002 - Travels to the Iron Pillar
Clearly, it has been some time since Solana has set out. The start of the trip was much rougher on her than expected - must be growing soft and squishy like the settlement-dwellers. A bit of time is spent getting familiar with life in the open again, hardly helped by the bizarre weather of the region.
Deeper into the Wild Lands is an old river, moving so loudly and furiously it was heard long before it arrived. Its age is made clear by the near-canyon depth it has eroded into the land. This river was never mentioned by the people of Timberhome. There is no reason to believe they lied to her, yet this would be impossible to miss for all but the least adventurous folks. How has it eluded all maps and explorers?
Continuing in on the Wild Lands, Solana comes across a stone pillar. Its peculiar shape is obviously a much smaller replica of the iron pillars dotting the world. The surrounding environment is quiet, peaceful, and almost lends one to falling asleep immediately. Solana gathers forages unharmed, if demotivated by the soporific aura.
Solana is approaching the outer borders of civilized society, and it’s pretty clear why: the heavy woods quickly degrade into a sludge-like tar mass. Organic material, long decayed, heavy moisture, and a distinct lack of sunlight escaping the tree branches have left the deepest parts of the Wild Lands more wild, less land, and much more fetid pit. The very air feels nauseating, to say nothing of what might happen if Solana stays for too long. Navigating through this disgusting bog leaves Solana gagging, exhausted, and feeling both worse… and paradoxically inspired. This is what she loves to do: roam the unroamed.
A terrible rock face marked the edge of the Deep Wilds. Given the sharp drop downwards (right into sharp rocks) and distant sound of oceans, this must be close to the Ragged Coast. Had she really went across the entire Deep Wilds? Deciding it would make a nice landmark, she continues her journey walking along the rock face… while being sure not to fall off, of course.
At long last, Solana finds the iron pillar in the horizon, which is enough to make her double her pace. That pace slows back down to a cautious walk, however, as she is clearly not alone: A man is at the base of the pillar, with a campsite nearby and a cleared area full of tools and markings, clearly in the middle of some sort of ritual! Solana makes a cautious approach, trying gently to greet them.
The man is taken aback that someone is here, and more than a little annoyed at the interruption. It is clear this is one of the mystics involved in the ritual-battle plaguing Timberland. It is clear through brief discussion that this battle cannot be stopped by talking to him alone. However, that a settlement is suffering for his actions gives him pause. He offers a proposal: Escort him to the town. Closer to the town, he can better protect it from his enemy’s magic, and though while the fighting will continue, the people will be much less troubled for it.
Mid-Story Commentary
Like most of my play even after this campaign, the initial incident usually involves taking a journey immediately. I'm still struggling to find a voice and get comfortable playing the game here. Here, I mostly roll on the Location oracles and over and over. I don't strictly recommend doing this, because it's prone to making bizarre patchwork worlds, but given what I rolled at this point I think it worked out okay.
Solana only has 1 Wits, so a journey is always going to be of a problem. I went for some gathering in the middle of it. I don't remember if the swamp was a roll or not. Talking to the mystic was a Compel weak hit, and the condition was to escort him back. I'm not sure if that's an appropriately costly compel or not, but it wasn't an unconditional "sure" and also drove the story forward, so all's fair.
I either didn't want to play out an entire dialog scene, which is why here it's not really a full dialog scene and more of a summary of what happened. I really did not, and still don't like, the idea of playing out scenes of people talking - it starts feeling really uncanny in my head as I basically have a roleplay conversation with myself. People playing Ironsworn for themselve: don't be afraid to do this! You don't hve to write in a particular way or style, if dialog sucks, don't bother with it and just say what happened!
Full Retrospective Commentary
I find it hilarious that this matter that all she had to do was walk up and ask Gautstafr to stop. A surprising amount of her problems get solved this way.
I wrote a lot for this journey, huh? I must have really got into this one, after the uncomfortable start of the first session. Plenty of other journeys later get glossed over, but this early on I was
This is the first appearance of who we'd learn is Gautstafr, and I would obviously have no idea just how important he'd end up being later on. One of the joys of Ironsworn is starting up things that are just kind of passing incidents, that later you can come back to in a big way and make them relevant whenever. Introducing a mystic early on was secretly a good move, since now I have a person to turn to for magical-based questions and quests, but I didn't know this at the time and was just playing off the "dueling mystics" oracle roll I got at the beginning.
I would later have exactly way too much fun trying to play into continuity.