Ironsworn Legacies Alpha Playtest, Part 1

Kidan is a deep scout, who travels ahead of a caravan, largely solo, planning a path and identifying potential obstacles or concerns.  Mostly alone.   He looks back to Salthaven, a city built and carved into a massive salt quarry.  The salt naturally protects against the horrors of the night.  Ahead, in the wilderness, the only sanctuary will be the salt carried by the caravan.  The people of Salthaven have hunkered down to survive the events of the past few decades, but local resources have become thin.  Kidan leads only one of many expeditions, hoping to find other communities that have survived in their own way that will trade supplies for salt.

There’s not really roads anymore.  Nature has reclaimed what it could.  Kidan ponders what traces new trade routes would leave: paths that could lead wanderers straight to Salthaven.  A city full of the most important asset in the Ironlands will be a target, but it can’t sustain itself  without trade.  He recalls his vow, and picks up his pace.

His caravan is not the only one preparing to leave this week.   The caravans are spreading out in all directions, in the hope to maximize the chances of finding trade to save Salthaven.  His caravan is not even the first to go in this direction, one has left previously.  So far, none have returned.  It’s Kidan’s responsibility to decide how closely to follow the trail left behind by the previous expedition, and when or where to forge a new path.  Kidan knows the surrounding area well, he has explored it frequently during his training.  While moving quickly, he checks the familiar fields for signs of anything amiss, but he sees nothing to slow him down.  He leaves small, coded flags behind to guide the caravan that will follow him.  The most recent one instructs them to follow the edge of the forest that’s too thick to allow the caravan to pass.  By the afternoon, after hours of travel straight away from home, he enters new territory for the first time.  He looks down into a valley of hollow hills.

There is another set of hollow hills closer to Salthaven that Kidan has explored as part of his training, but these hills could be a source of danger for the caravan.  Dead, leafless trees top each large mound.  When the trees lived, their roots pushed the tree upward, forming the hills out of a massive root structure.  Sometimes, when the wind passes through the hills, it can sound like the screams of the living, or the moans of the dead.  They make good spots for horrors to hide and survive the day.  Kidan pondered leading his caravan instructions to avoid the area, but he decides he has time to inspect the area. He inverts his cloak to the darker side, and steps carefully forward.

Finding quiet entry to each hill takes time.  Kidan tests every step on the hills, feeling for solid root before adding his weight.  His spear pushes and prods to make small gaps in the grass and vines nature has filled in.  When he finally finds a large enough opening in the first hill, he anchors his spear to the ground, and closes his eyes.  He tunes out his own elevated breathing until he can focus on the surrounding hills’ groans.  Once his eyes have adjusted to darkness, he swings himself into the canopy of the hill.  Faint shafts of daylight illuminate the cavern, flickering from the breeze.  The sounds from outside muffle as he searches every nook of the hill with his eyes while suspended in the air.  He finds nothing, and begins to repeat the process for the rest of the structures.  It’s the sixth hill before he sees it: a congregation of the dead, waiting motionless for nightfall for their own purposes.  The chamber is slightly hazy from the decay of specks of sunlight hitting rotten flesh.  They can’t feel it, or don’t care, but their instincts still drive them to sequester themselves away from the light.  At least, that’s if Kidan is lucky.

Kidan holds his breath and counts heads and searches more shadows.  He returns to the surface and scans the rest of the unexplored trees on hilltops.  If one is occupied, odds are more will be.  The sun is still overhead; if each of the remaining hills had this many dead inside, he couldn’t clear them all before nightfall.  But the first five were empty, what are the odds?  He quietly cuts his way into the hill.

The common dead are nearly dormant during the day.  Clearing the hills will just require being slow and methodical.  First, Kidan aims his bow to pick off the ones alone on the outside of the grouping.  The sounds of the hills cover the soft thumps of the bodies slumping to the ground.

Kidan’s spear takes the rest, one by one.  When some collapse, air is forced from the dead lungs over rotting vocal cords to emit a final rasp.  Kidan uses a dagger to slice between ribs before they fall, if he can.  Outside, the wind picks up, and the hills begin to scream.  Kidan emerges from the hill just in time to hear thunder rolling in the distance.  He curses under his breath and picks up the pace to the next hill.

Now, he’s in a rush.  He follows the same steps, climbing the hills to look for signs of dead from above, in the inner canopy first.  The next few hills are fortunately empty.  He finds more dead, but is able to clear them in their daytime hibernation.  After clearing more than half, he looks at the sun, poking through the storm clouds rolling in.  It’s time to decide, finish clearing the area, or retreat and reroute the caravan.  He’s done this much of the hills, as long as the rest aren’t all occupied, it would be valuable to have this refuge from the storm for the night.  It’s time to move faster.

The screams of the hills from the wind, and now the rain sprinkling down provide some cover for noise as Kidan sprints to the next hill.  He begins the climb out of habit, but suddenly, a crack, and the root structure gives out from under him.  He grasps at anything he can, but he falls through grass, vine, and root all the way to the bottom.  Something broke his fall.  It begins to move underneath him.

He scrambles from the writhing body, lashing out his spear in a wide sweep all around him as he moves away, in a random direction before his eyes can adjust to the darkness.

Kidan’s spear smacks against something that groans, so the spear comes at it again and again. Something from behind lunges and trips into him, so he rips away.  Lightning cracks outside, temporarily giving a flash of more light through the collapsed hole in the ceiling. Enough light to see the dead flinch.  Don’t wake up.  Heartbeat pounding in his ears, Kidan makes it to the rootwall of the hill, and feels for his bow. on his back.  Thankfully, it was not lost.  He tries to calm his breath as things come into focus inside the hill. His hand is slick with more than sweat. This is not a time to be bleeding.

In the dark, just one pair of glowing eyes looks toward him, jolting up and down as it stumbles.  Kidan lands an arrow between the eyes before it can bump and wake more.  He holds his breath and listens.  Hearing nothing, he draws his bow again, aiming for another figure standing alone in the distance.

More arrows take down more silhouettes, as Kiddan circles the edge of the rootwall.  The rest are too tightly packed, he will have to go in.  As the initial burst of adrenaline wears off, he starts to feel more pain as he flexes his hand.  He dries the blood on his cloak and prepares his spear.

Another string of lightning cracks outside, the thunder shakes the root dome.

Two by two, glowing eyes start to open in the darkness.

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