Tales of the Ironlands

Kalyra Sophisdottir

Episode 16: The Circle Bound

Recap

Last time, on Tales of the Ironlands, Kalyra Sophisdottir had made it back to the hut of Dagny Olgasdottir thanks to the timely intervention of two travellers. Einari also arrived, summoned by crows Dagny sent to find him.

The two of them began nursing Kalyra back to health. They tended her wounds, and did what they could to lower the fever she was suffering. At first, this seemed to work; she woke briefly, in the night. But in the morning, she had relapsed. Her fever was higher than ever, and during the day she began making strange, musical cries as she tossed and turned. Based on these, Einari diagnosed her illness as the Singing Death, a terrible disease that wiped out the Shatu clan of elves. Neither he nor Dagny know how to treat this disease, or whether it is contagious.

As for Kalyra, her spirit wanders a barren, rocky landscape of mists and shadows, half-way between death and life. In that strange land, she met an earth primordial, who told her that she is in Alumpana: the world’s remembrance of itself at the beginning of things. It is a between place, where the spirits of those who have refused to pass through the Black Door wander the mists looking for a way back to the living world. Kalyra is trapped there for the moment while her body fights off the illness that she suffers.

After Kalyra assisted the primordial with a ritual, it told her that if she wishes to help herself she should seek a healer here in Alumpana, and explained that the cromlech circles of the elves connect to Alumpana. If she can find a cromlech, she will find the souls of elves who chose to stay here and offer their wisdom to their tribes instead of moving on through the Black Door. Thus, she left the primordial behind, and set off to find the cromlech of the Skaren tribe.

Session Report

And that’s where we’re going to pick up. It’s been a while since I recorded; life became busy, as often happens. Just to review, Kalyra is not in great shape mechanically at the moment. She has no supplies, her Spirit is at zero, her Health is at 1, and she’s got Momentum of 4. She has a variety of outstanding quests: "Don’t Just Lie Down and Die" being the most important, which she had to start over due to failing it on a pair of double tens.

She ended the last episode by beginning a journey to the cromlech of the Skaren tribe, here in Alumpana, so that seems like the first thing to do. Marked it as a Dangerous journey. Undertake a Journey; rolled +heart (3) instead of +wits (2) because Alumpana is a place of will. 6v2/9, weak hit. Because she is currently a disembodied spirit and lacks any need for supply, suffering -1 supply didn’t really make sense; so I marked progress, but one fewer than usual (+1 instead of +2 progress) to 1/10.

Kalyra struggles at first with navigating Alumpana. As long as she can focus her mind on the cromlech of the Skaren tribe, it feels to her as though she is making steady progress. But any time her attention wavers, she finds herself walking past obstacles that she’s seen before. After the third time that passes a boulder that resembles a large tree, lying on its side, she puts her hands on her hips and glares at it. “Well ... he said it was a matter of will, to travel here. I guess I just need to hone my will. It’s frustrating, though.” She kicks the tree; which accomplishes nothing. Neither she nor the tree feels it. But she feels a little better.

Undertake a Journey. 4v3/5, weak hit. +1 progress to 2/10.

Alumpana is a featureless place. It’s just an endless expanse of stone, dirt, and mist. The monotony makes it very difficult to focus. “I hope I don’t wind up trapped here,” Kalyra mutters to herself. “I’m sure it would drive me crazy in short order. I wonder if it does drive spirits crazy? I must press on ...”

Undertake a Journey: 9v5/2, strong hit, +2 progress, 4/10.

Kalyra feels as though she ought to be tired. But then, she has felt that way much of the time she has been here. And, indeed, she spent some time resting when she was with the earth primordial. But as she travels, it soon becomes clear to her that that sense of weariness is nothing physical. It must come from the surrounding lands; or from her own low spirits. Or perhaps from the illness that her body suffers — somewhere, wherever it is, in the ordinary world.

The thought of her body lying in the bed in Dagny’s hut hardens her will. “I must get to that cromlech! They’ll be able to help me. Onward ... onward!”

Undertake a Journey: 4v2/7, weak hit. +1 progress, 5/10.

Kalyra wanders through the fogs and mists, uncertain where exactly she’s going; or rather, knowing her destination, but uncertain the path she is following is the one she truly needs to follow. “It’s that uncertainty,” she says. “It’s slowing me down. Focus, Kalyra. Focus! Think of Belisant. I mean ... she’s there. Sort of. At least, on the other side of those stones. I wonder if she’ll hear me, through the stones, when I’m there? Ach. Think of Belisant! Onwards.”

Undertake a Journey. 6v2/10, weak hit, +1 progress, 6/10.

Mortal minds were not really intended to navigate this realm. Despite her determination, she keeps wavering. Her thoughts skitter away from her. Towards the Barren, Pala, somewhere behind her. Towards thoughts of the primordial she spoke with, wondering what portents it gained from the ritual it cast. Maintaining a single-minded focus on a single destination is not something that comes easily to her.

It frustrates her, no end. “I ought to be better at this! ... or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I need practice. Ha! Well ... nothing to do but practice. Onward.”

Undertake a Journey: 7v4/2, strong hit, +2 progress, 8/10.

In time, Kalyra begins to learn that it’s not so much a matter of single-minded focus; it’s a matter of consistency. In the same way that an experienced knitter does not need to look at the row that she is stitching, Kalyra begins to learn how to keep her mind on her objective, while also letting it wander. It’s a strange sort of double perspective: keeping the destination in mind, while also allowing herself to ponder other things. Such as her anger towards Einari, for his cowardice in the face of the bonewalkers at Elenmir. But as soon as that topic comes to her, she pushes it away. “That’s not for now. I must be there soon. Come on, let’s go.”

Undertake a Journey. 4v3/7, weak hit, +1 progress, 9/10.

But thoughts of Einari continue to intrude on her previously strong focus. Her lips press into a thin line as she thinks of him. “I’m going to give him such a piece of my mind!.” Then she sighs in frustration: “I’m already giving him a piece of my mind! The piece that I need to navigate here!” She stops, looking around at the empty landscape full of nothing but shadows, mist, and stone.

She pauses and sits on a rock, and breathes: in and out. “I’ll get there soon. The cromlech cannot be far now. I feel it,” she says, sitting on her stone, eyes half close.

A bit of motion catches her attention. Looking out into the mists, she sees that she is not entirely alone. There is a ragged spirit, hovering at the edge of the area she can see, looking at her. Two pale blue lights hang in the air where its eyes would be, and she can see the vague suggestion of a mouth, and a nose. It hovers at the edge of her perception and just watches.

“What do you want?” she says.

It hovers and does not approach any further; but it blinks, first one eye, and then the other.

“Come closer,” she calls to it. Compel +heart, +1 from Deathtouched: 7v2/4, +1 to next Gather Info.

The spirit moves forward, its motion consisting of changes in the shape of the mist. It slides up to her. Its edges are ragged and unbounded. It is difficult to see where the mist leaves off and the spirit begins.

“What is it you want, spirit?” asks Kalyra. Gather Info at +1 from Compel and +1 from Deathtouched. 8v5/4, strong hit. +2 momentum.

The spirit approaches Kalyra. Its tiny specks of blue light hover, no more than a foot away from her face, and it endeavors to speak. “Kalyra ... beware ... beware ...”

“Beware? Beware what?”

“Raleth!” it says with a sigh, and then it dissipates into the mist.

“Raleth?” she says. “Raleth! ... oh, Raleth. She’s dead. Maybe she didn’t go through the gate. Maybe she’s here. Oh, my. I should go. Uhh ... I should be cautious. Hmm. Enough rest.” She gets to her feet and sets her mind on the cromlech of the Skaren tribe once again.

Undertake a Journey: 6v3/7, +1 progress, to 10/10. Moved to Reach your Destination: 10v10/10. AAAAAARGH. Failed to reach my destination. Chose “your objective is lost to you” as the outcome.

Striding through the mists, her thoughts focused on the cromlech of the Skaren tribe, Raleth, and her friend Belisant, Kalyra emerges from the edge of the mist into a clearing ... and a scene of horror. In front of her she can see the cromlech. She recognizes the stones arranged in the same circular shape as she saw in the Skaren tribe. But ... whatever she expected to see, it was clearly was not this; for scattered amongst the stones, she can see the forms of elves, all of whom are bound. Except one: the one in the center. The one who turns her face to see Kalyra. Raleth has bound and prisoned the spirits of the Skaren tribe’s cromlech circle, and the stones shudder with a black energy rippling across them.

Raleth’s eyebrows — unconcealed by any mask here in Alumpana — go up. “You!” she says. “What are you doing here? ... Ha, never mind! I can take my vengeance!” And Raleth moves to attack Kalyra.

Enter the Fray +wits, because she was effectively ambushed. 4v6/7, miss. Raleth has initiative, and we pay the price. Rolled 97: “A friend, companion, or ally is put in harm’s way.”

Raleth looks down at one of the bound elves. “Look, father. Isn’t this lovely? We have company! And you’re going to help me kill her!” She reaches down a draws a thread out of the chest of what must be Huron, her own father. He screams as she rips it out of him. She grows more solid as she inhales the thread, and turns towards Kalyra, hurling a bolt of black energy through the mist towards her.

Face Danger +edge to dodge. 3v3/3. Miss with a twist. Asked the Oracle to be kind. The oracle said: 94. “It forces you to act against your best intentions.” Oh, crap.

As Kalyra desperately leaps to one side, she is unable to get away fast enough. The bands of black energy wrap about her, clasping around her like a pair of ropes. They sting, and burn; she collapses to her knees on the stone.

Raleth begins laughing hysterically. “So easy! Come here.” And all against her will, Kalyra finds herself stumbling to her feet and towards Raleth.

“Oh, this is just delicious,” Raleth says. “I never expected to see you again. But here you are! And I am going to have such fun. As are you. Wonderful.” She sighs in contentment. “For now — sit down.”

Kalyra sits.

“Now, I have business to attend. I will be back for you.” She leans down and pats Kalyra’s cheek with a cold hand. “Never you fear. I’ll be back.” And so saying, she casually strolls off into the mist, leaving her new captive with all of her previous captives.

They look at her.

She looks at them.

“Well, shit,” she says. “I don’t curse much. I try not to. But the circumstances seem to merit it.”

“Uh huh,” says Huron, still feeling pain it seems from whatever it was that Raleth did to him.

“Ah, you must be Huron,” Kalyra says.

“That’s right,” he says.

“What is she doing to you?” Kalyra asks.

“She’s trying to use us. She wants to go back to the land of the living.”

“Like a Barren?” Kalyra asks.

“Something like that,” Huron says. “But she can’t be a Barren. That would not ... Barrens are deathtouched.” He glances at her glowing eyes. “Like you. She would be ... something else. I’m not sure what. I’m not sure this has ever come to pass before. Why are you here, anyway?”

Kalyra sighs. “I am ... technically still alive,” Kalyra says. “But deathly ill. I am stuck in Alumpana until my body can heal itself. I had hoped to find a healer among the Skaren. There was a primordial who told me that the cromlech circles connect Alumpana and the living world, and that I might be able to find somebody who could heal me at once of these.”

“Hmm!” says Huron. “Well, if we were free, we might be able to do that. As it stands, we are nothing but playthings for Raleth. I don’t understand how she’s become so powerful.”

“How does this work, anyway?” Kalyra asks. “I’ve met spirits before, here in Alumpana. They were just pale, wispy things.” She looks around at the forms of the elves. They are, in fact, translucent and insubstantial. But they have much more closely defined features and forms. They look almost like living people, just ... transparent.

“It’s a bargain that we strike. I don’t understand the details,” Huron says.

“I can explain that,” offers one of the other elves.

Kalyra looks over at this one. It is a woman.

“My name is Henna,” she says. “In life, I was a Kocari, and of course no one works with the cromlech stones quite so closely as the Kocari.”

“Well, uh, nice to meet you. I wish it were under better circumstances!” says Kalyra.

“So do I,” says Henna. “The cromlech stones allow the tribes to channel some small portion of their life force here, to Alumpana, where it sustains us, we who are bound to the stones. It gives us the ability to retain our memories. It gives us the ability to maintain our forms. And in exchange, when our descendants come to the stones and ask us for our wisdom, we can call out to them and pass on what we know. We are our peoples’ memory, going back as far as far can be.”

“Well, that sounds lovely,” says Kalyra. “What went wrong?”

“Raleth,” says Huron. “After she died she refused the Black Door. She had not died an unjust death, and was unable to return to life the way I did, seeking vengeance for a murder. Instead, she came here. She was barely a wisp of a thing when she showed up. We didn’t even recognize her at first. And I think that’s how she did it: she managed to catch one of us. One of the older spirits. One of those who’ve been here for, well ... the entire history of the world, more or less.”

“As you get older here, it’s easy to just ... drift. And dream. The dreamers,” Henna says, looking up. “The dreamers are vulnerable, I suppose. But we’ve never had anyone come looking to steal from them. One by one, she snuffed them out. Took from them what knowledge and energy she could, growing stronger and stronger, until finally she felt bold enough to begin binding us. And then pulling energy from us as you saw her do from Huron here.”

He nods, grimly.

“What a fine kettle of fish,” says Kalyra. “How about these bonds? How can we break them?”

Asked the Oracle: how can the bonds that Raleth has made be broken? Rolled on Action and Theme. 45, Seize. 71, Momentum.

“We can’t,” says Henna. “The bonds tie us based on our essential natures. We spirits — we cannot change. We are dead. All of our changing is done. We are what we are; we know what we know. We cannot grow or obtain new experience. I think that’s why we become dreamers, eventually. It becomes so easy to think of all the things that are past.”

“Well, I’m not dead! I can change!” Kalyra says. “I am alive. I can be something new. I can be different than I was before. But ... will that help?”

“It’s worth a try,” says Henna.

“All right, um ... I don’t suppose you know how I do that?” Kalyra asks.

Henna looks at her and says “You want me to tell you how to stop being and start being something new? Oh ... that’s a tall order, I’m afraid.”

“I am deathtouched,” Kalyra says. “I have a mission. I have to fulfill my vow to the Black Lady. Perhaps I have to be the kind of person who is willing to do whatever is necessary to make that happen.”

She lowers her face.

“What do you mean?” Henna says.

“You said that Raleth ... takes memory and energy from you. That she uses it to grow in power. Maybe I should do that. It’s not something I would do ... ordinarily. But it would be a change. It might free me of these bonds.”

Henna and Huron grow very still and glance at one another. “It might. What gave you the idea?” says Henna.

“I met a Barren. Pala. She killed her tribe. I met her on an island here in Alumpana, and she was spinning thread from the stones. I think now perhaps they were the crumbled ruins of the cromlech of her people. She was spinning it, spinning their screams into threads. Maybe ... I just thought of that.”

Henna grows stern, and she says “Then I cannot recommend this course of action! You are deathtouched. You should not do you anything that would make you more like a Barren.”

“But I’m human!” she says. “I’m not an elf, like you. I don’t even know if I could become a Barren. Or if I would be ... something else. Or nothing at all!”

“I can only advise you against it,” says Henna. “This is ... unwise.”

“Well maybe so,” says Kalyra. “But the alternative seems to be sitting here and waiting for Raleth to come back and finish draining everyone anyway!”

Henna looks away. “There is truth in that,” she says.

“I think ... I see a difference,” says Kalyra. “The Barren, Pala, and Raleth — they take. They take without asking. They take without permission. And so I cannot do that. So instead, I ask you. I ask all of you.” She looks around the circle of elven spirits. “I ask you to lend me your strength. Or ... I suppose I ask you to give me your strength, for I do not know if I will be able to return it to you. Please: will you lend me your strength?”

Huron raises his eyes to hers. They glow blue like hers, in death; and he says: “I will agree to this; but in exchange, I want you to deal with my daughter once more, as you did before, when you visited us on the other side. Swear this to me, and I will grant you my strength to the very end.”

Kalyra nods. “I swear by the iron in my heart: if you will lend me the strength to do it, I will destroy Raleth for you.” Swear an Iron Vow, +heart. Decided that my bond with the Skaren tribe via Belisant applies here, even though technically Belisant isn’t here because she’s not dead. It’s still the Skaren tribe; these are their people. Counted as bonded, for +1. Threatened my dice with dire penalties should they not behave. 6v2/6, weak hit. +1 momentum. Marked the vow Destroy Raleth as Dangerous.

Kalyra swears her vow. Huron nods; and he says: “Then you may take my strength.”

“Very well,” Kalyra says. “Um, I don’t really know how to do this. Ah ... so, I guess ... ” She sighs.

Being bound by the bands of black energy, she shuffles forward on her knees towards Huron, where he kneels in similar bindings. She leans forward.

“I’m sorry for this,” she says.

And then she places her lips against his, and breathes in.

He makes a small sound as she inhales. It’s clearly painful for him.

One of the black bands holding Kalyra snaps, leaving one more. +2 Spirit.

Huron has grown paler, and thinner.

Kalyra’s arms are still bound. “I ... I will need more.”

“Take it!” Huron says. “Honor your vow.”

Kalyra leans forward and inhales once again. A rush of energy passes through her, and Huron fades away to nothing. The final black band around Kalyra’s arms snaps; and Huron’s as well. +2 Spirit.

Kalyra stands, rubs her arms. She feels ... almost giddy. It was such a heady sensation! She feels full of energy. She feels like laughing and running and skipping!

“All right,” Kalyra says. “How long until she comes back? Where did she even go?”

But before Henna can respond, Kalyra looks up. There is a hint of motion in the fog at the edge of the cromlech circle; and then Raleth materializes out of fog once again.

She has the wriggling remnants of a spirit in one hand. “What?” she says. “What have you done?”

And end session due to running out of time.