SoloStories

Ironsworn - Mira - A call to Iron part 7

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Mira has travelled to the city of Abon in search of knowledge about the Iron Pillars and their mysterious powers. On arrival she has discovered that the city is suffering from an outbreak of disease and is under lockdown conditions. The affliction causes fever and madness, turning people against their friends and loved ones. Mira has sworn a vow to help the city, though she does not know how. However, a trader returning from the Warden outpost of Foxhollow has brought hope in the form of medicine to calm the madness of those suffering and a suggestion that a similar outbreak was eradicated from the city many years ago. We pick up with Mira as she enters the dwelling of Torgen, the city overseer, who seems to have some kind of task in mind for her.

Ironsworn - Mira - A call to Iron part 6

Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Mira has woken at her camp next to the pillar and is beginning to plan her next steps toward fulfilling her new vow, “I will find some way to help whoever is trapped beyond the pillars”. She has decided that her next stop should be Abon, the first and biggest settlement in the Ironlands. And, she thinks, a likely place to find further information. We join her just after waking as she begins to break camp.

Ironsworn - Mira - A call to Iron part 5

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Bucket of Bolts - Endurance - part 6

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Act 3 - The Descent

Captain 5 - A Space Sweeper

Captain creation

Describe the Captain and consider how they took command of your ship, and any notable crew or assets.

This will be our final captain for the playthrough. The game recommends 2 captains from each act, but this feels like a good place to finish. And it leaves scope to pick up this ship for use in a future campaign before I run it completely into the ground.

Bucket of Bolts - Endurance - part 5

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Act 2 - A Time of Strife

Captain 4 - A Bounty Hunter

Captain creation

Describe the Captain and consider how they took command of your ship, and any notable crew or assets.

Our 3rd captain, Myles, left his ship at the scene of his latest heist/mission. It makes sense to me firstly that someone would be annoyed enough to try and go after him and secondly, that they might make use of the ship he left them. And so after a day of sitting empty our 4th captain takes control of the Endurance.

Bucket of Bolts - Endurance - part 4

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Act 2 - A Time of Strife

There are three ‘acts’ in every ship’s lifecycle and we are entering the second. If the first act is where the ship fulfils its noble purpose, this act is where we start to see things deteriorate and become slightly murkier.

Bucket of Bolts - Endurance - part 3

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Act 1 - The High Era

Captain 2 - A long distance hauler

Captain creation

Describe the Captain and consider how they took command of your ship, and any notable crew or assets.

I turned to a name generator for this one. Most important for me was to keep the game flowing, and the ship is the star of the show anyway.

Bucket of Bolts - Endurance - part 2

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Act 1 - The High Era

The first act of the game shows the ship at its peak. This is a time of glory, before hard use and the ravages of time have had a chance to inflict scars, physical and/or metaphorical.

Captain 1 - A bold, optimistic explorer

Captain creation

We start by generating our first captain. The game provides a number of pre-sets themed for each era, but I’m going off script to get something more closely tied to my ship creation.

Bucket of Bolts - Endurance - part 1

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A game of Bucket of Bolts starts with creation of a ship. Very few prompts for this section, but it’s not as difficult as it seeems. If your imagination is struggling to break through the tyranny of the blank page, do what real writers do - steal from someone else :-)

For ship creation in my first game I’ll be borrowing liberally from Star Trek. Not necessarily for the ship itself, but for the ethos of the society and the engineering team that built it. I find that once you get the first few words down you can properly start envisioning things and everything else starts to flow.

Ironsworn - Mira - A call to Iron part 4

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Ironsworn - Mira - A call to Iron part 3

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Ironsworn - Mira - A call to Iron part 2

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We pick up with Mira as she comes across an old ruin on her journey North and stops to investigate.

I kind of want to do a mini-delve here. I’m not going to do all the set-up, and I’m going to play very fast and loose with the Delve rules. This will be a quick troublesome exploration of the ruin - I just want the prompts really.

Ironsworn - Mira - A call to Iron part 1

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The scene: The settlement of Springtide, a small village near the southern coast of the Havens. Close enough to the sea that the river occasionally floods when the tide is particularly high. We enter a hut near the centre where a young woman is packing a sturdy leather backpack with equipment and supplies for a long journey. She is slight and dark haired. Her clothes are practical and well made but clearly also well-worn. She wears a thick, dark grey woollen robe with a hood that is currently hanging down her back. She looks nervous but determined.

Solo Stories first post and intro

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The traditional first (and often only…) blogpost to get things moving and check that the formatting all works as expected.