Kalyra Sophisdottir
Episode 01: The First Step is the Longest
Note: This is my very first session of Ironsworn. It has been lightly edited to remove extended bits of silence, paper-shuffling, and so on. There is backstory up to 4:00. After some overland journey, she gets into a fight (16:00), much of which consists of me struggling to figure out the combat rules. If you want to skip to the end of the fight, jump to 35:00. The final ten minutes consist of some role play resulting from the fight.
And, of course, the game system is Ironsworn by Shawn Tomkins.
If you would like some music to go along with this, try the playlist Shadowlands on Spotify. That’s what I was listening to as I played.
Kalyra’s Game Profile
- Stats
- Edge: 1; Heart: 3; Iron: 2; Shadow: 1; Wits: 2
- Bonds
- To her father, Beren Verkenson
- To her mother, Sophi Enyasdottir
- To home village, Peilinham
- Vows
- Rescue my father (formidable)
- Bring Ironlanders into balance with the land (epic)
- Assets
- Path: Herbalist
- Combat Talent: Swordmaster
- Ritual: Keen
Kalyra’s Backstory
Kalyra Sophisdottir grew up in the northwest corner of the Havens, in a tiny redoubt in the forest called Peilinham after its founder Peilin, who settled the area during the first wave of emigration from the Old World. Her parents were Sophi Enyasdottir and Beren Verkenson. Her mother was the local healer, and taught her much herbal lore. Her father Beren hunted in the forest much of the time, but was also the proud bearer of an ancestral blade inherited from his father, who had brought it from the Old World. Beren’s father fell in battle with a wyvern that assaulted the settlement when it was new, and Beren retrieved the sword from his father’s corpse and used it to slay the wyvern who had killed him.
Beren desperately wanted a son to pass the sword to; but after Kalyra’s difficult birth it soon became clear that Sophi was no longer capable of bearing children. Rather than abandon his wife, whom he loved, or the sword, which he wielded in defense of his home, Beren chose to train his daughter in its ways. To his relief (and eventual pride) she proved an apt pupil for the weapon, soon mastering it. Indeed, he suspects she is a finer swordmaster than he is, for when she wields the blade, she can draw on the power of the spirits of those the sword has killed to guide her strikes.
Kalyra loves the peaceful arts her mother taught her as much as swordplay. But she feels there is something she is missing from her herb-lore. The land provides the herbs and plants that heal; and she believes, somehow, the land wants people to be healed. But of what, and how, she is unsure. Perhaps it is that the people, her people, have no bond to the lands they dwell in?
Alas, that will have to wait, for three days ago a forest primordial assaulted Peilinham. It came out of the shadowed woods at dusk and broke through the wooden palisade like it was nothing. The villagers rallied to defend their homes, and at their head were Beren and his daughter. Kalyra was knocked unconscious early in the fight; when she awoke, she learned that the others had driven the primordial off. But ... it took her father, snatching up his body and fleeing into the woods. No one could say if he was unconscious or dead; but he is definitely gone. And so, right then and there, Kalyra picked up her father’s fallen sword and swore an Iron Vow: she will bring her father back — if he still lives she will return him home where he belongs; or if he is dead, she will bring his body for cremation.
The primordial fled north, and Kalyra pursues.
Session Report
Kalyra began her quest by taking her family’s sword. Pausing at the north edge of Peilinham, she draws the sword and held it up to look at it. It gleams in the early morning light. She reverses it, holding it by the blade, and presses it against her chest. Closing her eyes, she focuses: on the keening of the souls this blade has taken beyond the black gate. Ritual: Keen. Rolled a weak hit.
Kalyra hums, and the resonance from her chest causes the sword to hum along with it, in a paean of agony from the souls of those the sword has slain. Slightly disturbed by the calls of the dead, she nevertheless set out on her journey. Suffered -2 Spirit and -1 momentum.
She made good time as she undertook the journey, setting out northward towards the Hinterlands. A strong hit with double 2s on the challenge dice. After a half day’s travel following the trail of the primordial, she finds herself entering a glade in a low spot between two hills. At the north edge there stands an enormous stone, carven with intricate whirling loops and geometric designs. The eye almost falls into them. It’s old; lichen spreads across its surface. The stone has stood untouched for centuries.
Curious about the monument, Kalyra pauses. She approaches it, and raises a hand to touch it; but then stops. No. She has other business to attend. She continues north. Rolled a failure on her second Undertake a Journey move.
So focused on her journey, Kalyra failed to note the presence of a boar until it was too late: she made the foolish mistake of getting between a mother boar and her piglets. The enraged boar proved a particularly tenacious and difficult opponent, and Kalyra found herself unable disengage. After a vicious combat in which Kalyra was constantly on her back foot, she made a desperate attempt to take control of the fight ... and failed, taking a grievous wound that put her moments away from death.
The two combatants — battered, bleeding — face off in the forest, puffs of white breath coming from their mouths. The boar charges in again, and Kalyra rams her sword home even as its tusks find her gut. A weak hit on Face Death.
And then: all is dark for a moment. The pale green light filtering through the early spring trees dims, dims to blackness, and she finds herself walking along a strange hallway. She knows it is a hallway, because she has seen hallways before; but this is not like any other she’s seen. It is made of stone, but not quarried stone; not stones piled atop one another and sealed with mortar. This is polished. Smooth. Seamless. Black and marked with tiny flecks of pale blue and white that shimmer in it. It is like walking across a field of stars, only she can hear her feet tapping on the stone.
At the end of the hall she finds a door. She reaches out her hand to open it by the enormous iron ring; but as her fingers close around it, a voice speaks from behind her.
“Kalyra.”
Kalyra turns her head slightly to the side, but does not look back.
“Kalyra. There is something I need of you.”
“Who are you? What is it you want?”
The Oracle said: Investigate Desolation.
“Far to the north, beyond the Hinterlands, beyond the shattered mountains in the frozen wastes that extend to the top of the very world, there lies ... a single rose that blooms black in the eternal sunlight of the summer, and white in the eternal darkness of the winter night. You must go to the far north. Pluck for me that rose. And bring it. Bring it to me.”
“And if I do this thing? What will come of it?”
“That is not for you to decide. That is the price I demand. Your other option is to open the door that stands before you ... and allow your father to meet whatever fate lies for him to the north in the Hinterlands.”
Kalyra pauses, one hand on the iron handle of the black door in front of her. Her grip tightens. She starts to turn it ... and stops. “Very well. I swear by the iron handle of Death’s Door that I hold before me: I shall make my way to the desolation in the north, retrieve the rose that is black in the light and white in the dark, and bring it to you.”
“Very well.”
New vow: Bring the Rose of Light and Shadow to Death. Epic difficulty.
And with an enormous CRACK, the black stone all around Kalyra falls away, and she finds herself standing, gasping, back in the forest. The dead boar slides off of her blade. The piglets run shrieking into the forests, away from the cooling corpse of their mother. And Kalyra falls to her knees in the forest, in the gathering shadows.
And when she looks up, her eyes have changed. Formerly they were blue; and indeed, they are still blue. But never before have her eyes been blue all across the sclera, all across the whites. She has no pupils, or irises, any longer; and her eyes gleam with a pale blue that shimmers in the dark.
And with that, with Kalyra wounded and cursed, we end the first session of her tale.