LogIronsworn: The Would-Be King-Jason-3

Game log for the 2021/09/26 session of Ironsworn: The Would-Be King, as taken by Jason

The party find themselves in a tavern in Irondale. Buildings here tend to be squat half-buried structures made of stone, with slate roofs. Pemba has joined them, and gets caught up with Aeddon. For his part, he thinks someone or something has corrupted Irondale's water supply. The water's foul right where it emerges from the rock, and those who drink it experience yellowed eyes, weight loss, and vomiting. Aeddon tries to summon the crows to see which way to take the Eye. They arrive but they don't give him any clear answer. They just flap around and cry, "cave! cave!" So, maybe we should go look in a cave somewhere? Also, the group is so low on supply that trying to make any longer trip wouldn't be entirely safe. Aeddon swears to Pemba that the group will find the source of the corruption.

Aeddon gives Kato a drop of blood for divination. Kato struggles to interpret the results. They don't look real fun - lots of corruption, death, and darkness. He makes out tension between Pemba and Aeddon, caused by Aeddon's decision to leave before Pemba thought he was ready. This trip is in part a test, if the omens read true.

It's not hard to follow a stream up to the source. Right at the source, the water smells bad, and it has a slimy texture to it. Brunhilde searches the area, looking in particular for a cave, but all she gets for her pains is a sense that something is watching her or following her, right before something heavy smacks her on the back of the head. The rest of the party gets to missing her, and sets out looking. To cover more ground, they split up, with Aeddon and Kanno in one team and Kato with Lio on the other. Kano sees a very thin trail of smoke, as of a very small fire, off in the distance, and go to investigate.

They walk for a bit until a woman's voice calls out, "Come no closer!" She professes to have no quarrel with them, and says she saw a woman matching Brunhilde's description headed downstream an hour or so ago. When Lio asks, she says that there's a cave upslope, by the bent pine. They thank her and wish her a good day, then go look for Brunhilde downstream.

All this noise wakes Brunhilde up. She's bound, gagged, and leaned up against a rock, so she can't call out for help. She recognizes her captor as Amara, which doesn't bode well for her. She tries to make a ruckus, but of course it's hard to do so when she's gagged. Luckily Kato gets a sense that maybe there's something not quite right about this woman of the wild, and Lio hears a weird mumbled sound followed by a thud. They hastily work out a plan for Lio to distract the foe and Kato to circle around.

Lio gets his shield up in front of him, and queries the woman to make sure she did indeed say she was his friend an hour ago. He asks if this woman saw Brunhilde's bow, but she did not. (Brunhilde did not carry a bow.) He then asks her if she'd like to help them find the corruption, either for money or mutual aid, but she just wants him to move along. She begins to realize that Lio's stalling, and she stops talking, makes a brief scrabbling noise, and then goes completely silent. Kato freezes in place, so that she can't locate him either. Lio calls out but she doesn't answer, so he begins closing in fast on her last position.

An arrow just misses him, so he accelerates, shield upraised. She calls out that her next shot won't miss, and he tells her to do her best, as Kato begins moving again. Her first arrow hits his shield, and the next one grazes his ankle, forcing him to go from a straight charge to a sort of broken-field run to make him a harder target. Kato can see her firing a couple shots, relocating, firing again, and so on, and decides to try to sneak in to cut Brunhilde loose. She sees her captor spot him, and tries to give him a warning look. It doesn't work, and Amara's next arrow hits Kato. Of course, this forces Amara to take her eye off Lio.

A brief bit of maneuvering ensues, punctuated by Amara's screamed insults and demands for vengeance on Brunhilde, until eventually she comes face to face with Lio and his bigass shield. He tries to calm her down, but it doesn't work at all, and she fires another arrow into his shield. Then she realizes that she hasn't been looking at her prisoner or the other rescuer, and goes chasing after them.

Kato recognizes the smell of the herbs that were in Amara's kettle - it's a ritual for breaking a bond. It requires a human heart. Brunhilde suggests baiting a trap for Amara, letting her follow a trail that will put her pursuer at a disadvantage to Lio and Kato. She finds a spot where Amara won't be able to sneak up on her. Amara stops just short of entering the killbox, but finds herself in a spot where it's a three-on-one fight. Amara shoots Kato first, though not badly. Lio rams her with his shield, knocking them both down. Brunhilde pelts Amara with a sling stone. Amara wriggles loose, drops her bow, and tries to escape up the rock, but Lio pursues and grabs her by the ankle. Kato picks up her bow. Brunhilde has lost sight of her but can hear her enraged screams of, "Let me go!" When she realizes she's caught, Amara stops screaming, but she stares at Brunhilde and says, "slut."

Brunhilde says, "Enough of this," and draws up a circle. Amara couldn't be happier! The circle's not even finished when she pulls a knife, throws herself onto Brunhilde, and stabs her while also pinning her to the ground. Brunhilde throws her off and then pounces, but Amara's too quick for her, and inflicts another knife slash. Lio offers Kato a side bet that the fight will end in four strokes or less. This time, when Amara moves in on Brunhilde, she's ready for it, and Brunhilde's knife strikes home. It's oddly reminiscent of how they fought with sticks as children. Amara complains that Brunhilde stole "him" and she wants him back. Brunhilde says she has no further use for him and she can have him. Amara's confused until Brunhilde explains that he's dead. Amara deflates in front of her eyes, saying, "You have taken everything from me." Lio pipes up and says that the men who killed Brunhilde's husband have been dealt with. When Amara asks, he explains that the Black Vanguard killed him, just a week or so back. Brunhilde doesn't like thinking about it. Amara breaks down in tears and tells them to leave her.

Aeddon and Kanno hear the distant sounds of shouting, and Aed sends his pet raven to investigate. It lands on Kato's shoulder and caws at him. Kato tells it to tell Aeddon that they found caves, and so it leads Aeddon and Kanno to meet their friends. The whole gang meets near the bent pines.

Aeddon does some first air on Kato, and then on Brunhilde. She tells him about her fun outing with her old friend Amara. Then they head upslope and find the cave, near a pine tree with a hell of a lot of crows in it. Lio takes point entering the cave, followed by Brunhilde with light. It's a small cave, but it seems to go back in the rock for a while. Longer weapons won't fit through there, and we have to make a pile of them at one corner. There another passage where they all have to crawl through some cold, slimey mud. Great. Eventually it does open up a bit, and they find a larger cavern where there seems to have been some sort of cave-in. They scramble over the rubble, around a bend, down a slope, and then it opens out enormously into an underground pond. They can hear water trickling somewhere, and some sort of nasty hissing sound. Everyone prepares to fight.

Brunhilde looks for it. Her light comes from a crystal that produces a yellow-ish white light. Out in the pond, she sees fresh rockfall, and in it, there's a bone sticking out. It could be a human bone. Then again, it could be a not-human bone. Lio prepares to defend the team with his shield and axe, and Brunhilde readies her sling, while everyone else puts hand to knife. There's a bad smell in here. Lio tries to draw the monster out, banging his axe on his shield and yelling a challenge to it. A shadow moves along the back wall. Nobody can see anything casting said shadow. Yikes. Brunhilde opens the fight with her sling stone, but it bounces off the back wall. She thinks she hears a low chuckle. Kato begins singing one of the Green Man's holy songs, and the shadow stops in its tracks, then begins swaying with the music, staring at him with malice. He then banishes it in the name of the Green Man. It hisses, moves silently over the water to the spot of the rockfall, and vanishes down into the rocks. Looking up, there's another bone up there. Lio enters the pond, walking out to the rock fall, and finds a human skull in there. There's most of a skull down here, just a few pieces up there, and some tree roots. Aeddon thinks we need to get the bones down from up top and re-bury them with the rest. That's going to be tricky, but Kanno volunteers to try, since he's unencumbered. He very carefully clambers up and finds some grave goods and a couple bones, which he brings down. As the rest of the group tries to dig the bones out of the rubble, Kato feels one begin to squirm in his hand. Time is running out. They find a corroded bronze circlet in the rubble. Once they have all the bones, they hurry out, Brunhilde leading with her light, Kanno right behind and helping to navigate.

They're halfway out when Kato feels the bag squirm, and cold fingers clenching around his heart. He tries to sing his calming song again, but he can't quite muster the same commitment with this monster clutching him. Kato hastily takes the bag off. Aeddon grabs it and passes it forward, telling Kanno to run. Kanno tries but he, too, feels fingers clutching his heart, and the smell of corruption in the air. He hastily passes the bag forward to Brunhilde. The creature, whatever it is, grasps her heart as well, but she's able to keep moving forward. As the light from the cave entrance draws nearer, she begins to see the creature assuming its full form, gathering itself around her. Luckily, the moment the rays of the sun hits it, the evil hisses again, and the darkness is sucked back into the bag of bones.

Kato improvises a hasty burial, shoving a rock aside to try to find soft ground in which to dig. Aeddon watches his extremely rushed efforts and tells him he needs to take his time. Aeddon takes the bag and heads higher up the slope, where they can dig a proper grave in dirt, with the rites. Brunhilde helps dig, and it's only her help that gets the hole dug and the words set while the light lasts. He just has time to set the crown on the skull as the light fails, and then the two of them rush to cover the bones with dirt, after which Aeddon performs the rites. He thinks this burial will hold for quite some time.

The team then finds a place to camp, and in the morning, Brunhilde and Kanno go hunting and foraging. Kanno brings down a deer, and Brunhilde brings in some edible mushrooms and berries.

Returning to town, Aeddon tells Pemba about how they found and reburied the haunt. He's stoked, but the community doesn't entirely believe that anything is really fixed, since the corrupted water caused a progressive wasting disease, and it doesn't heal overnight. Also, Amara has returned to down, all cut up and miserable. This town is not a good place for the team to sojourn. Time to head for the Tor, or maybe Broadmoor. Henge Tor is actually closer, so there's no reason not to head right to it.