The spire in question is a city, one where the buildings are built almost atop each other, rising into the sky like a pyramid that went through redesigns at several points. From the land surrounding it, a barren plain of rocks that look a bit like skulls, it's an imposing and bleak grey monument. Within, a maze of different levels and social strata, all narrow alleys and vertical handholds along the outside of buildings.
Many of the inhabitants look basically like humans, but there are others who don't to varying degrees, and whose abilities are certainly different from humans. In polite company, the varied lot of them are referred to as "Sculpted." Less politely (or alertly, depending on the speaker's level of peripheral awareness), they're called "Skews."
Constable Sha, head of the City Watch, is a Sculpted. Able to project wire-thin tentacles from her body. Also able to knit or reform her body as needed, although this can have deleterious effects on the mind, depending how far you go.
The Spire is a mystery. Who is the mystery killer Sha is tasked to apprehend, and why are they attacking their particular targets? Why is the new Baroness, no fan of the Sculpted in general or Sha in particular, so pissed about this particular killer? Why doesn't Sha know her past or of any other people like her? It seems like several mysteries, layered upon each other, but with brief flashbacks every issue to a tense carriage ride, it's eventually revealed as one, very old, mystery. Some people try to run from ugly truths, others to bury them.
Stokely creates some varied designs for the Sculpted. Frog-like in one case, in another what seems like a bunch of asparagus that have bundled together into a bipedal organism. The Sculpted without eyes sometimes wear wooden masks with press-on eyes, so others will find them less off-putting, and hopefully not fear them so. Sha has a messenger/comic sidekick, a lumpy and battered looking fairy-thing called Pug. It's like someone mashed together a satyr's lower half with the naked upper torso of a child's doll, put fly wings on the back and a peeled potato going bad atop the shoulders.
Sha is very much a Spurrier protagonist, much like Hum in Coda. Cynical, sarcastic, impatient, disrespectful. Likes to talk, though rarely about what's useful. If she complains and snarks, then the other person may push back. Then she can grumble and insult them more. If that doesn't produce results, then she has something to complain about. Win-win.
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