The Bones of the Ironlands [Ironsworn] [Campaign Record]

[Kylia Quilor]

The Ironlands. A bleak, forebodding, ancient land seemingly growing out of the roof of the world. A land perhaps cursed, perhaps simply unlucky, littered with the ruins of civilizations that have risen and fallen, the legacy of lost magic and wicked rituals. Dark deeds were done here - you can feel it whenever you tread into the places where civilization has fled and not returned, where the wind howls just right at night, and the moon dies every month before being reborn, and in those shadows hours, the line between life and death, real and unreal blurs, like wet paint splashed with water.

It is into these lands that our forebears fled from the Zaevori. From whence we fled, why and from what, none quite remember. Every village and clan once had their own version of the story - today, scholars in places like Wolfshadow and Greencairn have tried to find some single truth, but with four hundred and fifty years since we came here, a scattered, ragged fleet of refugee peasants and hunters, escaped slaves and former serfs, truth has melded into myth as the chain of time broke us. Some believe the Zaevori were demons or beasts, others merely a different group of humans. Others say they were our masters, and we fled to escape bondage. In truth, it perhaps does not matter - the Ironlands are our home, and the Zaevori do not seem inclined to chase after us.

In this grim land, our people first formed nomadic clans and small villages, some of which eventually grew, while those who could not abide by the rules of others were cast out, becoming raiders or hermits. As we spread from the Ragged Coast to the Havens, from the Flooded Lands to the low reaches of the Veiled Mountains, our people established new villages, new tribes, and spread further. We competed not only with one another, but with the Firstborn - the original human civilization that built great structures and ruins is long since lost and gone, but the Elves of the Deep Wilds, the Varou of the Hinterlands and the Giants of the Veiled Mountains remain - some trade with us, some attack us, some refuse anything to do with us, varying by village and clan, by personal predilection. Once the Firstborn had their own great civilization in the Ironlands, though whether they rose and fell before or after the humans who built the greatest of ruins (and practiced the darkest of deeds) remains uncertain.

Amidst these ruins, and from the Firstborn, some of our people have relearned magic, an art our forebears either never knew, or lost.

After a century and a half in the Ironlands, of scattered villages and limited trade, great Trading Towns rose up, centers of population and commerce - a thousand people or more might call one of these places home. Wolfshadow is the greatest of them today, and the House of the Lightstep rules us still, two hundred and fifty years since the Lightstep's War. In the earliest days of the rise of the Towns, they would control their surrounding villages through allying with savage clans and tribes of raiders, using them as fodder to secure trade, food and power. Such benighted practices were only partially ended by the Lightstep herself, when she finally gathered her own alliance of raiders and warriors and laid siege to the city, defeating her former Mistress Irena and claiming Wolfshadow for herself by force of arms, by the justice and rightness of her cause.

Talia the Lightstep is the greatest of the Ironsworn, though outsiders to Wolfshadow may wrongly disagree, but there are numerous Ironsworn to tell tales of. Legends, Heroes, Villains, Champions and Monsters - touched by Fate, or perhaps the dying gasps of the Gods we lost when we fled the Zaevori, or the gods of the Firstborn, the Ironsworn are those who vow oaths on Iron, the Iron our soil and hills are rich in, and it is from those Oaths and Vows they draw strength, and through those Oaths and Vows that they change the world.

It is of one of those Ironsworn, a sister-by-choice of the Lightstep herself, that I will tell you the tale of now. It is a tale of revenge, of dark magics and vile cults, of ancient mysteries and

In her fury against Irena for trying to chain her, then scarring her and casting her out, The Lightstep made but two missteps - she left a raider named Vesna escape her more than once, the woman blessed by fate to fail but escape constantly, and she left the village that had taken her in after she was banished from Wolfshadow, Taron's Hollow, unguarded.

A year after the Lightstep took power in Wolfshadow, the story of Salesca of the Hollow begins.

Ah. I see you recognize the name. Some part of her legend is known to you, I take it, good people? Then please, allow me a moment with my beer, and I shall continue. For I promise you have not heard the tale of Salesca truly until you have heard it from my lips.

---

Salesca was a woman of fiery hair and fiery temper, born in the small village of Taron's Hollow, her parents - Naera and Norcis - were both dead by the time she was five, and she was left in the care of her father's older brother, Hallistar. Old Man Hallister, the legends of the Ironsworn call him - much could be said of him, but I will lave the tales of his battles against raiders, his friendships with an Elven Witch and a Varou Warmaster and his Oaths and Vows for another day, another time.

Hallistar taught Salesca to hunt, to fletch, to use her bow as an extension of herself, more than a tool or weapon. He taught her to track and to hide, and by the age of thirteen, she was already bringing ample game in for Taron's Hollow, to be shared with her fellow villages. It was at this age that the Lightstep came to the Hollow. Scarred by Irena for Talia's audacity to reject her claims to mastery over her, Talia was a dancer and a whore and little more, with no sign of what she was destined to become. But Hallistar could sense that iron spine of will that allowed her to spit in the eye of Irena Vorhesk, may her name be cursed forever, and so he took Talia in, and taught her the bow and the ways of the Wilds.

Talia and Salesca soon became as close as sisters, and as Salesca aided her uncle in teaching Talia to hunt and to shoot, Talia in turn taught Salesca to dance - not just how to entice and allure, as she had, but to use such movements to evade harm to avoid the blows of your enemies, to be as nimble on your feet as the wind itself. For five years, Talia recovered and learned and planned, but her heart burned with righteous fury at Irena, her crimes and the sins she inflicted on Wolfshadow as she seized more and more power, restricting the movement of people out of the town to her own forces and to the merchants on whose trade her wealth rested.

When the Silver Thorn Clan of Raiders began to absorb other claims and put out a call for murderers and outcasts to join them in a great devastation across the Havens, Talia saw her opening - in a masterful campaign of battle and diplomacy, wits and iron, Talia defeated the leaders of the Silver Thorn and bound them to her command -

And though she was victorious in her quest, finally putting an end to Irena's cruel rule over Wolfashadow, in the last months of the Lightstep's war, Vesna, a monstrous thorn in her side time and again, would enact her revenge against Talia for the Lightstep's actions against her own kin among the Silver Thorn - Tarons Hollow was burned to the ground and though Talia and her forces arrived in time to save the lives of many, Hallistar was dying and could not be saved. With his last words, he begged Talia to protest Salesca.

In the burning ashes of her home, Salesca sworn an Oath and Vow on Iron, cutting her hand with her knife and vowing she would avenge the destruction of Taron's Hollow by Vesna.

For many months, she would blame Talia for Vesna's crime, saying Talia had brought it on the Hollow, and though she forgave her, their bond as sisters was frayed. While in hiding, Salesca grew close with Sareta the Wayfinder, who taught her still more about journeying in the Ironlands, about the lands beyond the Havens she called home. Salesca would reconcile herself with Talia in time to be part of the final act of the Lightstep's War, and would come to life in Wolshadow with the other survivors of the Hollow.

But much as Talia's heart had burned for revenge on Irena, Salesca's burned for revenge on Vesna - Vesna had not been at that final battle at the Gates of Wolfshadow, and when word came south of a new band of raiders, the Bloody Crows plaguing the Hinterlands and Greencairn's mining camps, and that among the Bloody Crows were raiders who had fought by Vesna's side, Salesca decided she must follow this one, thin lead for her revenge. And so, she went to Talia, her sister by choice, to ask her support in setting forth. Joining her at first in this endeavor - Sareta.

In time, Salesca's journeys would take her all over the Ironlands, and she would meet figures of myth and legend, and do deeds that would change the course of history, but even the greatest of journeys begin somewhere...

And that beginning is often with a setback.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Ironsworn, for the likely many of you who do not know, is a low fantasy tabletop roleplaying game built for solo or co-op play. It was created by (and is owned by) Shawn Tomkin in 2018, and is one of my favorite indie TTRPGs (to be fair, I've only played a comparatively small number of indie TTRPGs, but I've read the rules of more, and Ironsworn was the first to really grab me.) For those who end up being interested, the core rules of Ironsworn can be obtained, for free along with a pdf of the Asset Cards, from this website. There are also options to obtain print copies (for money) as well as buy the Ironsworn: Delve expansion, or the Sci-Fi game Ironsworn: Starforged, which uses the same basic concepts but for stories set in space.

It takes great inspiration from the Powered-by-The Apocalypse game system, with inspirations from other systems.

The basic mechanic of the game is the Action Die and the Challenge Dice. If you wish to perform a Move - such as Secure an Advantage or Strike or Forge a Bond you roll the Action Die - a six sided die -and add any relevant modifiers (This is called your Action Score) and the Challenge Dice - two ten sided dice. The objective is for your Action Score to be greater than the numbers showing on your Challenge Die.

If your Action Score is say, 6, and you rolled a 5 and a 2 on the Challenge Die, then you get a Strong Hit. This, in Improv Terms could be defined as 'yes and' - you succeed and you get something more, often.

If you had an Action Score of 6, but rolled a 5 and a 7, for instance, then you get a Weak Hit. In Improv terms you could call this 'yes but'. You succeeded, but at a cost, or in a lesser way, or with a complication.

If your Action Score was 6, but you rolled a 7 and a 9, then you have a Miss. This can just mean you failed, but it often - in order to keep the narrative flowing, works out to the Improv 'No, And'. Not only did you fail at your task, but some new complication or problem arises.

The test of each Move will provide some guidance on how to translate these results both mechanically and narratively, but wide latitude is left to the player(s). Using previous information, the outcomes of their moves and their own imagination, players turn their rolls into an ongoing story. When stuck or when seeking additional information, they may Ask the Oracle - that is, roll two ten sided dice and have one be the 'tens' column and one be the 'ones' column (with double tens being 100) and then consult assorted tables to get information. The various Oracle Tables can cover be as simple as rolling an Action and a Theme as inspiration, to determining the motivations and 'roles' of a character, plot twists, types of locations and more. You can also ask the Oracle a Yes or No question, and set the likelihood of a Yes based on the context and go from there.

Every Character has five stats - Edge, Heart, Iron, Shadow and Wits. When you roll your Action Die, you add one of these and any bonuses from your Assets, and that is how you know your Action Score.

Edge, put succinctly, is the stat you use for anything involving quickness, agility or ranged combat. You might use this when trying to Face Danger to dodge an attack or escape a trap, or when you Strike by shooting your bow at an approaching enemy.

Heart is courage, empathy, willpower, sociability and so forth. You might use this to Compel someone by appealing to their emotions or to try and convince them you are correct, or when you wish to Forge a Bond with a person or community with whom you have grown close.

Iron is your strength, your endurance, your aggressiveness. You use this when you Clash in melee, or when you chose to Face Danger head on - by blocking an attack with a shield, or by simply being too rooted to the ground for an onrushing enemy to knock over.

Shadow is your ability to lie, to deceive, to be stealthy. You could use this to Enter the Fray from stealth, or to Compel with lies and deceit.

Wits is more or less what it says on the tin, serving as your ability to think on your feet, your knowledge, your expertise. You use this when you Resupply - perhaps by tracking small animals to hunt, or to barter with someone in a village - or when you Undertake a Journey to make sure you can safely cross the distance and reach your destination.

Every player also has four Tracks - Spirit, Health, Supply and Momentum. All except Momentum go from 5 to 0.

Health is... your health. Your current physical condition and stamina. Whenever a situation may require you to Endure Harm, it is this track that is reduced. When you Endure Harm when your Health is at 0, you are at risk of dying or suffering a debilitating injury.

Spirit is your mental state. Your ability to deal with exhaustion, isolation, or awful horrors. It may be reduced in any situation where you face despair or mental shock, forcing you to Endure Stress. When your Spirit is 0 and you Endure Stress, you risk your sanity in one form or another, and could break entirely.

Supply is a catch-all for the general gear your character might have - food, camping supplies, spare arrows, coins or small valuables you might use to barter with, et cetera. It is deliberately left as a general number to represent a floating thing - it is assumed your character is often hunting or gathering along the way as they travel where possible, so your supply only goes down if you fail to do so, or if something causes you to lose some of your supplies or the like. If your supply is 0, you will be Out of Supply and will start to suffer -health and -spirit or -momentum as appropriate.

Momentum is perhaps the most interesting track in Ironsworn. Momentum starts at 2 for most players, and it represents how well your character is doing. Have they been taking L after L, constantly on the back foot, or have they been going from strength to strength? The outcomes of various Moves, as well as certain Assets, will dictate when and how you add or subtract momentum, but loosely - when things go well, you gain momentum, when things go poorly, you lose it. Momentum's primary use is to be burned. When you Burn Momentum you may cancel any Challenge Dice that is lower than whatever your momentum currently is. Then your momentum goes back to its reset number - usually 2 for most players.

For Example.

My momentum is 10. My character has been doing well of late. I decide to try to Compel a raider and convince him I've come to join his band. Since I'm lying, I roll +shadow, which is 2. I roll the Action Die, get a 4, add 2, and my Action Score is 6. Respectable. But I roll a 7 and 8 on the Challenge Dice. That is a Miss. Now I could eat the Miss, and suffer the consequences, but I decide to Burn Momentum - in doing so, I can cancel out the 7 and the 8, and immediately I get a Strong Hit. The raider buys my lie hook line and sinker and lets me into their fortified camp so I can talk to their leader.

If my Challenge Dice had come up with a 7 and a 10, then I would only be able to cancel out the 7 - 10 is not lower than 10, after all. That would give me a Weak Hit, still better than a Miss, but perhaps I decide it's not worth Burning Momentum in that scenario, or perhaps I don't.

Every Player has Assets - Assets are cards that represent mechanical and narrative benefits. They can be Companions, like a tamed Hawk, a Path, like Herbalist, or a Combat Talent, like Archer. They can also be a Ritual, like Communion.

Now, to be clear, just because you don't have Archer or Herbalist doesn't mean you can't shoot a bow, or can't gather and use herbs. It just means there's no mechanical benefit and it's not something your character necessarily focuses on.

Each Asset Card has three items or features. When you first buy (with experience points) or start with an Asset, you have the first one. You can spend more experience points to upgrade an asset to get at the additional features.

Take for example, the asset Herbalist:

1. When you attempt to Heal using herbal remedies, and you have at least +1 supply, choose one (decide before rolling). Add +2. OR On a hit, take or give an additional +1 health.

2. When you Heal a companion, ally, or other character, and score a hit, take +1 spirit or +1 momentum.

3. When you Make Camp and choose the option to partake, you can create a restorative meal. If you do, you and your companions take +1 health. Any allies who choose to partake also take +1 health, and do not suffer -supply.

If you start with Herbalist or when you first buy it, you'll only have feature #1 - so it makes using the Heal skill easier or better. As you upgrade it, you'll have additional mechanisms that will give you more additional tools to improve your character's journey. Every asset has options like that.

(For the purposes of the game mechanics 'Ally' means a fellow player in Co-op mode, while 'Companion' represents an NPC on your side, whether they're represented by a Companion Asset or not)

The last things to discuss are Vows and Progress Tracks.

Vows are the mechanism by which you gain experience points. You can think of them as 'Quests'. Vows can be sworn to yourself, to another person, to a god or entity, etc. When you swear a vow, you decide what the specific task or goal is, phrased simply, such as 'I will find my tribe's stolen totem', and the relative difficulty of the task - Troublesome, Dangerous, Formidable, Extreme and Epic.

The difficulty represents both how rewarding it will be - completing a troublesome vow will give you 1 experience, while completing an Epic Vow gives you 5 - and how... well, hard it is. The higher the Challenge Rank of the Vow, the more steps you need to advance the Progress Track.

A Progress Track - which represents a combat, a journey, a vow or any other multistage task is a range of 0 to 10 (the base rulebook represents these with 10 boxes and ticks, four ticks filling a box, but for this medium, a raw numerical representation is easier to present). Whenever you advance your Track, either by hurting your enemy in a battle, or reaching a milestone on your vow, or reach a waypoint in your journey, etc, you progress based on it's Rank.

Any time you progress a Troublesome Track, your Track goes up by 3. For a Dangerous Track, it goes up 2. Formidable, up by 1, Extreme, by .5 and Epic, by .25.

A general advice for players is that you shouldn't attempt to 'Complete' a given Track before reaching at least 6. So that means for a Troublesome Track, you need to progress it at least twice, and for an Epic, at least 24 times. So the Challenge Rank you pick also represents how much narrative space you really want a given Vow or Journey or Combat to take.

The Challenge Rank can also represent how much damage an enemy might do to you when you Endure Harm or Endure Stress, etc. 1 Damage for a Troublesome Enemy, 5 for an Epic Enemy. Epic Combats are thus very deadly if you're not lucky, and something you may need to run from and come back to - thankfully Epic Enemies for are things like Krakens and Dragons, rare and legendary creatures.

Click to shrink...

When you want to try to complete a Track with a move like End the Fight or Reach your Destination or Fulfill Your Vow you roll your two Challenge Dice, and have the number of your Progress Track serve as your 'Action Score', and get a Strong Hit, Weak Hit or Miss and follow the narrative and the rules of the Move accordingly. So while 6 is a generally accepted minimum, there are advantages to going higher. This can lead to some tricky stuff like - if you roll a Miss on Reach Your Destination, how did you fail to do that? If you sliced and diced that bear that attacked you, why did End the Fight miss?

The key to remember is that a Miss is more nuanced than just 'failure'. Perhaps you did reach the village you wanted to reach (or perhaps you were just way off base), but the village was destroyed, or abandoned or the thing you wanted there just... isn't there. In a battle, perhaps the Bear gets away, wounded but alive, or perhaps that thief you were hunting is now dead, and you had hoped to take him alive so he could tell you where he hid what he stole.

When it comes to rolling against your Progress Track, Momentum cannot be burned, and the ill effects of negative Momentum (to be discussed later) do not apply.

As I post installments of the story as I play the game, I will stop and explain more rules as I go, as while Ironsworn isn't the most complicated game, it isn't a simple 'here's all you need to know in five minutes' game either.

If you want to see a really well done live play if Ironsworn, I highly recommend Me Myself and Die Season 2, where professional voice actor Trevor Devall plays Ironsworn and chronicles the journey of Arn Kalapunki to fulfil a vow he made long ago, and face down a threat his forebears fought long ago.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Salesca of the Hollow is the 'Player Character' for this story. A girl raised by her Ironsworn Uncle and then forging a close bond with Talia the Lightstep, who would go on to be an Ironsworn herself, and whose quest for vengeance would destroy her home of Taron's Hollow, Salesca is a girl of 18 years, with fiery red hair, a temper, and a legacy she feels the need to live up to. She burns for revenge, and also hopes to one day make a name for herself like that of her uncle Hallistar, or Talia herself, as one who aids others and makes the Ironlands safer for all those of good will.

When you create a character in Ironsworn, you assign your stats - one stat gets a 3, two get a 2, and two get a 1. Salesca, with her focus on archery and dance, puts 3 into Edge. Trained to track and to hunt stealthily, Shadow and Wits get the 2s, leaving the 1s for Heart and Iron. She is not especially physically strong or enduring (though she's no weakling) and she's not great with people, in part because she lets her temper and sense of righteousness get in the way.

Options exist to have a different spread of stats than 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, if you wish to make your character's life harder or easier, but I went with the default here.

Click to shrink...

For Assets, you get three to start, and she has Archer, Fletcher, and Dancer. As of beginning posting the 'chapters' of this actual play, she's upgraded the Dancer Asset once, so I'll include that on her 'sheet' below as well, but she won't have that second Dancer feature in the early 'chapters'.

Every new character has 3 starting Bonds. Salesca has four now, as of posting. Her starting three, however, were Talia the Lightstep, Sareta the Wayfinder and The Survivors of Taron's Hollow.

Bonds represent people or communities with whom your character has forged a relationship with. When you have a Bond with someone or a group, rolls interacting with that person or community will usually get a +1. Bonds are created with the Forge a Bond move. Every bond you have also gives you .25 on your Bonds Track (was with other Progress Tracks, this is represented with Ticks and Boxes in the actual Rules), which is used for the Write Your Epilogue move, which you can determine how your character's story ends when they 'retire' or 'step back'.

An optional rule I have seen discussed by players is how, given that a Bonds Track is effectively an Epic Track, if you want, you can reduce the 'Challenge Rank' of your Bonds Track to make it easier to eventually Write Your Epilogue, if you'd rather not have to forge 24 Bonds just to get to six, let alone 40 to get to 10. For this campaign, I have decided to effectively treat my Bonds Track as an 'Extreme' Track, and thus my Bonds Track will advance at .5 with every Bond, rather than .25)

Click to shrink...

Health, Supply, and Spirit all normally start at 5. If you started with the 'Battle-Scarred' Asset, you could have your starting/max health reduced to 5, but Salesca does not have that. Her Momentum starts at 2, and it refreshes at 2 when she Burns it.

Every character starts with at least one Vow, up to two. A 'Background Vow' and an Initial Vow. A Background Vow is essentially your 'Main Quest'. It's a vow that defines what your character is ultimately aiming to do. It's going to generally shape the main course of their story. Then you can also have an Initial Bow. Sort of a 'what your character is going to do first'. Their initial problem. The first thing they're going to address.

A character's story does not have to end when they complete their Background Vow. Maybe it opens up more story to tell, or you just want to keep going, but many players will end a campaign/story when their character fulfills their Background Vow.

Your background/Initial Vows do not need the Move Swear and Iron Vow to be made and rolled.

I didn't give Salesca an Initial Vow, but I did give her a Background Vow: "Avenge the Destruction of Taron's Hollow By Vesna." I set it at Formidable - a little low for a Background Vow, but in the loose idea I have for this campaign, I have notions for possible stories past resolving the Vesna issue.

In general especially for Background Vows or other 'high value' vows, it's good to somewhat open-ended, so you can have some flexibility on what counts as fulfilling and what counts as a milestone - you don't know how the Oracle, etc will shape what happens to your character, and so while 'Kill X' is a fine vow, if you kill the character with only two milestones marked because you ran into them earlier than you thought you would due to unlucky (or very lucky) dice rolls, you might find yourself in a poor position when it comes to rolling to Fulfill Your Vow.

When it comes to equipment, there isn't really much to it. Equipment is largely kept vague and encompassed with 'Supply'. It can be fairly assumed your character has some kind of weapon or weapons - but the baseline Ironsworn setting has a generally 'Dark Age' tech level, so if you're in something like the 'standard' Ironlands, work with that.

Salesca begins with a Bow (and a Quiver and Arrows), a Dagger, A travel Cloak, Basic Clothing, and Quilted Armor. She's added a few other items that are reflected on her sheet now, as of posting these first chapters.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Edge: 3
Heart: 1
Iron: 1
Shadow: 2
Wits: 2

Bonds: Talia The Lightstep, Sareta the Wayfinder, the Survivors of Taron's Hollow, Namba's Hall
Bonds Track: 2/10

Health: 5/5
Spirit: 4/5
Supply: 4/5
Momentum: 2/10
Momentum Reset: 2
Failure Track: 5/10

Equipment: Bow, Dagger, Quilted Armor, Quiver & Arrows, Basic Clothing, Cloak, Onyx Wolf Statuette (Artifact), The Bloodstained Heart (Artifact), Strange Coded Cultist Map

Active Vows:
Avenge the Destruction of Taron's Hollow By Vesna: 2/10

Assets:

Archer: If you wield a bow...

• When you Secure an Advantageby taking a moment to aim, choose your approach and add +1.
  • Trust your instincts: Roll +wits, and take +2 momentum on a strong hit.
  • Line up your shot: Roll +edge, and take +1 momentum on a hit.

Fletcher:

• When you Secure an Advantage by crafting arrows of fine quality, add +1. Then, take +1 supply or +1 momentum on a hit.

Dancer:

• When you Secure an Advantage +edge by dancing for an audience, add +1 and take +2 momentum on a hit. On a strong hit, also add +2 (one time only) if you make a move to interact with someone in the audience.
• When you Face Danger +edge in a fight by nimbly avoiding your foe's attacks, add +1 and take +1 momentum on a hit.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Ironsworn
Talia the Lightstep, Ruler of Wolfshadow, Former Prostitute
Sareta the Wayfinder, Caravan Guide
Old Man Hallistar, Salesca's Uncle, deceased

In Wolfshadow
Jaxyn, a Survivor of Taron's Hollow, a Hunter

Companions of Indirra
Indirra, a Merchant
Kaberra, a Scholar
Eder, a Scout
Resaa, a Hunter
Vukro, a Varou Sworn Guardian

The Bloody Crows
Black Maevis, a Witch and a leader of the Crows, a former companion of Vesna
Regol the Red, her Husband and a leader of the Crows, a former companion of Vesna

Children of the Tainted Scholar
Forinia, a Cultist leader (Dead)

Other
Vesna, a Raider, the object of Salesca's vengeance
Irsia, leader of a nomadic band
Jartr, leader of Namba's Hall
Settlements
Wolfshadow, a trade-town in the Havens, recovering from war
Kharzu, a trade-town in the Flooded Lands, constantly short of iron
Greencairn, a trade town in the Hinterlands, commands many outlying iron mines
Taron's Hollow, a small village near Wolfshadow, now destroyed
Namba's Hall, a small village in the Havens, often beset by raiders, holds Mareila in great esteem
Elderbrook, a small village along the 'main road' between Greencairn and Wolfshadow
Stormrest, a small village on the Ragged Coast, where Sareta though Indirra died

Other Sites of Interest
Witch's Creek, a ruined tower near a small creek not far from Wolfshadow, believed by some to be cursed or haunted
Vidarna's Watch, a watchpost of the Jemshida Tribe of elves, along the border between the Deep Wilds and the Hinterlands
Warrens of Thyri, an extensive natural cave network that has housed dozens of groups over the centuries, presently held by the Bloody Crows raider band.
Den of Bloodstained Prophecy, the underground remnants of an ancient structure built by the ancient humans of the Ironlands, occupied by the Children of the Tainted Scholar until recently
Jartr's Ford, a natural ford across a river not far from Namba's Hall

Gods and Heroes
Haevaris, Elven god of the hunt, luck, opportunities, ambition.
Crodus, Old World Hero who gave his life to defend a shipment of food during the early days of the Zaevori war. Now worshipped or honored as a patron of trade and protection.
Mareila, Old World God, of agriculture and cities. Honored and remembered as a patron of settlements, farming and so forth.
Jasseira, Old World Goddess, of justice, revenge and punishment.
Kolbaeri, Elven goddes of death, the dead, funerals, graves
Croyla, Legendary heroine of the Old World. Faced down horrible monsters and powerful magi

 

[Kylia Quilor]

"I am not letting you do this, Salesca!" Talia, even now that she was ruler of Wolfshadow, didn't usually raise her voice, even with enemies, but she especially didn't with her friends. And yet... Salesca stiffened, swallowing as she tried to fight the urge to shout back. To remind Talia that the whole reason Salesca even wanted to do this, needed to find Vesna and kill her for what she did was because of Talia's own failures.

Because it's not that simple and you know it. And yet, Talia was trying to stop her from -

From cleaning up her mess.

"I'm sorry, Talia, but I thought part of your wonderful new order here in Wolfshadow was that people were allowed to come and go as they wanted. Go, especially." The old families had been more than willing to force people to stay in the town, when it suited them. Talia had tried to undo their restrictive laws, though she could only do so much without risking the entire town...

"Don't take that sarcastic tone with me, Salesca," Talia growled. "You know exactly what I mean. You are my respon-"

Talia the Lightstep
​

"You're not my mother, Talia, and if you don't let me do this, you won't even be my sister!" Salesca interrupted, hating the words even as they left her mouth, hating them even more as Talia flinched - Talia, the Lightstep herself! - flinched. I - she immediately opened her mouth to take back the words, but she found herself without any words to actually...

"...you..." Talia closed her eyes and looked away. "I thought you didn't - I... I thought you'd... how many times do I need to apologize, for not realizing what Irena would do, what Vesna would do, for not getting there in time?!" Salesca heard Talia inhale sharply, but it was too much of a sniffle for her to think that she wasn't tearing up.

"You don't - I - I'm not -" Salesca started, then inhaled. "Talia you -" She inhaled again, closing her eyes as she centered herself a moment. "I don't feel that way anymore, Talia." Salesca promised. "I... I shouldn't have said it like that, that's not what I -" She inhaled again.

"The Bloody Crows need to be brought to justice. You know that. For what they did, to Hallistar, to Taron's Hollow." Talia nodded slowly. "You can't do it. You can't leave Wolfshadow. Not while so many of your forces are ex-raiders. And you can't take too many with you. Not without some of the other towns getting ideas. or the remaining members of the old families."

(Move: Secure an Advantage using +Wits (2) to logic and reason Talia into starting see her POV on this. Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

"She does have a point," Sareta cut in from where she'd been watching, arms crossed in front of her, "When I went to Kharzu with the last caravan... there's a lot of talk in the taverns, about how weak Wolfshadow is. That it's a sign from Haevaris-"

Sareta the Wayfinder​

Talia hesitated for a moment, then scoffed. "They hardly have any respect for Haevaris in Kharzu, Sareta. You know that. I'm not - I'm not worried about Kharzu. They don't have enough iron to equip their own force, and if they tried it, It would take them too long to muster together enough raiders to be a threat, even if I sent some of my men after the Bloody Crows."

"Talia - please. I know you promised my Uncle to keep me safe, but you know - you know you can't spare the men. You can't spare yourself. Not for somewhere as far away as the Warrens of Thyri. Not all the way out into the Hinterlands! And I - I need to do this."

(Move: Compel using +Heart and +1 for Bond with Talia. (2) Miss.)
(1 tick on Failure Track)

The Failure Track is an optional rule from the Ironsworn: Devle expansion. It creates an additional track you can fill every time you roll a Miss. You add .25 (for a normal move) or .5 (for a progress move) and when you feel like your failure track is full enough - minimum of 6 is a rule in this case, rather than a general precept - you can make a Progress Roll against your Failure Track and see if you Learn From Your Failures, which will give you experience points if you are successful.

Click to shrink...

Talia stared at her a moment, then shook her head. "Salesca, you're not ready for this. You're right, I can't stop you from doing something so stupid, but maybe you'll rethink it if I don't let you take arrows from the armory, or food from the pantries, for a journey that long. Hm?"

Salesca stiffened again, heart rising in her throat a little. She'd... she'd been rather expecting she'd be able to do that. She had what she needed to make arrows, and she could always hunt for her food along the way, or forage, but - she'd rather been expecting, counting on -

I can manage. I'll just trade for what I need.

"Fine. You can do what you want. I'll manage on my own." Salesca turned, trying to blink back hot tears. Why does she - why can't she just believe in me!?

(Move: Pay the Price. -2 Supply as Salesca will have to barter and trade for the food she'll need for the journey ahead.)

Salesca stormed out of Talia's private room, out into the meeting hall where she 'held court', out of the manor that had once belonged to Irena Vorhesk. Out onto the streets of the town. Busy and bustling, as people went about their business, shopkeepers and merchants dickered and bartered, townsfolk and visitors buying and selling - the Wardens on the streets, the Wolf's Head symbol of Wolfshadow painted onto their armor or shields...

Two of Talia's ex-raiders, her personal forces, stood guard outside her home, their shields emblazoned with Talia's personal seal, a Notched Bow, angling upwards.

Does she think she can just send these kinds of people so far away, and expect them to obey, to come back? Some, perhaps. Talia was inspiring, and she'd convinced many of the raiders she brought to her side, but - still. Many of them only behaved out of fear of her.

"Salesca!" Sareta's voice called out behind her as she turned down an alley, cramped in between buildings. Salesca turned, wiping away her tears rapidly, as if Sareta hadn't been in the room, hadn't seen -

"Leave me alone," Saleaca muttered, bitterly. "I don't need to hear you defend Talia-"

"I wasn't planning on it. She's being an idiot. At least... a bit." Sareta's words drew Salesca up short, and swallowed.
"So you - you do think I'm up for this?" It would be nice to know that Sareta didn't think she was still a fucking child. Well, she can't think that, not after we shared bedrolls while in hiding and-

Salesca forced herself to banish that. It was just two people, desperate for connection in a trying time. Sareta didn't return her feelings, and... and Salesca... she couldn't afford to let feelings like that, this... childish crush, distract her.

"I think you deserve the chance to prove that you are, yes." Sareta answered, which... wasn't quite a yes, but...

At least she respects my right to make mistakes. It was a low hurdle to clear, but one that Talia, her sister in all but blood, seemed to fail at.

"That wasn't a 'yes, you can handle this'," Salesca pointed out.

"Well, no one really knows what they can handle until they try. Talia nearly died that first outing, against the Silver Thorn." Sareta reminded her. Salesca looked away, flashing back to that. The sight of Talia, staggering into the village, half-dead, a bandage soaked with blood on her side, pale, weak. It had taken a week for her to recover, and that was with the best poultices of their medicine woman. And even then, Talia shouldn't have gone out so soon, but she had. The Silver Thorn, closing in.

"Gods, my first solo wayfinding, I nearly drowned a few miles into the Flooded Lands," Sareta chuckled, rubbing one hand on the back of her head.

"I remember," Salesca murmured, unable to stop a smile on her face, recalling the way Sareta had told her that story. So distracted by where she was going, she'd forgotten to watch her own feet, and hit the sinking mud. It was easy to see, if you were paying attention. And Sareta hadn't.

"You're good with a bow. Great even. Probably as good as Talia was, when she started her little crusade." Sareta pointed out, and Salesca bit back the 'I'm even better' that she wanted to retort with, because it probably wasn't true.

Probably.

"But you're proposing to travel all the way to the Hinterlands, and then take on a rising raider clan, all on the slim chance you can find something useful about Vesna's location. If that stone bitch is even still alive."

"She's not dead." Salesca said, flatly. Vesna couldn't be. No one was allowed to kill her. No one was allowed to avenge the Burning of Taron's Hollow, but her.

"...You just know that?"

"I do." Salesca - she knew. Because it had to be so. Jasseira may have died, like all the other old gods had, at the hands of the Zaevori, or their gods, as the old stories said, but the justice she'd ruled over had not. There was justice in the world - the fact that she was standing here, in Wolfshadow at all, proved it.

"Vesna survived Talia four times. No one else came close."

"And yet," Sara countered, "You propose to do better."

"Most of those times, Talia wasn't out for blood. And Vesna was. Vesna doesn't know me, she won't recognize me. She won't know I'm coming. And she won't be fighting for revenge." Salesca gestured around them. "Revenge is a powerful force. It's what kept Talia alive long enough to be here, to replace Irena, to succeed where she failed." Sareta already believed she deserved this chance, so why - why was Salesca wasting her breath, hunting a dead deer?

Because you want Sareta's approval as much as you want Talia's.... more, in some ways. And...

"Okay. So fine. I'll grant you. You're as stubborn as Talia is, and you're right about what a thirst for revenge can do for you. Sure seems like Haevaris watches over you both, sometimes. But getting to the Warrens of Thyri is going to take more than just being damn good with a bow."
"Are you questioning how well you've taught me?" Uncle Hallistar and Talia had taught her the bow, and dance, and how to hunt, and stalk the grass and trees of the Havens. But it had been Sareta who had taught her how to blaze a trail across unfamiliar ground. How to find forage, and set a camp safely, far from home. "You taught me all I needed to know, about such travel. The Hinterlands are hardly the Veiled Mountains. You taught me how to find a good place to set my tent, how to find signs of a bear or wolf nearby, and avoid them. How to trap small animals. How to know what berries I can eat, which ones to avoid. And how to orient myself to my destination." She ticked off each item on her fingers. "I learned from the best."

(Move: Secure an Advantage using +Wits (2) to convince Sareta that she taught Salesca well enough to make this journey. Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

"You were an excellent student," Sareta agreed with a laugh. "Always attentive, dutiful and eager." she grinned. "...you know Talia just wants to keep you safe."

"This is the Ironlands. There is no 'safe'," Salesca offered back, rolling her eyes. Then -

It's not that I couldn't without her, but -

"You know, it occurs to me," Salesca said slowly, "That I'd probably have an easier time of it, and Talia would have more peace of mind if you came with me. I could do it myself, but you have travelled this path, gone to the Hinterlands many times..."

(Move: Compel using +Heart and +1 for Bond with Sareta. (2) Weak Hit.)
Sareta inhaled sharply, then bit her lip a moment. "...you would have an easier time of it, yeah. But," Salesca tensed, knowing what was coming, the rejection -

"But," Sareta repeated. "I can't just go off to the Hinterlands yet. I have something I need to do, first, here in the Havens. On the other hand... you could help me with it." Salesca felt her shoulders suddenly sag. That - that wasn't what she -

Salesca hadn't expected that.

"What? Name it." Salesca said, quickly, before Sareta changed her mind.

"Well, you know how hard it is to get through the Deep Wilds, especially with a caravan. It's so overgrown, and the elves are... well, the elves." Sarea started, and Salesca nodded. The Ragged Coast and the Barrier Isands were good fishing grounds, and people in Wolfshadow paid well for fish, even if it had to be heavily salted or smoked to still be edible by the time it got to them. But coming overland through the Deep Wilds was nearly impossible - and you could sail a ship around, but with as far inland as Wolfshadow was...

"Well, you don't wayfind as long as I have without getting to know a few elves. One of them... a well, let's call him a friend. Vidarna. His tribe live on the fringes of the Deep Wild, and there's a clear path through the Wilds that starts on their lands. Vidarna sent a hawk with a message for me, a week ago. I'd talked to him about it before, but now, he says his tribal elder is willing to hear me out, next time I visit. Might not be for a bit, but... it's a start."

Salesca grinned, "That's amazing news, though! Just think, if you could blaze a clear, and regular path for caravans through the Wilds-" Then she frowned, processing everything she just, "...what could I do to help?"

"Vidarna's tribe prize boar tusks. They consider them good luck charms. I figure, a few boar tusks might be just what I need as a gift, to get the elder in a good mood..." Sareta suggested.

So help Sareta kill a boar or two, and get the tusks, and she helps me get to the Warrens...


"Deal." Salesca said, quickly, reaching under her shirt and gripping her Uncle's Iron Amulet in her hand. "I swear on Iron that I'll help you get the boar tusks you need to gift Vidarna's elder."

(Move: Swear an Iron Vow. +Heart, +1 for bond with Sareta. (2) Burn Momentum to turn Miss into Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)
(New Iron Vow: Help Sareta get gift-worthy Boar Tusks. Troublesome Rank.)

Sareta burst out laughing, and Salesca flet her cheeks warm,

"Salesca, Gods, you didn't need to - sometimes you and Talia..." She giggled, "So dramatic, both of you!" She covered her mouth a moment, then got herself under control. "Sorry. I shoudln't have laughed, I just... thank you." She let out a breath. "I'm decent with a bow, but boars... they're something else." She shook her head, "I wouldn't want to take one on on my own."

"Well, then it's good I'm here to help you. Of course... boars aren't exactly thick on the ground in this part of the Havens..." Salesca didn't really like the idea of going too far out of her way to find a boar, but she had just made an Iron Vow. Even if Sareta didn't take it seriously, in the same way...

Well, no, she did, but - well, like she said, I didn't have to. But I did.

"I've heard about some possibilities. I'll ask around. You can do the same."

"True..." Salesca considered. "Jaxyn and his band came back yesterday. If anyone knows if there's a boar anywhere for miles... it would be him." Jaxyn wasn't the easiest of people to talk to. Guarded, and prone to hiding what he really thought. Still, he was good with a spear, and a reliable enough man, especially with his inner circle. She'd considered him one of the best of the men avaialble, in Taron's Hollow, when it came to thinking about who she might have to lay with to have children. That had been the expectation for every woman in the village, eventually. The obligation for a new generation.

Not something I need to worry about now.

Still, a good place to start.

"Good. You talk to Jaxyn, I'll talk to some of the people I know, we'll meet at the West Gate?"

"Sounds like a plan." Salesca agreed, then, before she could stop herself, leaned forward and hugged Sareta tight. "Thank you."

"No, thank you." Sareta countered, returning the hug, before they seperated. Sareta turning back away, onto the main road, while Salesca continued down the alley. Jaxyn and his fellows liked to drink at the Drowned Rat, on the north end of Wolfshadow. She'd start there. Maybe stop and purchase some supplies on the way, too.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Bartering for the food she needed - hard bread, baked twice, dried and smoked meat, dried fruit, a few other items that would keep well and could be eaten on the move, if she had to, or used with water and forage to bulk out a diet. A few arrows, some assorted small coins, other trinkets. Debating the value back and forth took longer than she'd have liked, but eventualy she was done and on her way to the Drowned Rat.

It was a place that sold cheap, well-watered ale and beer, it's patrons hunters, trappers, farmers and the like, as likely to barter off a bit of their produce, or run a tab on future gains, as to pay with coin or other standard trinkets used for exchange in the ironlands - small decorated pieces of wood, stone, or bone, arrows, sling bullets, very small pieces of iron...

Salesca pushed the door into a dimly lit room, catching the scent of some kind of meat cooking over the fire in the back, roasting, maybe some vegetables being boiled. But the primary smell was that of the cheap alcohol that the Rat was known for. Not overwhelmingly unpleasant, but still, Salesca wrinkled her nose at way it lingered in the air, even on her tongue.

Jaxyn and the other men and women he hunted with regularly, all fellow survivors from Taron's Hollow, were in the corner, gathered around a table, rolling dice and passing little wooden and stone tokens back and forth, quietly talking.

"...could be worse, you know. But Winter's coming, so... might want to pick up the pace, now?" One of the other men suggested, and Jaxyn nodded.

"Aye. With everything gone wrong... back in the Hollow we'd have had other options, but here? Got to keep going, got to save up plenty, store it all. Nobody's gonna help us just because we're neighbors. Not anymore." Jaxyn shrugged. He raised his head, looking up past the man he'd been talking to, gesturing at her.

"Salesca."

"Jaxyn," She nodded. "Have a minute?"

"You look all set to head out. Where you bound, then?"

"Out to hunt boar. Thought you might know where to start looking." Salesca could never get a read on him, and that held true as Jaxyn raised an eyebrow, his tone cool.

"Really?"

"Really." Salesca nodded again. Was he thinking she was trying to interfere with his work? Judging her for going after boars specifically? Jaxyn wasn't necessarily Talia's greatest ally, for all that he'd appreciated being welcomed into the Hollow, and joined her in the final days of the conflict against Irena, so was she being judged for that?

"So, have you, or any of you, know anything about where I might go looking for one?"

(Action: Gather Information. +wits, +1 for bond with the survivors of Taron's Hollow (3) Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

A Weak hit on Gather Information means that the information you get is useful, but also complicates your quest in some form.

Click to shrink...

"There were those pits up by that creek, north of here?" One of Jaxyn's band suggested. "Boar tracks in the mud, and the signs of them rooting in the trees? We didn't see any, could all be dead, but..." he shrugged.

"The creek near that creepy old ruined tower? Where they say that witch lived, when our forebears first came to the Ironlands?" Salesca grimaced. Not the best omen sort of place to go for starting a journey like this but...

"Aye, that's the one," Jaxyn nodded. "But it was a good number of footprints. Including small ones. So probably a few sows, maybe a father to the babies if he's still around."

Salesca let out a breath. That was... even more unfortunate, and more directly so. A bad omen or bad sign was... well, not great, but it didn't have to mean serious risk of death. Multiple boars? Especially protecting their children? She'd have to be very careful and hope she and Sareta could find one or two that were isolated.

"It'll have to do. Thank you." She nodded, setting a few wooden tokens of her own on the table as thanks for their help, heading back out of the tavern, weaving through the town for the west gate. It wasn't really time to meet Sareta yet - not quite - but close enough, and she could settle in by the gate and set to work on making some new arrows, at least.

(Action: Reach a Milestone. +3 Progress on Troublesome Vow)
However, by the time she got there, Sareta was waiting for her, a dour, disappointed frown on her face, looking down at the ground as much as at her surroundings. Exhaling slowly, Sarta looked... well, hardly defeated, but very much like a woman denied something she'd been hoping for.

"I take it your contacts didn't pan out?" Salesca murmured, nudging Sareta's shoulder with her hand to draw the woman's attention. Sareta shook her head.

"Nothing close, no. Even when I did find a hunter who killed a boar recently had already sold off the tusks. This is not a great start to our little boar hunt."

"Well, then it's a good thing Jaxyn came through," Not great news was better than no news, in this case. Salesca forced a bit of a grin, though it was only half-forced. The chance to get Sareta good news was still a reason to smile. "Remember that old tower, the one everyone says a witch used to live in two hundred or more years ago, even if no one can agree on anything else?" She'd heard at least a dozen different stories of the witch and twice as many different names for her.

Sareta nodded, slowly, a bit of hopeful light returning to her eyes.

"Jaxyn and his fellows saw signs of boars up there - footprints in the mud, signs of rooting." She inhaled a bit, "But... they also think it was a family. Or at least a couple young ones with mothers." Please don't call this off. Sareta had seemed pretty sure that getting some boar tusks would help her with the elf tribe she was going to try to negotiate with. If she can make a good impression with them, get that clear passage through the Deep Wilds...
It would be the sort of thing that could get Sareta's memory remembered for generations to come, passed down not just among wayfinders, but the kind of story that would be told to children around the campfire, even.

Sareta deserved the chance to do this, and do it right. And Salesca was more than happy to help her.

That and you'd like her help getting to the Warrens of Thyri, a selfish little voice in the back of her head reminded her.

"It might be risky, but if we can do it right,,," Sareta murmured softly.

"And we can," Salesca told her. Boars were dangerous, yes, but they were not the greatest threat in the world. Not by any measure.

"Alright." She looked over at the sun, which was still high in the sky, but starting it's journey downwards. "The tower's 8 miles away, give or take, right?" Salesca nodded at Sareta's question. it sounded about right.

After a brief discussion with the gate guards, the West Gate opened, the wood creaking open, and Salesca followed Sareta out, onto the flat land of the Havens around them. There were plenty of hills in this part of the Ironlands, but from Wolfshadow, you could only just see them in the distance.

As they travelled, trudging steadily through the taller grass the further you got from Wolfshadow and the trade roads, they talked little, occasionally trading a few questions about recent happenings in Wolfshadow, or the surrounding area, but little more. Sareta was not one for idle chatter while on the road, and while Salesca would have preferred to fill the time, she wasn't sure what to fill that time with.

Finally, they drew close, the tower looming ahead. The creek wouldn't be far.

"Should we look for the boars now?" Sareta asked. "You have more experience with hunting, and all the wisdom your Uncle passed on."

"It's still light, so we could," Salesca agreed. "But it could take us some time to find them, so I think it would be better to wait. Besides, I'd like to make some more arrows, before we go." She gestured to her quiver. "Traded a few for supplies, and I needed to make more anyway. Boars are tough animals." And you needed a lot of arrows to remind them they were dead, sometimes. Her Uncle had shown her that personally, on the last hunting trip they'd gone on together.

All that you robbed from me, Vesna, I will be taking back in blood.

"You could just learn to stab them with a spear, or get better with that dagger of your," Sareta suggested, the chuckle in her voice and the grin on her face belying the suggestion. "Camp it is."

(Action: Make Camp +supply (3). Weak Hit. Focus: +1 Momentum)

The Make Camp move offers 5 possible rewards - increases to health, momentum, spirit, trading supply for more health, and a bonus on your next Undertake a Journey Roll. A Strong Hit on Make Camp means you can pick two, a Weak Hit means you can pick one. In this case, I picked the increase in momentum - unless your health or spirit are low, increasing your momentum when you have a chance is often the best choice, because momentum can and will save your bacon later on.

Click to shrink...

They found a couple of bushes near a tree that made a passable place to set up camp, though it took some work clearing away fallen leaves, a couple of downed branches - though she set a few choice pieces of wood aside - and digging a small firepit. On the plus side, they found a few wild onions. A pot of water from the creek was set to boil over the small fire, and while they waited for the water to be safe enough to use, Salesca set to putting arrows together. She had a few shafts, and she could make something... useable from some of the longer, more solid bits of wood available. Nothing all that good, but it would do the job, and that was all she needed.

Getting the components separately and putting them together herself was cheaper, and scavenging things from the wild to make arrows from, or at least stretch her supplies was... serviceable. Sometimes, every arrow counted.

"I know how important finding and killing Vesna is to you, but... then what?" Sareta asked as she worked. "The Bloody Crows, Vesna... there's probably more raiders left, that were part of the Burning of the Hollow, but you may never find them. You wouldn't even know where to look!"

"If the Bloody Crows weren't a lead on Vesna, the only one I have, I... I wouldn't make them a focus." Salesca admitted. "The Burning of the Hollow was the work of Vesna, and Irena. It was the work of one woman's need for revenge and another woman's power play. The rest of the raiders... they were just tools. Irena is dead. Vesna is all that's left, and I will bring her to justice."

"And then what, Salesca? Talia isn't happy, you know."

"She's getting to finally out her vision of a just rule in Wolfshadow, why wouldn't she be happy?" Salesca knew she was being petty and bitter, but she couldn't stop the sour note in her voice. Who was Talia to give her grief over this, really? "She seems to be handling things just fine."

"She still sees you as her little sister, she's not going to drink and bitch about all her problems with you." Sareta rolled her eyes. "She doesn't say it in so many words, but she's miserable. Running Wolfshadow with justice is easier said than done. And more importantly, more relevantly, Talia let her desire for revenge drive her for years. The only thing she cared about. She got revenge and it didn't make her happy."

"Spare me the words of wisdom, I'm not Talia and I'm not trying to be." Salesca muttered the words. "I'm not going to get so focused on Vesna that I let Wolfshadow burn!"

"Salesca!" Sareta's eyes widened, she stood. "What are you-"

Salesca put down her tools and a half-finished arrow, standing up as well. "I know it's not Talia's fault, and I know the fight that made Vesna hate Talia would have happened either way, but Talia had a good life in Taron's Hollow. She had my Uncle. She had me. She had a place to call home, people who cared about her! Wasn't that enough?!" Why hadn't it been!? Had Salesca not been a good enough sister, a good enough friend? Had Uncle Hallistar not mattered to her? The other people in the village? "Why was revenge so damn important? And that revenge?! She could have just snuck into Wolfshadow and killed Irena in her sleep! But no, Talia had to do it her way!"
She had to bring Irena down. Tear down her position piece by piece. Build an army. Take Wolfshadow by force, watch as Irena realized it had all been ruined.

"You think Talia should have left Irena to keep up her ways? The people of Wolfshadow didn't deserve-"

"Irena got worse the more Talia pressed her! If Talia had left well enough alone, would Irena even have taken over?! She was just an influential man's wife, at first!" Salesca knew the story by hear. Talia had told her the first part, and the bards and poets told the rest, over and over again. Kind of accurately.

The Burning of the Hollow was just one part of the heroic rise of Talia, of the Lightstep.

"Taron's Hollow was my home, Hallistar was my family, my blood, and Talia was my family too, and now? Now she's not. Because she feels like she can demand I put aside revenge, when she pursed it as far as she did?" Salesca shook her head, raising her hands a little. "Oh, wait, she's just worried about my safety." Salesca made a face twisting her lips into a derisive grimace. "Right. So worried. Like I wasn't worried every godsdamned day she went out on her little war! Every day she was gone, I'd wonder if I'd ever see her again!"

Salesca sat back down, chest rising and falling quickly. She hadn't - she hadn't meant to... not like that. She didn't -

Was that really how she felt about Talia? Really?

It was. It wasn't only how she felt about her, and yet...

She'd never said it. Never admitted to herself, how much she resented Talia for it. How much she wished it could be so simple, so easy to blame her.

But it wasn't.

"I... I'm sorry. I -" She shook her head and picked up her tools again. "I know - I know it's more complicated and - just... I'm sorry." She repeated, taking a breath and trying to focus.

Ignoring Sareta as she focused on her arrows Salesca tried to force herself to banish all that from her mind, for now. She had boars to track and kill tomorrow, she had Vesna to hunt after that.

(Action: Secure an Advantage using Fletcher Asset. +edge +1 (4). Strong hit and Match. +2 Momentum, +1 Supply)

A match on your Challenge Dice in Ironsworn means some kind of plot twist. Generally, it's a good twist if you did a Strong Hit and a bad twist if you missed, and something in between on a Weak Hit. I used the Plot Twist Oracle and got 'The Enemy Gains new Allies', but since it was on a Strong Hit, I decided it meant that Salesca herself got new allies, which she will meet the next day.

Click to shrink...

The sun had set by the time Salesca had several arrows she was happy with, and she finally set them aside, feeling... well, perhaps not better, but at least calmer. She looked up at Salesca, the other woman drawing in the dirt with a stick.

"I shouldn't have taken all that out on you." She said, apologizing again. "I'm sorry."

"You shouldn't have," Sareta agreed. "But you shouldn't have been holding that in. I'm your friend, Salesca. I wish you'd said something sooner."

"I - I didn't really realize I felt that way until I said it," Salesca admitted, flushing. She stood and walked around the fire, to sit next to Sareta, looking at the spiral pattern the other woman had drawn in the dirt. "I never answered your original question."

"I hadn't noticed." Sareta observed, dryly, turning to look at her directly. Salesca flushed a little, looking away, biting her lower lip before she finally gave an answer.

"Like I said, earlier, I don't - I'm not so obsessed with Vesna. I promise. Not to the exclusion of all else, the way Talia was with Irena. As for what comes after... my Uncle was one of the Ironsworn. He helped people because he could, because out here, outside the towns where things are safe, and prosperous, or close enough... the only reason we're all still alive is because we help each other. I want to follow in those footsteps." She was good with a bow, and she could only get better.

She wanted to help. Not enough people did that.

Sareta smiled softly. "You always had a good heart." She reached over and took Salesca's hand, squeezing it. It took all Salesca could do to not react to the touch, not read into it more... Sareta didn't mean it like that. "I'll take you at your word that you won't let yourself get so obsessed with Vesna." She chuckled. "But if I find out otherwise... I'll be quite cross."

Salesca couldn't help but chuckle herself at that, and she let out a long breath afterwards. "Entirely fair." She started to sigh, but it turned into a soft yawn and she covered her mouth. "I suppose we should get ready for tomorrow, and sleep. I'll take first watch."

"Sure you won't fall asleep?" Sareta teased, then nodded. "Wake me when it's time to switch off," she murmured, and Salesca nodded.

As Sareta slipped into her bedroll, Salesca moved back to her previous position and, using a long stick, pushed some of the mostly unburned bits of wood away from the flames, to keep the fire from getting too big, to keep some fuel available to add back to it as needed.

Tomorrow there were boars to slay. Perhaps a whole family, if they couldn't isolate one or two, and then... then...

Well, then she could finally head for the Warrens. The Bloody Crows had information, and Salesca was going to get it from them, one way, or the other.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

Witch's Creek
​

The sun had only just risen when they moved to the creek and the trees and bushes around it. The old tower was close, sort of looming overhead, but with the sun where it was, it didn't cast a shadow over things literally, at least.

There were still some signs of the boars in the mud, dried further away from the waters of the creek. Spots where more than one sow - had to be sows, if there were young ones as part of the group -had dug in to cool off. Hoofprints as well. The trees nearest the mud showed signs of rooting, dug up, tubers and roots eaten, or damaged by the work.

"Well, Jaxyn was right, there were boars here, but... the question is where are they know." Salesca crouched down, closing her eyes a moment, trying to focus herself, recall Hallistar's lessons, on tracking. She opened her eyes again.

(Action: Gather Information +wits(2) Strong hit, and a match. +2 Momentum.)

I Consulted Action+Theme Oracles to determine meaning of the positive match In addition to the Ironsworn core book, and the Ironsworn: Delve book (a supplement that offers rules for 'delves' - dungeon crawls - I also use the fan-created supplement Ironsmith. Ironsmith, created by Eric Bright, offers a whole bunch of extra Oracle Tables. Using the combined Ironsmith Oracle table, resulted in Amass + Warband. In combination with the ally from the previous strong hit, it seems to me that a friendly group of warriors, or at least armed people, is nearby, and actually got rid of the boars already. But because it's positive rolls, they're favorably inclined towards providing the boar tusks, or trading for them anyway.

Click to shrink...

"The tracks head off this way, away from the tower," Salesaca followed the hoofprints - only a few were actually still left in the mud, others lost in the moving of it when it had bee wet, presumably, coming to the creek. On the other side of the creek was more signs of rooting, and more hoofprints. They went through the trees and bushes clustered just past the mud, a few berry bushes now all but bereft of fruit, presumably from the boars, from the way some leaves show signs that they were bit as part of grabbing the fruit.

But as Salesca, with Sareta right behind, crossed the creek, boots only getting a little wet as they stepped through the shallowest parts of already shallow water, the sound of voices drifted through the foliage. Salesca stilled, one hand behind her back, grabbing an arrow, lifting her bow, crouching down lower. There was the sound of branches being pushed aside, and then, a few branches were pushed away and five people came through, one after the other.

"...there was definitely a fire in this direction last night," one of them said in a low, thick growling voice, their voice strange, accented, or something. That one wore long brown robes, and a heavy hood that shrouded their face, the sleeves of the robes even covering their hands, and trailing down along the ground. All Salesca could make out was eyes, which were an unnatural yellow, maybe. It was hard to say from here, in the lighting.


The other four wore nothing of the sort, more conventional travelers clothes, simpler, smaller, open cloaks with the hoods down, some patchwork armor.

The other three wore nothing of the sort, more conventional travelers clothes, simpler, smaller, open cloaks with the hoods down, some patchwork armor.

(Ask the Oracle: Do Salesca or Sareta know any of them? It's a big Ironlands, but Sareta has been around the block a lot, so I'll rate that 50/50 for Sareta, and unlikely for Salesca.
Sareta: Yes, Salesca: No.)
(Name: Indirra Role: Trader Goal: Feel personal accomplishment. Descriptor: Aggressive)

"Indirra?" Sareta's voice was raised, higher pitched, the confusion evidence. Salesca removed her hand from her quiver, straightening back up and turning to look at Sareta, then back to the group. One of them, a woman with long blonde hair, and a stocky, muscular build, her bare arms drawing Salesca's eye for a moment, stepped away from the group, towards Sareta.

"Gods, Sareta, what the - what the hell are you doing here, you bitch?" Hostile words, but with a smile on her face and the way the two women half-ran to meet eachother in the muddle and wrap each other into a hug, laughing. Indirra wrapped her arms around Sareta's waist and actually lifted her off the ground a moment. Sareta let out an indignant half-shriek, demanding to be put down, and after a moment, Indirra complied.

"Gods," Indirra repeated, shaking her head incredulously. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"Thought you never see me again? I thought - they said you were dead!" Sareta shook her head, blinking back tears. "How did you - the headman in Stormrest - he said - he said you washed out to sea in that storm, insisting on going back for your - for your treasure. I..." she shook her head. "It's really you?"

"It's really me," Indirra chuckled. "And yeah... I did go back." She rubbed the back of her head, her smile small, but rueful. "You know me. I wasn't going to abandon all those coins. Some of them were gold. Gold! I actually found real gold in that cave, you don't think I was going to risk losing it after all I put in to get that? And let people say I was a liar?!"

"I would hope you wouldn't have - at the expense of your own life, I - How did you survive? What are you doing here? It's been three years. How - I've criss-crossed the Ironlands so many times. How -"

"I'm not all that sure how I survived, to be honest. I did manage to grab my bag, hold onto it, even as I got tossed around on the waves." Indirra looked past Sareta a moment, distant. "I think I grabbed onto a piece of one of the huts that got washed away with me. I'm not sure. Ended up on one of the islands. I was stuck there for two years. Living on fish, fishguts, seaweed that washed ashore and the water from the little natural spring on the island. Finally I got lucky and a ship was passing by. Extortionate bastards forced me to hand over some of the gold - the actual gold! - before they'd take me aboard, but I was desperate and they knew it."

"You always say what use coins if not to trade them,"

"Aye, but gold's not for trading, it's for proving you have it. What was that captain going to do with gold?" she shook her head. "After I got back to land, I ended up spending a lot of time wandering the Hinterlands and the Tempest Hills, using my silver and copper coins to rebuild my caravan, carrying goods from village to village myself if I had to."

"...and I've been in the Havens, the Deep Wilds and the Flooded Lands, this past year." Sareta shook her head. "But why are you here? I mean, you didn't know I'd be here, and- gods, what are the chances?"

"The Gods probably don't have a role in it," The hooded man grunted, in that same sort of growling tone. "You and your friend share a bond. Fate always conspires to make such people find eachother once more."

"Well, of course you'd say that, Vukro," Indirra countered, shaking her head, but then looking back to Sareta. "As for why we're here - I heard stories about this old tower in Greencairn." Salesca recognized that name. The only tradertown in the Hinterlands, a nexus for all the iron and coal and other useful things mined in the Hinterands and points north. "My Caravan's doing well enough up north I figured I'd come down myself, see if there's anything worth finding here. I've a knack for drawing shiny trinkets out of these old places, you know."

Sareta shook her head, smiling, "True, true enough. " She muttered 'Gods' again, mouth once more half-open, as if she still couldn't believe this was happening. "So you've already rebuilt from nothing?"

"Far from it. A lot more work to do, hence why I'm bothering with what could be a wild goose chase." Indirra waved a hand dismissively in front of her. "But enough about what I'm doing - what are you doing here? And who's your friend?"

"Right," Sareta cleared her throat. "Indirra, this is Salesca, late of Taron's Hollow, now of Wolfshadow. She's a friend, and one of the finest shots with a bow I've ever seen. Salesca, this is Indirra, probably my oldest friend. We grew up together. Travelled together a lot sometimes, though I was always blazing ahead and she was staying behind to see if anything worth trading could be found."

"It's always nice to meet a friend of Sareta's," Salesca said genuinely. Sareta could be reticent about details of her past, - well, perhaps that wasn't the right word, but she didn't volunteer much of it. I wonder if Indirra has any embarrassing stories...

"Likewise," Indirra nodded.

"We came here hunting boar. You wouldn't happen to have seen any?" Salesca asked - she was curious about Indirra and her past with Sareta, but there was a task at hand.

"We did. Whole family. Killed the male and several of the sows, the rest ran off." Indirra answered. "Their meat is still smoking up at our camp, what this endless gullet didn't gobble up last night." She gestured at Vukro.

"What about the bones? The tusks? Do you have those?" Salesca asked. She couldn't imagine they'd be that far - you could make a lot of things from animal bones. If this Indirra was as enterprising as she seemed...

"We do. Is that why you were after boars? The tusks specifically? Seems a bit of a waste."

"It's not as if we'd have wasted the rest of it," Sareta pointed out. "But yes, we were looking for boars for their tusks, specifically." Sareta explained why she was looking for them, telling Indirra and her fellows about Vidarna, and her goal to chart a safe path for caravans through the Deep Wilds. Vukro made a strange sound at the mention of elves, like a growl, but... almost inhumanly so.

He's a Varou! Salesca had only ever heard stories of the wolflike Varou, one of the Firstborn peoples of the Ironlands. Their glowing yellow eyes were legendary, and the large hood must be to cover the face, complete with the snout much like any dog or wolf had, the sleeves to cover the hands, which were said to resemble paws as much as normal hands, though they did have moveable thumbs, unlike actual wolves. And of course, they stood on two feet.

What is one doing so far from the Hinterlands? And in the company of an Ironlander? Varou were said to be territorial, preferring to keep to themselves and keep others - humans yes, but even more, elves and giants, or so said the legends - at arm's length. Even her Uncle Hallistar had only seen Varou from a distance.

Salesca looked to Sareta, but the wayfinder showed no reaction to the sound. She has to know, right?

"By Crodus, that's a worthy goal. Ambitious, but worthy." Indirra nodded. "It would beat needing to go the long way around from the Ragged Coast, by ship, or up through the Hinterlands. And you think the boar tusks will help?"

"Maybe not by much, but anything that lets me get a good impression with his tribe..."

"Pah! Elves are liars all," Vukro growled. "They will not honor any agreement they make with you. As soon as it suits them, any path you mark for caravans-"

"Will you shut up about how we can't trust elves, Vukro!" One of the other three of Indirra's companions complained. "We get it, you hate elves. Gods, you hate pretty much everyone but Indirra, now that I think of it."

"Foolish," Vukro turned, walking away, back to the camp. "I will fetch the skull of the male boar. It's tusks are the most magnificent. That is, if you are set on aiding your friend in her folly."

"I'm afraid I am, Vukro," Indirra chuckled. "But no need to fetch. Come on up to the camp with us. Share a meal, if you like, we can catch up and you can have your tusks."

"Just like that?" Salesca's eyes narrowed. This seemed far too easy.

"Why not? I get to help you," she looked to Sareta, "And, if it works, maybe I can get first pass of a caravan through your new path."

"If this works, gladly," Sareta agreed, laughing. "By the way, you don't have to keep your hood up, Vukro, I knew you were a Varou from the start and Salesca figured it out when you were growling about elves."

"And yet you do not scream and run. You are uncommon Ironlanders." Vukro turned back to them, and his hands came out of his sleeves, coming up to pull down his hood, revealing his face.

Salesca didn't scream, didn't run but she did inhale sharply.

Vukro​

The stories always said that Varou looked like wolves, but - I never expected it to be so much... it didn't look identical to a wolves, there was some difference in the way the face was oriented on the head and the head itself still looked humanlike, but... Her glimpse of his hands - they were humanlike in shape, but they seemed to have something like the pads that could be found on the paws wolves, dogs, cats and other such animals.

"You're going to have to tell me the story of how you ended up travelling with Indirra." Sareta told him

"I do not," Vukro countered, turning back away from them and starting into the foliage they'd come through, walking quickly.

"Vukro really doesn't like most people. Not even sure he likes other Varou," Indirra explained. "Come on. I can fill you in on the story of how I met Vukro and convinced him to come with me while we eat." She gestured, turning away, starting after Vukro, much more slowly. She started to push a branch out of the way, then turned back halfway to point at Sareta. "And you're going to fill me in on what I missed of your life in the last three years, or at least as much as you can in an afternoon."

"Not sure how much I can summarize, but I'll try," Sareta agreed. She followed after Indirra, the three other, still unnamed compatriots of the trader and her varou companion following behind Sareta, and Salesca took up the rear.

Does it really count as me helping her if Indirra gives her the tusks? Perhaps it didn't, she considered as she slung her bow over her back again. But Sareta wasn't the sort to refuse to help her, after agreeing, just because something unexpected, but fortunate happened.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

While most of the remainder of the meat from the boars that Indirra and her companions had slain the day before was being smoked for long-term storage and later use, there was some left, and that was supplemented by some fruit and bread - bread a least a little more edible than the twice-baked travel rations Salesca was used to seeing on the road. It wasn't great, but it did do the job of being a filling lunch, which always had it's advantages.

"...and so there Sareta and I are, the bear is on the other side of the bushes, shuffling around, looking for us, and Sareta goes and mimics the sound of a Wyvern on the hunt. I nearly scream, thinking we were about to have to deal with one of those beasts. I turn to grab Sareta and run, and there she is, screeching again. The bear hears it, and somehow - still not sure how - falls for it, loping off, and I'm left gasping when I finally let out a breath." Indirra shook her head. "You never told me you could do that!"

"It's not like you didn't know I could mimic birdcalls," Sareta shrugged, as if that made any sense at all.

"A wyvern's not a bird!" Indirra countered, nearly shouting, indignant. Though from the way Sareta grinned and giggled, it was a familiar exchange for them.

It was the latest in several stories Indirra had shared with her about her history with Sareta. Nothing truly embarrassing - Sareta apparently had her own share of stories and had threatened Indirra with sharing the details of some event, but still, they had filled in a few questions Salesca had had, about where Sareta had picked up a few of her scars, where she'd picked up some of her skills.

Though the ability to make the hunting all of a wyvern... Salesca had never done more than seen a wyvern from a great distance, and she hoped that never changed, but... how? How could Sareta do something like that?

"Perhaps not, but they're close enough when it comes to making their hunting calls." Sareta shrugged. She looked over to where two of Indirra's companions, Eder and Resaa, were busy separating the tusks from the jaw. It was a delicate process, but Resaa seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Better even than Salesca could have done, she had to admit. There was a third man, now paging through a thick tome by the edge of the camp, who had introduced himself as Kaberra before opening the tome.

"I have to agree with Indirra here, Sareta," Salesca smiled, shaking her head in wonderment. "I'm still stunned that you got those cuts on your shoulder from a cat. Not even a mountain lion, just a cat." Those had been deep gouges, and a whole lot of them.

"You didn't see the little bugger. It was vicious!" Sareta defended herself, and this time it was her raising her voice indignantly. "The teeth and the claws and - it wasn't some ordinary mouse-killer!"

"Is that why you picked it up and tried to kiss it between the ears?" Indirra teased. Sareta muttered something unintelligable, and the trader laughed, then turned, looking over at Salesca. "Sareta called you one of the best shots she'd ever seen. High praise. What do you do with it though? Are you a wayfinder, like her?"

"No." Salesca pulled her Uncle's amulet out from under her shirt, showing it to her a moment. "I'm an Ironsworn of a broader purpose, like my Uncle Hallistar." She flushed. "Or at least, that's my goal."

(Does Sareta know Hallistar? Rated Unlikely, Oracle says Yes)

"Hallistar." Indirra furrowed her brow. "Hallistar. Did he have a scar, over his right eye, kinda shaped like a fishhook?" She traced a line over her own forehead, directly above her right eye. Salesca had never actually seen a fishhook, but she could say that her Uncle's scar did have a hooklike shape to it, and the way Indirra was moving her fingers...

"You knew him?" Sareta had known Hallistar, in passing, but by the time she'd started wayfinding, he'd retired to raise her.

"Met him once. I was just starting out on trading - Sareta too. She'd gone and rushed ahead while we were heading up the Ragged Coast, all excited about finding a way up a new cliff. I stuck around in the village we'd passed by and made some of my first sales. An Ironsworn came by, delivering the head of some raider."

Salesca furrowed her brow, trying to think back to her Uncle's stories. He'd been at the Ragged Coast when her father had fallen ill, staying behind when he came home because everyone knew her father was not long for this world...

Who was that raider? The last one he hunted as an Ironsworn, rather than just protecting Taron's Hollow? Then it hit her.

"Maygar the Silent."

"Yeah... that sounds right. Had no tongue?"

"Had no tongue," Salesca nodded. She laughed, "I'm amazed you remember seeing him once, so many years ago."

"The man made an impression, and I heard a lot of other stories about him and his exploits while I stuck around. Heard a few others here and there, though who knows how they grew in the telling." Salesca nodded at Indirra's words, she'd heard some of those exaggerated stories about her Uncle's heroism, the people he'd saved, the beasts he'd fought. Hallistar had killed a Wyvern once, but it was alone, and the village he'd been defending had helped to weaken it with arrows and spears of their own before it had run off, and he'd tracked it, finding and killing it a few days later, when it was still recovering.

A mighty battle and a worthy quest, but not the singlehanded slaying of a whole pack of the winged beasts.

"Well, if you're ever looking for people in need of help, come to Greencairn. Always work for people looking to help." Indirra offered. "Use my name. I'll be happy to vouch for a friend of Sareta's."

"Thank you. I'll consider it." Salesaca nodded. At the very least, Greencairn could be the closest tradertown to the Warrens of Thyri, so depending on the nature of the lead she got on Vesna's location from the Bloody Crows...

It could be a reasonable place to stop, get supplies, gather more information...

Indirra started to tell another story, but before she could further then mentioning the name of a village - Blackwood - Sareta cut her off.

"Oh no, I think it's my turn to tell a story about you," Sareta countered. Indirra laughed, and gestured for Sareta go to on, looking down a bit as she did so, and Sareta leapt into a tale of how Indirra had managed to find herself tricked into buying four crates worth of sand. The liars that had done so had managed an incredibly convincing scheme, complete with roping an entire village into unknowingly aiding their deception, distracting Indirra with a handsome man, and spinning an entirely fictitious story about the legacy of a supposed king from the Old World, here in the Ironlands. the whole effort really was far more than they managed to get out of Indirra, but it was insane nonetheless.

By the time Sareta was winding down, after ignoring Indirria's half-serious protests for her to stop at various embarrassing points, Eder and Resaa had managed to finish their work with the boar tusks, and brought them over to Indirra, who handed them over to Sareta.

"These... these are marvellously intact," Sareta ran her thumb over one as she examined it. "Thank you."

(Action: Reach a Milestone, mark three progress on the Troublesome Vow)
(Action: Fulfull your vow. Progress move versus 6. Miss.)
(Mark Failure Track, 2 Ticks/+0.5)
(Action: Forsake Your Vow. -1 Spirit)
(Action: Endure Stress, +spirit (4). Weak Hit.)
(Action: Test Your Bond +heart(1). Miss. Burn Momentum to make it a Weak Hit)

Translating the failure of an Iron Vow that it seems like you succeeded - or failing End the Fight on a battle you seem to be winning is always finnicky, but ultimately, you need to just work with the fiction and go from there. Salesca wants to impress Sareta and prove herself, and she feels like she failed to achieve a pretty basic task - kill some boars and get their tusks for Sareta. Is she about to be a little dramatic below? Sure, but she's also eighteen.

Click to shrink...

Salesca bit her lip as she watched the two talk a bit more, feeling...

Well, like a failure. This wasn't the first Iron Vow she'd sworn - she'd sworn to bring Vesna to justice. She'd sworn others, during the last months of Talia's conflict with Wolfshadow, as she'd tried to do her part to keep the other survivors of the Hollow alive, but -

This was...

She'd sworn to help Sareta, and she'd done nothing of the sort. At best the information she'd gotten from Jaxyn had directed them here, since Sareta hadn't gotten any direct leads, but..

I failed at something so minor, and how - how can I expect to have any chance to bring Vesna to justice? Hm? Salesca knew she was being... overdramatic. That this - it hadn't even merited swearing a vow on Iron, on her uncle's amulet, but she'd -

She'd been so damn obsessed with proving herself to Sareta, and indirectly to Talia, to convincing them that she knew she was doing and -

How can I hope to be like my uncle if I swear on something so frivolous, so minor, and then - and then fail at it?!

She was mostly just staring off into space, or at the ground, as the two old friends talked, but finally, as the sun reached the midday height, Sareta stood.

"As much as I would love to stay, and linger here with you for... a long while, catch up, reminisce..." Sareta sighed. "I do have places to do, things to do." Indirra stood as well, and the two clasped hands, exchanging quiet goodbyes. "Once I finish with the elves, I'll travel to Greencairn myself, I promise. Either to meet you there, or at least leave a message."

"I'll look for you, or your message," Indirra smiled, and Salesca followed Sareta away from the camp, heading north.

Once they were a good distance from Indirra's camp, Sareta pulled up short, and turned back to her. "Okay, so... what's bothering you?" Salesca stared a moment, jolted out of her self-recrimination by Salesca's tone.

"I... I failed. I made a vow, on iron, on my uncle's amulet no less, and I failed." Salesca looked at Sareta, her throat tight, voice coming to her ears higher pitched than it should. You're being overdramatic. And yet, she couldn't stop herself, stop the crushing feeling inside her. "I failed you."

"We got the Boar tusks. So what if we weren't the ones who killed them?" Sareta rolled her eyes. Then she sighed. "I - you didn't fail at what you promised me," Sareta stepped forward, placing a hand on Salesca's shoulder, looking her in the eye, tilting her head downwards to do it. "You didn't promise to kill the boars yourself, or personally rip out their tusks, just help me to get the tusks."

"I feel like I failed." Salesca muttered.

"That..." Sareta shrugged, helplessly, her free hand splaying outward, mouth falling open wordlessly. She let out a long breath. " - I can't change how you feel, but I can assure you I don't think you failed me." Salesca knew that, but she still looked down on the ground, the weight in her gut feeling less, but... only a little. She tried to meet Sareta's gaze, and Sareta inhaled.

"If - if will help make you feel better, you can promise me something, okay." She took her hand off Salesca's shoulder, holding it up. "Not an Iron Vow, or anything like that. Just a promise from a friend, to a friend. Can you do that for me?"

"If you're going to see this as a failure, then... learn from it. From all your failures. Because you're going to fail. It happens. We all fail, it's what you do next that really decides what sort of person you are. Hallistar didn't succeed at every task he set before himself. Talia didn't. I haven't. And the gods know Indirra has a track record of failure a mile wide." She chuckled, though it was more a mere hint of humor than anything else. "All I want is for you to promise that you won't let any failure get to you. Not here, in your heart." She placed a hand over Salesca's chest for a moment, then pulled it away. "And when you do fail, when you do fall, pick yourself up and try to see if there's anything you can learn from it."

What did I learn here? Well, Salesca knew. Be more careful about her vows. Or perhaps not take her vows so seriously, in that way, in the way that she had to do it personally. Watching her vows would be easier, at least, than completely retraining her mind, but... she could try that.

"I can try." Salesca nodded. "I promise."

"Good." Sareta smiled a little, clapping one hand on her leg. "Then I think we should get moving, because - well, we're not going to get to the Warrens of Thyri by standing around here, are we?"

Salesca shook her head, feeling... not light, perhaps, but the knots and weight in her gut much reduced, her sense of... shame lessening. A little. "No, I guess not."

 

[Kylia Quilor]

(Action: Undertake a Journey. Destination: The Warrens of Thyri, in the Hinterlands. Formidable Journey. Downgraded to Dangerous thanks to Sareta's aid. Add +wits (2). Weak hit. Mark 2 Progress. -1 supply. Reach a Milestone. 2/10)

In Ironsworn, a 'Journey' is made up of multiple stops as you make each roll. A milestone offers opportunities and dangers based on what you find when you roll the Oracle Dice or work with your existing narrative. You can choose to engage with a milestone or not (unless it's actively dangerous in which you may need to resolve that first) before resuming your Journey.

Click to shrink...

Travelling across the Havens was often a fairly simple task, if you stuck generally to the trade roads, and for this part of the journey, it was easy enough. Travel was never safe, even in the Havens, even, or perhaps especially, in the wake of 'The Lightstep's War', but it was safer on the trade roads. Enough regular travelers, villages often near the roads, making for easy chances to resupply, usually, rest.

Even raiders generally were careful about the trade roads, to avoid killing the chicken that laid the black iron eggs.

As Salesca and Sareta journeyed along the well worn, well marked dirt road, however, they found that there were surprisingly few fellow travelers along the road from which to barter a bit of food from, to supplement their own supplies, and even the village they passed on the second day seemed more interested in seeing them on their way, hoarding supplies for the coming winter. Which Salesca could understand.

With hunting along the trade roads usually limited to small game, as the larger animals tended to avoid so many people, Salesca and Sareta were forced to dig into their own supplies more, but they were in no danger of starving.

It was midday on the third day of travel when they saw it, in the distance. A caravan, smoke rising in small trails from it, no great columns visible from vast distances. The breeze blew lightly towards them, and the acrid smell of burning flesh, or at least, the faintest hint of it, carried on that breeze. Salesca drew her bow from across her back, and Sareta readied her spear. As they drew closer, they got a better look at the caravan, or rather what was left of it.

Three wagons, each pulled by sturdy draft horses. A common setup for a caravan, safety in numbers, often a hired guard or two, even an Ironsworn, at times. But these wagons had all been turned over onto their sides, and there were at least four dead horses that Salesca could see, some charred, some hit by spears or axes, some with arrows embedded into them. The burning flesh stench was stronger, and Salesca wrinkled her nose, blinking her eyes against smoke suddenly blowing into her face as the breeze picked up for a moment.

Raiders. They may have grown weaker in the Havens, after Talia and Irena scooped up as many raiders as they could find and threw them at each other, but they weren't gone. Salesca's grip tightened on her bow, and she advanced slowly, carefully, crouching into the taller grass around the road, creeping closer. Where were the caravanners themselves? She didn't see any -

She drew closer, angling to get a better view past the first caravan. On the other side of the road, in the grass there, Sareta too was crouching, though her taller and sturdier frame meant she was having a harder time of hiding, and Salesca could see her easily, without even trying. She was remaining quiet though. She's better than Talia was, when she first came to the Hollow, at least...

The momentary nostalgic flash, to when she first met Talia brought a smile to her face - and then, as she managed to see past the overturned first wagon, and the bodies of the horses that had pulled it, the question of what happened the caravanners was answered.

(Action. Face Danger, +iron(1) to resist throwing up. Weak Hit. -1 Momentum)

Arms. Legs. Torsos. Hands. Feet. All severed, bodies cut apart, piece by piece, sliced with surgical presicion, or so it seemed, and piled and scattered around at the center of the caravan. The heads were all piled up together, or what had been heads - now they were a charred mass of half-melted flesh and blackened skulls, the smell of death, burnt flesh, and blood strongest here, mixing, assaulting her nose.

The acidic, hot taste of bile hit her tongue and Salesca doubled over, covering her mouth, cheeks expanding, body, gagging, preparing for the worst. A shuddering breath, a moment.

Another moment.

Nothing.

The taste of the bile at the back of her tongue, the feeling of it's burn in her throat lingered, but as Salesca straightened up, she seemed to have gotten past the worst of it...

Inhaling a half-strangled breath, trying not to breathe through her nose, Salesca approached closer. There seemed to be no sign of light around the caravan, and so she straightened up, shading her eyes, watching Sareta do much the same.

"What... what happened here?" Salesca had seen the work of raiders. They killed. They even made examples of those they killed sometimes, but this... this was not... "Raiders do not... I have never heard of Raiders doing something like this."

"Nor have I," Sareta too looked like she'd barely kept her stomach down, covering her nose with one hand, to try to hold back the stench, which only grew worse as they came closer to the bodies.

It was impossible to say for sure how many heads were in the pile, not without touching it, moving some to see if there were more beneath others, but it seemed at least ten. She didn't even bother to count the torsos, or legs scattered around... Salesca stepped over an arm, cast aside carelessly onto the blood-soaked, nearly muddy earth. She swallowed, trying to force back any hint of bile. This was...

"We need to know what happened, who did this," Salesca declared. "This - this is -" she had no words. It was unholy, unnatural, unacceptable. By the names of Crodus and Jasseira and Kolbaeri -

Salesca's hands twitched towards her amulet, but she held herself back, though not enough to stop Sareta from noticing.

"Salesca, I agree with you that this - we must know what kind of evil would do this..." she gestured at it, lost for words. "But you - this is not the time for a vow."

"I know. I know." Not when they had so little information. Iron Vows were sacred, for a reason. There was every chance that whoever had done this was gone, and no trail. That it would be beyond her to try.

Uncle Hallistar would have taken care, learned what he could, understood the full scope of what he faced...

(Action: Gather Information +wits(2) Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

Salesca found a walking stick, blood on one end of it, perhaps used by one of the caravanners to defend themselves. Holding the clean end, she used it to try to search through the debries of the caravan, turning over loose body parts, lifting a fallen horse's legs just a little... the longer she stood here, amongst the wreckage, the smell of the blood and burned flesh was getting more and more powerful, but she held back her stomach, refusing to let whoever had done this beat her like that...

She couldn't tell if all of the bodies were the innocents who had fallen here, or if any of the attackers had fallen and been butchered with the rest. There were no weapons more sophisticated than spears left, but the attackers could have taken them with them... but did they take the bodies of their own? Or did none of their own die?

Moving slowly as she went, she reached the third cart, which had been covered over with cloth, perhaps used by some of the members of the caravan as a place to rest at night - like the others, it was on it's side, and the cloth had collapsed in on itself. But there was a lump there, under the cloth... and it seemed to be moving, just a little... Salesca gestured to Sareta and together, they grabbed at the cloth, ripping part of it away.

There was someone beneath. A man, wearing furs over quilted armor, both stained rust red with dried blood in the chest and on his left side. He was breathing, but shallow. A broken shield was strapped to one arm, she could see the hint of some red crest upon it, but she couldn't tell what, from this angle... the arm itself hung loosely as he lay there. Broken? His other arm was curled tight around a small wooden box, locked.

"Who... who are you," the man demanded, or tried to. His voice was weak, and he seemed as though he could barely muster the energy to speak the words, but still, the hostility was there.

"I think the better question is who are you, and how are you still alive?" Salesca demanded. "When all the others here died and were butchered, like sheep, why do you live, still intact?" She moved closer, using the stick to carefully - prod at his shield, pull the edge up -

The man cried out in pain, his arm definitely broken, but she stopped paying attention to that when she saw the sigil, or the better part of it, on his shield. A red bird, arcing upwards, a crude heart in it's talons. The beak and head, the front talon, were missing, but the rest was clear.

"Bloody Crow!" Salesca stepped back, pulling an arrow from her bow, notching it, Sareta readying her spear. "What are your ilk doing here, in the Havens, so far from your den?!" The Crows had fled the Havens, what - why were any of them here? "What happened to these people!?" Some raiders could be trusted to protect caravans. If this caravan had been foolish enough to hire any Crows...

"...why should I tell you? You'll kill me anyway!" The raider got some heat behind his words, letting go of the box, propping himself up on his good elbow, just a little, biting his lip bloody, hisses escaping through his teeth.

"Will I?" Salesca had no intention of letting one of the Bloody Crows live. Even if this one hadn't taken part in the burning of the Hollow - and she had no way of knowing - he clearly had taken part in what happened here, if he was so sure they'd just kill him.

But then, he doesn't have to know that...

Salesca crouched by him, drawing her dagger, but not threatening him with it. The raider looked at her, meeting her eye, managing a bit of defiance, spitting blood at her feet. She ignored it, looking at his wounds. They were bad, but how bad?

(Action: Secure an Advantage, +wits(2) Miss.)

It was hard to say, the armor and furs obscuring the worst of the injuries... and his arm seemed broken, but he was still alive, and had been here for hours, at least, so... there was every chance he could live. Talia had survived worse.

Vesna survived worse.

"I want to know what happened to this caravan, why you were involved in it, and everything you know about Vesna!" Salesca demanded. She swallowed, affecting a show of hating what she was about to say - more than she did, anyway.

"If you tell me what I want to know, I'll patch you up, herbs and bandages for your wounds, even help you splint your arm, and let you on your way. You are not my problem." she heard Sareta inhale in surprise behind her, Salesca held up a hand, hoping Sareta didn't blow the lie, that the raider felt like her surprise made it more believable.

(Action: Compel + Shadow (2). Weak Hit.)

"Vesna?" The raider scoffed, wetly, blood coming up with the cough, thick, dark, some landing on Salesca's boot. "She's not one of us."

"Not anymore, no, but she was with you when you fled north after burning Taron's Hollow." Sareta wanted to press her dagger to his neck and demand answers, or else he'd die now, but -

"Herbs and bandages first. I talk, then you splint my arm," the raider countered, coughing. "I keep like this, I'm not long for this world anyway."

It's not as if I'm going to let him go... Salesca bit her tongue a moment, hesitating, then...

"Fine." She reached for a pouch at her belt, dried herbs that could help accelerate healing, prevent infection. He had two wounds of real note, on his side, and in his chest. the chest wound was shallow, at least, even if it looked bloodier... but the wound on his side was deep... even if she could bind his wounds, accelerate the healing process, there was no guarantee he'd live long, even if she let him leave. He wasn't likely bleeding inside, or he'd be dead by now. But his state seemed grim.

Of course, he knew that too.

"Bandages?' She looked to Sareta, pleading for the other woman to play along. Hesitating only a moment, Sareta crouched, dropping her pack to the ground and digging through it for strips of cloth, boiled and dried, as clean as they could be.

"Stay still while I work on your side," she ordered.

(Action: Heal +wits (2) Strong Hit.)

Fortunately, it didn't require a lot of the herbs or cloth to bandage his wounds up, in the end, which was good, because this man was going to die shortly.

"So. Talk." Salesca demanded, raising an eyebrow. "What is a Bloody Crow doing all the way down here, in the Havens? What happened here? Even for raiders-"

"The slicing people up wasn't me! Wasn't us! It was them! The freaky people." He raised his good hand and gestured near his head, "They weren't right in the head. But Black Maevis said to go with 'em, help 'em out, so we did." He shuddered. "They came to us, Maevis knew 'em. Talked to 'em. Sent me and some others, told us to help them hit a caravan, do what they said, and come back." He shook his head.

"I didn't join up for cults and black magic. Maevis is creepy enough!" The raider protested.

"Who are these people? This... cult?" Salesca knew Black Maevis. The witch had been right at the front, at the burning, conjuring fires and hurling them at homes, fleeing people... Salesca had tried to shoot her with an arrow, but she'd been younger, less capable then. Uncle Hallistar had nearly felled her, before...

Going up against people with magic wasn't easy, but-

"They call themselves the Children of the Tainted Scholar." The raider delivered the title with as much scorn as he could pack into his voice, given things. "Freaks in robes, with long knives. We hit the caravan, started plundering- they started getting all the bodies together, cut them up, then the alive ones, that surrendered, ones that would make for good slaves, or-" He cut himself off. "Cutting people's arms and legs off while they're alive? It's - what's even the point?" He grimaced. "Then they burnt all the heads. Did some chant, ritual. Magic... thing."

Mad cults. Uncle Hallistar had spoken of facing one, and you always heard stories of them - human sacrifices, strange rituals, black magics, summoning demons - not that anyone agreed on what a 'demon' was, of course, just that they were bad, nasty, evil, monstrous.

Her uncle had claimed the one he faced was flash and smoke, one mystic and a bunch of fanatical fools. But fanatics were ready to die.

That insane cultists prepared to do... this would work with raiders didn't surprise her... and as for Black Maevis...

Well, I'll keep my eyes and ears open when I get to the Warrens... perhaps see if Maevis feels talkative with my dagger to her throat.

"What was the ritual supposed to do?" Sareta asked from her position standing over them both, now pointing her spear at the raider's face.

"How the fuck would I know, cunt?" The raider demanded, lifting his arm and trying to knock Sareta's spear away. "Don't point your spear-"

Salesca held her dagger at his throat. "Don't test me, or your luck, Crow. Watch. Your. Tongue." The raider closed his mouth, then swallowed, and nodded. Salesca withdrew her dagger. "Where are these cultists now?" Salesca burned to ask about Vesna, but there were other things going on.

"They've got a camp, to the west. Heard one of 'em say something about some... place, underground, close by. Dunno where." Salesca searched his eyes, looking for any sign of deceit. Raiders were selfish cowards as a rule, yes, and she'd promised to splint this one's arm, or so he thought, but...

"You're not lying."

"Kill 'em, please. Who do you think did this to me? The caravanners?" He snorted, then coughed, his whole body shaking as he hacked repeatedly for several long moments, spittle flying from his mouth and connecting with Salesca's knee. Salesca grimaced and wiped it from her breeches. "I tried to walk. Call me raider scum, fine, I got no problem with what I do, but that..." he gestured towards the pile of burned heads. "My ma always told me to have no truck with that sorta magic. The others... didn't like that."

"So you fought. You lost, and let me guess, you played dead, then crawled into the collapsed wagon, in case anyone else came along?" Salesca raised an eyebrow.

"...just about, yeah. Wanted to keep this. My loot." He grabbed the locked box again, curling his arm around it once more, challenge in his eyes, defiant, daring her to object.

"I don't care about a box. Last question: What do you know about Vesna?"

"...splint first."

"I told you not to test your luck, raider." Salesca started to move her dagger to his neck again, but words spilled form his mouth too quickly.

"Alright! Alright! I - I'll tell you..." He breathed heavily, chest rising and falling fast, fast enough to make him wince, as she pulled the dagger back again. "I don't know where she is. Regol and Maevis - they'd know more. But I hear things. She went looking for something... anything, that would let her beat the Lightstep. Bitch just can't fucking stop. I heard she said something about checking barrows and tombs for magic weapons, if it came to that."

Still, she burns this hard for revenge against Talia for the death of her cousin? One man. One man who Talia slew in defense of herself, of Taron's Hollow. Vesna's actions had killed dozens of people Salesca had known all her life, killed her uncle, driven her and her people from their home...

"Magic weapons in barrows is a story they tell children." Salesca scoffed.

"Tell Vesna that. She nearly killed Regol over him saying that." The raider countered. "She's crazier than you... not as crazy as the fucking cultists, but..." he shook his head, lips drawn thin. "Crazy."

Salesca considered this information. It made sense, and she didn't get the feeling the man was lying. Vesna had failed to kill Talia as many times as Talia had failed to kill her. And even if they were children's stories... if one got desperate enough, driven so much by revenge...

The leaders of the Bloody Crows, Regol the Red, and Black Maevis, they'd know more. Or someone in the Warrens will. But I do know something. If nothing else, I can check every barrow in the Ironlands... Vesna was still driven by her need to kill Talia. She was so focused on that, perhaps Salesca could be entirely unnoticed, until it was too late...

(Action: Reach A Milestone on Vow "Avenge the Destruction of Taron's Hollow by Vesna". 1 Box Filled)

"Very good. You've held up your end of the bargain." Salesca nodded.

"Then let's get to splinting my arm, I want to get the fuck away from here. Can't go back to the Warrens." The Raider went on, grumbling about his woes, as if the fact that it would be a little harder for him to loot and pillage as he saw fit was something that Salesca cared about.

"Unfortunately," Salesca lunged forward, pining his good arm to the ground, hand pressing just above his wrist, her dagger moving back to his throat. "I don't make deals with murdering, raping scum like you." The raider's eyes widened as she moved her blade to just the right spot on his neck, and stabbed, a gurgling, choked cry escaping for half a moment as he legs kicked at her, hitting her side, her own leg - Salesca winced, but she pulled the blade back and cut a line across the raider's neck, to make the blood even faster, to make sure he died.

She would make no Vesna of her own.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

"You want to go find these cultists." Sareta asked, and Salesca nodded.

"I do. Not only are they a link to the Bloody Crows but..." she looked back at the pile of half-melted heads. "I refuse to not do something about them. And we have a lead."

"The camp, and the underground place nearby. It's not much of a lead."

"No, perhaps not, but if the camp is close by, to the west, then we should be able to find and follow a trail."

"We need to be careful, but yes, we should be able to." Sareta agreed, tightening her grip on her spear. She looked down to the raider, now dead, blood staining his armor even more, and it had pooled down down on the ground by the left side of his neck and head.

"Go ahead. Say it. I went too far." Salesca was expecting the lecture. Sareta had no more love of Raiders than she did but-

"No, you did the best thing. The man would have been a raider again, once he recovered use of his arm." Sareta shrugged, and Salesca blinked. Then stared. Then blinked again. Sareta laughed, grimly, then let out a breath, trailing her tongue along her lower lip for a moment. "If he'd shown the slightest hint of being repentant, I would have wanted him to have that chance, but this one... no." she shook her head. " Killing him was the right move."

"I - Thank you." Salesca felt her cheeks burn a little, appreciating the approval from Salesca.

"Should we take that box?" Sareta asked, gesturing to it, sitting in the pool of blood. "...the caravanners are dead, and it doesn't have any seal. There's no way to know who it might belong to..."

"If we leave it here, someone else will take it." Salesca agreed. "But it's a bit bulky to carry. We should open it. We could probably pry it open with sone of the spearheads from some of these broken spears, or maybe a sharp arrowhead..." Salesca and Sareta went and found a few of them, picking ones that still had an edge. Without a key - and without any tools for or experience with picking the lock, crude and clumsy though it was, forcing the box open was the best option.

(Action: Resupply. +wits (2) Strong Hit. +2 Supply.)

Crude though the lock was, it held on - it was the box that broke, the wood snapping under the pressure leveraged against it as they slipped spear and arrowheads in to the gap between base and lid and pushed...

The inside of the box was valuable indeed. Coins, mostly copper and little circular bits of mostly useless scrap iron, but even a few silver coins. Against the value of the wagons in the caravan, the horses, and all the supplies they carried, perhaps not that much, but this many coins...

Well, next time they found a village, keeping themselves in food would be simpler, for a time, at the very least.

It was a quick matter of dividing the coins, and then searched around the Caravan's wreckage, searching for a trail, any clue as to where these cultists were camping.

(Action: Gather Information +wits (2) Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

"Here!" Sareta called over, and Salesca approached. She crouched next to the wayfinder, and followed her gaze. The footprints weren't especially clear, and it was impossible to say how many had gone this way. How many were at the camp.

"It might be dark, by the time we find them." Salesca hoped it was. "We can use that."

"A night attack is a double-edged blade," Sareta cautioned. "But since it's likely they outnumber us..." she nodded. "It's the best option."

Salesca paused a moment, ready to set out on the trail, but... there was something she needed to do. Her memory of her failure - even if it really wasn't failure - burned in her mind, but this... this was not frivolous. This had to be done. She reached under her shirt and gripped her hand on her uncle's amulet.

She murmured the vow, though she knew Sareta would hear it. "I swear on Iron that I will find justice for those slain and butchered in this attack." She had to find Vesna, but this... this had to come first.

(Action: Swear an Iron Vow +heart (1) Strong Hit. +2 Momentum)
(Dangerous Vow Created: "Find Justice For The Caravanners Slain By The Children of the Tainted Scholar")

Following the trail proved to be difficult, but far from impossible. A few times they nearly lost it, before an errant footprint, or a few drops of blood, or dropped bit of food picked up the trail again. Stopping to check around every time they nearly lost the trail did waste time, and it was indeed the sun was nearly done setting by the time the reached a small hill, smoke trailing up from a camp fire on the far slope of it. Carefully, Salesca and Sareta creeped closer, up the hill.

(Action: Secure an Advantage + Shadow (2) Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

They reached the top of the hill, using the cover of some low bushes to conceal themselves as they saw the camp. It was a low-burning campfire, just enough to cast light on the surroundings. It wasn't much of a camp, the slope of the hill flattening out a bit on the way down, a rocky outcropping serving as a place for a the fire, a few bedrolls set up.

"I just want to get this done with. Maevis is going to hear about what happened. Regol too." A man grumbled, loudly. A member of the Bloody Crows, presumably. There was another like him, furs over quilted armor, a woman. The other two though... they wore hooded cloaks, large, covering their entire bodies, save for hands that she could see poking out from underneath. She couldn't see the long knives but they were probably under the robes.

"Feel free to tell them," One of the cultists replied with a cool, smooth, almost slimy voice that made Salesca shudder. "Our agreement with Maevis was that you obeyed us as you would her, until your task is done. Your fellow refused to do so. Would Maevis have let that stand?"

Child of the Tainted Scholar​

"Of course not, you idiot. But she's a Crow. You're not. She gets to do that."

"You helped. Go to sleep. We have a long day ahead of us, before your task is finished." The cultist gestured to the other cultist. "You as well. I'll take first watch."

Salesca turned to Sareta, gesturing. They should wait, until the the other three had fallen asleep. She mimed shooting her bow at him. If she aimed it right, took her time lining her shot up... she might just be able to kill that one in one shot, or perhaps two, one right after another...

Sareta nodded, and Salesca laid prone, rather than stay crouched the entire time. After some more conversation - too quiet now, for Salesca to hear - the two raiders and the other cultist settled down into their bedrolls. And then more time, waiting, to be sure they were asleep.

The moon was well up into the sky by the time Salesca felt confident the others were asleep enough. Slowly, she moved into a crouch, drawing a bow, and stringing and arrow.

(Action: Enter the Fray +Shadow. Weak Hit. Salesca Has the initiative)
(1 Enemy - Troublesome Zealot)

In Ironsworn, the key feature of combat is 'The Initiative'. Having the Initiative means you can use Strike as opposed to Clash as the mechanism by which you attack your enemy - Strike is more powerful and safer - and it means you can use End The Fight (A Progress Move) when you feel it's appropriate. When you Enter the Fray, you have Initiative on a strong hit and +2 Momentum. On a Weak hit, you pick either +2 Momentum or Initiative. You Lose the Initiative whenever you roll a Miss or a Weak Hit after that. If you lose it, you can regain it with any strong hit.

Narratively, the initiative is about who is dictating the course of the fight - who is on the offensive, who is pressing the advantage, who is just barely holding back attacks, et cetera.

Click to shrink...

Inhaling slowly, Salesca lined up her shot, her Uncle's lessons, Talia's lessons, racing through her mind.

This is for the people you slaughered, you scum.

The Arrow was aimed right for where the small of his back should be, underneath those robes...

(Action: Secure An Advantage +edge +1 (4), Using Archer Talent. Strong Hit On a Match. +1 on next action. +1 Momentum)
(Action: Strike +edge +1 (4). Weak Hit. Do 2 Harm. 6/10 Progress. Lose initiative.)

'Harm' in Ironsworn is just damage. Deadly weapons such as swords, axes, spears and bows do 2 Harm. Other weapons or unarmed attacks do 1 Harm. How much damage - that is, how much progress is marked off - depends on the rating of the enemy. Against a troublesome enemy, 1 Harm = 3 Progress. Had her Strike been a Strong Hit, she'd have done +1 Harm, for 3 Harm total and 9 Progress - a perfect position to then immediately try to end the Fight.

Click to shrink...

Her arrow sailed true, connecting with the cultist's back, embedding deep. The cultist gagged with pain, a 'hurk' sound escaping him. He wasn't dead yet.

Shit shit shit shit...

The cultist doubled over a moment, groaning quietly in pain. Salesca held her breath, trying to move away from where she'd fired... the others would wake... Sareta could do her part then but -

The others didn't wake. The cultist didn't even shout, or make much noise as he stood, trying to grab at the arrow in his back. He managed to snap off part of the shaft, and turned to face her, or rather, where she'd been, as he moved quickly, but quietly through the grass, one hand producing the promised long knife from under his cloak. It glinted in the moonlight, slightly curved.

Why isn't he waking the others?

Salesca couldn't question her good fortune, not now. But she had to make sure the cultist couldn't find her. The longer that took...

She crouched, as low as she could, hiding in the tall grass, as the cultist came to where she'd fired from.

"I know you're here..." the cultist murmured quietly in that same, soft, smooth, slimy tone. Salesca swallowed, heart pounding in her chest as he turned not quite in her direction, walking slowly, knife at the ready.

(Action: Face Danger + Shadow (2) Weak Hit. -1 Momentum)

The Cultist kept on past her, but he was close now, too close... if she fired now, she might just hit him, but she also might get stabbed. Or both. She needed to get more distance from him... but she needed to stay quiet...

Salesca felt her breath catch as she crept back again, away. Just a little bit more distance... almost... almost...

(Action: Face Danger + Shadow (2) Weak Hit. -1 Momentum)
This isn't working. The cultist still wasn't finding her, but every time she moved, she had to do it slowly, so slowly he got to her. If this kept up, he would wake the others, or she would... she had to take a gamble. If she could move faster, run, draw him up the hill, towards Sareta...

(Action: Face Danger +edge (3). Strong Hit. +1 Momentum Take Initiative back.)

She rolled, back, then climbed to her feet, staying low, but running up the hill, towards the branches. If she could just get him to position himself with his back to Sareta... the grass rustled as she moved through it, catching the cultists attention, drawing his eye. He moved after her, quickly, still not running but

She stood, at the very top of the hill, above Sareta, above the cultist, drawing another arrow, readying it on her bow.

"You!" The Cultist hissed, still quiet, still not raising his voice. He moved towards her again, purposefully, slowly.

Salesca said nothing - she didn't want to make any more noise than she had to. She just let him come, taking advantage of his strange tactical choices to aim again.

(Action: Secure An Advantage +edge +1 (4), Using Archer Talent. Miss. Enemy has the Initiative.)
(Mark Failure Track, +.25)
She had her shot lined up again, almost there. Almost there...

She pulled the bow back to fire and - at the last moment, the cultist darted to the left, moving faster than she'd seen him yet, still not raising his voice to shout for his allies, but charging at her regardless, blade raised.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Salesca had to assume Sareta would be coming in from behind, or maybe she'd go for the somehow still sleeping others at the camp, but right now, Salesca needed all the distance she could get - she darted back, to the left, dropping into a roll, trying to get past the cultist, come up on the other side...

(Action: Face Danger +edge (3). Weak hit. -1 Momentum)

The cultist reached her, slashed downward with his dagger. Salesca dashed to the right, then down, back, the blade sailing past her, over head, right where she was, slicing through the air fast enough to swish audibly - but she was staying jsut one step, maybe not even that...

Salesca nearly cried out as another slice came this close to her face as she bent backwards, under the slash, the blade sailing over her nose, almost close enough to cut it off...

(Action: Face Danger +edge (3). Strong Hit. +1 Moment. Take Initiative)

But it was the opening she needed. She grabbed his arm from below, shoving it up, out of the way, making him stumble backwards - heartpounding, breathing fast, shallow, Salesca dashed past him, around his back. No time to aim now, no taking that chance. No was the time to strike. To hit him, to hurt him.

He was there, he was coming at her - she didn't need to aim, didn't bother to wait. Hand, arrow, stringing it to her bow and -

(Action: Strike +edge (3). Weak Hit, Burning Momentum to make it a strong Hit. Inflict 3 harm. Progress 10/10. Take Initiative)
A meaty thunk as the arrow connected with the cultist's chest, the force of it making him stumble - for a second, he seemed to hang there in the air, then... down, flat on his back, yelping - loudly this time. Salesca had no time to check to see if it woke the others. He still breathed, she would not give him a chance to -

(Action. End the Fight vs Progress 10. Strong Hit.)
Salesca ran the distance towards him, drawing her dagger, ready to finish him off. She dropped into another crouch by his prone form.

"...you are nothing against her." The cultist gasped out, blood at his lips, spilling out of his mouth, his words gurgled, and broken.

"Why didn't you raise the alarm! Where are the rest of your cult!?" Salesca hissed, pressing the blade to his neck, though there was no point. He was going to die in moments.

"...she needed to see you, see how you fight," The cultist got out, a bloody grin forming on his face. "She sees all through our eyes, and she is pleased with your performance."

The mad ramblings of a fanatic. Salesca dismissed.

"Where is your underground-" She didn't get to finish her question before the cultist coughed, blood spraying onto her face as his body jolted, shook, and then stilled. He was still alive, but only for a few more moments...

A few seconds too many. Salesca drove her dagger into his throat, like she had with the raider at the caravan. Suffer not a monster to live.

Wiping her face off with her forearm, Salesca cleaned her dagger on his robes and stood, looking back down the hill, looking for Sareta. She'd expected the other woman to come to her aid, or go down the hill now that she'd...

The latter. She could see Sareta further down, by the fire, burying her spear into one of the raiders as he slept. He gurgled as the blade pierced his chest, likely puncturing a lung, but the gurgle was apparently loud enough that the sleeping raider and cultist were finally woken - perhaps the final straw after other noise. Sareta pulled her spear from the fallen raider - it took her a second too long, perhaps, because the remaining raider was able to get nearly to her feet, moving almost impossibly quick, clearly able to go from sleep to active very quickly.

But it wasn't enough to spare her entirely from Sareta's spear, the wayfinder stabbing at the raider's side, scoring deep as she got to her feet no shield on her arm, but she did have her axe, and she swung at Sareta as Salesca watched the other cultist get up much slower, seemingly still quite groggy.

They don't know I'm here...

She took several careful steps down the hill, the light from the campfire and the stars illuminating her enemies enough for her to shoot, as long as she was careful when she aimed...

(Enemy - Dangerous Raider, downgraded to Troublesome thanks to Sareta's aid)
(Enemy- Troublesome Zealot)

(Action: Secure An Advantage +edge +1 (4), Using Archer Talent. Weak Hit. +2 Momentum. Enemy has the initiative.)

She fired her arrow, but at the last moment, the raider ducked under another strike from Sareta and the arrow sailed over her head, hitting the ground next to Sareta, which only drew the attention of both raider and cultist.

"You take care of the archer, I'll deal with this one!" The raider snarled, swinging her axe furiously at Sareta. The Cultist didn't say anything, but charged towards Salesca, or tried to, the big heavy cloak once again doing the members of this cult no favors in the mobility department. Salesca scrambled back, creating more distance as she strung another arrow to her bow and fired quickly, without taking the time to get her aim perfect. No time.

(Action: Clash +edge (3) Weak hit. 2 harm on Zealot. 6 Progress.)
(Pay the Price. -1 Momentum)

Her arrow found home in the cultists shoulder, and for a moment, it almost seemed like it would reel back, stumble, fall down the hill under the force of the impact as it thudded into flesh. Salesca lowered her bow, just a moment, ready to charge after the cultist when they fell -

But then they didn't fall, and redoubled their efforts, charging at her - that moment of delay cost her, and Salesca scrambled, faster, not up the hill, but to the side, trying to get around the cultist, onto the downslope behind it. She bit her lip as she moved, her mind running through the ways Talia had shown her she could use the same techniques in dancing to move quickly across a battlefield.

(Action: Face Danger + edge (3) Miss. -1 Health)
(+.25 on Failure track)
(Action: Endure Harm +health (4) Strong Hit, with a match. Embrace the pain +1 Momentum. Take Initiative)

But the cultist proved to be faster, or at least better at reacting, than Salesca expected. Moving quickly as she was, she lost her footing for just a moment, stumbling, and the cloaked bastard caught her with one hand, driving his blade towards her neck - Salesca twisted, barely avoiding the dagger hitting her throat, and instead the curved blade scraped across her shoulder instead. Salesca bit her lip, supressing a hiss of pain, tasting blood. The cultist brought his blade around for another attempt, but his other arm was still on her, and she grabbed his arm, twisting, pushing back, letting go, watching him stumble backwards, giving her just a little room to maneuver.

Grabbing another arrow from her quiver, Sareta fired as the cultist struggled to regain his footing.

(Action: Strike +edge(3) Weak Hit. Inflict 2 harm. 10 Progress.)

Her arrow found home again, hitting the cultist in the leg. He was exposed, open for another strike, but she didn't want him dead, she needed this one alive. It was possible there'd be some other clue that would allow her to find that lead she needed on where this 'underground' lair for the cultists was but she couldn't gamble on it.

Darting towards the Cultist, Salesca moved quickly, trying to get under his guard so she could get close, knock him to the ground, knock him out, make him surrender. She moved close, bracing her legs, watching him, unable to get a good look at his eyes under the hood. She needed to move when he moved. His own movements were sluggish as labored, pained breathing could be heard from him, but he was apparently unwilling to stop fighting.

He lunged, swinging desperately with the blade as Salesca lunged back, slightly off center, aiming for his lower torso, his legs-

(Action: Face Danger +edge (3) Strong Hit. +2 Momentum)
(Action: End the Fight vs Progress 10. Strong Hit.)

Hitting with more force thanks to the slight toward trajectory, she his the cultists legs, knocking him over - his dagger flies from his hands as they both tumble down the hill - Salesca hisses again as they come to a stop a few moments later, her back and injured shoulder feeling the bruises of the fall, but the cultist was still pinned beneath her.

Breathing heavily, gasping for air, the cultist was too dazed from the impact and likely from blood loss - her arrows had caused his robes to stain with blood, though it was hard to see it as anything but a darker patch against the black cloth and the dim lighting. Pulling out her dagger again, Salesca ripped away the hood, revealing a clean-shaven, young face - maybe her age, perhaps even a bit younger. He had a pointed chin, sharp cheekbones - someone might even call him handsome, though she was the wrong woman to ask about that.

"Back to sleep," Salesca told him, thwacking him on the head with the hilt of her dagger, watching with satisfaction as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

(Ask the Oracle: Did Sareta finish off the second raider in the intervening time? Chance: Likely. Yes)

 

[Kylia Quilor]

(Reach a Milestone, Mark Progress on Vow "Find Justice For The Caravanners Slain By The Children of the Tainted Scholar", 2/10)

As Salesca looked up from her victory, she saw that the other fight was done - Sareta had finished off her foe, that final raider dead, impaled on her spear, the wayfinder pulling the weapon out her fallen body. She stood, breathing heavily, the rush of combat slowly fading from her.

"Are you alright?" She asked, moving towards Sareta.
(Action: Ask the Oracle Is Sareta injured? Chance: 50-50. No)

"I'm fine. Never managed to score a hit on me. Probably too groggy and thrown off by surprise." Sareta looked towards her, then her eyes widened as she saw the dark spot on Salesca's shoulder. "But you - you're hit."

"A minor scratch," Salesca waved her hand, grimacing a little as she moved her shoulder just wrong. "Okay, maybe not just a minor scratch, but I've had worse. I took this cultist alive," She gestured to the the one she'd just knocked out. "Somehow, I don't think fanatics can be so easily made to talk, but it's worth a try. If we're lucky, one of them has... a map, or something. Maybe a note. There's an underground lair somewhere nearby, assuming they told the raider back at the caravan the truth."

"That is an assumption. Would you tell a raider where your lair was?" Sareta countered, raising an eyebrow.

Salesca considered, "I think I would, if I wanted to make sure he knew I had friends nearby. But I suppose we'll find out. You check their gear, and search this one here, I'll go and check the one that chased me up the hill, then come back and help you."

Sareta nodded, "Right. But then I'm helping you with that wound, Salesca." Salesca opened her mouth to protest. They didn't have time. If they could find a lead, they needed to push on. But once more, Sareta was glaring at her, brooking no argument. And if they didn't find anything, or at least not anything simple...

"...fine," Salesca allowed, inhaling slowly, closing her eyes.

You have to be patient. Justice will come for these sick bastards. Their 'Tainted Scholar' won't save them, that's for sure.

(Action: Gather Information +wits (2) Weak Hit +1 Momentum)

A quick jog back up the hill, and Salesca was pulling back the hood of the first cultist. It was an older man, greying hair anda full beard and moustache. Rugged, craggy looking face, the man had seen many winters, clearly. She crouched by his body, searching him. The exterior of the his cloak had no pockets, but as she ripped it open, she found, sewn in on the inside, almost hidden, a small folded piece of parchment within. She hoped it was what she was looking for...

Salesca held it in her hands, standing up slowly. She looked up at the moon and stars, then back down to the parchment, before moving back down to the camp and searching the other cultist. Best get that done first. Sareta was checking though the bedrolls and assorted packs of the others.

"Found something," Sareta called out, holding up a small scroll. Salesca had just finished up her search of the second cultist, and found nothing, so she approached Sareta, holding up the parchment.

"I found this. Let's see what we have." They opened their respective finds, unfolding or unrolling the parchment as appropriate. Salesca felt her heard beating in her chest - there was no reason to feel this anxious about it, but she needed to know if she was able to fulfill the vow she'd made, on iron, to punish the ones behind this...

Den of Bloodstained Prophecy. That's a rather grandiose name for whatever useless little lair they've set up for themselves. It was probably just a cave or some lost basement in a small ruin.

"Seems they weren't being very honest with their allies." Salesca suggested, holding out her note. "It makes me wonder why Black Maevis agreed to this. Three seasoned raiders isn't nothing, so why did she just agree to surrender them?"

"I don't know. They must have offered her something valuable, or threatened something worse, I suppose," Sareta considered. "But what do they mean by 'false mists'? And piercing them with your will?"

"Some sort of magical protection... apparently one that can be parted with a blood sacrifice." So the cult really did have some sort of mystic leading it. Someone with real power. A witch, or perhaps a shaman. Salesca set her lips in a line, thinking. It didn't change anything. A shaman, a witch, whatever sort of user of magic they had leading them, she would kill them and make sure they could hurt no one else, could butcher no one else. Justice. "But it doesn't need it. Perhaps we'll have a better idea when we get there," Salesca certainly hoped so. "What was on your scoll? A map?"

"Nothing quite so useful." Sareta showed her the scroll. "It says that when they get back from the Warrens with their raiders in tow, to meet Vidar at the spring half a mile east from the Den of Bloodstained Prophecy. They really feel the need to use the full name, apparently."

"They seem to have a love of the grandiose and ostentatious, in addition to the monstrous. The robes weren't exactly very helpful to them in a fight." Salesca pointed out. "So if we find the spring, then we travel half a mile west, and we'll be there."

Sareta nodded, lowering the scroll, rolling it back up and slipping it into her belt. "But that doesn't help us fine the spring itself. Do you think your prisoner would be willing to help us?"

"We can certainly try. Somehow I don't think lying that we'll let him go will work, so it's either appealing to his better nature, or threats." Salesca scoffed. "And threats it is." She ran her eyes over Sareta's muscular form. "You'd make a better look for threatening, you know. You look like you could snap someone like a twig." And under other circumstances, she probably be wanting that someone to be her. But her fondness for Sareta's strength was a distinctly tertiary concern right now.

Sareta shook her head, "I might look stronger. Be stronger. But I don't have the same viciousness as you." She let out a breath. "It's not as if we're actually going to torture this one to make him talk." She gestured to the unconcious cultist with her spear. "I can't lie worth a damn either. You, on the other hand, aren't bad at it, and... well, the whole reason I was so worried - am worried, even with your promise, I can't help myself from worrying - about you letting revenge drive you too much, consume you... is because you're a very angry woman."

Salesca inhaled sharply, biting her lower lip, feeling her nostrils flare. There was no point in disagreeing with her. Though at least Sareta was acknowledging her promise, that she was just worrying because she cared...

"But in this case, that anger serves us." Sareta finished. "I don't like what these cultists did, I want to see them brought to an end, but... you hate them. I... don't think I've hated in a very long time." Sareta shook her head, voice level, careful, cautious.

"...you should try it again sometime. It's cathartic," Salesca finally said after a long moment. "If nothing else, it provides a convenient target to blame everything that goes wrong on. It's all Vesna's fault, after all." Salesca inhaled. "Fine. Though anger or not, I don't really... I mean... look at me. Would you be scared of this?" She gestured to her slight, short form. She wouldn't call herself sticklike, but she was at best wiry, or lithe. And she showed her young age. There was nothing intimidating about her.

"If you played with that dagger of yours enough, and did that thing where you take your voice down, that sort of dark, growly tone you do?" Sareta nodded, "I would be." She held up a hand, "But! You're not intimidating anyone until I see to your shoulder. Sit by the fire. I'll fetch some deadwood for it, so I can get a better look."

Salesca nodded and sat, considering Sareta's words. It was impossible to deny that she was angry, or that she hated these cultists. And Vesna. Always Vesna. It really was all Vesna's fault. Everything that had happened in her life since the Burning of the Hollow was. But... still. Was that really enough to be intimidating? Sareta certainly thought so, and she wasn't exactly one to just tell someone what they wanted to hear, so...

As she waited for Sareta's return, she considered that note. Piercing the false mists with your will. Just... what? Wish the mists apart? Hallistar didn't have much experience with magic, beyond local village mystics, a little magic to see the future, perhaps do a little healing, communing with nature. And nothing really about how it worked. Not hat anyone really did understand how it worked. The Zaevori killed all the great mages her ancestors had once had.

If it was false mists, then... they didn't exist? Illusions? The old stories were full of the heroes of legend facing illusions, realizing they were fake. Usually it was a false monster, or a false ally. A wall that wasn't there, or a wall that was, sometimes.

But the stories were decidedly thin on details in terms of just how they actually did it, beyond just... seeing through them.

She got no closer to an actual solution by the time Sareta returned, a few branches and sticks in hand. "Here, break this one up, start feeding it to the fire," Sareta directed, handing Salesca a branch. Sareta crouched behind her and pulled apart the cut part of her armor, peeling some away from her skin. "A little more light... there," Sareta concluded. "Keep that arm still."

Salesca nodded, inhaling very slowly, trying to avoid lifting her shoulder as she heard Sareta pour some water from her waterskin onto a cloth, and dab at the cut. Salesca hissed, wincing.

"Still!" Sareta ordered again, and Saleaca frowned.

"Sorry."

Despite her best efforts, however, Salesca found herself repeatedly moving, twitching her shoulder as Sareta cleaned the wound, packed it with dried herbs, and then bandaged it.

"Well, that took twice as long as it had to, but you're good for now, so... that'll do." Sareta concluded, pulling back.

(Action: Heal +iron (1). Weak Hit. +1 health -1 Momentum)

Even though Sareta - an NPC - is healing Salesca, all the rolls and stats are Salesca's. Since Iron represents your general toughness and endurance, it can reflect how good a patient you are during things like having your wound bandaged.

Click to shrink...

"I'm sorry," Salesca muttered again. "I guess - I guess the cut was more sensitive than I thought."
"It was worse than you thought, don't pretend otherwise, Salesca." Sareta scolded. "But... it wasn't as bad as it looked when I first worried, so I guess we were both wrong. Do you want to start threatening the cultist now?"

"Let's tie him up first." Salesca stood, digging through her pack and pulling out a length of rope. With Sareta's help, she pulled the cultist up into a seated position and then tied his hands behind his back. Despite being manhandled like a doll, the cultist continued to be out of it, the hit to his head clearly harder than she'd expected.

"I hope I didn't damage his brain before he can talk," Salesca murmured. "Not that it would be a huge tragedy for the mind of a madman to rattle around in his own skull, I suppose."

"Might even do his sanity some good, honestly," Sareta suggested, grinning, They tied his legs together for good measure, then hunted up a waterskin from the supplies of the raiders and cultists, dumping the contents over his head, slapping his face at the same time.

Sputtering, the cultist woke, swearing repeatedly. "... and She will have your eyes for a necklace!" He finished spitting the words out - and then spitting onto Salesca's face in actuality.

Grimacing, Salesca wiped the the slip off her cheek. "Pathetic. I'm no more afraid of your little witch leader than I am of you, if that's the best you can do. Threats and spittle."

"She is so much more than some mere witch. She commands the ancient secrets of the Ironlands, and bends them all to her will!" The cultist snapped, eyes blazing with a fervor.

"And how will she feel about your defeat? Or the fact that you're going to tell us everything you know about how to find the 'Den of Bloodstained Prophecy'. Where is the spring you met 'Vidar' at?" She pressed his dagger to his neck. "Bear in mind," she added, dropping her voice into a low growl, lips by his ear, "That I can make sure it takes you days to die." She pressed the dagger closer, not quite drawing blood. "I'll start with your thumbs. And then I'll make you eat them."

(Action: Compel +iron (1) Miss.)
(Mark Failure Track, +.25)

"You won't have the chance to try! I'll never betray Her!" The cultist countered, and then he bit down, hard. Salesca dropped the dagger and lunged at his mouth, trying to hold his jaw apart as his body started jerking, blood spurting from his lips, holding his jaw tight, with far more force than Salesca could counter. Choking and gagging on his own blood, his tongue-

Salesca pulled back, his blood on her fingers, wiping them on the cloak, shuddering, feeling a sick heat in her throat as bile rose. She held back, again, barely.

She stood, and Sareta dropped his body, letting him jerk on the ground, gurgling and gagging as he took his time dying.

At least he's paying justice for what he did but...

Now what?

"Fanatic," Salesca murmured, closing her eyes. "I assumed he'd be ready to die for his cause, his leader, but..." she felt Sareta put a hand on her shoulder and she brought her own hand up, onto Sareta's, inhaling. "We'll just have to find the spring ourselves. Assuming we're anywhere near it, it should be..." she exhaled. "It should be doable?"

"It should be," Sareta agreed. "Even easy. If the raider at the caravan was telling the truth and so far, it seems like he might have..." she laughed, "If nothing else, we could just check for unusual mist, if there's meant to be enough to hide something."

"You've wayfound through this area before, many times. Wouldn't you know if there was some hidden..." Salesca flushed and cut herself off as she realized how stupid that sounded. "Nevermind."

Sareta nodded. "I can't recall anything like that, no. Nor specifically where a spring near here is. But... if we look carefully, methodically. We should be able to find it, and then it's just a matter of walking to this Den." She laughed, "Such a big name for what seems to be something far more pathetic."

"Isn't that the whole point of cultists? The stories of the legendary heroes fighting cults, in the Old World... they were always pathetic, but desperate for some connection to a higher power, some deeper purpose..." Salesca laughed hollowly, then sighed. "We're not going to find the spring while it's still dark." Which meant waiting until morning. Which was...

Probably for the best. The high of battle was past, and she felt... Salesca let out a long breath. "We should find a place to set camp. Take what we can from here, and then leave the bodies for the worms."

"You? Proposing we wait to kill more of these bastards?" Sareta chuckled, squeezing Salesca's shoulder. "Who are you, and what have you done with my friend?" She pulled her hand back. "But you're right."

With how dark it was, they didn't want to stumble around for too long, so it was only a short time late that they found a reasonably sized rock to set up near, using the rock as a partial windbreak to roll out their bedrolls by. They ate cold dried meat, tearing strips off with their teeth and chewing, then settled in to rest.

(Action: Make Camp +supply (5). Strong Hit. Prepare and Focus. +1 Momentum, +1 to Action if the Next Move is Undertake a Journey)

 

[Kylia Quilor]

(Action: Undertake a Journey - One Roll, +wits +1 (3) Miss. -2 Momentum)
(Mark Failure track, +.25)

Undertake a Journey can also be used to represent a single, simple trip, at which point you don't have a whole progress bar.

Click to shrink...

Unfortunately, their search for the spring took the entire day. They resolved to try a rough circle, spreading out, moving north, then coming back around after they went half a mile, splitting, coming around...

They found it, eventually, shortly before nightfall, a small spring nestled in among some rocks and trees on the downslope of another hill. There were signs of recent traffic, at least five people heading in the direction of the road, so she had to assume that this was in fact the right place.

Salesca made poor company that night, stewing in her annoyance at how long it was taking, but eventually, she was able to get some sleep. And the next day, with the sun up, they started out due east. They saw the mist well before the reached it. A field of rocks and stones, shrouded by mists, they could see the outlines of it, but nothing more. There was no recent rain, and as Sareta had said, no large body of water, no lake or sea for the mists to roll in on. It was like smoke spreading from a fire, but not smoke either.

"False mists indeed. Short of a blood sacrifice then, how do we make it through?" Sareta walked towards it. "I can't imagine it's so simple as just trying to walk through it." They could see enough out outlines of what was inside it, it really didn't seem impassable...

Salesca approached it as well and reached out, touching the fog. Or rather, her hand passing into it, a clammy, cold damp enveloping her hand. With a yelp, she pulled her hand back. She shook her head violently. "Gods, that felt weird." She tried again, slowly, knowing what to expect now, and tried to step into the mist.

A sudden vertigo as the ground seemed to move under her, the world spun and she stumbled forward...

Back out of the mist, right where she'd started. She doubled over and this time, she really did throw up, her head and body reeling from whatever magic had spun her around and back out of the mist.

(Action: Endure Stress. -1 Spirit. Roll +spirit (4) Miss. -1 Momentum)
(Mark Failure track, +.25)

She grabbed onto Sareta's arm, stabilizing herself as she emptied her stomach of the morning's meal. When she was done, she grabbed at her waterskin, fumbling with it as she pulled it open and took a quick sip, swishing the water around in her mouth, spitting it back on the ground.

"Ugh," Salesca straightened back up, drinking more water.

"I'd ask if you were okay, but-"

"I'm fine now, it... I don't - I went in, everything spun..." Salesca paused, then, "You know how when you're a kid, sometimes you'll spin so fast around you get dizzy, and then feel sick to your stomach?" Sareta nodded. "I felt like that, but worse. Hence the -" She gestured to the pile of steaming, stinking vomit. She stepped away from it, Sareta close behind her, sipping more water, spitting some out, the taste lingering in her mouth. "Gods. I'm going to be tasting that for -" she cut herself off and forced herself to take a breath.

"Well, now we know how this mist defends their lair." Sareta observed. "But how does one... will through it?"

"It's supposed to be false mist. So it's not actually there." Salesca turned to look at it. "Perhaps... perhaps we just need to pretend it doesn't exist? Or -" she blinked, the terminology confusing her. "At least - convince ourselves, that it's not there? Or convince it?" She shook her head.

"I wish Indirra was here. She might have an idea, her collections of old magic trinkets..." She sighed. She walked up to the fog, holding her hand out in front of her, but not touching it. "You're not here. You're not real." She closed her eyes, inhaling, brow furrowing in concentration... "You're not real." She said again, and as Salesca watched, the mist seemed to quiver, shake... and then...

"It's moving!" Salesca nearly shouted, the mists parting, just a little, moving away from Sareta's hand. Salesca moved up to stand next to Sareta, holding her own hand out towards the mist.

(Scene Challenge: Troublesome. Timer 0/4)

Scene Challenges are a mechanism in Ironsworn to resolve extended processes that aren't Journeys, Fights, or Vows. Things like casting magical ritual - or resisting one - or a chase, or a contest of some kind, or perhaps a debate with someone else before a council or elders or the like. A Scene Challenge uses a Progress Bar at whatever rank you feel fitting and a Timer. The Timer goes up when you roll poorly, and even if you don't feel ready to try to make a progress move - if the Time fills, you have to roll against whatever progress you've made by that point.

Click to shrink...

(Action: Secure an advantage +wits (2) Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

"You're not real." She told the mists, feeling a bit like an idiot, but... "This is a false mist. And I will see past you. I will get past you..."

(Action: Face Danger + wits(2) Weak hit. Mark Progress 3/10 Timer 1/4)

Salesa furrowed her brow, feeling sweat beading down it, despite the brisk day, focusing all her will on the mists. She could see them slowly parting, spreading apart, revealing some of the stones that had been shrouded before. They had strange arcane carvings, runes. She didn't recognize them, or understand them, but that didn't surprise her. Still... they looked like they might be recent.

I wonder... are those runes the source of it? Salesca stepped into the parted mists, Sareta close behind her. Salesca crouched by one of the revealed stones, still repeating over and over in her mind that the mists were false. She looked the runes over, reaching out to trace one.

(Action: Secure an Advantage +wits (2) Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

She couldn't help but feel like she was on the cusp of understanding something about whatever magic held these mists here, but... it elluded here, dangling just outside of reach. She stood back up, turning her gaze back to the mists.

"You're conjured by cultists, by whatever murderous bitch is behind them, your power is... the magics of the Old World are gone. This mist is not here." She spoke through gritted teeth, trying to convince herself she wasn't seeing what she was seeing, as much as 'speaking' to the mist. Was there even a difference?

(Action: Face Danger + wits(2) Miss. Timer 2/4)
(Mark Failure, +.25)

Salesca's head hurt, just a little, a dull throb behind her eyes. I never thought thinking too hard could actually hurt your brain but...

The mist was being incredibly stubborn this time, refusing to move, refusing to part, shaking, quavering, but not parting...

"You're NOT REAL!" Salesca ground out, raising her voice, holding out both hands towards the mist.

(Action: Face Danger +wits (2) Strong Hit. Mark Progress, 6/10)

This time the mist parted more before them, revealing more of the stones, the ruins of some masonry, the base of a wall, long crumbled, a few errant carved stones by them on the ground, as if fallen. More runes revealed themselves, and that hint of a revelation continued to dangle at the edge of her mind teasing her, taunting her.

"It's working!' Salesca couldn't spare the focus to jump for joy, but she almost felt like she should, a sense of satisfaction and pride flowing through her. In the distance in the mist, she could see the faint outline of more walls, more intact, slightly higher, but only a little, just hinting at more, perhaps the entrance to this... underground lair.

Their magic may be... this, but... Salesaca crouched by more revealed runes. It was a repeating pattern wasn't it? She looked back behind her, to older runes, or trying to get a good angle on them. Then back to the ones in front of her, on the crumbled ruin of a wall, barely coming up past her ankles...

(Action: Secure an Advantage +wits (2) Strong Hit.)

There was a pattern. Each set of runes seemed to be centered around this one specific symbol, a sort of upside down hook shape, the other end also curving, intersecting with itself, wrapping around.

The stories about... Croyla, when she faced the Magus of Deldarrow... his wards were centered around one repeating symbol, and... if you moved through them, one rune to the next... She couldn't remember the story exactly, but-

She stood, looking at that rune, looking ahead of her, just before the mist, another of the rune, she stepped towards that, once more reaching out towards the mists.

"There are no mists. Only magic, and magic can always be overcome by those with strong wills. Like Croyla of legend, like countless heroes who lived and died before us."

(Action: Face Danger +wits +1 (3) Strong Hit with a Match. Mark Progress, 9/10)

The mists parted more, and she could see the higher walls - they still only came up to her waist now, but they were at the heart of more crumbled masonry, large stones, some great building that had crumbled here once. Like too many buildings here in the Ironlands. There was so much history lost, villages destroyed, structures ruined... it seemed old, long ruined and abandoned... though the stonework seemed very different than the old witch's tower by the creek. The stones had strange dimensions as they had been piled on one another, rather than square or rectangle...

Up ahead, between those two waist-high walls, she could just barely make out what appeared to be an opening in the ground, stairs going down, the faintest outline of the first few stairs.

"There's the entrance!" Salesca sucked in a breath, feeling the strain of... thinking? Forcing her will on the mist? She didn't understand it, but she felt sweat on her forehead, trickling down the back of her neck... she felt like she'd jogged a good distance. But she was close, so close. She could just... she looked to Sareta, who seemed to be sagging a little, her hair sticking to her forehead, her neck, looking even sweatier than she did.

You're not real, you're not real... Salesca didn't try anything fancy. She just repeated it, over and over and over again in her mind as she drew closer, reaching the latest edge of the mist, almost but not quite touching it with her hand...

(Action: Face Danger +wits (2) Weak Hit. Mark Progress, 10/10. Timer 3/4)
(Resolve the Scene Challenge vs Progress 10. Strong Hit)

"I've heard stories of places like this. Underkeeps, they're called." Sareta murmured. "You know the stories, about how our ancestors, fleeing the Zaevori weren't the first humans here?" Salesca nodded. The Broken, debased, twisted, warped remnants of those people were said to haunt the most remote ruins. Her uncle had fought a few, once. He said they were as much pitiable as dangerous, seemingly in pain, and wanting to inflict that on others, so they didn't suffer alone.

Nobody really knew what happened to them, to make them like that. And the Elves and the Varou didn't really share many details. Or so the stories said. Most stories of that first culture spoke of them embracing dark magics, but... there really was no clear answer.

"They say that these Underkeeps are all that's left of their structures. I once met an old man who swore he once had a dream of what their Kingdom once looked like, great fortresses and towers across the Ironlands." She shook her head. "I don't know whether to believe him or not, but..." she gestured to the stairs. "Here's an Underkeep."

"I can't imagine we'd run into any Broken, now that this cult is here." Salesca considered. "And for all that this is far from the road, this is the Havens. The place has probably been picked over and cleared out by now." She set her pack down on the ground, pulling out a torch, which she handed to Sareta - in close quarters, she might not have much chance to use her bow, but it was still better to keep both hands free. She pulled out flint and steel, and as Sareta held the torch close, she struck, a few goes to get the right sparks and then -

The torch lit.

"Let us see what we can find." Sareta murmured, and Salesca nodded. "Hopefully, they weren't expecting anyone to get past their mists so easily..." She still felt like she'd run that jog, but she also felt invigorated by victory, by the knowledge that these cultists were going to get what was coming to them...

One step closer to bringing you to your end, you murderous bastards.

(Reach a Milestone, Mark Progress on Vow "Find Justice For The Caravanners Slain By The Children of the Tainted Scholar", 4/10)

 

[Kylia Quilor]

(Begin Delve: "Den of Bloodstained Prophecy" Rank: Troublesome. Hallowed Underkeep)
(Objective: Locate the Leader of the Cult)

In Ironsworn, a Delve is a dungeon crawl, though it can be in other non-dungeon sites (though D&D and related games have expended the definition of 'dungeon' pretty far). Delves are made in Sites, and all sites have a Theme, like 'Ancient' or 'Wild' and a Domain, like 'Mine' or 'Barrow'. The Theme and Domain exist to provide the flavor for dangers and discoveries you make. When you begin a Delve, you give it a Rank, and you pick your objective - that is, what are you here for? To solve a mystery, recover a specific piece of loot, et cetera. Then, you Delve the Depths with either speed (+edge), stealth (+shadow) or intuition (+wits). Mechanically, all three work the same on a Strong Hit or a Miss, but on a Weak Hit, each one has slightly different chances of variations on Find an Opportunity (find something good or useful or interesting) or Reveal a Danger (what it says on the tin). As you might expect, with stealth tends to be the safest, tends.

When you have marked enough progress in your delve, you then can make a Progress Move against whatever you've gotten to see if you can Locate Your Objective. Such as find the answer to 'what happened here' or 'oh, the hidden room where the ancient warlord buried his magic sword', et cetera.)

Click to shrink...

As they reached the base of the stairs, they opened out into a larger room, carved out of the earth, rough hewn stone, rather than the masonry they'd seen earlier. There were a few sections that had been built up, creating corners and more structure to the room, several columns had once held up the ceiling, but one of them was crumbling, and one wall, hewn out of the rock, had a half-started attempt to cut through it with pickaxes, bits of rock scattered around on the ground. There were signs of recent passage, an burnt out stub of a torch in a sconce on the wall, a few dropped items - a broken arrow, a forgotten bit of old food, long gone stale and solid. It might have been bread once, but the lack of mold on it was strange.

Old magic.

Footprints in the dust, a clear path to the hallway ahead, which only went for a bit before branching out.

"We should move, quickly. There's no guards here, so either they didn't notice us breaking through their magic, or they are thrown off by it. Either way, the faster we move, the faster we can get to the leader," Salesca advised. She kept her bow in hand, but no arrow strung as she led the way, Sareta's torch casting light from behind her as they moved through the hewn stone hallways, moving quickly, not quite running, but, still, speed, and no effort to hide their movements.

(Action: Delve the Depths with Speed, +edge (3) Miss.)
(Mark Failure. +.25)
(Reveal a Danger: Secret of the Faith is Revealed)
Unfortunately, the maze of tunnels proved to be more than she was quite prepared for, and two turns, then another into a side chamber and she wasn't sure where she was in relation to the entrance. At least not much. Fuck. She looked back to Sareta, who didn't seem all that confused or lost. Salesca cleared her throat, and then they heard it.

"...Great Mistress, Keeper of all that is Hidden and Forbidden, guard your loyal followers against the intrusion of the unworthy." There were at least three voices chanting, as their words changed into some sort of language she didn't understand, and from teh confused look on Sareta's face, she didn't either. They proceeded down the hall a bit more, one more turn up ahead and the hallway spilled out into a larger room. This one was well lit, dozens of candles hanging from some sort of metal contraption hanging from the ceiling, and torches along the walls.

These walls were not rough hewn, but build up, lined with walls, masonry stone, laid out much like the crumbling walls on the surface, but much more intact, despite their age. At the center of the room was a statue, rising up on a raised platform, an altar, a large block of white stone, but stained the color of dried blood at the center of it... and now red with fresh blood, a man laid out onto it, black robes he'd once worn torn open and splayed open, his clothes torn, baring him entirely, and his chest had been cut open, the ribs broken apart, heart ripped out, resting stop what was left of his chest.

"...take this offering from one of your most devout followers. Tainted Scholar, this freely given life, let the blood fuel you, and defend us." Someone chose to have that... Fanatics. Sick, twisted fanatics.

Kneeling before the altar was three more cultists in robes. The one speaking was a woman - the leader of the cult, the She the two cultists had talked about?

But the She could also be the statue. It was of a woman, lithe in form, nude, a feral, predatory look on her face, with long, sharp incisors. Her hands were raised above her head, her body positioned as if she was twirling, mid-dance. It certainly gave no image of 'scholar'. Were it not for that feral look on her face, that mad expression in her eyes, Salesca might even call the woman attractive, her body athletic, but a generous curve to her hips. But there really was nothing about the situation that allowed her to do more than intellectually process that.

Salesca felt bile rising in her - not in her throat, not physically, but a visceral disgust nonetheless, something deep-seated and - something about seeing the statue, the sight of the man who apparently gave himself to his... goddess? What did that statue even represent? Who was - what was the Tainted Scholar? The sudden disgust came as fast as it went, leaving her almost feeling drained, spent -

(Action: Face Danger + Heart (1) Weak hit. -1 Spirit)
(Action: Endure Stress +Spirit (3) Weak Hit.)

"Defend us from those who have sought to assault us in your holiest of sites," The woman finished, and she turned. The other two chanting cultists, also women, turned as well. Both of them had their faces covered by their hooded robes/cloaks, but the one leading the chant lowed her hood, revealing a pale, almost sickly so woman, with lips as red as blood, and hair the same shade.

"And who are you? Unbelievers, foul invaders-"

"Foul! I saw what your followers did to the people of that caravan! What you do to your own!" She gestured at the body on the altar. "You're disgusting monsters, murders and madmen!" She raised her bow, pulling an arrow from her quiver.

"Unsurprising judgements from an unbeliever, who has not been shown the glory of the vision of Her." The woman observed, lips curling into a smirk. "I am Forinia, and I lead this place in Her name. And you are?"

"Sareta, and this is Salesca. Remember them when we send you to the punishment you deserve in the hereafter." Sareta cut in. "And what is 'Her Name'? What do you serve that makes you do such things?"

"Her Name is not for the likes of you to know. Nor will it matter. You will not leave this place alive. See to them," she gestured to the two other cultists, who drew the same sort of long, curved knives that their fellows on the surface had used. She started to back away, towards a hallway leading out of the far left corner of the room.

"Oh no you don't!" Salesca snarled.

(Enter the Fray +iron (1) Strong Hit with a Match. Salesca has Initiative. +2 Momentum)

Salesca let the arrow fly from her bow, aiming at the woman.

(Strike +edge (3) Miss. Lose Initiative.)
(Mark Failure track, +.25)

Unfortunately, despite the fact that she had a clear and open shot at the woman as she ran, the arrow sailed wide, missing her, clattering against the stone. Forinia tittered, a cruel mocking sound. "What fluke allowed you to get past our wards, I wonder?" She continued away as the two remaining cultists charged, one at Sareta, one at her.

(1 Enemy - Troublesome Zealot)

Scrambling to the side, Salesca hurried to create distance between herself and the cultist - it was just like her fights on the surface, the motions the same as she darted away, jumping over low stone benches, trying to get several between herself and the cultist. She just needed -

(Action: Face Danger +edge(3). Weak Hit. -1 Momentum)

But she didn't know this terrain, didn't know where she was going, and she nearly tripped over one bench, giving the cultist time to close in - he swung, but Salesca dropped, trying to kick out, knock him back and get him away from her. She just needed space-

(Action: Face Danger +edge (3) Weak Hit. -1 Momentum)

And she kept not getting it. Fuck it! She had no choice but to make a gamble, if she could just knock him back, hit him with an arrow - the cultist slashed at her leg, darting away from her kick and Salesca barely got away, jumping back to her feet. There were so many reasons not to do it, but she pulled an arrow and strung it quickly, not bothering to aim as she fired, the cultist right in front of her -

(Action: Clash +edge (3) Strong Hit. Find an Opening. 3 Harm, Mark 9 Progress. Take Initiative)

When you Clash and get a Strong hit, you inflict your harm - 2 given that she has a bow - and then can take +1 momentum or to inflict +1 Harm.

Click to shrink...

The Arrow hit straight into the cultists stomach, embedding deep, sending her staggering back, crying out in a near-shriek of pain as she tripped over a bench behind her and fell, sprawling back, cracking her head on the stone floor.

Salesca drew another arrow, aiming quickly, and fired, watching Sareta and the other cultist fighting out of the corner of her eye, Sareta using her spear to keep the cultist at a distance, but unable to land a blow as the cultist dodged away.

She's buying time for her leader, this Forinia... that witch was planning some other magic, something she could use to defend herself and her liar. How many more of her followers would they have to go through?

(Action: End the Fight vs Progress 9. Strong Hit with a Match.)

The arrow sailed true, connecting with the cultists neck - a spurt of blood gushed out from where it grazed the main vein there, life fading from the cultist quickly, and leaving Salesca free to deal with the other cultist, who was still contriving to dodge Sareta's spear thrusts, even as she couldn't get close to the other woman...

Salesca pulled another arrow, and inhaled slowly, lining up the shot.

(1 Enemy - Troublesome Zealot)

(Action: Secure An Advantage +edge +1 (4), Using Archer Talent. Weak Hit. +2 Momentum. Lose the Initiative)

The Cultist was still moving, quickly, almost too quickly for Salesca to get a bead on him, but she managed, just barely, firing the arrow - if she could just graze him, even, give Sareta an opening to drive her spear into him -

(Action: Clash +edge (3) Weak Hit. Mark 2 Harm. 6 Progress.)

The arrow sailed across, clattering on the stone just behind the cultist, but drawing her attention just enough that Sareta was able to drive forward as the cultist turned her head, just a moment towards Salesca - the spear punched into the culists's shoulder, driving against bone, and Salesca almost imagined she could hear the sound of the iron scraping against the woman's bones - but the culist refused to be down for the count, her blade in her other hand - Sareta was too far to stab, the spear holding them apart, but with Sareta pulling her spear back -

"Sareta!" Salesca started to run towards her, but too late - the cultist flung her dagger, losing the weapon, but connecting with Sareta's arm, slicing a long line - Sareta fell back, by sheer chance hitting a bench and essentially sitting on it, the spear clattering to the ground. The cultist dove for the weapon, taking it up in her hands.

(Action: Pay the Price - A Friend, Companion or Ally is put in Harm's Way)

At various points when you Miss or suffer a Weak Hit, you may be told by the text of a given Move to Pay the Price. Paying the price can take the form of suffering Harm or Stress, or losing Momentum or Supply, but it can also have some sort of narrative consequence. That consequence does not have to be fatal - you should scale the price to the threat, generally - but in this cae, it put Sareta into a poor position. That could have meant she got more seriously injured or - if things went very badly - Sareta could have died. In this case, things did not go that poorly for our protagonist or her friend.

Click to shrink...

"Not my prefered tool, but it will do for killing you both," The cultist growled, her voice low, scratchy, as if from smoke inhalation.

"You're dead, bitch," Salesca snarled, drawing another arrow and firing it into the cultist as she pulled her spear back, Sareta scrambling away from the woman, without a weapon or a good way to block it,

(Action: Clash +edge (3) Weak hit. Mark 2 Harm. 6 Progress)

Her arrow hit the cultist again, but not before the cultist's spear nearly skewered Sareta, the other woman barely managing to pull back at the last moment, tripping over a bench and falling back as she did so-

"SARETA!" Salesca screamed and lunged, trying to get between the cultist and Sareta, between Sareta and the spear as it bore down on her again, the cultist now with one arrow in her shoulder and the other in her leg, but somehow continuing the fight-

(Action: Face Danger +edge (3) Strong Hit. +1 Momentum)

As the spear came baring down, Salesca reached it, crashing in to the shaft, knocking it away, out of the hands of the cultist, perhaps a second before it would have hit Sareta as she lay there, dazed from her fall. But now the cultist was wide open, and Salesca dropped her bow and flung herself at the cultist, snarling, trying to tackle her to the ground, punching at her head, her face, her chest, anywhere she could reach, rage burning in her own chest.

"YOU! DO! NOT! HURT! HER!"

(Action: End the Fight vs Progress 10. Strong Hit with a Match)

In this case, the second Weak Hit on Clash should have merited another pay the price, as you saw a hint above, but then ending the Fight a Strong Hit and a Match had me decide that in the end Sareta's injuries were ultimately minor, sort of canceling things out. Not every player would translate the rolls this way, but that's the way I did.

Click to shrink...

"YOU! WILL! NEVER! HURT! HER!" Salesca was shouting now, nearly screaming, punching the cultists's face, over and over again, seeing red, not noticing that she'd broken the cultist's nose, that her own fist was starting to get bloody not just from the nose, and knocking out teeth - she was bleeding lightly from several knuckles under the force of her punching, fury driving her forward to the point where she didn't notice. This bitch had hurt Sareta, almost killed her, gotten this close to giving her the sort of wound you didn't come back from -

"Salesca!" Salesca only half-registered a voice behind her, raising her fist, hammering it down, again and again and again, cursing this cultist that dared to think she could hurt - "SALESCA!" A hand grabbed onto her shoulder and Salesca half-turned, still straddling the cultist, fist raised -

And she managed to lower it, the red leaving her eyes as she saw Sareta standing behind her, looking... fine. Even the cut on her arm didn't seem so bad, up close... Salesca's breath caught, and she realized her own fist was throbbing dully in pain... she wiped the cultist's blood of the back of her hand on the robes, realized she was bleeding from her knuckles...

She let out a breath. "I... I saw her hit you and then you went down and I -" She looked at the ground, cheeks feeling hot a moment.

"I'm fine. It's barely even a scratch, see, not even bleeding anymore." Sareta showed her the arm, and Salesca had to admit it was...

"I'm still bandaging it up," Salesca said, "Scratch or not." Sareta of course, didn't protest. Of course she doesn't she's not a stubborn idiot like you. Salesca found a clean, blood-free section of the closest fallen cultist's robes and quickly cut some off, turning that into makeshift bandages, for now, wrapping the cloth around Sareta's arm, securing it with a small knot at the top.

"Thank you." Sareta nodded softly. Then she let out a breath. "Well, we know the name and face of the leader of this cult... and the patron they serve, whatever and whoever she is..." She looked up at the statue. "Under other circumstances, I'd almost say the statue is attractive." Salesca felt a bit of relief that she wasn't the only one. "It's masterful work, and absolutely not recent. This was built by the humans who lived here before."

"Then this... Tainted Scholar might have been one of them. Assuming Forinia isn't making it all up to dupe them." Salesca considered. She had to hope that it was the case, rather than suggesting that perhaps Forinia had tapped into some deep well of magic or power by her veneration. Some said that the humans who had been here before her own forebears had wielded powerful magics, well beyond even that of the elves. "But either way, we have a name and a face to our enemy, and we need to find her."

"Right." Sareta nodded.

(Reach a Milestone, Mark Progress on Vow "Find Justice For The Caravanners Slain By The Children of the Tainted Scholar", 6/10)

Of course, to find her, they needed to start heading deeper into this Underkeep. She'd escaped through the tunnel in the far left corner, so they needed to go that way.

(Action: Delve the Depths with Speed, +edge (3) Miss. Burn Momentum. Weak Hit.)
(Mark Progress - 3/10. Reveal a Danger)
(Reveal a Danger: You face an environmental or architectural hazard)

This tunnel - which was actually made with mortared stones in the walls and floors, surprisingly evenly cut ones at that - at least was straight forward, without too many twists or turns, only a few rooms branching off, though Salesca was sure they'd have to make a turn at some point. This place was like a maze, and she could only imagine familiarity and practice allowed the cultists to travel through it, since there were no identifying signs on the walls that she could see or notice... she moved quickly, wanting, needing to make up the ground that they'd lost in the fight, in getting turned around and -

They reached another intersection, the tunnel they were on a dead end, but a new hallway intersected, offering left and right directions, and no clear indication as to which... Salesca stepped forward, looking down the left tunnel, trying to get a glimpse down the darkness -

"Check the right tunnel, any sign if she went that way?" There were no convenient 'footsteps in the dust' or anything like that... Salesca took another step into the left tunnel, peering.
(Action: Face Danger +wits (2) Weak hit. -1 Momentum)

At the last moment, Salesca hesitated, her foot hovering over one section of the tunnel, several of the stones in the floor seeming... almost a little lower down. Some instinct was screaming at her that it was dangerous. She stepped back, turning to Sareta, who was about to take a step back.

"Wait!" Salesca hissed, "Don't!" At the very last moment Sareta hesitated, stepping back, and Salesca held up a wordless hand as she approached the right tunnel very slowly, gently taking the torch from Sareta's hand and holding it down, lower to the ground. There it was. Another line of stones, all the way across the hallway, a bit lower to the ground. In fact, now that she looked at it... there were more, ahead, every few steps, a whole set of them, at least three that she could see...

"Oh fuck," Sareta murmured. "Some kind of trap?"

"The old stories do have them..." Salesca nodded. "That's what my gut says..." she couldn't imagine what the trap was. She looked around, at the walls, at the ceiling...

(Action: Secure an Advantage +wits (2) Miss with a match)
(Mark Failure, +.25)

She couldn't tell. She didn't know Unfortunately, there wasn't a safe way to test it, because then it would just happen. But... well, they could see the trigger, so -

"Well, we know it's there, so if we're - if we're careful, we should be able to avoid it, right, just step carefully..." Salesca murmured, feeling confident. "We just need to figure out which tunnel to go down..."

"I have a good feeling about this tunnel," Sareta suggested, pointing down the right tunnel.

"Okay. We'll go that way then." Salesca handed Sareta the torch and stepped forward, very - very - carefully stepping over the row of depressed stones... only to hear a very loud grinding sound as the stones she was stepping on started to sink into the ground.

"Oh shit." Salesca was frozen in place for just a split second, and then there was a rumbling above her, the ceiling starting to shake, crack, masonry dust and bits of stone falling down, hitting her shoulder. "Oh shit!" She looked to Sareta, who was looking up at the ceiling, then back down at her. "Sareta, run!"

(Action: Face Danger + Edge (3). Miss. -1 Health)
(Mark Failure. +.25)
(Endure Harm +health (4). Strong Hit. Embrace the pain. +1 Momentum)
Salesca tried to grab at Sareta's hand, to tug her after her, but then a large stone fell from the ceiling and Salesca had no choice - she dove down the right tunnel, away from Sareta as more stones fell from the ceiling, smaller bits of stone hitting her - she ran, not sure if she even could outrun the trap, but the whole hallway couldn't be the trap, there had to be a safe zone at the end, right, since the cultists had to be able to get by safely-

As more of the ceiling fell behind her, as Sareta ran for safety - just as Salesca had told her! - Salesca had no more light and she could barely see in the near-pitch darkness-

She dove, dropping, rolling forward - and a piece of ceiling stone fell directly onto her, hitting her back, just below her neck sending her staggering forward, pain ripping through her - FUCK how big was that - She stumbled ahead, barely able to get her bearings enough to keep moving, but she did, she tried -

And somehow, she realized after what felt like an age, but only be several more seconds that the ceiling directly above her wasn't falling, that trap must have run its course.

Salesca couldn't see - there was no light, no torch, and Salesca wasn't sure it was a good idea to light one, she could get seen, and now she was alone, without backup, if she got outnumbered by cultists, without Sareta's backup...

Oh gods... Sareta...

No. No. She was safe. She'd run. She was on the other side of the trap, she'd gotten clear. She had gotten clear. But... there was no way she could get past this cave-in. It was tons of stone, of dirt, all piled up for... a whole length of hallway. She'd need proper mining equipment and... days, weeks...

There has to be another way to her. Another way out... This place was a maze, but...

Salesca turned, away from the blockage, keeping one hand on the wall to her left. There was no choice. She needed to keep going. She'd find another passage, a way back to find Sareta, make sure she could get out.

The only way out is through.
Closing her eyes a moment, Salesca reached back, feeling her back, just below her neck, wincing as she touched where the stone had hit. The throbbing pain was distracting, but it didn't seem like anything was broken, or that she was bleeding, she could - she'd have to manage...

She'd have to manage, and go on.

I have to move slower. If there are more cultists ahead, or the leader... I need to be able to get the drop on them. She closed her eyes a moment, remembering her uncle's lessons on stealth, Talia's own words on the subject, the times she'd snuck through bandit dens and beast lairs... her own experience with hiding when on the hunt...

(Action: Delve the depths with stealth. +Shadow (2) Strong Hit.)
(Mark Progress. 6/10. Find an Opportunity.)
(Find an Opportunity: The Terrain favors you, or you find a hidden path)

Salesca lost track of how long she actually spent moving slowly, crouched low to the ground down the pitch-dark hallway, one hand on the wall, but she did. And then she found a passage in that wall, small, narrow, barely enough for her to travel sideways through, but she could see light at the far end of it... she squeezed in, barely able to move, but she could, and as she got further down it, she could hear voices... two voices. There was a bit of echoing in the distant, or something like it, but she could make out a snatch of conversation...

"...one of them must have gotten buried in the collapsing tunnel, because there was just the one that I saw." A grunt of pain, maybe a bit of a gasp, "Got me in the side with her spear, knocked me over, and ran down that hall. I tried to get after her, but-"

"There's far more of us than of her. Mazelike down here or not, we'll find her." There was the sound of something heavy hitting something else, metal on stone? "And she didn't get in here so..."

"True. It's secure." There was a suggestion of relief, a slow exhaling.

Neither of the voices - the first male, the second maybe female, it was hard to say for sure - were Forinia. How many cultists are there? The two on the surface, the two we killed by the altar, the one killed on the altar... and now these two. And more implied. How could so many be bent to whatever madness this Forinia offered?

But... they thought she was dead. She could use that. They weren't looking for her. And more importantly, Sareta was alive.

But where was 'here' that she didn't get into. What's secure...

(Gain Insight. +1 Momentum)

When you Find an Oporrtunity, you can leverage it immediately on your next roll for a +1 to that roll, or you can just take a flat +1 Momentum

Click to shrink...

Salesca held her breath and waited until the voices grew indistinct, then out of earshot. She had to figure out where Sareta was. Sareta would be looking for her too, but without any clear idea of where she was in relation to the trapped hallway...

She inched through the cramped passage, and finally saw clearly the other end.

It was a room, not too large, not too small, lit by a torch in a sconce in the wall, the flickering flame casting shadows in the corners, but she could see. There was a closed door leading out, a heavy metal thing... an iron door? My gods... Salesca thought about the extravagance. That much iron... it might have been able to feed Taron's Hollow for a week! It seemed as old as the structure, so obviously the ancient forebears who had built this place...

But the fact that the door was there meant that she had a bit more room to move, less chance to get spotted, more warning if someone was going to come in. Then, she noticed another thing about the door. It was locked.
From the inside. Which meant, it would be very easy for her to get out, but someone trying to get in would have a much harder time unless they had the key.

The second thing she noticed, against one wall, to her left (and the right of the door across from her) was another altar or small raised platform, though this one was not bloodstained, nor did it have a blood sacrifice on it.

It was a statue... but small. It was of a wolf, snarling, open maw, incredibly detailed in it's carving, fangs bared, Salesca almost expected to see some sort of saliva dripping from it's lips, the detail so close... she almost felt like she could make out individual pieces of fur, which she could only assume was an illusion of the lighting, and skilled carving... the ancient forebears had to have made this... No one alive could have done it.

It wasn't made out of stone, or at least, not any kind of stone she'd ever seen. It was... black, and smooth, almost shiny in the light from the torch. The only think that wasn't black were the eyes, purple gemstones in place... Salesca's breath caught. She'd only seen gemstones - apart from amber harvested from certain trees - in the jewelry worn by the elites of Wolfshadow, or the jewelry found amomg the personal possessions Talia had claimed from Irena's home and corpse, though Talia had largely sold them or gave them to her warriors. They were incredibly rare, most said to have come from the Old World - especially the ones in the more finely detailed jewelry - but occasionally it was said miners would find a gemstone while digging for iron, or silver, or coal... they fetched great sums in the trader towns.

And this... this would fetch that and more. But somehow, she doubted the value of the item was why the cultists had placed it on this... altar? Shrine? Or why it was behind locked doors. Or why the one had sounded so relieved that Sareta hadn't gotten it.

So I should steal it. If the cultists valued it, then perhaps she could destroy it in front of them, or threaten to do the same, or at the very least, she could sell it... or just destroy it on principle.

That's probably the better idea. If they value it, it must be... blood-soaked in some way, or used for it or... something.

Salesca dropped her pack to the ground and very carefully examined the ground around the... shrine? Shrine. and then the shrine itself. She was very much not interested in tripping another trap, but...

After checking, then checking again, slowly, carefully... No traps... She crossed her fingers, closed her eyes and took a breath, then grabbed at the little statue, taking it off the shrine.

She had no idea what she could do with it,. but she placed the statue into her pack, and then pulled it back on, shifting it a little to make it sit on her back better. It was heavy, but... she could make it work. She went up to the locked door, and slowly began to pull it open, revealing another hallway, which headed straight ahead one way, or left the other way. This hall was also lit by a torch in a sconce, burning low, likely ready to extinguish itself soon, but it cast a flickering, dim light over the hallway. She needed to find Sareta, but she didn't know which way to go. She tried to map the route she'd taken in her head. If Sareta had gone down the other hallway...

Then...

If Salesca was right - and there was unfortunately no way to be sure - then she wanted to go straight ahead. She thought.

There's only one way to find out...

Salesca took another breath and continued, creeping down the hallway, sticking to the darkest parts of it that she could. There were more torches, all burning low, and not many, further down the way, creating shadows and even patches of darkness in the uneven masonry halls...

(Action: Delve the depths with stealth. +Shadow (2) Weak Hit.)
(Mark Progress - 9/10. Reveal a Danger)
(Reveal a Danger: Crumbling Architecture)

The hallway eventually branches out again, but only one of the other hallways to choose from had torches. Since she was trying to find the leader... when in doubt, go where people were, she supposed. Or at least, where they went. This hallway ended in another door, also iron, unlocked. Salesca listened at it, but she could hear no sign of anyone... she opened it,

A stairway, leading down, into near blackness - at the bottom, a good ways down, there seemed to be a small light, another torch, but she didn't have much to work with to let her see the stairs, which were ancient looking wooden things, over empty space, stone at the bottom. They did not look very secure, and after a moment, Salesca had an idea. The bottom was some... thirty feet down, maybe? It was hard to say for sure. But if she had enough rope - she didn't even need thirty feet, which was a lot, And she was fairly certain she didn't have that much length, but if she had enough...

(Action: Check Your Gear +Supply (5) Miss.)
(Mark Failure Track, +.25)

I could have just said 'she has rope', if I had wanted, more or less, but I decided use the Check Your Gear move instead, because it's more interesting to roll for things - to a point.

Click to shrink...

Salesca cursed as she checked her pack. No rope. Not even a little. Nothing she could use to latch onto anything else, use that to get down there without using those fucking stairs.

I just... I just have to be careful, move very slowly, and be ready to run if anything starts to crack...

Salesca very carefully, very gingerly, put her foot on the first stair. It creaked, it groaned, it seemed to move ever so slightly under her weight, but it held...

She proceeded down the stairs, but about halfway down, with more distance between her and the bottom than she wanted, it creaked even louder, groaned and then -

SNAP!

Salesca dove forward as wood started to give way under her feet, trying to get closer, as close as she could to the bottom -

(Action: Face Danger +edge (3) Miss.)
(Mark Failure Track. +.25

But it broke faster, her foot fell through - she felt the top of her boot catch under another stair, and she fell, rolling forward, the stairs breaking under her, bouncing down, down, the wood hitting her shoulders, her back, she covered her head with her hands as she landed in an undignified heap at the bottom. Bruised, and - she tried to move. Nothing felt broken, but her back, her shoulders, they throbbed with pain.

(-1 Health)
(Action: Endure Harm +Health (3) Strong Hit.)
(Shake it off. -1 Momentum, +1 Health)

Salesca stood, inhaling slowly, bracing herself against the wall. After a moment, the pain seemed to fade, mostly. She'd protected her head, and while her shoulders throbbed, nothing was broken, she didn't think there was even a crack. Just bruises, and she could work with those.

There was indeed light here, but it wasn't a torch. It wasn't a candle. Nor a lamp. It was...

Well, it was... light. A series of floating, flickering little balls of pale white light, each seemingly hanging in the air under it's own power, casting it's rays over another masonry hallway. The walls of this hallway were holding together far better than other hallways she'd passed through, and the walls every few feet had carved scenes into flat stone, depicting that same feral, predatory woman, still nude, in various scenes of battle, or victory over other opponents.

Some sort of beast that could only be a troll, based on its long, spindly arms. Another seemed to be a whole force of elves, from their masks. A large, massive snake-like creature, so large it wasn't even entirely depicted on the carving, but the woman, this unnamed patron of the Cult, was in a position of victory, standing atop it's head, a spear buried in it.

Further down, the carvings grew more... detailed. And explicit. No longer was the woman defeating beasts and Firstborn. She was defeating other humans and... forcing them to...

Is that even physically possible? No one's body can bend like that?!

There was no writing, no names, no idea who was who or what, as Salesca continued down the hallway further, slowly, trying to ignore the carvings. But the woman... she was gorgeous, in that monstrous sort of way, and each carving she passed seemed to draw more attention to it. And the scenes depicted... they even seemed to be increasingly tailored to...

I always wanted Sareta to do that one to-

Salesca shook her head and forced her eyes ahead, moving forward slowly, carefully and as stealthily as she could, though there wasn't much cover to work with...

 

[Kylia Quilor]

(Action: Delve the Depths with Stealth +shadow (2) Weak Hit)
(Mark Progress - 10/10)

Finally the hallway reached another room, a large open chamber, the ceilings here higher than in the hallway. The floating orbs of light were all around the edges of the room, and gathered over the top of the center, revrealing another statue of the woman, the 'Tainted Scholar' presumably. Nude, feral and beautiful, as before, holding an axe in one hand, a whip in the other. In the statue, where the heart on a human would be, glowed an unnatural red light. It was dark red, the color of blood.

The glow flickered away, for several moments, and then back.

(Action: Locate Your Objective vs Progress 10. Strong Hit)
(The Situation Favors you. Make another move and add +1)

Salesca stayed as much in the shadows as she could, crouched low, bow in hand, but still. This seemed like more than just another shrine. Something about that glow... whatever it was, it was important, nearly as important as the statuette she'd taken earlier, or more important, maybe.

As she stayed there, watching, trying to understand what she was seeing, she saw someone approaching the statue from the other end of the room. Salesca was in about as good a hiding spot as she could get, a dark patch where hallway met room, between two sources of light, just at the edges of the areas they illuminated...

It was Forinia. Gone now were her robes, she was wearing a dress, black, tight fitting around her waist, but with long sleeves that trailed down, rather than covering her hands. She had no weapon in her hand.

"Mistress, Great One, unbelievers have penetrated far into this holy place," Forinia said, kneeling before the statue. "I fear they may drive us from it entirely, for those whom I have gathered to serve you, though devout of will, are weak of flesh. And these intruders have proven... durable, and fortunate."

Which means Sareta is still alive... and she doesn't think I'm dead. That was good news, and bad news. The cultists thinking she was dead had been an advantage. But that Sareta lived... Salesca could only hope she found her way here as well.

Forinia bowed her head, "Your will is understood. I will take the Heart and depart." The woman spoke as if the statue had spoken back to her. Which was... nonsense. But then, the cultist was crazy. Magic was real. Talking statues from the gods of insane cults?

That had to be fake. No god would endorse these monsters.

Salesca crept a little closer, Forinia's back was to her as she approached the statue and actually started to climb it, just enough to reach that dark red glow at the statue's heart, which she closed her hand around as Salesca got into position.

(Action: Enter the Fray +Shadow +1 (3) Strong Hit with a Match)
(+2 Momentum, and the Initiative)
(1 Enemy - Forinia - Dangerous)

Perfect. The woman was climbing back down the statue, distracted... Salesca drew an arrow, readying to aim. If she targeted just right, right where she was about to step...

(Action: Secure An Advantage +edge +1 (4), Using Archer Talent. Strong Hit.)
(+1 Momentum, +1 to next move)

Her shot was lined up perfectly. Salesca inhaled, and right as she exhaled, she let go of the bowstring, flying right for the woman.

(Action: Strike +edge +1 (4). Weak Hit.)
(Mark 2 Harm - 4/10 Lose the Initiative)

The arrow sailed true, connecting right between Forinia's shoulder blades, but rather than nearly immobilizing the woman as Salesca expected, the cultist leader turned around, her empty hand reaching around behind her, snapping the arrow off at the shaft. The other hand that glowing object, which Salesca realized must be a gemstone. A massive fist-sized, blood-red gemstone, glowing with some stranger, inner light. Magical in nature.

"YOU! You dare to intrude on this most sacred of spaces!" Forinia shrieked the words out, and they were actually loud enough to make Salesca flinch, recoiling back just a bit, covering her ears. Which was all the opening the woman needed. She slipped the gemstone into a pocket in her dress and -

Chanting words in a language Salesca didn't recognize, her hands suddenly...

There was a crackling sound, like lighting, and there was lightning, in the woman's hands. Actual lightning, like what came from the sky in storms, but small.

"I can sense you doubt the power of her, our mistress. WHY NOT TASTE IT YOURSELF!" This was less of a shriek and more of just an angry shout as she thrust her hands out towards Salesca and the lightning flew from her hands, towards Salesca...

Or where she was, because Salesca started moving the moment she thrust her hands, instinct making it clear she did not want to be where she was-

(Action: Face Danger +edge (3) Strong Hit)
(+1 Momentum, Take Initiative)

The lightning hit the stone where Salesca had been, moments before, but she was already several feet away, still running, facing Forinia's side.

She has real power. Not just little rituals, charms, techniques and... real magic, the sort -

She could throw lightning! Salesca looked to where she'd been standing, scorch marks on the stone now, each the size of a head. If that magic bad hit her... Salesca's breath caught, but couldn't let herself get distracted.

"Speed alone won't save you from my wrath! Your bow is no match for my magic!" Forinia snarled, gathering more lightning in her hand - it crackled, appearing and disappearing around her. "It is no match for the power she grants me!"

"First, you have to hit me, and so far, I think I'm the one that's had better luck with that." Salesca snapped. "All the stories from the Old World agree, even the greatest of witches bleed, and I doubt you're the greatest of witches." Salesca brought an arrow to bear, Forinia starting to move, but she just didn't have the same speed Salesca did.

Or her experience with aiming where someone was going to be.

(Action: Secure An Advantage +edge +1 (4), Using Archer Talent. Weak Hit.)
(+2 Momentum, Lose Initiative)

But as Salesca found that perfect line up, lightning flew at her again and Salesca had to lose her aim, darting away, towards the far wall. More lightning flew past her, and Saelsca felt her hair stiffen at the back, sticking out straight up -

But even as she ran, she turned and fired again.

(Action: Clash +edge (3). Weak Hit)
(Inflict 2 Harm - 8/10)
(Pay the Price -2 Health)
(Action: Endure Harm +health (2) Weak Hit)
Her arrow hit, embedding into Forinia's upper thigh, but she didn't stagger back, didn't let it affect her as it should - instead, she blasted lightning -

And Salesca couldn't evade it this time. The lightning hit her leg, and she fell to the ground, tumbling into the wall as her previous momentum had her half-rolling, half-sliding across the cold, hard stone ground, her bow clattering to the ground nearby.

Salesca could barely think - she'd taken lightning right to her leg - her pants there were burned and tattered, and her leg looked like she'd stuck it in a fire and let it cook. She smelled cooked pork, or something very close to it -

How - how did she - how am I - Salesca bit her lip, tasting blood, forcing herself to scramble towards the bow as she heard Forinia chanting again, the same chant that called her lightning to her -

(Action: Face Danger + edge (3) Strong Hit)
(+1 Momentum, Take Initiative)

Salesca grabbed her bow and without waiting to aim - there was no time - she fired at Forinia again, aiming for her throat. If she could interrupt her chant, stop her from -

(Action: Strike +edge (3) Strong hit)
(Inflict 3 Harm - 10/10)
(Action: End the Fight vs 10 Progress Strong Hit.)

The arrow connected, cutting Forinia's chanting off immediately, and the woman finally silenced, save for a few seconds of gurgling as she staggered back, falling backwards to the ground. Salesca's leg throbbed with pain, her back hurt, she felt a headache mounting behind her eyes, but -

I killed the leader. The witch that had led this cult, found gullible rubes to follow her insanity - she was dead. Her breath was coming in and out in shaking, shuddering gasps as she slowly walked towards the woman's body, wanting to make sure she was dead.

Salesca crouched by her body, touching two fingers to her throat. A slow, weak, rapidly failing pulse. Salesca ripped the arrow out of her neck, letting blood flow freely from the wound.

"Killing you quickly is too good for you, for what you did, what you are." Salesca growled, voice full of hate. She stayed there, kneeling on one knee, by the body, as life left Forinia - her skin was already corpse pale, were it not for a complete lack of a pulse... and another stab or two to her chest...

Salesca might have wondered if the witch was still alive.

(Reach a Milestone, Mark Progress on Vow "Find Justice For The Caravanners Slain By The Children of the Tainted Scholar", 8/10)
But she wasn't. She was dead.

The witch didn't have that much on her person, save for the strange glowing gemstone. 'The Heart', Forinia had called it. Salesca held it in one fist, not sure if she should put it into the same bag as the statuette. If both were magical...

Salesca found another one of the long, curved daggers of the cult strapped to the woman's thigh, under her dress, and inside a small pocket, a key. The knife could be sold to someone, or traded - it was quality metal, but nothing Salesca wanted to use herself. So she grabbed that as well as the key. Forinia had come to this room from...

Salesca looked around. Behind the statue. That direction. Salesca pushed herself back to her feet when she heard footsteps coming from the left -

"Salesca!" Sareta's voice cut through Salesca's pain and Salesca turned, seeing Sareta there, rushing towards her, spear and shield dropped as she embraced her, squeezing almost too tight for Salesca to breath.

"Oh gods, I was so - you're alive! You're alright!" Sareta nearly sobbed with relief, then laughed, giddy. "I was - when the ceiling fell, I told myself you had to have gotten to the other side, there had to be another side. I tried - I tried to find you I -" Sareta was speaking quickly, almost too quickly to follow, but Salesca couldn't care less, as she returned her hug.

"I'm fine. You're fine." Salesca repeated, several times, breathing in as deep breaths of air as she could manage with the tightness of Sareta's arms around her midsection. Finally, Sareta pulled back, and Salesca got a proper look at her -

She was not uninjured. A small cut on her cheek, just below her left eye, the blood no longer flowing from that, and another cut on her leg, shallow, but still bleeding a bit.

"You're hurt," Salesca murmured.

"Just - just small cuts. Nothing - what happened to you leg? It looks - did she burn it? Throw a torch at you?!" Sareta looked at the body, then, "That's the leader."

"She was a real witch. With power like out of the stories," Salesca murmured, the reminder of her onw injury making it impossible for her to keep pretending she wasn't hurting, despite her overriding concern over Sareta's injury. "She threw lightning."

"Lightning? Actual- from thunderstorms?"

"She did," Salesca gestured to the marks on the stone where the lightning had hit her, and missed. "She was... she was tougher than her followers. I almost..." Salesca shook her head. "But she's dead, and I'm not. She was trying to get away with this," Salesca held up the glowing gemstone.

"What... that..." Sareta's eyes widened. "I've seen gems... but this... this has to be worth enough to buy all of Wolfshadow."

"If anyone would actually be able or willing to buy it. It's clearly some sort of magic. This too." She dropped her pack and opened it, revealing the strange smooth black stone wolf statuette. "They had it on this... pedestal, behind a locked door. Clearly important to them. Thought maybe I could threaten to destroy it or something, at some point." She looked to Forinia's body. "Turns out, didn't need to."

Sareta shook her head in wonderment. "You managed far better than I did with all this... I only fought cultists and ran away a lot.... you found their leader, killed her..."

"And found a key. She came into this room from that direction," Salesca gestured. "We should see what this opens, and then get out of here."

"You're hurt! We should-"

"And so are you. But they could come at us at any moment if we linger in one place." Salesca pointed out. "I've got you at my side again. We can handle just about anything between the two of us. Besides, with the leader dead..."

"Hopefully they lose hope and disperse. We can only hope..." Sareta nodded. They moved towards the far end of the room, a metal door waiting for them, with a lock. Sure enough, Forinia's key opened it up, revealing a room decorated with more carvings of the 'Tainted Scholar', each of them significantly more explicit than any of the others Salesca had seen so far. She flushed, looking away from them, ignoring the amused smile on Sareta's face. There was a stone bed against one wall, built into the floor, part of the structure, a pile of soft furs and a bedroll atop it. A stone table was strewn with papers and a single unlit candle, and a chest was at the foot of the bed.

Salesca went to the table, examining the papers. They seemed to be written in some sort of code - the letters were all ones she recognized, but they were in orders that made no sense to her. There were a few sketches - one was of a pile of heads, like the one that the cultists burned at the caravan.... there was another, it looked like a map, but she couldn't make heads nor tails of any of it. Everything was in that strange code, or perhaps... language? But the language here on the walls of the ruins was in a lettering she didn't recognize at all, so that...

There were no clear landmarks drawn. Some hills. something that might be trees, but she couldn't figure out what, where...

"Sareta, can you make any sense of this map?" Salesca gestured for the wayfinder to come over.

"No..." Sareta murmured, shaking her head. "I don't. I've never seen anything like this... I think this," she gestued to one point, labeled with a string of meaningless letters, "is the focus of the map. Look how everything's oriented in relation to it. I think these numbers here..." she gestured to some numbers along the side, "are referencing the distance of all the various other points to this one in the center, but..."
"Without knowing where anything is, it's useless." Salesca murmured, and Sareta nodded.

"The chest didn't have much - some dresses, some powders, for making the skin pale, and this red paste," she held up a small jar, "I think she put this on her lips to make them so red. And couple of bottles of this," she held up one. It was of a thick, viscous-looking dark green... thing? It sloshed a little, like liquid, but very thickly. Even a bit lumpy, like stew.

"I think it might be some kind of poultice, for burns. I've seen several kinds that look like this."

"We can find out once we're out of here," Salesca murmured, softly. She rolled up the map in her hand, and stuffed it into a pocket. She had no idea if she'd ever figure out the code, but it was worth trying, no? Someday? If Forinia thought it was important...

Well, then best to find a way to deal with it, no? At some point. The rest of the papers though...

With flint and steel, Salesca lit the candle, and slowly touched one of them to the flames, dropping it onto the others. "In case any others of this cult decide to try to pick up where she left off." Salesca explained, and Sareta nodded. Salesca turned back to the wayfinder.

"Time for us to leave. And hopefully not run into too much trouble on the way out."

(Action: Escape the Depths - Fastest Way Out. Roll +edge (3) Weak Hit. -1 Momentum)

Unfortunately, despite trying to move quickly, they get lost in the tunnels - They went back the way Sareta had come, since the stairs Salesca had used were ruined. They did encounter a few cultists, but only one stayed long enough to fight after Salesca said she'd killed Forinia, and held up the glowing gem - which seemed to be proof enough for them that someone had bested their leader.

With Sareta by her side, killing that one was simple, but it was another delay, and it was very dark by the time they made it to the surface. But they had made it.

(Action: Make Camp +supply (5) Strong Hit.)
(Recuperate +1 Health; Relax +1 Spirit)

Setting camp amongst the ruins seemed like a bad idea, but a bit of careful moving through the night to put some distance between themselves and the 'Den of Bloodstained Prophecy' brought them to a decent enough spot to make camp. They lit a small fire, and though it was late, both of them felt like a cooked meal was worth more than sleep, or at least, as much as sleep.

By the light of the fire and the stars, Sareta and Salesca tested the poultice, to see if it would actually work for her burns, if it even was what Sareta thought it was.

(Action: Secure an Advantage +wits (2) Miss)
(Mark Failure. +.25)

Unfortunately, on closer examination, it turned out to be something else - neither of them could tell what. Sareta suggested they save the vials until they could find an alchemist or herbalist who could enlighten them, and in the meantime, Sareta carefully administered to Salesca's burn, mostly by wrapping it loosely, to stop it from getting dirty, or aggravated.

"If we can't get a proper poultice from a village, or find another option - herbs, maybe a bit of magic, it's going to scar." Sareta warned.

(Action: Heal +iron (1). Burn momentum to turn a miss into a Strong Hit)
(+2 Health)
"I didn't expect to be scar-free my entire life," Salesca murmured, putting on a brave face. She moved her leg very carefully, not wanting to rub against the cloth around it. "First though, I want to go back to the caravan. If any of them are lingering after death, in some form, I want to tell them personally that they've been avenged." She'd sworn a vow to find justice, and she had, but... she felt like she had one last thing she needed to do.

And so they rested that night, takng shifts to sleep, but no one attacked in the night, there was no sign of any remaining cultists wanting to ambush them for revenge. And so they set out, back to the site of the destroyed caravan. Even with it being a busy trade road, by the standards of the Ironlands, Salesca doubted the wreckage would have been cleared.

(Action: Undertake a Journey, -One Roll. +wits (2) Strong Hit.)
They made good time, surprisingly, so, given Salesca's injury, but she was still riding high from defeating Forinia, her first successful, truly successful vow. Doing the sort of thing that Uncle Hallistar would have done. She might not have saved any lives directly, but that cult, that... witch, would never hurt anyone else again in the name of that twisted patron, that "Tainted Scholar"

That let them reach the caravan shortly before nightfall once more. Salesca stood there, among the wreckage, the body parts more picked clean by scavengers, some even missing entirely, dragged away by one animal or another. But there was still that pile of burned heads. The wreckage of the wagons. The bodies of the horses, even if more of the flesh was gone.

Salesca stood at the center of the mess, closing her eyes and holding her iron amulet in hand. She spoke quietly, softly.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save you. That I arrived here after the attack. But... the woman who was behind this, the architect of the attack. I don't know why she did this to you, what she thought she would gain, mutilating you all like this, desecrating your bodies, killing you, cutting lives short. Ripping you from friends, family, each other. But..." Salesca exhaled slowly. "She's dead now. She can't hurt anyone again. I'm sure that's cold comfort, but..." Salesca trailed off.

"As much as it's possible to do, in this life, I found justice for what happened to you."

(Reach a Milestone, Mark Progress on Vow "Find Justice For The Caravanners Slain By The Children of the Tainted Scholar", 2 Boxes)

(Action: Fulfill Your Vow vs Progress 10. Strong Hit.)
(Dangerous Vow - 2 Experience)

That night, Salesca spent her watch around the fire practicing her dodging. She'd failed to dodge successfully several times, down in the den. Let the stones hit her, let Forinia blast her with that lightning... Talia took her share of hits, but she'd managed to use her skills as a dancer to great effect, avoiding attack. She'd seen the way Talia could move across a battlefield. Salesca needed to be able to do the same.

(Advance - Spend 2 Experience to upgrade asset 'Dancer')

It costs 3 Experience to acquire a new Asset, and 2 to upgrade an existing one.

Click to shrink...

 

[Kylia Quilor]

(Action: Undertake a Journey. Destination: The Warrens of Thyri, in the Hinterlands. Dangerous Journey. +wits (2) Miss with a match. Waylaid by a Perilous Event)
(Mark Failure Track - +.25)

Unfortunately, they didn't end up making much progress the next few days, as a pretty bad rainstorm hit early the next day, and they had to take shelter in a copse of trees, for the entiriy of the day, into the night - and with night, came thunder, and lightning.

The trees, combined with their tents, provided as much shelter against the rain as they could get, but being around all those trees posed it's own risk. Salesca had just managed to fall asleep, taking far too long with the sound of the rain and the thunder - it felt like the moment she closed her eyes Sareta was shaking her awake.

"Wha-" Salesca blinked, trying to push Sareta's hand off. "Just - a bit more-"

"No time," Sareta shook her again. "The thunder and lightning are getting closer. I think one of these trees might get hit."

Salesca rubbed at her eyes and temples, taking several moments for Sareta's words to progress through her sleep-fogged mind, but then-

"Shit! Are you sure!? No, of course you, you've been travelling the roads a lot longer than me." Salesca shook her head violently, slapping her face. She still felt groggy, and she dreaded going out into that weather and getting drenched, but it was better than burning down. Quickly they gathered eveyrthing, then pulled down the tent last -

Their timing was almost perfect, as another roll of thunder followed lightning by just a moment, closing in even closer. Cursing the rain that quickly soaked through her pack, maneuvering herself to trying to keep her bow as dry as possible, Salesca followed after Sareta as they moved out of the copse and then -

The lightning cracked through the air again, right behind them and tree caught fire, spreading faster than Salesca would have deemed possible. Memory ringing with the lightning that Forinia had fired, the way that had burned on her leg, Salesca stumbles, staring for a moment behind her -

Those few seconds were all it took for the fires to get too close for comfort, and as a shout from Sareta cut through the sound of the downpour, Salesca moved finally as she came back to the present, running as fast as she could from the flames.

(Action: Face Danger +edge (3) Weak Hit. -1 Supply)

Since this isn't 'in a fight' the 2nd ability for Dancer that Salesca just bought can't be used.

Click to shrink...

The storm finally let up after far longer out in the rain and mud than Salesca was comfortable with, and she was soaked to the bone, and shivering, Sareta little better. In the end, though, most of their supplies were salvageable, mostly. Some of their food was ruined, and one of Salesca's spare bowstrings. It could have been worse.

(Action: Undertake a Journey. Destination: The Warrens of Thyri, in the Hinterlands. Dangerous Journey. +wits (2) Weak Hit. 4/10 -1 Supply)

The aftereffects of the storm made travel slow while the ground was still so muddy, but they did manage to reach a village - Elderbrook. Buying a night at the small shack that served as the closest thing the village had as an inn for travellers proved to be more expensive than expected, but they decided it was worth it. Salesca decided that some judicious use of their coin and bartering was in order the next day, but in she had an idea on how to make the most of that. The village apparently gathered every night in the center of the village to drink, share stories or otherwise maintain the bonds of community, and Salesca could put her skill as a dancer to work entertaining them.

Ideally, it might make them more favorably disposed to trading. Talia had taught her not just how to dance in battle, but how to dance for the entertainment or... arousal, of others. That latter option wasn't especially relevant here, but the former...

Eager for a new form of entertainment rather than the same songs and stories, the villagers were eager to be entertained, and she asked the closest thing the village had to a proper bard,, an older woman who was quite skilled with her drum, to start a familiar tune, and then Salesca closed her eyes a moment, taking a breath, and started dancing.

(Action: Secure an Advantage +edge +1 (4). Using Dancer Talent. Strong Hit. +2 Momentum. +3 to next Move to interact with Audience)

Her dance was met with applause and cheers, and she was asked to do more. With the help of the 'bard', and a few others, including a handsome-seeming young man with a surprisingly good singing voice - he would have done quite well in the pleasure houses of Wolfshadow - she performed several more dances, before begging off for the night. But she was able to make... perhaps not friends, but at least get to know several villagers better, in preparation both for the night, and for the trading that would come the next day.

A few drinks and some out of tune drinking songs later, and Salesca went to bed, rising early to see what sort of food people were selling.

(Action: Sojourn +heart +3 (4) Weak Hit. Provision +2 Supply)

She had indeed put the villagers in a favorable mood for trading. She couldn't stay long enough to teach anyone to dance - and the singer from last night had tried quite insistently to convince her. Had he been a woman, he might even have succeeded, but she humored him and gave him a few pointers and suggestions, demonstrating a few basic things.


You should make the dances your own, once you master the basics," Salesca told him.

That afternoon, then, their packs laden with fresh supplies, and an open invitation for her to entertain them again next time she was passing through, Salesaca set out with Sareta again.

(Action: Undertake a Journey. Destination: The Warrens of Thyri, in the Hinterlands. Dangerous Journey. +wits (2) Strong Hit. Mark Progress - 6/10)

(Location Roll: Contested River Rapids)

As they moved north further, taking a bit of a tilt to the east to keep them on track for the Warrens, they eventually reached a river, one that came down from the hinterlands, before curving southwest, leaving them on the wrong side of the river to go north. The river was swollen with rain - not the storm they'd faced before Elderbrook, but still, rain had been recent here too - and moving fast, so they went upriver a ways, Sareta recalling a ford in the vicinity.

When they reached that ford, however, they found they weren't the only ones there. Two groups, each armed with spears and bows, pointing them at each other. One wading knee-deep in the water, the other on their side of the shore.

"Thats far enough Irsia" One of the men on shore shouted to the leader of the group in the river, a woman, judging from the long hair. Salesca and Sareta watched as the two groups faced off. This was not Salesca's problem, she just needed to cross the river. On the other hand, they were in the way, and she supposed her Uncle would at least try to find out what was going on.

"Right, I forgot, you control this river, Jartr." The woman snapped, her voice low and scratchy as she shouted back. "You decide who crosses it, hm?"

"No, but I do decide how close I let a thieving bitch like you get to my people," The man shouted back. Jartr, presumably. Salesca walked closer, slowly. Neither group seemed able to notice that they had company coming, eyes for eachother.

"Right, yes, thieving. Because it's theft to take what's rightfully mine, something we agreed on!" Irasia had long blonde hair and dark skin, her hand tight on the shaft of a spear, which she raised into a position to throw, rather than just stab with. "I do not have to listen to you. Stand aside and let us cross the river!"

"No!" Jartr shouted back. He was balding, a long scar over the top of his head, visible on the bare patches now they were getting closer.

"What about us, are we allowed to cross your river ford?" Salesca raised her own voice, and everyone from both groups, or just about, turned towards her.

"Who the fuck are you?" Irsia and Jartr both demanded.

"Someone who is trying to get north, into the Hinterlands. But you're sort of blocking the ford." Salesca pointed out. "Perhaps you could fill me in on why you're looking ready to murder each other?"

(Ask the Oracle: Do either of them explain? Unlikely for Jartr, 50-50 for Irasia: No, Yes)
(Action +Theme = Withdraw Blessing)

"It's none of your affair! Just be on your way!" Jartr snapped, half-turning to face her and Sareta, but still keeping an eye on Irsia.

"I'd love to, but you're in my way, unless you are willing to move to let me pass. I'd rather not step in the middle of your fight." Well, not physically, anyway. "So please, either move, or tell me what's going on? I am Ironsworn," she displayed her amulet. "And I promise I'll try to find a way to resolve this fairly. I'll even make the formal oath on iron if you desire."

"There's no need. Just make this bitch give back what she took from me and mine!" Jartr snapped. "That idol to Mareila was stolen-"

"You promised it to us, if we could rescue your son! It is not my fault, it is not my people's fault that your son despises you so much he was never truly stolen from you, but ran away to join those raiders himself! We found him, we even brought him back, but he would not stay because he finds serving them more appealing than serving you!"

"So you claim, but my son is a good, hardworking man. He would never resort to raiding! I promised you the idol and the blessings it would provide as payment for a task, and it was a task you did not fulfill!" Jartr snapped, hand tightening on his spear, stepping forward.

"Because you can't rescue someone who is willingly one of his supposed captors, you slimy, lying filth!" Irsia was practically screeching her words out now.

"Okay, seriously, both of you, SHUT UP!" Salesca raised her voice again. "I want to cross this ford. If you two want to fight it out, then do it! I withdraw my offer to actually help you! Just please, please, let me pass! I have a vow to fulfil right now, and my destination is on the other side of this river. You both know you're going to fight, right!?" Salesca inhaled sharply, breathing coming fast. These two had a grievance and they were going to make their two groups come to blows over it. But she needed to cross, and they were going to let her.

(Action: Compel + Heart (1) Weak Hit)

Jartr and Irsia both went silent for a long moment, but neither of them seemed ready to move.

"I think you might have managed to piss them both off," Sareta cautioned, and Salesca bit her lip. She couldn't disagree, given the way both were turning to look at her.

"I'll let you pass if you hear us out, properly, Ironsworn," Jartr said finally. "I should not have lost my temper, but I am afraid that this matter cannot be resolved by either Irsia or myself, and..." he paused, clenching his jaw. "I would prefer to avoid violence."

Irisia looked at him, "You would agree to let us keep the idol if she decides in our favor?"

"If you agree to return the idol if she decides for us. She is Ironsworn. You are not of my village, nor or Irisia's wandering band." Jartr said that second part to Salesca.

Salesca closed her eyes, inhaling. She looked back to Sareta, opening her eyes, murmuring "I really want to just leave them to this, given their attitude, but..." she exhaled slowly. "Uncle Hallistar would help them."

"You don't have to do it just because your Uncle would. You can be your own woman, Salesca," Sareta noted. "That said, this will probably be our best option."

Salesca nodded. "A fact I hate. A lot." She raised her voice again. "Fine. I'll hear you both out. Your men can stay guarding the ford, Jartr, and your people can stay where that are, Irisia. All three of us can meet a little down the edge of the river, there, by that rock," she pointed to a rock between her and the ford. Jartr would have to walk a little further to get there than Irisia, but it would be well within sight of his men, so hopefully they'd be willing to hear her out.

(Set Scene Challenge - Rank - Ask The Oracle -Likely That It is Troublesome Rather Than Dangerous. Yes.)

(0/10 Progress, Timer 0/4)

The two leaders spoke to their own people quietly, and Salesca walked to the rock, inhaling. She considered what she'd heard. The two groups of people hadn't said much about what was the root of their dispute. Somehow she imagined it was bigger than the idol or the missing son, but it was ultimately the fate of the idol that mattered her. Still, she wracked her brain, trying to recall if her Uncle had ever told her a story about anything like this...

(Action: Secure an Advantage +wits (2). Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

She couldn't think of anything specific, but something... niggled at the back of her mind. Whatever else, she needed to start this off by ensuring that both agreed to what needed to be agreed to. They both needed to believe they were going to have a fair hearing.

Irisia and Jartr both arrived. She could get a better look at both of them now. Jartr was a tall, imposing sort of man, an axe at his side, a shield across his back, and muscles and scars both visible on his arms. His blonde hair was going grey at the temples, flowing a bit behind his head in the light breeze . His hair was clean enough, but unkempt, tangled, messy. By contrast his impressive moustache showed careful grooming.

Irisia was younger than Jartr, but by no means a young woman anymore. She too was well-muscled, and her spear showed signs of use, and signs of care, the blade well honed, the shaft marked with signs of where it had been used to block attacks, small cuts and dents in it, but no serious harm to the shaft had been allowed to stay. It was a thrusting weapon, and she could imagine Irsia was quite good with it.

"To begin with, would I be right in guessing you are both followers of Marelia, since it is her idol you are fighting over now?"

"We both honor her, aye," Irsia admitted. "My people and I have no permenant home now, but we had hoped with Marelia's blessing, we would find such a place."

Refugees? Or people who had come together on their own, but were now ready to stop wandering? Salesca decided not to pursue that line.

"I swear on my iron, and in the name of Jasseira that I will give fair and honest judgement to your dispute," Salesca assured them, her amulet in hand. This was a different sort of vow, but a vow nonetheless, and one she had no intention of failing to provide. "But for this to succeed, you must both believe the other will uphold their end of the bargain. Swear in the name of Marelia that you will let my ruling stand, and that you will respect it."

(Action: Face Danger + Heart (1) Weak Hit. +3 Progress. +1 Timer)
(Progress 3/10, Timer 1/4)

Irsia and Jartr both stared at the other for a long moment. Then another one. Irsia clenched her jaw, Jartr's hand flinched towards the axe on his belt, but after too long, too much time wasted - she could see the others of both groups watching, looking a little agitated. Salesca swallowed. If this took too long, one side or the other might start a fight anyway.

Wonderful.

"I promise in the name of Marelia that if you rule in Irsia's favor, I will allow her to keep the idol, unmolested." Jartr finally broke first. He growled the words out, but he was being honest, as far as Salesca could tell.

Irsia hesitated for another moment more, then finally, "Very well. I swear in the name of Marelia that I will return the Idol to Jartr if you rule in his favor."

"Good. Then let's begin with you, Jartr. The idol was yours to begin with, yes? Owned by your village for a long time?

(Action: Ask the Oracle. 'Since we came to the Ironlands'? Unlikely. No. For at least a Hundred years? 50-50. Yes.)

"At least a century it has been in the care of my village, yes." Jartr nodded. "Our crops have rarely failed us, and though we have had many hard times, we have endured them all."

"But you were willing to promise it a way to Irisia for her to recover your son?" She pressed. "Why? That seems a great price to pay, your villages's safety and security just for one of your number."

(Action: Secure an Advantage +wits(2) Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

Jartr ground his teeth. "Irsia's band is skilled in combating raiders, and raiders took my son." Irsia started to protest, but Salesca raised a hand. It was not time for an argument now. "The raiders have preyed on our neighbors and any of us who travel too far from our village. Rescuing him would have required doing much harm to the raiders, or so I hoped." He sighed. "So my people hoped. It seemed a stiff price to pay, but we feared the raiders would grow even bolder, now that they had taken the son of the leader."

Well, that doesn't help me much. It was an explanation, but only made it seem less likely that they'd be happy with nothing having been done.

"Your son had travelled beyond your village, and been taken by raiders?"

"Aye." Jartr nodded. "He had set out to hunt, with one other. They split, to track two different animals. The other returned, having caught a good beast, and wanting my son's help in carrying the kill back. He saw them. Raiders, speaking with my son. Three. He didn't hear the words, but my son had surrendered his spear, and they took him with them as they left."

"And you tried to recover him yourself?"

"We did. We tracked them to their camp - they have no single home, but they had set camp... several of my warriors fell, too injured to fight, or hunt or work. None of us died, but I commanded a retreat and we returned home. I hoped for a new plan, when Irisia came, seeking to trade. I asked her help."

(Action: Ask the Oracle. Did Irsia ask for the Idol? Likely. Yes)

"She asked for the idol. Spoke of her people's desire for a permanent home. I spoke to my people that night, and in the end, we agreed."

"And in the end, what happened? Obviously she did not return with your son, but still. Did she go find the raiders, face them?"

(Action: Face Danger +Wits (2) Weak Hit. +3 Progress. +1 Timer)
(Progress 6/10, Timer 2/4)

"Aye. And then she returned without him, claiming my son had joined the raiders. My son is a good boy! He's no raider! They captured him, and clearly Irsia was unwilling to actually fight to take him back!" Jartr's voice grew louder with every word, more insistent. Irsia clenched her jaw, hands balling into fists, ready to lunge at him. "Aye, they went to the raider camp," Jartr repeated. "They fought a few and then decided they could get our idol without doing the job they agreed to."

"Then how did they get it?" Salesca asked. "You didn't just hand it to them, I assume."

"They stole it!" He spat on the ground, "Like thieves in the night, one of her ilk snuck in and took the idol! When we awoke the next day, it was gone. Irsia swore she'd get the idol one way or another, and she did!"

"My oath was that I was going to back to the raiders, and bring your son back to you, likely missing a hand!" Irsia snarled "We didn't recover him because he refused to come! Taking a prisoner is very different from a rescue!"

"You-!" Jartr snarled, and Salesca jumped between the two as Jartr took a step closer, her hands raised, one towards Jartr, one towards Irsia.

(Action: Secure an Advantage +Edge (3) Miss. Burn Momentum to turn Miss into a Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

She landed between the two, stumbling and nearly falling over, but she caught herself, barely, and barked at them both: "Both of you, step back!"

Neither of them stepped back, both now inches from her hands, and really only separated from each other by herself.

"Step. Back." She growled again. "I will not do this if you insist on fighting back and forth with yourselves! That's what got you into this mess, and what's roped me into it now too. If you need to talk, talk to me. Not each other." She glared at each of them in turn. "If you don't do that, I'll let you both fight it out and I'll go days out of my way to find another place to cross the river. Am I clear?!"

Jartr was the one to move first and he inhaled jerking his head to the side stiffling for a moment, then cracking his neck and stepping back several paces. Irsia all but hissed and did the same.

"Good. Now, Irsia, You say you and your kin attacked the camp. What exactly happened?"

"We charged in." Irsia paused, shrugging and waggling her hand side to side a bit. "Well, drew a bunch of them out of their camp proper with arrows, and then charged at them while some were separated from the main body. There were only a dozen of them, and I brought five of my best." Six against twelve, and she said 'only' a dozen. Salesca eyed the woman carefully, increasing her estimation of her combat skill.

"One against two are not odds that I would invite so readily."

"Well, it was more six against five at first, the rest came in after. We felled three, the others fled back to the camp... and there was Jartr's son. Tattooed with the mark of the raider clan - a red bat on his forehead. He attacked my people and I had to shout not to kill him. It only made him bolder."

Salesca bit her lip, wincing a little. One thing Talia had made quite clear to her, in teaching her how to fight was that if the other person wanted to kill you, and you wanted, or needed them alive, they had an advantage. If the other person knew it...

Irisia looked to Jartr, "You-" Then she paused, grimacing and looking back at Salesca, "Jartr's son fought well. It's just a pity he used the skills he learned from his father to join raiders."

"Why would he join the raiders? Did he say anything? Did you ask?"

(Action: Face Danger +Wits (2). Miss. +1 Timer)
(Progress 6/10, Timer 3/4)
(Mark Failure. +.25)

"No. I didn't ask, and he didn't say." Irsia admitted, gritting her teeth, as if she didn't want to admit her oversight.

"That seems a... poor choice." Salesca considered. I appreciate it was a battle, but given that he was the whole reason you were there, the entire purpose for your attack...

"I will certainly grant that," Irsia admitted, teeth still grinding against one another,

"I don't mean to issue recriminations, and I apologize if that was the impression I gave," Salesaca said after a moment, trying to calm Irsia down. Jartr had seemed the more unreasonable at first, but now Irsia was the one being the least helpful, though really both of them were quite set in their position.

She looked the woman over. Was she telling the truth? That really was the question.

(Action: Ask The Oracle. Is Irsia Lying? Unlikely. No.)

Salesca's instincts said the woman was, which made this more difficult. She held her tongue between her teeth, looking Irsia over, taking a breath, examining her.

"What I'm trying to understand, Irsia, among many other things, is why you decided stealing the idol made sense? I will agree with you that if Jartr's son truly did join the bandits, and I believe you when you say that's what you saw, you were not going to be able to rescue him, as such. But the idol was hardly yours to take if you didn't do what you promised to do."

She saw Jartr's nostril's flare at the first part of what she said, and then just as quickly he started smirking. Salesca closed her eyes for a moment, and then watched the woman. She really wanted to understand what the other woman's thought process here was, the conclusions that led her to decide 'yes, it makes perfect sense to just steal the idol'.

"Because we told Jartr what happened and he refused to give it to us! We did what we were bade, blood was spilled, my people were injured. It is only by the grace of the gods and my people's skilled healers that stopped any from dying! We earned the idol!"

"I fail to see how. You certainly earned something for your trouble, but to just take the idol in the night... whatever your claim to it, you have to be able to see that Jartr's people were never going to accept that."

(Action: Secure an Advantage +Wits (2) Strong Hit with a Match. +1 on the next move)

Irsia inhaled slowly. "Yes. I did see it, in the aftermath. In the moment, my fury was enough to override any of that. And the fact remains that we are owed that idol. The blessings of Mareila are what my people need to claim a permanent home of our own, and I cannot let Jartr's pique stop us from finding that home!"

"You're making it very hard to side with you or declare the idol yours by rights," Salesca said, wishing she had a better way with words to make the point land softer. "You did not speak to Jartr's son, you did not try to recover him - understandably, but still - and you stole the idol, and you even grant that it was wrong to take it. Yes, your people are owed something for what they did, but... are you really owed the idol?"

(Action: Face Danger +wits +1 (3) Weak Hit. +3 Progress, +1 Timer)
(Progress 9/10, Timer 4/4)

Salesca inhaled. "I would prefer a compromise exist between you. Perhaps a joining of forces to recover Jartr's son in the near future. I think that would be a better solution for you both. But... I cannot force you to work together, and it's clear you have a long history of disagreements well beyond this idol."

Irsia and Jartr both made noises of agreement at that, glaring at one another. Irsia was carefully schooling her expression to blank, Jartr on the other hand wasn't trying to hide the smug expression on his face.

"As Ironsworn, as asked by both of you to adjudicate, I say that the idol rightfully belongs to Jartr and his people."

(Action: Resolve the Scene vs Progress 9. Strong Hit)
Irsia closed her eyes and looked away, before finally sighing and dropping her pack from her back, reaching within and removing a small statuette of Mareila, a woman standing holding a hammer in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. It was made from a white stone, one Salesca had seen a few times in the markets at Wolfshadow - a rare stone found in the far north of the Ironlands, though supposedly it had been more common in the old world.

She extended the idol to Jartr, who snatched it from Irsia's hands.

"It is good you have seen reason." Jartr chuckled. Salesca dropped her head into one hand, pinching the bridge of her nose, and then Jartr's next words were in a gruff, but less harsh and cruelly triumphant tone. "I do not believe that my son would so willingly have joined raiders, but I am willing to grant that you believe it. I will return to my people, and I swear on the spirit of my father and my father's father, that we will give you some recompense for your work. All debts between us will be settled then, and after that is done, I do not want to see you, or your people near my village again."

"You cannot dictate where we do or do not wander, Jartr," Irsia said. "But I do not wish to deal with your people again either. So yes, I will go to Namba's Hall tomorrow and we shall negotiate payment more... fair for what I and my people did. And then yes, we shall go elsewhere, far from you and yours. You are many things, Jartr, few of them good, but I never once doubted your dedication to your people." She picked up her bag once more and set off back towards the edge of the water, gesturing to her kin and they moved south at the same time she did, joining up some distance away.

"Your words of wisdom as an outsider did far more than my words of anger could," Jartr said. "My people's village is to the east, not far and just over the river. I would thank you for serving to prevent more bloodshed by granting you a night's rest with us, if you would choose to take it."

Salesca considered his words. She did not want to delay, but the day would end before she could make too much more progress. She turned to look at Sareta, who was not walking to join her.

"It occurs to me that you should have set out to Vidarna's Watch already," Salesca told the wayfinder.

"Perhaps, but one often travels lighter than two, and I wanted to see you closer to the Hinterlands." Sareta lowered her voice as she came closer to Salesca, "I know what you can do, but I also know that to let you come to harm... if I did not have other purposes I needed to see to-"

"I know," Salesca blinked repeatedly, hating that she was feeling wetness in her eyes. She pulled Sareta into a hug. "What do you say to one last night in a settlement, possibly for the both of us, before we part ways?"

"That seems a fine idea," Sareta agreed, and after they pulled away from eachother, Salesca turned to Jartr, nodding.

"Your offer of hospitality for the night is most welcome."

 

[Kylia Quilor]

(Action: Secure an Advantage +edge +1 (4). Using Dancer Talent. Weak Hit. +2 Momentum. +1 on next action)

Namba's Hall, as Jartr's village was known, named for the distant founder of the village, celebrated that night. Jartr himself seemed less interested in celebrating, but he did not hold back his people from being happ about the return of their idol, and the protection and blessings it provided. Jartr withdrew into his own hut, but only after relaying how Salesca had been the one to sway Irsia into returning the idol without bloodshed. This made her very popular with a village that had taken several injuries and was down more than one fighter in the attempt to rescue Jartr's son. and was not looking forward to another fight.

This meant that during the celebrations, many plied her with drinks, and by the time music started to be played - mostly drums and rough flutes - Salesca was a little tipsy and more than willing to dance, adding to the show. It was not, Salesca would have to say later, her best performance, the drink making her stumble and sway just a little more than once.

But equally, the others were drinking too, they were happy, and she had provided a vital service to them. They were, in a word, quite pleased with her, and Salesca found many swearing that she would be welcome in Namba's Hall forevermore. She wasn't quite prepared to consider that entirely true, not without the word of the leader, but equally, it was good to know she'd likely be welcome here in the future. Once she was done in the Warrens of Thyri, after all, she would need to head south eventually. Even if she did indeed go to Greencairn to meet with Indirra and accept her offer of work.

After she danced, she spent the rest of the night talking with the villagers, learning about Namba's Hall, it's history and the lives of those who lived there. It was little she hadn't heard before, much the same as Taron's Hollow in the main, but this far north in the Havens, away from the tradetowns of the south, when Namba's Hall did business with traders, it was with those from, or at least heading to, Greencairn. And though it was still the Havens, animals to hunt were slightly different, and the winters noticeably longer, though not crippling. It was an interesting thing to hear about firsthand.

In turn, Salesca spoke - in general terms - of her own purpose, moving north to find a woman who had wronged her people and fulfill the vow she had made to see justice done.

(Action: Forge a Bond with the people of Namba's Hollow. +Heart +1 (2). Burn Momentum to make a Weak Hit a Strong Hit)

By the time the night was finally too late to continue, and everyone set to sleep - Salesca and Sareta being given space to lay out their bedrolls in the home of an old woman whose children had long since married and into huts with their families, Salesca felt as though she had won the people of Namba's Hall over. They respected her, and the vow she'd made, and she could respect them, as fellow villages, eking out a life in the Ironlands, a life that likely would have been hers eventually, had not Taron's Hollow burned...

The next day, Salesca rose with the sunrise, rubbing at her forehead, blinking, covering her eyes - the light coming in through the small gaps in the old woman's hut was just enough to be too much for her still-waking body, a mild headache coming on.

Groaning, Salesca looked over at Sareta, still sleeping peacefully. The other woman looked peaceful, calm and beautiful. It almost seemed a crime to disturb her rest, but she knew Sareta would want to set out on her journey as early in the day as possible.

"Sareta," she pushed at her friend's shoulder. "Wake up." Sareta made a wordless, incoherent noise and shifted, turning onto her side. "Sareta, get up," she said again, a little louder, hoping she wasn't disturbing the old woman too much.

Sareta's eyes slowly opened, and she met her eyes. For a moment, confusion, and then she must have remebered the events of the previous night as she let out a groan.

"A bit too much to drink. Just a bit." Salesca murmured, and Sareta let out another groan, pushing herself into a sitting position. She reached for her pack behind her without turning, hand grasping uselessly. Salesca grabbed Sareta's waterskin, handing it to the woman.

"Thanks," she mumbled, barely comprehensible.

"I'll be outside when you're ready." More sunlight wouldn't be good for the light pounding in her head, but Salesca had endured worse hangovers. She'd drunk more than was advisable, admittedly, but still. This was nothing.

Standing, Salesca looked to see if the old woman was still sleeping, but the pile of furs that had been her bed were empty. Perhaps she'd risen before the sunrise? Salesca didn't bother stepping too quietly or being careful about opening the door as she stepped out. The village was still mostly empty, only a few risen - sleeping off their celebration, no doubt.

The old woman was one of the few up and about, poking at the embers of a cooking fire with a long stick. She looked in Salesca's direction as she closed the door.

"Thank you for letting us use your home," Salesca said softly, and the old woman nodded.

"You recovered our idol, without blood. Happy to do my part to help a traveller like yourself."

"Still. Thank you," Salesca repeated. She took a moment to look at the rising sun, orienting herself, then looing north. The Warrens of Thyri would not be reached by dawdling. The door opened again behind her and Sareta staggered out, groaning.

"...How much did you drink last night?" Salesca asked. She rubbed at her temple after asking, thoughts fuzzy and the sunlight definitely not helping, but still. Sareta seemed to be having it worse.

"Too much, apparently," she grumbled. She nodded to the old woman, who nodded back, and then she turned to Salesca. "I've put off my own departure to the Wilds too much, but..." she sighed. "I worry."

"Sareta, I can handle myself." Salesca countered.

"Aye, you can. But you're proposing to try and kill all of the Bloody Crows all by yourself. The stories about Black Maevis, or Regol the Red - they're not easy raiders to kill."

"Well, I'm hoping I won't need to literally kill all of them. The Warrens are big, sprawling. All I need to do is find out where Vesna is. With any luck, I won't face either Maevis or Regol." Salesca let out a small chuckle. "Gods willing, anyway."

"Just as mad as Talia, in your own way," Sareta sighed, shaking her head.

"Talia won."

"And lost Taron's Hollow in the bargain." Sareta said back. "And lost something of herself too."

"Vesna needs to pay for what she did. Talia has responsibilities, or she'd do it herself. But she does. So it falls to me," Salesca swallowed. Talia had lost something, in her war. She had never been one for laughs, but now, even less so. Her smiles, more elusive. The burdens of keeping her personal warriors in line, the losses in the Lightstep's War...

And the death of Uncle Hallistar...

"The whole of the Ironlands don't rest on your shoulders, Salesca. That's a lesson Talia needed to learn too." Sareta put her hand on Salesca's shoulder, and Salesca put her own hand atop that. "Life is more important than revenge. Remember that. Your soul, too. Just... promise me you'll live. Talia will never forgive me if you die." She allowed herself a small smile. "I'll never forgive myself, for that matter."

"I'll do everything I can to live," Salesca promised.

"Even if you end up having to forsake that vow of yours? Forgoing revenge?"

"It won't, but even if, I promise." Salesca agreed.

"Good." Sareta's hand slipped off her shoulder, down to her side and the wayfinder pulled her in for a tight hug. Salesca returned it, arms tight around her friend - and the woman she still dearly wished could be more than that - before finally she pulled back.

"You stay safe yourself. The Deep Wilds are nothing to take lightly, even if you do get Vidarna's help." Salesca sighed.

"We'll see eachother again, at Wolfshadow, if nothing else."

"If the gods are good, we'll see eachother at Greencairn." Salesca countered. "I think will take Indirra up on her offer."

"Greencairn's a lot rougher than Wolfshadow," Sareta warned. "Keep a close eye on your coins there. But... good journey to you, Salesca."

"And you." She turned back to the north and started to set out, greeting a few other villagers exiting their own huts as she passed, saying farewells to the ones more out and about. She got waylaid briefly by someone profusely praising her dances the previous night, and handing her an apple and a half of a loaf of dark barley bread. The bread she put in her pack, the apple she started to eat as she finally set out.

(Action: Undertake a Journey. Destination: The Warrens of Thyri, in the Hinterlands. Dangerous Journey. Setting out from a bonded community. +wits +1 (3.) Weak Hit. 8/10. -1 Supply)

The next two days passed uneventfully as she continued her journey to the Warrens. She could see the hills of the Hinterlands off in the far distant horizon now, but it still was another day, perhaps two. Unfortunately, these last two days had by luck or by the increasing ruggedness of the terrain, given her no good forage, not even a rabbit or other small animal to shoot and cook. The bread from Namba's Hall had been eaten first - it wasn't the sort of harder, twice-baked stuff made for traveling, so if she'd left it off it wouldn't have lasted.

(Waypoint: Grim Hut)

She spent the night on that second night in an abandoned hut - dried mud around a wooden frame that had by now fallen into desrepair, the roof with several holes, the walls crumbling in a few spots. Still, it served as a sutible place to rest. There was a skeleton out front, bleached by the sun, laying down - perhaps the last resident of this place, laid out to die? Or murdered, or gods knew what else. The bones showed signs of having been gnawed at by animals, but it was hard to say any might have killed him.

(Ask the Oracle: Is there anything of interest here? Small Chance. No.)

There was nothing else suggesting who might have lived here. No belongings, not even any old scratches on a stone or something. Just the hut, the skeleton and an indent in the earth that was likely once a firepit.

She rose with the sun the next day, and set out once more. She was close to the Warrens. With the sun rising in the sky now, she looked to the hills of the Hinterlands, and... perhaps a single day's travel, as long as she managed the day well. The terrain was getting rougher - not the sheer ruggedness of the hills ahead, or the lands even further north, but the easy walking of the first half of her journey was now firmly a thing of the past.

(Action: Undertake a Journey. Destination: The Warrens of Thyri, in the Hinterlands. Dangerous Journey. +Wits (2) Strong Hit. 10/10)

(Action: Reach Your Destination vs. Progress 10. Strong Hit. +1 on Next Move)

Another day of travel had brought her to the Hinterlands. The Warrens were close now, she knew, but it was best to set out and worry about facing the raiders within after rest. The Havens were a place of tall grass, trees, soft, rolling hills, when there were hills. Even here, on the outermost edge of the Hinterlands, Salesca could see these were so much more. Rocky, craggy, broken. She found a a long dried out gully - she was pretty sure it was a gully, if she was remembering Sareta and Uncle Hallistar's stories of their travels properly - and set camp there, not bothering with a fire.

No sense in risking drawing attention to herself by the smoke, if the Bloody Crows set out patrols.

When she awoke, it was to the distant rumbling of thunder, the sight of angry, black storm clouds rolling in ahead. It would rain soon.

Best to get into the Warrens now, then.

She found the Warrens with her ears, rather than her eyes, the howling of some sort of hound, the shouts of people. She dipped into the undergrowth, staying low and down and as she parted another low bush, she saw it. An gaping hole in the side of one of the hills - wide, but shorter than she'd expected, though the tunnel within was dark and black, no clear ending. The real sign was the howling dog and the two people shouting at it to shut up.

"Yes, you fucking mutt, it's going to rain soon, so shut the hell up before this watch gets even more annoying!" With the black clouds mostly blocking out the sun as they continued to roll towards them, most of the light was coming from the fire just inside the cave's entrance. The people were clearly raiders - they wore hide armor, one of them more than a little mismatched and ill-fitting, the other more suited. Both of them had left their shields by the fire, propped up against stone, but the red bird crudely painted on the shields made it clear she had found the Bloody Crows.

Hopefully.

"Stop wasting your time and just hit the damned thing until it quiets down," The other raider - a woman, scarred and ugly, her nose having been clearly broken once before, and healed poorly. Her hair had been shaved close to her head on one side, the other side still quite short.

"And risk pissing off Kennel Master Amhlaidh? You didn't see what he did to the last recruit to hurt one of his precious hounds. Fucking split his skull open, threw the body into the kennel, let them have that for dinner instead. Poor Yoron." The man shook his head. "You wanna hit the damn dog, go for it, but it's on you."

The two raiders continued to argue, the dog continued to howl - and so far, it didn't seem to notice her. It was howling at the roiling clouds instead. With the way they were positioned...

If I'm lucky, I can sneak by them. The undergrowth had been cleared as approaching the entrance, probably long ago, when the Warrens had been a settlement visited by traders, rather than the den of scum that it was now. But she could get closer...

(Action: Secure An Advantage + Shadow +1 (3) to get into the Warrens stealthily. Weak Hit. +1 Momentum)

Unfortunately, with the cleared space to the entrance, there was no elegant way to do it, she realized after a long moment watching. Finally, she darted out, staying low to the ground as the two raiders kept arguing - the dog howled it's last howl mere moments after she got inside, but to her good fortune, the two Blood Crows had gone from arguing about the hound to trading barbs about some dispute during or after a recent raid. It gave her enough time to slowly scoot down the slope as the cave dipped. She felt her way along the wall. Best not to light any torches herself...

She was in. Now she just needed to somehow, some way, find out where Vesna had gone. Where she was going. Where she had been, if nothing else...

(Action: Reach A Milestone on Vow "Avenge the Destruction of Taron's Hollow by Vesna". +1 Progress. 2/10)

If Haevaris and Jasseira favored her, Vesna would be here, or she'd overhear someone speaking of Vesna, some meaningful, useful clue. Something she could use. Something less vague than 'she's looking for magic weapons in ancient Barrows', anyway.'

Haevaris, you may not be a god of Man, but many of my people have honored you since we came here. My Hunt, it has reached a new step. Guide my steps, bless my fortune and let my iron be true...

Jasseira may be dead, but the spirit of Justice that you animated remains strong. I am closer to finding it, now. I will find it, and honor your memory in my pursuit of it.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

And that is the end of what I have pre-written. I will post additional chapters when and as I complete them.