Now that we’ve rounded out Mira with a Background vow, I’d like to introduce her and chat through some of the process of turning character concept into Ironsworn character.

The Seed

Fundamentals:

I wanted to play a Cleric. Since listening to the Dungeons and Randomness podcast - specifically Arc 2 and the character of Maddy Rhiawen (impeccably role-played by Susan), I’ve had a craving for a Cleric character of my own. Ironsworn doesn’t have classes, so if you want a Cleric you have to build your own and there are dozens of different ways to go about that.

I wanted my character to explore the Ironlands, because exploration is my favourite thing about Ironsworn, so they needed starting and background vows that would drive them to search out unfamiliar areas.

Finally, I wanted my character to have the conflict of giving up one calling to pursue another, because (as my year 10 Drama teacher used to say) “conflict is the foundation of all drama”. And hard choices make good role-play.

And so Mira was born.

Fleshing out the concepts

I wanted her to be curious and I didn’t want combat to be a huge part of the campaign, so I decided Mira would be young and that she probably wouldn’t be particularly martial. Everyone in a village who can lift a stick probably gets basic training with militia weapons to fend off wild beasts and raiders, so those would be her equipment. But as per Ironsworn rules they are not deadly weapons, so fights would be risky and slow to progress.

• Name: Mira
• Age: 17
• Appearance: Long dark hair and small frame. Long robe of thick wool, well-worn.
• Equipment:
  • Wooden staff which she wields as a weapon when not using it as a walking stick.
  • A sling and a pouch of stones at her belt.

I think she may have been part of a militia that defended her village from raider attack when she was 15 years old. She wouldn’t have been on the front lines but would have faced battle and seen some of the horrors. She won’t freeze up in the face of combat, but she also won’t seek out fights with other humans. Stats

The Lodestar reference guide gives a couple of alternative stat arrays for those that want to tweak their play experience. Since I’d made her a younger character, and I’m a reasonably experienced Ironsworn player, I went with the ‘Grim’ stat array: 3,2,1,1,0. This will mean more weak hits and failures, but also that my narrative positioning and asset bonuses become much more significant. At the end of the day it’s the weak hits and failures that drive the adventure in unexpected directions, and I’m in control of how hard those failures hit the character. It seemed like a good fit for an AP blog.

As an apprentice crafter I decided Mira was probably a quick learner and light on her feet, but as a young girl in a sedentary crafting profession her physical strength was likely to be her weakest attribute.

• Edge: 2
• Heart: 1
• Iron: 0
• Shadow: 1
• Wits: 3

Assets

And now for the fun part. Choosing Assets to represent key aspects of your character. The assets should highlight areas where you’d expect their background and experience to bring helpful skills or equipment, and they’re also your opportunity to give your character mechanical bonuses that fit your play style. If you want to think of it in those terms, this is where your create and flavour your ‘starting class’.

Devotant

Since the basis of this character was a Cleric-type concept, the Devotant asset was an obvious first choice. It’s certainly not mandatory - you can have your character believing in gods, saying morning prayers, asking their deity to bless their weapon etc. entirely through narrative - but having the Asset gives you a mechanical bonus for doing so. And rather than gods, the deity in this case is ‘the ironlands’, or just ‘the iron’. We don’t really know what that means yet, but we’ll find out through play!

I usually steal from the Norse pantheon for Ironsworn deities but last playthrough I had an idea that the nature of the gods or spirits in Ironsworn might be tied to the land, giving an old gods/new gods divide with different magic and rituals for each. That last character never really interacted any further with that aspect of the world, but I filed it away in my brain for future use.

Wright

The other significant concept was the idea that Mira is a former craftsperson who abandons her trade to follow her calling. I wanted this represented mechanically, so the Wright asset was a natural fit. I spent a lot longer thinking about which craft I wanted her to follow and settled on leatherwork as something that was realistic for a small village in the Ironlands and which should also come in useful during play. It also meant I could add a few relevant bits and upgrades to her equipment:

• Leatherworking tools in a roll
• A leather backpack

Long-arm

The final asset could have gone in a few different directions. I toyed with the idea of giving Mira a Ritual but decided I wanted to save discovery of magics as part of her cleric ‘arc’. I did also ponder giving her a third Path asset - Wayfinder would have been extremely useful for a character who would be travelling across the Ironlands, and the bonus to Undertake a Journey would have been particularly nice since even a Troublesome journey in Ironsworn can turn brutal with a couple of misses - but there was no narrative justification for a village-girl to have those skills, and the pull of the calling overcoming the terror of setting out into the unknown was a part of what made this calling so dramatic and interesting.

I decided I could narratively justify the Long-arm asset since everyone who could lift a weapon would be trained and drilled to help defend the village, and the quarterstaff has always been the weapon of the commoners. It would also let me mitigate her non-existent Iron stat in close combat by using Edge instead, at the cost of doing only one harm on a hit. I wanted combat to be a difficult choice, but if she did get into a fight I wanted her to have a fighting chance. And the upgrade to boost Undertake a Journey rolls would give me something to try and unlock as early as I could.

Drives and goals

I knew I wanted Mira’s vows to drive exploration, and so her starting vow was to attend the iron pillar a day or so from her village.

I didn’t know what I wanted Mira’s long-term goal to be, and if you’ve been reading the Ironsworn posts up to now you will have seen that this background vow, “Uncover the collapsed knowledge of the Ironlands”, was established through play in part 4 of the series. Ironsworn is flexible about these things. Discovery through play is supported and encouraged through the system and can be a fun way to let your character surprise you.

Bonds

Bonds are important for an Ironsworn character. The number of bonds you forge has a direct effect on your character’s prologue if and when you retire them, and there are mechanical bonuses for some moves if they feature a place or person you are bonded with.

Mira starts with 3 bonds:

• Village: Springtide, Mira’s home village
• Mentor - Zhan: The Leatherworker who was training her as apprentice. Location: Springtide
• Brother - Kova: Mystic, village healer and keeps the beliefs of the old lands alive. This iron calling might be a source of friction between them? Location: Springtide

All in and around her home village, so if all goes according to plan they are very unlikely to feature again.

Character complete

And with that, we’ve gone from sketched out concept to full fledged character.

We’ve completed the Prologue, and next post we’ll dive back into Chapter 1 as Mira begins to work on the first part of her background vow.