LogIronsworn: The Would-Be King-Jason-5

Game log for the 2021/10/18 session of Ironsworn: The Would-Be King, as taken by Jason

Brunhilde and Kato have a mission to deliver the eye of Tarash-Kar to the giants. They move out into the wilderness. As they're moving through a ravine, they hear falling rock from somewhere above, followed by the sound of heavy breathing. Soon thereafter, they see a Black Vanguard leading two other men on chain leashes with iron collars, both filthy, one of whom appears to be Varou. Both of the people on chains are sniffing at the air. They both hide. The Vanguard and his pets head downhill toward Ash Keep. Nobody has ever seen Varou used like this. After the danger passes, the two of them resume their hike.

As they're cresting the draw, they turn and get up to a sort of plateau, only to find another Black Vanguard, possibly an Unfeeling, on a horse. They let fly with sling stones before the rider even sees them, hitting him with a few stones. He wheels his horse, draws his blade, and charges. Kato readies his staff while Brunhilde slings another stone. The stone hits home but the rider's horse shoulders her out of the way as his blade strikes her, which adds up to quite a lot of punishment. Kato uses his staff against the horse just as the rider tries to turn to strike him. The horse goes clean over, and the Vanguard barely avoids being trapped. It looks like his leg's hurt. Actually, Kato thought he heard the bone crack when the horse landed on that leg, but the guy's standing on it. Unfeeling it must be! Brunhilde comes around the other side of the horse, and as the Unfeeling turns to face her, Kato thrusts his staff hard into the his face, crushing his face. They scamper off.

Back at the Keep, Aeddon sets up a healing station for the inevitable casualties. Kanno and Lio try to come up with a plan. The Keep is on a modestly sized rocky outcrop with a village around it. Kanno's biggest worry is that the village means there are bad fields of fire for archery. It takes a while but he convinces them to convert some of the buildings into loose rubble, which is going to be very tricky to cross under fire. The village is getting a little chaotic, and Adley comes to Aeddon and asks his aid in getting everyone on the same page. He works with her and some of the other villagers to make sure everyone understands to go to his first aid station if they get hurt.

That night, Aeddon is nervously pacing while keeping watch. He climbs the ladder to the top of one tower, steps onto the parapet, and his foot splashes. It hasn't rained. He's standing in a pool of blood. He raises the alarm. He barely gets a syllable out before something comes out of the darkness toward him, and he throws himself to the side. The thing goes past him and snarls, and he starts yelling his head off. Lio and Kanno wake up and come running from the great hall. Aeddon tries to descend the ladder, and whatever it was that nearly smash his head just gets a little hair. He goes running toward the hall to find reinforcements. He's only partway down the stair when he comes across Lio, running up.

Lio comes left out of the door onto the walk, hears the scratch of talons on stone, and barely has time to try to raise his shield. Whatever was swooping on him lands on the shield, and then he dumps it off the shield and watches it tumble. It looks humanoid enough, and Lio spears it in leg. It rolls away and comes up in a three-point stance, revealing what appear to be knives, one of obsidian and one of rusty iron. Lio contiues to use his spear, and he's too quick for this creature to evade. It's slowing, but not stopped, when it turns and flees into the tower. Kanno goes up the stairs behind Lio and turns right. This walk goes to the big tower, the top floor of which are Adley's quarters. He sees something shouldering its way into that tower. He goes into rapid fire, feathers the something repeatedly, and causes it to howl like a varou and charge him. He ducks, pulls his knife, and lets the thing gut itself on his knife. It dies as he hears a double-thud sound of someone jumping from the tower to the ground behind him.

Lio charges whatever-it-is that he's fighting through the door to the next tower, but it had lept up as it entered, and now it lands on him. Actually, it lands on his spear, and that's a very unhealthy thing to do.

The jumper swings at Kanno, but he's too quick and rolls away. Adley comes out of the other tower and violently assaults him. The archer comes to his feet and looks for foes against which he might do archery. Aeddon finds that there's nobody who needs medical help right now, but there's a grappling hook on the top toweer. He pulls it up and lets people know. It's fur-padded to silence it. Looks like scouts, hoping to hide and open the gate at the key moment. The defenders re-light the torches. The defenders throw the enemy dead over the wall.

Back in the wilderness, Kato and Brunhilde have been pushing themselves hard. They make camp one last time before they get above the treeline. Brunhilde goes out to gather what she can, but the local mushrooms aren't quite the same as the ones she knows. They both grow violently ill with blood in their stool, though the mushrooms did taste good. Kato's able to perservere, but for Brunhilde, who was already somewhat banged up, this is very bad, and she actually craps herself unconscious. Kato starts feeling better but Brunhilde continues to pass blood. Peerhaps desperation fuels them in the morning, because they make good time. They spot a hovel and decide to approach.

Kato knocks on the door, and the voice from inside tells them to go away. He reminds the dweller of the value of hospitality while Brunhilde noisely heaves up more blood and bile. An ancient man with a crazy beard cracks the door, revealing a space overcrowded with sheep and mountain goats. He immediately recognizes the signs of yellowcap mushroom poisoning. He prescribes dung soup as a treatment. It's terrible. Horrible. Indescribably laden with nast. Also, the texture is kind of sandy. The local, who says his name is unimportant, clearly hates people but craves human interaction, and tries to get all the news he can out of Kato. The old man doesn't understand why anyone would go higher up into the mountains. He confirms that there are firstborn up in the mountains but has no interest whatsoever in helping Kato find him. They overnight there, Kato says his morning prayers, and then they depart in the morning.

They're well and truly above the treeline now, moving steadily but working through their supplies. Weather begins to close in, and up here, that's literally true. They're hiking through a crowd. Brunhilde uses her magical light powers to help them press on, making very good progress through the night.

Back at Ash Keep, time passes. On the afternoon of the third day, the bad guys show up. Adley has maybe a dozen fighters, supported by 60-70 civilians who didn't flee. The enemy appear to number 150, of whom maybe 50 are on horseback. They approach to just outside arrowshot, and one robed figure comes forth, walking up the switchbacked stair to the keep. Adley consults Lio and Kanno, who don't think terms can be made, but that stalling might help. Also, Lio wants to fight their champion. The emissary is gaunt, blindfolded, black of tooth, and missing most of his nose. He says he's come to offer surrender. Adley accepts their surrender. He chuckles and explains that their force canot stand against them, so they're willing to allow the opportunity to avoid bloodshed. They just want 1/3 of the defenders as slaves. Adley counters with the duel of champions, the winner to keep the Eye and the Keep. Nobody really intends to keep the terms, but it will be a fun fight for Lio. Lio makes it clear he's going to win anyway, so it don't matter.

"I'm not going to lose." "We shall see." "You're not going to see much of anything with that fucking blindfold on."

The champions prepare. One of the Vanguard leaves the rest and approaches the keep. He's large, heavily armored, and carrying a polearm with a large sickle-curved blade. Lio begins drawing the circle and the foe attacks immediately. Lio ducks under the blow, the champion overcommits, and Lio draws blood with his spear, then backs off. The foe charges, but Lio expected it and set his spear. That's got to hurt.

Aeddon's patrolling the walk, looking for treachery, and doesn't find it.

Lio uses his spear to keep his foe from closing. The champion tries a backhanded blow to force the spear out of position, but Lio's still too quick. Before he reverses back to forehand, Lio makes a whipping stroke of the spear right across the enemy's neck, slitting his throat. The Black Vanguard champion topples. Horns blow, and a rain of arrows begins. Lio uses his shield to cover his back and runs to the keep. Arrows bounce off the shield as he flees, but he makes it OK.

Atop the wall, Kanno tries to take aim at one of the Unfeeling, ready to use his precision arrow. He gets shot first, more than once, and one of the arrows burns. The burning doesn't last long, for what that's worth.

Aeddon doesn't see any foes atop the keep, and the arrows are coming in, so he heads down to the medical collection spot. He smells burning down there, so he grabs a couple people to investigate. It's coming from the stairwell of one of the smaller towers. They follow it down and find the smoke coming from a storeroom. One of the walls is red hot. Foul wizardry! He runs to get Lio, who comes downstairs. Aeddon leads a group to pull the supplies out before they catch fire.

Kanno's doing archery from the walk and sees a group bring ladders toward the keep, part of the general main attack from the south. Their siege ladders don't seem long enough to do the job, which is confusing, but these guys get to the edge of the base, turn, and move to the northwest. Kanno opens rapid fire on them to try to dissuade them, and they take significant casualties.

In the storeroom, rocks begin to fall, a blast of heat hits Lio, and he can hear the cracking and hissing of the stone cooling. He sees an iron ball sizzling in the gap, then the top of a ladder, and suddenly men are charging in. The first one steps in the lava, screams horribly, and dies. The attackers following on try to force their way in. Lio opposes them. There are so many of them that they almost overwhelm him, but his talent at killing is up to this challenge. One guy's hanging on his shield to immobilize him, but Lio bites his finger, forcing him to let go, and then Lio skewers him. He falls backward and trips over the ladder, and falls down all the way to the ground. Lio knees another attacker aside, hooks the top run of the ladder with the crossbar of his spear, and pulls it up. It catches fire on the lava, which pretty much rules out anyone coming up that ladder. Aeddon takes a moment to bandage Lio's wounds.

Brunhilde and Kato make camp. She tries to pull more light from the campfire, but she's not able to. After resting, they set out again, and make it out of the first range of mountains. They decide to pause and forrage, whence Brunhilde has no trouble finding some goodies. They even manage to find a useful cave in which to nap before they press on. Refreshed, they scamper quickly into the next set of mountains, and then make camp again. Kato tells an inspiring story to keep their spirits up, and prepares to lead out the next day. Brunhilde tries to gather light again, and this time, gets it done. They carry on, travelling so high into the mountain that they're building an igloo for shelter, and find themselves running low on supplies. They forage enough supplies to keep themselves moving, then hustle forward, into a wooded valley. They feel like they must be getting closer. This is easier travelling, but they hear weird noises off in the distance. It's neither wolves no varou, and it sounds solitary, but they can't tell what's making it. Kato wants to ignore it and push forward, and Brunhile provides the light. They travel quite well this way, and find some giants as they climb out of the valley!

Brunhilde first hears the sound of what sounds like a bell, realizes it's livestock, and follows it to the biggest, harriest mountain goat she's ever seen. Sitting nearby is a giant, twice the size of a human, with lumpen features. Kato shows their token of friendship, and the giant says, "Welcome, friend," and asks them to come with him.

Kato strikes up a conversation with the giant, and it goes straight. The large bromigo has a happy-go-lucky disposition, and while he talks slowly, he happy to do so indefinitely. He takes them to a very large dwelling and feeds them from a bowl like a small bucket. This kindly giant goes by Torlin Stonefather and tells them that to deal with the Eye, they need Kragath Ironbreaker. Torlin just talks Kato's ear off while giving them provisions.

At the siege of the keep, the Vanguard steel themselves for another push. Kanno fires some arrows but can't seem to influence the course of things, and he's running low on arrows. They come in through the gap in the northwest again, and Lio stands by to repeal boarders. They come through as he expected, and his defense is so strong that the Vanguard are taken aback. He attacks them and takes a fearsome toll on them. Some of them are barely off the ladder before they're taking spear thrusts. The bodies he's slain are holding up the new attackers. He tries to end the fight by plugging the whole with the bodies of dead Vanguard, but he misjudged their numbers, and some of them are throwing axes. He can't hold the room against so many, and must retire to the stairs. The good news is that he's got friends with him now. Aeddon sees this and arms himself.

Kanno sees more foes rushing for the breach, and opens fire on them. It might be too little too late, but it can't hurt the good guys, right? He decides to go find a grappling hook and try to get his fancy Unfeeling-slayer arrow back. As he prepares his descent, an old busted sergeant named Kent cannot believe this insanity is before him, and promises to cut the rope if there's any danger of the enemy taking that rope. Kanno sets the grappling hook, whooshes down the line with his callused and leather-protected right hand, and is on the ground arrow. He finds the arrow, kisses it, and puts it in his quiver. Now he's on the rocky outcrop, and can see the forming area that the Vanguard are using. He begins to take aim and suddenly he's locking eyes with the Unfeeling. He looses. The arrow, specially made to kill the Unfeeling, flies straight and true, striking the foe right between the eyes and coming out the back of his head. Maybe, just maybe, a whisp of smoke issues from the eyeholes of his helmet. Kanno goes running for the east side of the keep. He makes it to the southeast, running for the east, and takes a spear. As he falls, he sees the defenders pulling up the rope, losing quite a bit of blood, but not losing stride. Once he's on the east, th defenders lower a line. They haul him up as he climbs and it's almost like he's flying. Kanno arrives at the top and falls over.

Aeddon calls the militia to help. They're focused on defending the gate, though, and one of them didn't recognize Kanno and is concerned the Black Vanguard's rushing the gate. Lio waits for the enemy to charge, and this time, one of the foe draws blood. Another one slips past Lio and charges Aeddon, who defends himself nobly, ducking the attack and sticking a hand axe in the charging Vanguard's gut. Aeddon then tries to rush to Lio's aid, covering his weak side, but gets in the way instead. Lio takes another wound, and Aeddon a spear thrust. Lio returns to the fight, giving and taking furious punishment. There are too many enemies still, and Lio and Aeddon must retreat up into the tower.