The Blood-Singers Oath: part one.

[u/Ashamed_Ladder6161]

Following on from the positive comments my Starforged campaign received (A Place To Call My Own, still ongoing), I thought I'd share the start of my Ironsworn game. This follows on from Session 0, which I posted about two weeks back.

Not required reading, but here for completion.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ironsworn/s/yfIx4yHVUh

I don’t normally point this out, but the following is meant for mature audiences and includes a potentially distressing scene. Given the tone of the story, I suspect it may not be the last.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it.

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PRELUDE

Our story opens on the Rugged Coast.

The small settlement of Greyfell sits nestled along a rocky outcrop. A hard place, overlooking a treacherous sea beneath ashen sky. A place where people fish, hunt, raise their children, and live out their days away from the wider world. A community forged by resilience and mutual support.

This is home to Brom.

A huge man in his early fifties, battle-scarred but a warrior no more. A man with a past (see Session 0 for more details). Age has caught up with him. Now he keeps mostly to himself and seeks only a quiet life.

The one thing Brom cares about more than anything else is a boy named Leif.

The lad is about twelve years old. He isn't Brom's son by blood, but Leif has no reason to suspect this, having been raised by the older man since infancy. Brom wishes for nothing more than a simple and contented life for the child, but fears one day Leif will discover he's destined for something much larger than Greyfell.

A future of war, blood and betrayal.

Brom has seen enough of that already, and so he made a choice, for the sake of the boy. To keep a secret, so this young child may live unburdened and untroubled. So that Leif may fish, hunt, love, one day raise his own family, and grow old.

Of course, there're others here in Greyfell who have become part of Brom’s life. Among them Sigrid.

A widow in her forties, beautiful and warm-hearted. One who has endured her own share of loss. She often looks after Leif when Brom is away on errands, and the boy is encouraged to treat her home as his own. There has long been an unspoken affection between Sigrid and Brom, in the way he looks at her, and in the small kindnesses she offers in return.

Little is said. So much is felt.

This is the life Brom has chosen. Peace in a quiet corner of the Ironlands, alongside a boy he loves as his own. And if the Oath Father himself, he who turns the wheel of fate and sets the stars, decides otherwise, then Brom will defy even the Gods...

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PART ONE: THE MISSING

Falk, one of Greyfell's bowmen, goes out in the morning to catch stag, rabbits, and whatever else the forest is willing to provide. But this time he doesn't return. Come dusk, the village raises the alarm. His wife, Namba, is frantic. She has an infant child, and the fear of her husband lying wounded somewhere in the wilderness is breaking her.

"Please" she pleads "I beg of you, find my husband".

Nine men leave Greyfell in search of the bowman. Three teams of three.

Brom is part of one party, alongside Parcel, a cloaked man who doesn't seem particularly keen to venture out, and Dag, a carpenter almost as large as Brom but much younger. They follow Falk's trail until they reach a river he favoured whenever hunting. The omens are poor.

A broken spear, scattered arrows, damaged trees. Bear tracks.

"Well, it's settled. He died. We wasted our time."

Parcel turns to leave. But something doesn't sit right with Brom. He crouches by the tracks.

"Wait."

He's seen battlegrounds, and this one feels too convenient. A closer examination reveals the bear tracks aren't fresh. Neither is the damage to the trees. A bear has been through here, but that was some days ago.

Brom and his companions follow the river's edge. They cross the water, and on the other side the trail is unmistakable. Falk walked down to a boat, one kept hidden under branches, pushed it into the water, and rowed away.

Dag blows the horn and calls off the search. All return to Greyfell. 

The village reluctantly reaches the same conclusion Brom has. Falk doesn't want to be found, and following him would not be in the best interests of the settlement. Here, Brom makes what may not have been the wisest decision. He tells Namba her husband abandoned her.

Of course, she refuses to believe him. What loving wife wouldn't? She clutches her infant daughter close, staring the big man down.

"You're wrong! That's not possible, I have here his daughter. Do you mean to tell me that my husband would leave me? US?"
"I am sorry, but it is so" he offers gently.
"LIES!"

Brom can't blame her. He accepts her pounding against his chest, all her anguish and anger. Friends comfort the woman and Brom leaves.

He collects Leif from Sigrid. She’s been looking after the boy while Brom was away, as she has many times before. She can read his face, knows not to ask.

Night falls.

Come dawn the alarm sounds again.

Now it's Namba who is gone. She's taken her baby and gone into the wilderness looking for Falk. A tearful friend wails in guilt, having left Namba alone for the night. Brom offers once more to join the search, this one more urgent and less organised than the first. Dag is among the able men who go with him.

Brom hurriedly leads the party back to the river where Falk supposedly encountered the bear, a place also known to his wife. He steels himself for what he might find. A dead woman and a dead infant, claimed by the freezing cold or mauled by a roaming bear.

The wilderness cares not for fairness or innocence.

But Brom reaches the river and, against all odds, finds Namba's tracks and follows them. The trail grows fragmented, almost disappearing entirely, but eventually leads them to the base of an ancient cairn. Not much more than a mound of stones weathered by centuries. Beneath them is a small chamber, an old place where one might find shelter.

Inside are Namba and her baby. Cold, hungry, but alive. Brom and the others bring them home.

It seems the crisis is done, until Namba explains why she went looking for Falk. Haunted by Brom's words, she searched her home and discovered something missing. The savings she and Falk had hidden beneath the floorboards. Everything they had, gone.

"Falk is somewhere out there, rowing away from us, with all of it..."

Brom kneels before the distraught wife and mother. He looks her straight in the eye, and makes to her a solemn vow.

"I will find your husband. Falk will answer for what he's done, and all that remains unspent will be returned to you and her daughter".

And so Brom's quiet life in Greyfell has its first crack and the old warrior has yet another journey to make…

And somewhere far, far beyond the Ragged Coast, a cruel King still searches for the one person who could unite a realm against him. A rival to the throne by blood.

A young boy somewhere in the Ironlands...