Assault On The Spire

The other night I ran a quick one shot improvised game of Fate Accelerated for +Frank Falkenberg +Dan Hall +Raymond Nagle and +Seth Blumberg. Originally Dan was going to run, but he had some voice issues and so I ran the game. We started with this premise: "Mythic Age: There were many great empires in the past. Men of Science and Sorcery ruled all the known lands. As with all things the empire became corrupt, rotted from within. Now those empires have fallen, and you sit in the last bastion of civilization trying to rebuild. Trying to discover the secrets of the past."

I saw this as kind of Heroic Fantasy, and Frank really wanted to add in some word and sorcery. After a bit of discussion among the group we ended up with a fantastical far future apocalypse scenario. I did not see that coming. The premise for the adventure is this. There was a great archology that was abandoned during the fall of Man known as The Spire. A small town grew up at the base of The Spire to cater to adventurers who were stupi-um...brave enough to search the tower for ancient artifacts. Something went terribly wrong with one of the journeys into the tower. The Enemy was released and wiped out the town. Now it is a year later and a group of prisoners are being volunteered to go up the spire and see if The Enemy is still there. 

Our Heroes are:
Miyo, The Swordsman(Dan)
High Concept: Fastest sword in the land
Trouble: Pride before the fall
Crime: Death is the only way to escape my blades
And: Razor sharp senses

Ivan “Kroach” Krassniy(Frank)
High Concept: Well-travelled Tech-Salvage for Hire
Trouble: That one Artifact must have had a Malfunction
Crime: Accidentally disintegrated the Palace

Kellen(Ray)
High Concept- Optimistic Con Man
Trouble- Dreams the Impossible Dream
Aspect- Have I got the Plan for You?
Aspect- The Grass in NEVER greener. Aspect- Have you met Ted?

Dr. Fosse Dalaver(Seth)
High Concept: Meddler in Things Man Was Not Meant to Know
Trouble: Shiny Red Candy-Like Button!
Under Sentence of Death For: I Most Certainly Did Not Release THE ENEMY
Also: I’ve Got Just the Thing in My Toolkit
Also Too: Everything’s a Weapon

I added in a new aspect for FAE. I asked what crime they had committed to get them on death row. Then the adventure began in earnest. They entered the building and Dr. Fosse's need to investigate led them into an ambush. A scissor handed robot struck from the darkness and it was only the mad skills and senses of Miyo that saved the day. They removed the power core from the bot, but the roll was a tie so the minor complication was that it was delicate. They found The Shaft a massive cylinder going through the center of of The Spire sunk deep into the ground and rising off into the darkness above. Mysterious rooms hung from cables over the chasm. The good doctor decides to use the power core to make use of what he calls Vertical Traverses(I think, I kind of forget the exact title he gave them). He does not try and hide this...something noticed them.

that something was The Enemy, a collective of nanites awoken by the Doctors meddling with things man was not meant to know. Miyo stood and fought while Kellen climbed on the roof to join the fray with his boundless optimism. In fact the was Kellen throughout the whole game, he had only one power, his belief that everything was going to turn out wonderfully(we compared him to the fantastic +Mark Diaz Truman and his boundless optimism). During the fight the power core becomes a bomb. Things escalate. Miyo, Kellen, and Ivan manage to defeat the Enemy, but there are a few nanites left on the core. they start eating away at the elevator roof. It all leads up to a really wonderful seen where the good Doctor uses the nanites to infect all the other nanites with a virus and kill them. It was pretty epic.