We catch up with Mira who has just dispatched a Bladewing and is now beginning an exploration of the ruins it was guarding.

Time to continue the Delve and hope against hope that we don’t roll up another denizen. I really don’t want to get into another fight here. Delve the Depths: Wits
Roll: 5 + 3 (Wits) vs 1 and 7 = Strong Hit
Mark progress and find an opportunity
Progress: 6/10
You locate a secure area
Take action now: make a move, add +1 and take +1 momentum on a hit.

Mira makes her way toward the back of the ruined structure to where the building is more or less intact, reasoning that this will be where the foundations are deeper and more robust. It pays off when she sees a wooden hatch set into the floor, heavy but unlocked. Picking out a likely looking timber she hauls it over and uses her staff as leverage, lifting the heavy wooden hatch cover and using the timber to wedge it open.

Face Danger: Wits
Roll: 5 + 3 (Wits) + 1 (Opportunity) vs 2 and 10 = Weak Hit
Succeed but are delayed, +-1 momentum (Opportunity bonus and Face Danger cost) (+4)

It’s difficult work, Mira is clever and quick but she’s not especially strong, and it takes time to lever the hatch open bit by bit. But gradually she gets it vertical enough to throw her bodyweight against the old, weathered wood and push it all the way open. This seems a likely place for a hunter to hide from wolves, and in the darkness it would be an easy place to lose a knife.

Lighting a torch, Mira proceeds carefully down into the basement room keeping her eyes wide open for danger.

Delve the Depths: Wits
Roll: 6 + 3 (Wits) vs 4 and 3 = Strong Hit
Mark progress and find an opportunity
Progress: 9/10
This area provides an opportunity to scavenge, forage or hunt
Take action now: make a move, add +1 and take +1 momentum on a hit.

A perfect opportunity to try and resupply out in the middle of nowhere. If we’re saying this looks like an old storage barn then it seems very reasonable that there might be some useful stuff preserved in a cellar.

Resupply
Roll: 3 + 3 (Wits) + 1 (Opportunity) vs 3 and 3 = Strong Hit with a match
Take 2 supply (+5 max), +1 momentum (Opportunity) (+5)
I think between the resupply and the matched 3s I’m going to say that I find a new blanket that will replace my tattered bedroll alongside a dusty bag of grains that look old but dry, and which are probably very edible if cooked into a porridge. I don’t fancy roleplaying a night in the open in the ironlands with no blanket. And the old blanket can be bandages, which will likely also be useful.

Down a short staircase is a small square room with stone walls and flagstone floor. Old, dusty equipment is piled up against the back wall, and in amongst the barrels are a stack of thick woollen blankets woven in the style of the old world, with intricate embroidery around the edges. Mira gratefully takes one, but leaves the rest for future travellers. She also scoops up enough dried grains from an old sack to fill a large pouch. Boiled up with river water these should keep her going for a couple of meals at least.

Locate your objective
Roll: Progress 9 vs 1 and 3 = Strong Hit
You locate your objective and the situation favours you. Take +1 momentum (+6)

In the corner of the room Mira catches a glint of metal and smiles as she identifies the knife she was searching for. The ironlands are a hard master, but they reward persistence. She tucks it into her belt and makes her way back up the staircase, her spirit battered but slightly renewed.

The sun is beginning its dip toward the horizon, but there are a few hours of daylight left and Mira decides not to waste them. She wants to reach the pillar before nightfall and hasn’t planned beyond that, but something seems to draw her onward and the whispers are becoming more urgent as she gets closer to her goal.

Undertake a Journey (Troublesome): The iron pillar north of Springtide
Roll: 1 + 3 (Wits) vs 3 and 6 = Weak Hit
You reach a waypoint and mark progress but suffer -1 supply (4)
Progress: 6/10
OK, let’s get a closer look at that waypoint.
Location / Descriptor: Abandoned Foothills
That doesn’t give me much, let’s enrich that Location roll with something from the Theme oracle
Theme: Trade

Mira has been heading across country so far, her village isn’t big enough to have a worn road connecting it to anywhere. But as she heads north she crosses the trade road, little more than a muddy track worn into the grass of the rolling foothills.

If she turned and followed it East it would take her all the way to the border of the Flooded Lands and to the bastion town of Foxhollow, a fortified settlement that sits on the boundary where the rolling grasslands of the Havens give way to the swamps and bogs of the flooded lands. Monsters are rumoured to dwell there, and Foxhollow is an outpost of the Wardens who patrol the borders and protect the settled lands.

To the west is Abon - literally ‘landing’ in the old language. The first settlement in the Ironlands, and still the biggest. Food, military supplies and recruits are constantly flowing to Foxhollow, while news and veterans travel in the other direction.

There is comfort in knowing that others walk this path. She takes a moment to look up and down the road, but there is no one in sight. With a small pang of regret she steps over the road and continues North back into the wilderness.

Undertake a Journey (Troublesome): The iron pillar north of Springtide
Roll: 1 + 3 (Wits) vs 6 and 7 = Miss
On a miss you are waylaid by a perilous event. Pay the Price.
Pay the Price: The Current Situation Worsens
Progress: 6/10
Sigh. OK so the current situation is that we’re alone in the wilds, darkness is starting to fall, and we’re still an indeterminate distance away from our destination. There are a few ways that this could worsen, but let’s see if a Theme can prompt us down an interesting path.
Theme: Creature
And that’s the one I really didn’t want. Stupid dice. So, what do we have? Our world truths say that Beasts are common and can be found throughout the Ironlands. We’re in the Havens - rolling grasslands, stands of trees but no huge forests - and we’re playing the default Ironlands setting which is vaguely nordic. But the Oracle just said Creature, and ‘the situation worsens’ doesn’t need to mean a fight. I think I have an idea.

Mira smells them before she sees them through the lengthening shadows. A herd of some fourteen bison, huge and hairy with large curved horns and steaming breath. She can’t help thinking of the village hunters - just one of these creatures would feed the whole village for a week. She knows she needs to push on and find a safe place to rest for the night but she feels compelled to try and get a message back to Springtide to let them know about the herd just a few hours’ walk north of the settlement.

She realises that this is a second test of her new-found faith. She could head back toward the village and carry the news of this rare bounty. It would relieve the hardship of her friends and family, provide them with food, bones, leather, horns, hides - a bison is a treasure trove of resources for an Ironlands community. But it would mean abandoning her quest. Yes she could come back later, but there would always be some reason to turn around and put off her pilgrimage. This is where she makes the conscious choice to put her calling above her kin, or she goes back home and spends the rest of her life repairing leather tack and making shoes.

With tears of guilt and frustration building in her eyes Mira turns from the herd of Bison and continues walking North, feeling like she has let down almost everyone she knows and knowing that she would do it again a hundred times over.

And the price I pay will be to voluntarily make the Endure Stress move.

Endure Stress: -1 Spirit (2)
Roll: 6 + 2 (spirit) vs 8 and 10 = Miss
Suffer -1 momentum (5)

Undertake a Journey (Troublesome): The iron pillar north of Springtide
Roll: 4 + 3 (Wits) vs 4 and 4 = Strong hit with a match
Reach a waypoint and mark progress.
Progress: 9/10
The waypoint will be the iron pillar. Then we’ll roll to Reach our Destination and see what happens. On a failure then this wasn’t the end of our journey after all. And we need an interesting opportunity for that match on the challenge dice.

Reach your destination (Troublesome): The iron pillar north of Springtide
Roll: 9 (progress) vs 8 and 1 = Strong hit
The situation at your destination favours you. Make another move now and add +1.

The pull becomes unbearable, and as exhausted as she is, Mira finds herself jogging and stumbling for the last ten minutes as her conscious mind loses control of her body and it tries to go faster and faster despite the protestations of every muscle. As she finally approaches the pointed grey silhouette she sobs in relief as her body is allowed to drop to its knees in front of the monolith. She is here. She doesn’t yet know why, or what she needs to do. But the pull has stopped.

Mira has enough awareness remaining to realise that attempting to get answers out of the pillar this evening is probably a very bad idea. She drags herself a short distance away into the wind shadow of a nearby rock and wraps herself inside her thick old-world blanket. She is asleep before her head touches the ground.

We’re packing in the moves here, but I think completing this journey also marks a milestone on our quest to attend the Iron pillar and find out what it wants.

Reach a Milestone (troublesome): Attend the iron pillar north of Mira’s home village and find out what it wants
Progress: 3/10

And the +1 will go on a Make Camp move, as Mira chooses a spot close to the Iron pillar to rest for the night.

Make Camp
Roll: 4 + 4 (supply) + 1 (favourable situation) vs 9 and 10 = Miss
You take no comfort. Pay the Price.
Pay the Price: Your action has an unintended effect.

Well, that’s not good.