Spire Sessions 3: Possession Junkies

Spire's worldbuilding is incredible, let's be real. The massive amount of lore, extensively detailing the many facets of the city and life within it, is staggering, while still somehow leaving some openings for GMs and players to create their own new concepts. It all fits together.

But. As great as I think Spire's lore is, it overlooks some prime opportunities for great extra content. Case in point: a small passage in the Strata sourcebook, which introduces the outstanding concept of possession junkies. The idea of people addicted to letting ghosts drive them around is great, but it's dropped quickly so the worldbuilding can continue.

Part need to mechanically represent one of my players' backstories and part public fucking service, I present to you a big box of lore for Spire's ghosts and, most importantly, a full extra advance for playing a junkie. Enjoy.

The Nature of Ghosts

Contrary to popular belief, most deaths in Spire are very much final. Dead is dead, and when you're dead, your soul moves on to whatever afterlife. If you're lucky, you go peacefully; most people in Spire aren't lucky. These unlucky people are where ghosts come from.

The souls of the dead that become ghosts--the drow at least--are souls tainted by great sin. They are people who did something they should feel guilty for doing, such as murder, theft, or infidelity. The mind naturally becomes unquiet when a sin is committed, and the soul does, too. The soul, however, cannot be cleaned easily; it is something metaphysical, something that cannot be quelled with deep breathing and vice.

To cleanse the soul, one must seek forgiveness. Ghosts are those who either do not seek it, or do not get it. Upon death, their souls congeal, the weight of their guilt turning the immaterial solid. They become ectoplasmic facsimiles of the people they once belonged to. Copies, but very, very good ones, to the point that the distinction hardly matters.

Ghosts are typically bound to somewhere, someone, or something; again, their souls have weight, so moving away from their binding is difficult. Some ghosts will be confined to the places they died in, while others will be forced to follow their killers and/or loved ones. That's not to say all ghosts have such limited ranges: certain people may be open-minded enough to call the city of Spire itself home, meaning their spirits will be able to move freely around the whole city. All that matters is what they valued in life.

Appearance-wise, they aren't usually pleasant to look at. The bodies of ghosts are warped and distorted--a side effect of their bodies being made of metaphysical slime. There are not hard and fast rules for their crimes, binding, or appearance, however: as their very existence defies the very laws of the universe, why would they be held to all of the rest?

The Nature of Junkies

In possession addict circles, it is considered a mark of true trust to open up to someone about your Door. Your Door is, simply put, the worst thing you have ever done. It is a very bad thing, and the guilt of doing it eats away at you. Ghosts, they can feel it when you've done something bad. They can feel when you've opened a Door, a great crime that lets them hold sway over your body, that makes you like them. All junkies remember their Doors vividly, even if they don't want to.

Possession addiction's origins are usually purely psychological. Folks usually just enjoy letting go of their bodies for short periods of time, experiencing comfortable numbness while some sinner parades them around. For others, it's masochistic or even sexual--it's not unheard-of for the more out-there aelfir party people to have ghost kinks. Your reason for enjoying possession doesn't really matter, and junkies are prone to oversharing about it.

Spire is absolutely filled with ghosts, especially in the lower districts. It's as though the energies of the Heart act as a lightning rod, keeping spirits which harbor sins barred from the afterlife. Ivory Row is the district most populous with the unquiet dead, on account of being the final holdout of the drow during the short war with the aelfir; lots of ghosts there still crave vengeance, even if they can't haunt their murderers directly.

"Ghost dealing," if it can be called that, is a tricky business ethically. There's profit to be made in providing junkies with ghosts to get their fixes from, though. Sometimes, getting ghosts can be as easy as purchasing a house in which a mass murder or the like took place, but during times when pre-existing ghosts can't be found, a more...Direct approach is required.

The most powerful dealers in Spire, the Sunset Moths, are based in Ivory Row. Mr. Alas allows the gang autonomy over a couple blocks of his territory, where the gang engages in all varieties of murder. The nicer members either perform assisted suicides or kill those who really deserve it--everyone else just kills any hapless travelers who wander onto the block. Rumors abound that the Sunset Moths' boss, an Incarnadine only known as Harb, shares body and brain with a colony of ghosts and charges rent fees for the privilege.

EXTRA ADVANCE: Possession Junkie

Requirement: commit a sin great enough to open a Door for ghosts and get hooked on giving up your body for a while.

Refresh: allow a ghost possessing you to seek forgiveness and move on to the afterlife.

POSSESSION RULES

Normally, avoiding possession requires a Resist+Occult roll. On a failure, you automatically gain the Possessed Fallout for D8 hours. On success, you may share your body with a ghost, which has no mechanical effect by default. Normally, only one ghost can possess you at a time.

FALLOUT: Possessed [Mind]. A ghost has taken control of your body. You have no control of your character for the duration, for good or for ill. The GM (or, perhaps, your fellow players) will tell you what happened while the ghost had control.

LOW

The Sixth Sense. [Occult] You can smell death and taste sin. Roll Investigate+Occult to detect any ghosts in the immediate area. On success, you can sense at least one ghost within a city block; you do not know their exact location.

Willing Victim. You know what ghosts want and you know what you want, so why not indulge? When a ghost possesses you, you may willingly surrender your body to them. You gain the Possessed Fallout regardless of stress and clear D6 Mind stress.

MEDIUM

The Chains Forged in Life. The ghost within you has forged an ectoplasmic weapon out of its own misery. For the duration of the time you share your body with a ghost, you gain access to a unique weapon. The weapon's profile is entirely up to the GM.

Ripe With Sin. You accrue so much sin that ghosts are drawn to you. Once per session, whenever you incur major fallout to a bond, you may mark D6 stress to Mind to draw the nearest ghost to your body. While sharing your body with the ghost, gain one domain or skill the ghost possessed in life that you do not.

HIGH

Psychopomp. [Occult] There's enough room within you for more than one passenger. Multiple ghosts can inhabit your body at once. Mark D4 to Mind for every ghost past the first which possesses you.

This is Your Brain on Ghosts. [Occult] You have painstakingly rewired your own mind to serve as a prison for unclean spirits. Mark D8 stress to Mind to force ghosts to possess you against their will. You may still make the normal possession roll and, regardless of success, the duration is entirely your choice as opposed to simply being a D8 roll.

GM Notes

What you just read was my first attempt at properly writing up homebrew mechanics for Spire. I considered adding more fallout options and maybe giving the Junkie a core ability a la the Deep Apiarists in the Black Magic sourcebook, but I didn't wanna go overboard. I'll probably revise this once it's actually playtested. Until then, I hope this can be considered a success.

Sorry if this entry was a little shorter than the first two--I had to put more thought into my writing this time because this one has actual mechanics accompanying it. The next one will hopefully be longer and closer to the 2000-word range of The Wilted Man and Ashford Street Asylum. 

Up next: a new antagonistic force made to help bring two vanilla factions closer together. Signing off.