Mira has finally arrived at the Iron pillar and fallen, exhausted, into a deep sleep in the wind-shadow of a nearby rock. We scored a miss on our camp roll and the price is that ‘our action had an unintended effect’, which shouldn’t be good for Mira. BUT we also scored a strong hit with a match when we finally arrived at the pillar, and I haven’t resolved that match yet. That should present us with an opportunity.
This post is meta and mechanics heavy because it deals with a lot of Oracle rolls and interpretations. Apologies to those of you who are in it for the story. But one of the things I really enjoy in other people’s playthroughs is peeking behind the curtain and seeing their thought processes as they try to make sense of the table prompts. Hopefully this is helpful for someone. So I’ve been pondering this in my spare time over the last couple of days away from the keyboard, which is one of the joys of solo RP vs group RP. You’re working to your own timeframe, and even when you’re not writing journals and rolling dice you’re still playing the game. Let’s dive into play and we’ll see if the Oracles play nicely with my ideas.
Mira wakes early the next morning, stiff and cold and feeling like she hasn’t slept a wink. Her head feels like it’s stuffed with wool and her body simultaneously feels like it’s too tired to move and yet also on high alert, pumped full of adrenaline. Her brain is full of visions which are rapidly fading as she retreats from unconsciousness, but she can’t help feeling like there was something in those visions that she is glad to lose. Something disturbing; a sense that a veil was lifted that she would rather remain shut. Slowly she turns her head to face the pillar, certain that it is the source of her troubled sleep.
Just one thread of the visions remains and she grasps at it in her mind, holding tight as everything else fades. A message from the pillar - from the Ironlands. She is sure of it.
And this will address our match. I’ll roll an Action / Theme and we’ll see if we can work out what this pillar is trying to tell us.
Action/Theme: Uncover / Knowledge
I mean, that’s too on-the-nose isn’t it? Sometimes the Oracles do this. It’s like the dice are listening in. The Ironsworn Lodestar reference book has a couple of extra tables, and one of the prompt combinations it recommends is Action/Descriptor/Theme. Let’s throw a descriptor in from that Oracle table and see if it helps.
Domain: Collapsed
So ‘Uncover Collapsed Knowledge’. I had plans to use this matched-hit oracle roll to give me another progress tick on our vow to find out what the pillar wants from Mira. But actually this prompt feels perfect for something else. Something much more interesting.
When I created Mira I didn’t give her a Background vow because, while I knew I wanted it to be related to her Iron Calling, I had no idea what it should be. I ran through a few ideas - ‘a pilgrimage to all the iron pillars in the Ironlands’, ‘discovering the truth about the pillars’, ‘spreading the word of the new gods to the people of the Ironlands’ but they all seemed hard to track and/or not interesting to play through. I thought “we’ll I’ll leave it for now and hope that it comes out in play once she starts doing some quests”. And I think it just has.
Background vow (Extreme): Uncover the collapsed knowledge of the Ironlands.
What does this mean? We don’t know yet. The collapse might be symbolic, or it might be physical. Since this is the background vow we may never know. But one of the Truths of my Ironlands is:
“Before the Ironlanders, before even the firstborn, another people lived here. Their ancient ruins are found throughout the Ironlands.”
I think it might relate to the lost knowledge of that ancient civilisation.
Mira gets to her knees and packs her blanket back onto her backpack. Her movements are controlled and intentional. She focuses on even breaths and tries not to think about what she needs to do next. That tiny, squirming thread of vision she holds in her mind is a clue, but she needs help before she can understand it. There’s only one thing she can think of and the idea of it terrifies her. She pulls the backpack onto her shoulders and gets to her feet. She turns to face the pillar and slowly and deliberately she walks towards it.
When she is a single pace away she stops, raises a hand to the iron of the pillar and places her palm on the smooth metal. She feels the cold and the hardness on her skin, and there is a sharp intake of breath as she opens her mind and allows the pillar to rush in.
The end goal here is to perform a Gather Information move, which will give us our next steps. Gather Information is a fail-forward move; whatever happens you get the information, a bad roll just makes the situation more complicated. If ever you’re stuck on what to do next, try to work in a Gather Information. However, before we get to that we need to address the narrative, and in this instance we’ll be gathering information by opening ourselves up to the Iron Pillar. That feels risky, so we’ll use a Face Danger roll to model it. We’re meeting this challenge with fear and courage, so we’ll roll with heart. The outcome of this roll will determine our starting position when extracting the information from the pillar.
Face Danger: Heart
Roll: 4 + 1 (heart) vs 8 and 10 = Miss
Pay the Price: It causes a delay or puts you at a disadvantage
Mira tries to hold the thread in her mind but quickly realises that there’s a real danger that she’ll lose herself in the torrent of vision and feeling that cascades over and around her. She curls into a mental ball and somewhere she is aware of her body on its knees, breathing heavily and sweating with the effort of holding her together, hand fixed to the pillar. Knowing she can’t sustain this for long she quests out toward the pillar, opening her mind as much as she dares.
Gather Information is supposed to be rolled with Wits - Mira’s strongest stat - but in this instance I’m going to make an exception and roll with Iron - her worst. That will be the disadvantage from our Pay the Price. Mira is hanging in there with pure grit and determination.
Gather Information: Iron
Roll: 5 + 0 (Iron) vs 10 and 6 = Miss
On a miss your investigation unearths a dire threat or reveals an unwelcome truth that undermines your quest.
Unsurprisingly we roll a miss. This is bad for Mira because life just got more complicated, but good for me because I get to roll one of my favourite Oracles for it. The Major Plot Twist Oracle.
Major Plot Twist: Someone or Something goes missing.
Wow OK. This has to relate to our vows - finding out what the pillar wants, uncovering knowledge. I’d like some context, maybe a location and descriptor role will give me a suitably vague pointer.
Location / Descriptor: Trail / Hidden
Oh, oh I think, I think… there’s the barest hint in our vision that the pillars can be a kind of gateway. They open a path - not physical but it can be travelled. But it’s dangerous, and someone got lost. And there’s some echo of them from whatever lies on the other side, calling out to those who are sensitive. I think this ticks progress on our troublesome vow to attend the 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: 6/10
In for a penny, I think this deserves a roll on the Mystic Backlash Oracle to see what this interaction to the pillar does to us personally.
Mystic Backlash: You are sapped of strength.
Makes perfect sense.
Mira suddenly comes to face down on the mud and grass surrounding the pillar’s base. She doesn’t know how long she’s been laying there but her breathing is back to normal and the sweat has dried from her body. The sun is at its zenith peeking through the cloud cover and she is cold to her bones. It must be several hours. She tries to lift herself to her knees but can’t lift her bodyweight and settles for flopping over onto her back. She needs a fire and a blanket, but her mind begins racing.
She remembers a cry for help. Not a voice, but a desperation. Someone is trapped in the pillar, or beyond the pillar. that makes no sense, but it’s what she felt and she knows fundamentally that it’s true, she just doesn’t have the words to properly describe it. She knows that she needs to help them but she doesn’t know how. Even the memory of that feeling of helplessness threatens to overwhelm her.
Gathering all her strength Mira forces herself upright, takes the Iron knife from her belt and cuts a nick into her finger. She lets the blood swell and watches as a droplet falls to the ground at the pillar’s base. And she speaks to the pillar, with a passion that surprises even her. “I offer the Iron of my blood to the gods of the Ironlands as proof of my sincerity, may they give me strength. I swear on Iron that I will find some way to help you. I don’t know how, or what that help will look like, but I will see it done.”
Leveraging my Devotant asset here. That little offering will count as a prayer to my god asking them to grant a blessing, which means I can get some help toward a Secure an Advantage roll.
Secure an Advantage: Wits (my God’s stat)
Roll: 4 + 3 (Wits) vs 9 and 10 = Miss
You fail or your assumptions betray you
Pay the Price: A new danger or foe is revealed.
Oof, we’ll park that for a minute while we go ahead and swear the vow, but I want to come back to that Pay the Price. I feel like we’re about to uncover some kind of supernatural conflict here.
Swear an Iron Vow (Formidable): I will find some way to help whoever is trapped beyond the pillars
Roll: 6 + 1 (Heart) vs 3 and 4 = Strong Hit
You are emboldened and it is clear what you must do next.
+2 Momentum (7)
It might be clear to Mira, but it’s not to me. This is where the Action and Theme oracles are invaluable.
Action / Theme: Investigate / War
Didn’t I just say we were getting into a supernatural conflict?! The Oracles are spooky sometimes. So maybe the magic that created gateways from these pillars was opposed by the spirits of the Ironlands, and the war was between the wielders of the magic and the Ironlands themselves. Or maybe someone was sealed away beyond the pillars as part of some other conflict. We’ll find out as we play, but this gives us a starting point.
And while we’re here, let’s see if we can clean up that initial vow to journey to this pillar and find out what it wants. Rolling to fulfil this at 6/10 progress is risky, but failure drives story in this game and as it stands I don’t feel like there’s anything else we can meaningfully do to reach a milestone on this vow, which is usually the fiction telling you it’s time to roll the dice.
Fulfill Your Vow (Troublesome): Attend the iron pillar north of Mira’s home village and find out what it wants
Roll: 6 (vow progress) vs 2 and 9 = Weak Hit
There is more to be done or you realise the truth of your quest. Mark Experience. You may Swear an Iron Vow to set things right.
This makes sense. I would say that our vow to help whoever is trapped is a natural extension of our vow to find out what the pillar wants. Sadly no experience for a weak hit on a Troublesome quest.
Mira kneels for a while in front of the pillar feeling conflicted. Her vow is sworn and her sense of purpose is clear. But her mind is clouded, and she gets the sense that her offering was not as welcome as she had hoped. Eventually she makes the decision that she will not attempt anything further today. She needs food and rest to regain her strength, and she wants time to meditate on what she has learned and to see if she can attune to the aura surrounding the pillar. Mira gathers firewood and clean water and makes camp, closing her eyes and unfocusing her mind as the water slowly heats over the campfire.
Make Camp: Supply
Roll: 4 + 4 (supply) vs 1 and 4 = Strong Hit
Relax +1 Spirit (3), Recuperate +1 health (4)
When she wakes the next morning she is refreshed mentally and physically. She needs to know more about this land and its history. Abon is nearby; she can head back south to the trade road and follow it to the big town. They’ll have scholars and maybe a library, she may even find other Iron priests. And in the back of her mind she knows that from Abon she can strike out for the Deep Wilds and a source of knowledge far older than anything held by the Ironlanders. In the Deep Wilds are said to live the peoples of the firstborn, hidden deep in their forests far from humans. If anyone in the Ironlands knows about the pillars, it’s the Elves.