint as they passed into the kitchens.

Within was a scene of bedlam. Two sets of waiters from rival companies argued and jostled for position. Estaban looked for a place to change, finding a break room for the staff where he holed up while Ezbet was loaded up with a tray of vol au vents and kicked out into the garden to serve to the guests. It was a grand space, the estate surrounding it like a cloister. There were silver willows and flowers that chimed with the passing of the wind, all surrounding an artificial lake filled with magelight that illuminate a sunken Drow temple. A temple of Our Hidden Mistress.

She began to circulate, passing Javet who had met one of his employers, Parafel Dust-Whispers-Still, who seemed concerned about something and asked Javet to join him in his chambers. Suspicious of what might be going on Ezbet followed them upstairs, missing the arrival of Visions-Transpire-Nightly who was dressed for the occasion as a giant clockwork praying mantis, his sorrowful mask gripped in its mandibles. A dragon of gold and green sidled up to him, recognising him and plyed 'Visions' with Blue infused hard boiled sweets, ‘Melancandy’, as they offered to introduce him to Lisivia.

Upstairs Parafel asked pointed questions about who knew what about the death of Lisivia’s mother. The official record stated the Drow destroyed a tenement in Ivory Row she was in to kill her, though in truth she was purging the tenement and was shot buy a Drow boy who had gotten their hands on a Paladin’s sidearm. Parafel wondered who else might know and Javet didn't think many would.

Satisfied that he had his answers Parafal drew a silenced pistol and shot at Javet, who was struck in the arm but managed to wrestle the gun off Parafel, calling for Impella. Outside the door Impella attacked one of the Mortician guards whilst Ezbet tackled the other.

Back at the party the dragon, Coin-With-No-Sides, introduced Esteban to Lisivia who is stood on a stool that raises her above everyone else, crushing melancandy and snorting it through her mourning mask. Attendants with handkerchiefs go to wipe her tears but as they did Ser Estaban noted them spraying the tears onto the cheeks of her mask.

It was dreadful, he hated her, but more than anything Ser Estaban envied her.

Impella smashed through the door, rushing over to tackle Parafel as Ezbet limped in behind her. On the floor outside the Mortician she was fighting lay on the ground, neck at an odd angle. Ezbet slumped down, something very wrong with her leg. Parafel, beaten, showed them the manner of the Remembrancer ritual Lisivia would be going through. There is a case in his room with several bottles all labelled with street names from Ivory Row. Each contains a spirit captured by the Morticians. Lisivia’s mother’s spirit couldn’t be found, but they found likely mothers in the ruins of the tenement where she was killed. What Lisivia wanted was to be reassured, to hear a mother’s voice, Parafel saw this as his way of fulfilling their contract.

Ezbet decided to fake it. She was confident she could lie well enough to pass as Parafel as they stripped him of his mask and clothes. Impella helped Ezbet down to the garden to perform the ritual. Across the garden Lisivia Weeps-Drowned-Wishes appeared, holding a single candle unlit. The lights went out and in the darkness Ezbet opened one of the bottles, inhaling the spirit within. She was filled with the spirit of a woman from Ivory Row, a mother, but the words remained her own.

In the guise of Siviana Weeps-Drowned-Wishes, Ezbet ranted about the true architects of her death; the Paladins themselves who gave the Drow boy who killed her a gun to hunt him as sport. She raged against them and Lisivia wept, truly and deeply, at her mother’s words. For a moment the crowd stirred, something seemed off, until Javet slipped some coin to distract the ringleaders.

Lisivia however was not so taken in. She roared at Parafel, accusing him of profaning her mother’s name and that of the Paladins, banished him from her estate. Javet and Impella help Ezbet out, staggering into a street teeming with ghosts where Chenille finds them, looking for Ser Estaban.

In the morning papers the party was covered at length, especially the role of the crazed Drow swordsman who broke in, killing several including Lisivia Weeps-Drowned-Wishes. Stabbed through the back as she was getting changed, according the testimony of Magrit, her servant and suspected accessory to the crime. The killer, Ser Estaban of the North Docks was found in the morning lay in her bed, wearing her mask not ten feet from her body. When challenged on why he did the crime he indignantly declared that he was Lisivia Weeps-Drowned-Wishes.

Stranger still was the death of Parafel Dust-Whispers-Still, found in his own chamber, presumably killed by the devil Estaban and yet later seen performing the ritual of remembrance. Speculation has already begun that the aged Mortician’s spirit, so dedicated in life, refused to leave it without first completing his final duty.

FIN

If you are interested in seeing what was actually prepared for this adventure, or to run it yourself, you can find a copy of the outline document here: A Time to Remember