Iron & Gold
Credits
This is a solo play-through of the adventure “Ironwood Gorge” by Eric Jones, published by Ludibrium Games.
Because I am not really an old-school guy, things have been converted to (originally) Iron Gauntlets by Precis Intermedia Games and after about chapter 6, Iron & Gold, also by Precis Intermedia Games. Where necessary, I use Mythic Game Master Emulator by Tana Pigeon, published by Word Mill Games.
This is the second Ludibrium Games module I’ve used for these characters, and I enjoy them. (The first was “The Sanctuary Ruin.”)
As usual, rules misunderstandings are mine and I try to present it as (bad) fiction, with game mechanics in footnotes. The italicized subtitles after the chapter title are prompts from Mythic Game Master Emulator; I try to work the intent into the scene. I am not always successful, but it keeps me a bit more honest.
“Ironwood Gorge” is meant to be the basis for a campaign, where the Bleak Tower is a home base for adventures. I have not yet decided whether I will do that; there could be additional Bleak Tower adventures, or they'll wander away until the third adventure in the trilogy is published.
19 — On The Way
Side goal: I forgot to roll one
Felewin was tired and achy, and the day’s march hadn’t helped. He was sure that the Seneschal’s change of heart had to do with the long talk that Lady Anwen had with Felewin, and he hated to think that anyone thought bad of him, even (or perhaps especially) if that thought was wrong.
Kagandis had been forced to stay behind, because Lady Anwen had not allowed her to go, and for the sake of peace, Felewin had not forced the issue.
Not that my comments would have helped, he thought.
They had made good time, heading mostly north with directions that Daerdun gave them. Although the sun was still relatively high in the sky — it was full-on summer by now — Felewin started looking for an appropriate place to pitch camp.[166].
Ninefingers, taking point, held up a hand for everyone to stop. Felewin was lost in his own thoughts and walked straight into Hrelgi, who elbowed him to no effect.
Ninefingers indicated a bush. Uthrilir went around the eastern side, Felewin took the western side. Felewin strung his bow, notched an arrow, and waited. Uthrilir looked, then shook his head and backed away. He held his mace up in a defensive manner.
“Boar,” he said in a low voice. “Eating nuts.”
Ninefingers immediately headed west and they gave the boar a wide berth.
They found a place to camp and hour later, almost by the water’s edge.
Here, the river bent, so there was water on two sides to protect them. Farther along, it got marshy, and Daerdun had advised them how to avoid the wet ground. Felewin and Uthrilir spent time flattening brush and cutting saplings and small tree-limbs to make a lean-to that would act as a shelter, because it looked like rain.
It rained overnight, putting out their small fire. Ninefingers was on watch, and he chose not to re-light it. Out in the darkness, he could see lights bobbing in the distance, across the river. He watched them but they didn’t move like lights held by a person.
In the morning, he asked Felewin about it.[167] Felewin nodded and swallowed his oatmeal. “Will-o-the-wisps. They guide people to their doom. Kinda like fey-flares, but they’re intelligent — sometimes they work with other creatures.”
“Why do they do it?”
“Fey,” said Felewin. “Why do fey do anything? They have their own rules.” He shrugged and ate more oatmeal.
Ninefingers said, “If we knew the rules, it might be safer to deal with them.”
“Fey came to my father’s court once. The cook was in a panic that there might be a dinner, but Father didn’t have one. One of the kharyat, a rank in my land kind of like barons, showed up with his clothes inside out to prevent feycraft, but Father had him ejected.”
Ninefingers asked, “If you had nobility in your land, why not become a knight there?”
Surprised, Felewin said, “We didn’t have knights.”
“But you could have become a carrot.”
“Kharyat. I had the family requirement, but I needed a herd of oxen, allegiance from half a dozen family heads, and bravery in war. I did not wish for war, and truthfully, knighthood sounded brave and exotic.” He knocked his cup against the ground to knock out the dregs, wiped the rim, and stored it. “Knighthood is perhaps better in the tales instead of the practice. I see why my father preferred to have the allegiance of the families rather than attempt to slay a singing beast.” He stood. “Get your kits. We should be off.”
Ninefingers frowned, but followed.
Hrelgi said, “I’m not done!”
Uthrilir said,”You’re eating leaves. You can eat on the way.”
“Hmph,” she said. “This is not leaves, it’s salad.”
#
Felewin pushed them hard, managing to get them past the marshy lands by noon. Ninefingers had been practically jogging to keep up, and he finally tugged on Felewin’t arm and said, “Hey, hold up.”
“Are they falling behind?”
“Yeah, but listen, we don’t have to get there tonight. Day after tomorrow is when we figured we get there. What’s eating at you?”
Felewin looked back to see them. “I’m the reason that the seneschal approved our trip.”
“He likes you?”
“He wants to get rid of me. He thinks I’m being improper with the Lady Anwen.”
“You?”
“She wanted to talk to me, and she shut the door. Then she talked to me for an hour.”
Ninefingers made a soft sound while thinking. “She’s mad at him.”
“The seneschal?”
“Of course the seneschal. I don’t know why she’s mad at him, but it has something to do with the Margrave’s disappearance.”
“His illness?”
“You are so innocent. He’s gone and illness is the cover story. I mean, maybe it’s an illness in some way. Trust me, she wanted to make him mad, and he was.”
“Oh.” Felewin said, “That someone thought I would do that, I couldn’t—”
“He doesn’t know you.”
“Huh.” Felewin finally spotted Uthrilir stumping towards them. He waved. “I guess if I had been a knight, he’d have thought the same things?”
“She wanted him to think those things,” Ninefingers said.
Hrelgi and Uthrilir came up. Felewin said, “We’re past the marshlands, so it should be easy. From here, the river gets deep and fast. We don’t have to worry about anything crawling out of the water.”
“Did we before?” asked Hrelgi. She had her breath back.
Felewin smiled. “Maybe.”
#
At midafternoon, Felewin started looking for a campsite, and he took them off the animal track they had been following. “Did you see[168] the divots? Those are from spear shafts. Lot of orcs take this path. From the footprints, goblins, too. Anything lighter than a goblin doesn’t really leave a mark on this stuff. I don’t want to run into any of them. And there’s something big that hunts here, too — I could tell something big got killed and dragged off.”
“I don’t want to run into that, whatever it is,” said Hrelgi.
“None of us do,” said Uthrilir.
Single-file, they headed off the track with Uthrilir covering their tracks. Mindful of the unknown large beast, Felewin took them farther from the track than he would normally.[169], but he was mindful that every step they took was a step they would have to retrace.
He wished they had Kagandis there; she did an excellent job of scouting ahead. Ninefingers could move silently but he didn’t have the eye for nature that Kagandis did.
Finally they were at the base of a low hill. A pair of pine trees had fallen over and their roots would make a fine pair of shelters, if they weren’t already occupied.
They were not.
Ninefingers looked at them both judiciously and said,”Both nice, but this one is more like home. If I were going to dig a new nest, I’d start with this one.”
Uthrilir said, “No, I’d look at the other one. Sturdier.”
“Either way, we don’t want to sleep directly on the dirt. Uthrilir and Hrelgi, please gather enough branches and grasses for us to sleep on. Ninefingers, you start a fire, and I’ll start getting some food ready.”
It was while the other three were out gathering firewood and bedding that Felewin heard the sound.[170] It was a soothing sound — not an ocean murmur or a river, but similar. It tugged at his heart and his limbs. He resisted, but saw that Ninefingers was standing rapt.
Felewin knew one animal that trapped with a song: the singing beast but they only used the songs when mating and when protecting their territory. His eyes flicked to the cave on the hillside.
We camped in the territory of a singing beast. And a singing beast might explain that dead animal by the trail.
The sining beast looked like a griffin without wings: the talons were like a griffin, but the paws were more like an awe-stritch, a fflightless bird he had heard of. (The teller had been drunk, which had caused Felewin to discount the idea.)
The beast had to be near; its song didn’t carry far.
He grabbed his sword and shields. He thanked the gods he hadn’t shucked his hauberk yet. As he was straightening up, the singing beast appeared and leapt at him.[171] He dodged out of the way of the beast’s talons and slashed; his sword bit something but he had to move: right now, his back was against the tree roots. The singing beast turned and attacked again.[172] Felewin managed to dodge again, backing up. He slashed again at the beast and cut it again. This time he saw that the beast could be cut, but it was tough. It swiped at him and he got the shield partway up but the thing’s talons hit his arm too.
Ninefingers was still standing there, entranced, even though the song had stopped, so Felewin danced away, hoping to get it facing away from Ninefingers. He held until the beast rushed again, then slashed again.[173]
The singing beast was bleeding from each wound but it was as big as bear; Felewin had seen other big animals keep going.[174] He went for the neck this time, and slashed it open before the beast could move again.
It bled out a dozen paces from one of the root shelters.
Felewin waited until it stopped moving and then stabbed it repeatedly.
Once he was sure it was dead, he turned his attention to Ninefingers. It took some rough shaking but the goblin blinked and said, “Don’t!”
“I thought I’d lost you. I’ve never heard of anyone surviving a singing beast’s voice,” said Felewin.
Ninefingers looked over at the bloody corpse. “No, if the voice gets them, they’re usually dead.”
“Indeed. The problem is, that one was female, and it might have been protecting its young.”
“More than one? Where are the others?”
At that moment, Hrelgi came running up[175] from the trees. “You have to help! Uthri is paralyzed or something because of the beast!”
“We killed the beast.”
“Another one. I killed it.”
“We’re in the middle of their territory, and they’re territorial. Take us to him.”
Hrelgi and Ninefingers weren’t strong enough to shake Uthrilir free, but Felewin took a turn and managed to snap Uthrilir to consciousness.
Meanwhile, Ninefingers looked at the one that Hrelgi had killed. “Male, but I don’t know how to judge the age of a singing beast. This is the first I’ve ever seen. Well, second, counting the one back there.”
Felewin looked at it. “For age you look at the feet and the colouration around the beak. Juvenile.”
“I hope never to use this information.”
They trudged back to their belongings. “Only the female raises the young, and there are usually one or two offspring, Do we take the chance that there are no more?”
“No,” said Uthrilir and Ninefingers.
Hrelgi said, “It was just dumb luck that you and I didn’t get entranced. I don’t know anything about spells to protect us from that.”
“I heard tell one fellow stoppered his ears with wasx” said Felewin, “but we don’t have any wax. I vote we move on.”
“Mine was easy to beat,” said Hrelgi.
“Juveniles,” said Felewin.”I’ll bet the mother is out there somewhere.” He picked up his pack. “Come on. They were hunting out to the trail, so we have to get farther than that to be out of range.”
Hrelgi groaned. “You just want us to march farther.”
Fortunately, dark came much later in the summer. They marched for another hour and then collapsed at a site that Felewin said might be okay.
Game Mechanics
[166] Everybody rolls awareness or Tracking, depending on what they have: difficulty is 2. Ninefingers is the only one to make it, rolling a 7
[167] Felewin rolls a 7 on his 8≥ survival roll.
[168] Felewin rolls a 4 on tracking, so he can expound for a bit.
[169] Checking whether they make Challenging Composure+Reasoning roll to avoid singing beast
Felewin rolls 12
Ninefingers rolls 2
Hrelgi rolls 4 (missing by 1)
Uthrilir rolls a 9 (missing by a lot but not as much as Felewin)
[170] In a demonstration of the luck system, the two people with composure got 3,which they needed to avoid the Challenging cry of the singing beast. The other two did not (though of course they’d have made it on a roll of 2).
[171] Reactions Felewin 13 Beast 10
Felewin hits (margin 4 vs 3) and his 3 Inj attack does 1 level of damage. The Beast’s attack missed (its margin was -1, Felewin’s was 4).
[172] Reactions Felewin 11 Beast 8
Felewin’s attack succeeds (margin 4 vs 1). His attack manages to do 1 health level (rolls a 1,2,4 for damage versus the Beast’s Toughness and Fitness of 4). The beast hits; one point of damage is stopped by the shield, and the other by the chain.
[173] Reactions Felewin 10 Beast 10
Felewin gets a great hit (margin 2 versus -4) and two of the three points of damage get through.
The Beast does less well: It misses (-1 vs 5)
[174] Reactions Felewin 13 Beast 11
Because the thing is Oversized, Felewin hits (margin 3 vs 1). 2 of the 3 get through, and the Singing Beast is dead.
[175] I did actually roll this: Hrelgi got the first attack and successfully cast fabrica motus and the singing beast failed its athletics roll. It went flying back and hit a tree, which inflicted two levels of health damage; she made her composure roll.. The beast, enraged, spent the next turn getting up, while Hrelgi was setting up the same spell. Hrelgi went first again and hit the singing beast (which failed athletics again), sending it backward again and into the tree once more. Because the tree was now broken, it was sharp and killed the beast. Good thing the singing beast died, because she failed the composure roll.
Uthrilir was motionless the entire time.
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