Ironsworn: The "riveting" tale of loss, horrible dice rolls and ultimately death.

Made with Inkarnate.

Welcome to the Ironlands: a place of beauty, rugged terrain, fierce beasts and, not always though in my case often, death.

This is the default setting for Ironsworn by Shawn Tomkin. As you might recall, I babbled about Ironsworn in a previous post, going into some of the mechanics but I didn't really feel as if I captured the awesomeness of the game in that post. I don't think I can really do it justice in any post and I don't think I'll do that in this one. Especially because this post will tell you how terrible my dice are and how much they hate me. So not necessarily the uplifting, magical explanation that would really sell the game to you.

Anyhoo, let's begin.

The story begins with Katrin Cera, an Ironsworn living in the Flooded Lands with her father Hersham who is a seer and the village mystic/nut. For years he has been going on about the Iron Pillars (mysterious objects that litter the Ironlands and are worshiped for their power) and how something was wrong. Katrin ignored it until she received a dream of the pillars cracking and falling. Fed up that her father's ramblings were piercing through her dreams, she decides to take Hersham to the nearest Iron Pillar to prove that they're still standing and whole. 

When they get there, they find that the area has been closed off and that you can only gain entry via recommendation of the elder at Stonehill - the nearby village providing for the priests. To get that recommendation, Katrin offers her services as Iron Sworn to help the town with their current ailment - raiders. Recent raids have made a dent in the village's supply and she sets off with some folks to do a counter raid and get the goods back. 

She has a miserable time of it, returning with the goods, both wounded and stressed, only to discover that the initial raid was a feint. That the baddies had come back to attack the village a second time, this time emptying its stores and kidnapping villagers - including the elder and Hersham. She follows the trail of the baddies, attempts to sneak up and take out the lookouts, but fails to do so, alerting everyone. Not that it mattered, in her wounded state, she is no match for a couple of lookouts and is easily slain.

That was five hours of solo gameplay. Very annoying gameplay, I should add. I had spent so long building the world, building the character and when I actually got to play her things just went sideways. Why?

The bloody DICE!!

Never have I rolled consistently high on the wrong dice and low on the right dice. But that's the nature of the beast, I suppose. So I decided to try again.

Instead of creating a different world, I decided to use the same world but a different person in a different location.

In steps Kataka Sayer, a veteran fighter-turned-Ironsworn who is working on one of the Barrier Islands with a priest to investigate troubling events within her town. New dice were hauled out and the evil ones that caused the death of Katrin were returned to the stash. Surely it would go better this time, right? 

Well... not really. The pair of investigators couldn't find the baddies, were attacked by all kinds of assassins and only barely survived. But at least, they discovered that this whole plot was due to the machinations of a priestess dum dum dummmmmmm who has withdrawn to the Flooded Lands while her evil plans are carried out.

So now the pair are on an perilous quest to go to the Flooded Lands, to capture the wench, and to return her to the settlement.

Frustrating, but fun. I just hope my new character survives long enough that she finally finds out that the apocalypse, that the previous dead character dreamt about, is a possible reality. I really liked that idea and I'm loathe to discard it just because of something as inconvenient as character death. ;)

I tend to mostly play over the weekends. I find that the exhaustion of a workday isn't really conducive to playing a solo TTRPG. 

So I guess I'll find out what happens next in a couple of days from now. Maybe I'll give an update here... Maybe.