Wolf and Cat, log 13

   This is the 13th log of my Ironsworn solitaire campaign about Oddi Ice-Chosen. Character background and start of the narrative can be found at: Wolf and Cat, Log 1. 

Session length varies wildly. Some are multi-hour sessions in open evenings, others are 20-minute diversions over a lunch-break. 

Cast of Characters:

• Oddi Ice-Chosen, my main PC. Abducted by a Firstborn sorceress as a child, only recently returning to the world of men, motivated by a terrible prophetic vision. Wears an enchanted wolf-skin. Storyweaver and occasional ritual spellcaster.
  
• Sammutisel: Oddi's pet Cave Lion. 150 pounds, 4-inch fangs. 
• Kasju Frystgrotta: The Firstborn sorceress that abducted Oddi and taught him magic.
• Grassa Bitterloss: Oddi's mother. Recently reunited after 12 years.
  
• Emelyn Firetop: Blacksmith. Survivor of the destruction of Oddi's hometown. 
• Tern: Emelyn's younger brother. Werebear.
• Myrgun Bitterblad: Oddi's sister. Currently missing in the Shatterwood.
• Rygar Bitterblad: Oddi and Myrgun's recently deceased father. Grassa's ex-husband.
• Amolfir: A missing villager from the town of Sword Hope, last seen riding into the Shatterwood with Myrgun. Emelyn and Tern are currently staying with Amolfir's wife. 
  

Session Log 13:  8/8/2021

Notes going in to the session: My wolf pelt is no longer charged by the Bind ritual. Early next session I should do Mark Progress - It's likely this is fortress of either the Shatterwood Broken, Fluugs the Tree-Troll, and/or the Bloodsick Warrior. Once I know whose castle it is, that will determine whether it gets a progress mark on vs Broken or vs Bloodsick.

Where we left off: After catching my breath, I look upward at the towering wall of brambles. It runs up near as high as the ridge I came over. Above it is a watchtower, giving the impression that the thicket is a castle wall. These are like the walls of Thyckete and Thorne, perhaps the most famous of the Firstborn castle-growers. Men in the Old World made castles of stone. Men in the Ironlands sometimes do the same, usually on a smaller scale, but more-often erect walls of dead logs, like Proud Hoarfrost or Jorgun Kin-Foe did. A living castle, on the other hand, means a Firstborn at least laid its foundations. This place is important. I have only seen castles illustrated in scrolls that Kasju shared with me in the Frozen Cave of Zhan.

I look up at the top of the wall. There are people on it, in two senses. Some sentry pacing the top of the wall, and two bodies a little further down the wall, dressed in black and somehow tangled in or tied to the wall. Sammutisel growls up at them, and their black cloaks alight and scatter. The bodies are naked save for tangling branches, the darkness was crows feasting upon them. Such barbarism does not bode well. Someone went to a lot of trouble to arrange that torture.

Anyone who has heard The Lay of the Ruined Mallet knows that Broken are as wild as beasts, as mad as the moon, and as splintered as the Shatterwood that I find myself in. They are known for their cruelty, not their cleverness. I do not doubt that they would wound a man and hang him bleeding for the crows, but my stories do not indicate how they would maintain a fortress of the Firstborn, nor have the skill and coordination necessary to lash a man to the outside of a wall. It's not impossible the tales could be embellishing their mindless savagery... Garl the Slayer had mind enough to speak sense and curse betrayal, after all. I had assumed him to be exceptional among his kind. Feris Left-Tusk's fatal lack of thinking before action seemed more in line with my understanding of such once-men.

The guard high above is painted like the Broken, and his pacing is more like the barely contained rage of a caged animal than the measured outward-facing procession of a professional sentry. The wall is tightly woven, grown in an intentional mesh. It's not like the loose tangles of the other ravine, punching through this would be hard work and noisy. The guard's pattern is erratic, his attention divided or wandering, so I resolve to try ascending the thicket.

Check Your Gear - Strong Hit

I reach in my satchel and produce the gloves I so often needed in the Frozen Cave. They are fur-thick, and will save my hands from being destroyed in my ascent. Some thorn-injuries will be unavoidable during this climb, but I need my hands to still be able to grasp my axe when I reach the top.

Face Danger - Weak Hit       Endure Harm - Miss, -1 Health and -1 momentum

Delve the Depths with Edge - Strong Hit

Find an Opportunity Oracle 78 - Get the drop on a denizen. That's the same result as last time I rolled on this chart. So I'll take out the Guard with a Battle, I guess, and hope it's not retroactively a chieftain that I'm slaying this time. :)

Battle - Strong Hit  - Momentum is now back at 10.

I want a little more interesting randomness here, so I roll some oracles

Combat Action - Create an Opportunity     Action/Theme - Seize Bond

I scale up the wall, slowly, trying not to cut myself too badly. It's delicate, painful work, but the gloves save my hands. Sammutisel follows after me, making more noise than I'd like, but proving a capable climber.

As we pass by the naked corpses tangled high on the wall, I am shocked to discover that one of them still breathes. Cutting him free and getting him safely off the wall will be a task and a half. Sensing my weight upon the thicket, he opens the one eye the crows have left him. I cover his mouth before he can cry out. With his eye open, something about him strikes me as familiar, maybe I knew him a decade ago, or maybe his age and haggardness reminds me of the tales of the Grey Wanderer.

I whisper to him "Quiet. I will try to rescue you, but there is a guard walking the wall. I might be able to cut you free the next time he's walking away towards the watch tower."  The man nods, and I look upward again. The guard paces near, muttering to himself bizarre half-sentences about murders and hoofprints. He turns away again, and I start to cut the vines that have grown around this prisoner's neck. As soon as his head is free from the position it's been held in, he turns and stretches his neck. That's when he spots Sammutisel below, and tries to warn me. "Lion!"

The madman guard on the wall rushes over and leans out with his spear. Whether he intends to stab the prisoners, or fight a lion, doesn't matter. I throw my knife into his neck, and he slumps forward. I catch the spear when it falls from his hand. Turning it around, I use it to poke and prod his body out over the edge. After he falls, we wait in silence for a few seconds, but no other guards appear.

"Do not fear the Lion," it is now safe to whisper to the man, "He is my friend. I am Oddi Ice-Chosen."

The man smiles. "Son of Rygar. Your sister is around here somewhere."

I immediately scan the wall in both directions, but don't see any more bodies than these two men.

"Inside, I think. I don't know if she yet lives, but she was not dead last night when I was placed here. I am Amolfir of Sword Hope. I rode here with your sister to avenge our friends who died in Despair."

Emelyn had told me that the village's name was shortened after they lost the struggle to forget. My mother's endless grief was a part of that, she'd said, but the Gloom's vision had complicated that narrative yesterday. I force my mind to refocus on the man.

"I'm going to cut you free," I tell him. "Getting down will not be easy, and then you'll need to travel half the Shatterwood before you can get home."

"Are you going over the wall to fight them?" He asks.

"I am."

"Then I will as well. I cannot walk naked into Sword Hope as the sole survivor."

"You can, and you will. You lost an eye. No one will doubt your courage."

Compel - Miss

"Listen, Oddi, I swore an iron vow that I would avenge your village."  It's suicide, but Amolfir refuses to let me got to my death alone. If I don't want to bring him with me into the jaws of death, I would have to leave him stranded on the wall. He says that if I send him to the ground, if he can still walk he will head to the gates and fight his way in. This is a really bad idea, but I respect his bravery.

The plan is thus: I will finish cutting him free, then we will go over the wall. If we are spotted, we take as many of them as we can, and look for opportunities to free any other captives. If we somehow get over the top unnoticed, we'll head for that watch-tower. It should provide enough privacy and security for me to get him bandages and clothing from my pack. I tell the plan a second time to Sammutisel, in the First-Tongue, and hope the cat understands.

Delve the Depths - Shadow because we're trying to be sneaky - Strong Hit!

Find an Opportunity - 56: You locate a secure area.

Things go much better than expected. Enough I wonder if Amolfir is the Grey Wanderer, or perhaps with his one-eye just a close-enough approximation for the Gods to take a guiding interest.  No one spots us down below, and we are three grey shadows moving to the watch-tower, which is wicker and wood construction, with just enough room for us.

Mark Progress - Not just on the Delve, but on my vow against The Shatterwood Broken. I killed one, freed one of the their prisoners, and have now snuck inside their castle.

Once within it, I give him my spare pants from my pack. I bandage as many of his cuts as I can, and pack his eye, and check my own wounds while I'm at it.

Heal - Weak Hit - +2 Health but -1 Momentum

My satchel's contents are poured out on the floor of the tower, and his one-eye is drawn to the hexen-belt. "I stole it from a monster," I tell him. "I am only carrying it to keep it away from creatures worse. I won't use it."

"Why not?" He asks incredulously, as if I were about to go into dire battle outnumbered, and refusing to wield the greatest weapon in my arsenal. Perhaps I am.

"It's a great weapon, but it's also evil. I fear what it might make of me."

Compel - Weak Hit - He wants something in return. Not sure what to make of that so I roll some oracles.

Disposition: Unfriendly.    Activity: Learning.    Goal: Seize Power.

That's not good. "Oddi Ice-Chosen, you may have the gifts of the Firstborn to speed your arm in battle, but I do not! We are outnumbered. You are sending me into battle half-naked and armed only with a crude spear captured from the enemy. I will not run away from this fight, but neither will I slit my own throat for them. It is all good for you to say that you fear this magic getting the best of you. I do not fear this. I am fighting for the honor and memory of my slain friends, and for my own honor which they tried to peel from me. My heart is just, and I have already suffered and remained strong. I cannot afford to just refuse to use such a weapon on general principle. Let us do this: You let me carry the collar. If all goes well, we fight and carry the day without it. But if we are not enough to defeat these monsters, then it is better if the collar is carried by one is willing to risk it if there is no other way to win. Let me carry it, and I promise you I will not use its power if there is any other way to succeed. It is only a last option, to be avoided if there is any other way."

I know it's a terrible idea, but I consent to this battleplan. I hope my trust is not misplaced.

Locate Your Objective - Progress Move - Strong Hit - Make a new move at +1

We look down into the Firstborn castle. The courtyard has huts, cages, weapon racks, a horse on a spit roasting over a large fire-pit, a table where a man has been butchered. Like the outer walls, all of it seems to have grown into the current shape, woven and as twisted as the men who walk around it. I witness acts of brutality, madness, torture, cannibalism, fornication, the Broken have no mores nor taboos. It's painful to look at. They outnumber us 15 to 3 at least, and maybe worse if there are more inside the huts, or in the large low knot of trees that have been shaped by magic into something like an inner Keep.

Endure Stress just for looking down at that mess - Weak Hit - 1 Spirit.

I scan the landscape for anything we can leverage to our advantage. The wood is too green to burn well, but it would produce a lot of smoke that might provide the cover we need. That is assuming that the magic that's making the thickets grow into high castle walls isn't also protecting them from fire. I need a better understanding of what's going on in this place.

Gather Information - Weak Hit

I ask Amolfir to fill me in on everything that happened the past few days, and what we're up against here. His tale is troubling. Some of the Broken are the mindless savages we expect, but a few had greater cunning. They attacked in ambushes, with diversion or bait. They dragged people away, taking captives even if it cost them lives and battles to do so. On the second day, they waved a white flag, and wanted to talk. The negotiations were pure bedlam: the Broken spoke over each other, and leadership seemed to change from moment to moment. But the most nonsensical thing of it all were who was with them. Three dozen Broken, plus two missing members of the Despair community and one of our own number who'd been dragged away in the fighting the day before. All three were marked with a symbol on their foreheads, the same tower-and-wave motif you'll see on many of them down there. Instead of behaving like prisoners in need of rescue, all three were as rabid and crazed as any of them."

I'm aghast at this news. There are of course tales of civilized men going Broken, that's basically the crux of the Lay of the Ruined Mallet... but these are transformations that take place over years of hardship, not overnight.

"While all the Broken shouted over each other, there were two of the Broken who seemed to be competing for who was in charge. One of them had your father's sword belt, and a single jutting tooth. The other was a woman with a hundred iron hooks piercing every inch of her painted flesh.  Myrgun asked about Rygar's sword. The man with the tooth got very agitated about this, and the woman said that their leader had it now. The man screamed at her "Floogs is not my leader!"

"Fluugs the Tree-Troll?" I asked, from my vantage point peering down through the wicker weave of the tower.

"I'm sure some Broken just named for the legend, but yes. They came to blows over that leadership squabble, and Myrgun chose that moment to act. We killed several, captured 3, and scattered the rest. One of the 3 was from the town of Despair. We tried to reason with him, snap him out of it, but he bit Myrgun. Not a little bite, he was trying to murder or at least disfigure your sister, and left an open wound on her face. After that, she ordered all three hung until dead, and left there for the traitors to humanity they..."

Down in the courtyard there is now some greater commotion afoot than the general cacophony of Broken antics thus far. A painted woman comes flying out of the tree-Keep, hits the ground hard, rolls, and springs up on her feet, drawing knives in either hand. Another woman comes stomping out after her, clad in mail and a respectable but blood-stained tunic, but wielding a big jagged axe of Broken design. The two women have eyes locked on each other, looking for an opening. The armored woman...

"Amolfir, look! Is that-"

"Myrgun!"

Enter the Fray - Edge - Strong + Opportunity!  - We're going to call this something between Dangerous and Formidable. Only 1 progress per harm like Formidable, but only inflicts 2 harm like Dangerous. For the Opportunity, I'm going to say that if I manage to score a Secure An Advantage at any point in this fight, it will allow me to score +1 on Clash, Battle, or Face Danger for the rest of the scene. I'm basing that on the "Companion: Kindred: Shield-Kin" asset ability.

I leap down from the tower, and run across the planking at the top of the wall, which has bark not boards. The random thought fires through my head about how amazing this place is, and how much I want to study it, learn its history, sing its praises, meet its maker.

Below, the two women circle each other, and the other Broken creep closer to them both, staring intently as their duel begins.

Strike with Cave Lion Edge - Miss - Spend my 10 momentum for a: Strong Hit!  3 Harm + 2 Momentum

I drop down behind the ring that's watching them, but at just that moment one of the maddened throng watching the fight turns around. I don't know if he heard me, or saw movement out of the corner of his eye, or was chasing a hallucination. All that matters is he sees me and is drawing a dagger. Then Sammutisel bounds past me, and knocks the Broken over in a bloody mess. The next one over turns around as well, and I throw one of Emelyn's daggers into him.

Strike with Cave Lion Edge - Strong Hit - 3 Harm +2 Momentum

Total chaos erupts in the courtyard. The scent of blood is thick in the air, strong enough to mask the scent of everything else foul the Broken have done in this space. I throw blades in any others that turn towards me, and heft my axe when Emelyn's knives run out. Sammutisel tears at them as well, and Amolfir thrusts down with the spear from a position on the walls.

We've thinned the opposition enough that I can spare a glance in Myrgun's direction.

Secure an Advantage - Heart - Miss!   - Pay The Price: 07: A person or community you care about is exposed to danger.

The ferocious Broken chieftess she was dueling has fallen, and much of her arm has fallen a few feet further away. Myrgun is moving in for a killing blow that is most redundant.  Excited, I call out to her. "Myrgun, it's Oddi!" Like I'm a stupid little kid.

Myrgun looks in my direction, and the chieftess picks that moment to hurl a dagger with her good hand. My sister's instincts are quick, and even distracted by my idiocy, she still twists her body and tries to parry. If she was wielding our father's sword, she would have been fast enough, but this Broken axe is heavy and off-balance. She screams out in pain, and then moves for that killing blow anyway. After pulling the knife out of her arm, she give the chiefess two more hacks.

I focus far too long on her struggle and my responsibility for it. A foe comes charging up on my right side and dives at me.

Clash w/ Iron - Weak Hit, burn Momentum to make it a Strong Hit  - Find an opening: Harm 3

The Broken who leaps atop me is a snarling barely-human beast, with teeth sharpened to points, and an elaborate facial scar. He's atop me, snapping and spraying spittle, and trying to stab with the broken head of a shattered spear. The facial scar is deliberate and intricate -  a stylized tower on the left side of the face, surrounding the eye, and in turn surrounded by ripples carved in the tissues everywhere else. The same motiff I've seen painted on others of this group, but clearly the best, most dedicated application of the design that I've seen. It makes a perfect target for the punch I use to knock them off of me. Then I roll on to my side and push up onto my knees. They roll as well, and then spring back at me. I bring my axe up to block their counter-attack, and catch them on the chin with the butt of my weapon. This connects hard enough to daze them, and I follow up by swinging the axe around to destroy that amazing scar.

End The Fight - Strong Hit

Back on my feet, I search for anyone left to kill.  Hardly anyone. A hamstring to stop an escape, a few  hacks, and then it's mostly recovering Emelyn's knives.

Mark Progress - the third progress on my Dangerous vow to avenge my father's murder by the Broken

Glancing over, I see little sister Myrgun, my closest playmate in childhood, who absolutely worshipped me, and followed me everywhere I went. Only now she's staring daggers at me, while tying a strip of tunic around a dagger wound on her arm. "Sister! I am so happy to see you again. These 2 and 10 years, I have often thought of you. I missed you dearly."  No response.  "Mother is alive and well, I saw her to Sword Hope. Speaking of which, I saw you using an axe, do you know where father's sword is?"

"You interfering idiot!" she shouts at me.  That's not exactly the greeting I had hoped for.