# Fleshmaker's Fire: The First True Man tags: #play/hollow-places-of-the-soul #game/rpg/ironsworn #thoughts/CharacterCreationChallenge/2024 > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2024]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] I wasn't intending to come back this way, but sometimes an idea is just so good you have to come back to it. Somewhere on the order of seven months ago, I started putting together the site. I wanted to populate it with a *little* bit of content before it went live… But then it took a bit longer than expected to get around to taking it live and things just sort of built up. As you can tell from the root page, one of the reasons it exists is to do actual solo real play, actual play, and record/journal the results. One of my favorite solo RPGs is **[[Ironsworn - Starforged|Ironsworn: Starforged]]**… With **[[Ironsworn]]** itself not being first and foremost in my mind, simply because I'm not *that* into fantasy. ![[Ironsworn (cover).jpg]] Still, it has a fantastic world generation process and [[HPotS 000 - Building Your Truths|I wanted to play around with that process, feel it out.]] I never really intended to get back to it for actual play. It was going to be a useless little appendix hanging off the side of the garden, a historical artifact. But I got to thinking recently, which is the cause of so much cruelty and foulness in the world… I've picked up a lot of **Ironsworn** add-ons in the last six months. Some of them are very, *very* good. Some of them are exciting in ways that I have hoped that other games would transfigure into for years and they never did. Some of them refer to concepts, structures, and ideas that I have always loved in classic tabletop role-playing games. Could I use [[HPotS 000 - Building Your Truths|the world that I've already created]] with those new tools to create something that really excited me? And then this came down the pipe:  (If it doesn't embed, we'll blame YouTube but go over and watch. Absolutely worth it.) While I'm probably *not* going to create anything quite that intense in terms of audiovisual quality – I was reminded that **Ironsworn** does some amazing things and should be used for amazing things. Not long ago, news about [the publication of an anniversary edition of **Ars Magica**](https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/682f8a76-7506-4a3b-b578-4391c50d8b8f/landing) percolated through the mighty hive mind and all these things came together in one blinding flash, my collection, the announcement, this video, the memory of the world that I had created six months ago… I knew what I had to do There is no *Order of Hermes* in **Ironsworn**… But that doesn't mean I can't create one! What would it be like to try and be the [Bonisagus](https://arsmagica.fandom.com/wiki/Bonisagus_the_Founder) of the Ironlands? Not the first mage, of course, but the first who made it his goal to reach out, find other mages, bring them under one roof, draw them into a single organization, and forge the Hermetic Order^[Okay, yes, yes, I know that was mostly the political work of Trianoma, but go with me here!] in an entirely new world, in an entirely new place, using entirely new people. That sounds like an *epic* story. That sounds like something worth doing. There was a final realization that struck my forehead like a single silver bolt from the blue that told me this was a thing that had to happen: *Nobody ever said that you had to play the same character all the time in a solo game.* Troupe style play in a solo game? It's more likely than you think! That was the closer. That was the big deal. That put the polish on the apple. So what are the resources that we are going to be using for this game? ## Texts of Study | Title | Why? | | ---- | ---- | | **[Ironsworn](https://www.ironswornrpg.com/products-ironsworn)** | The core text, absolutely required, and absolutely free. Go pick it up because if you haven't by now, I'm not sure I can help you. | | **[Ironsworn: Delve](https://www.ironswornrpg.com/product-ironsworn-delve)** | The obvious reason? Dungeons, or more abstractly the idea of dangerous places that require preparation, gear, but which have a limited physical scope. Good places to find magical resources. Beyond that, really good rules for threat tracks, magical artifacts, and other goodies which are going to be handy along this path. Again, this is probably a must-have if you want to play **Ironsworn**; totally worth the investment. | | **[Arcanum](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/368750/Arcanum-High-Magic-for-Ironsworn)** | This is where things start to get spicy. **Arcanum** basically implements **[[Ars Magica]]** within the **Ironsworn** framework. You get your verb+noun magical system, you get mechanics for building and expanding your Chancel (I mean – your Arcanum), and some really good mechanics for covering magical backlash. This is 65% of what made me think of all of this is a possible solution. Absolutely worth picking up, playing, and enjoying. Plus – mechanics for figuring out entirely new magical essences and manipulations. Be a pioneer! | | **[Ironsworn: Reign](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/419256/Ironsworn-Reign)** | Here's the final nail in the coffin, as it were. While **Arcanum** does have rules for managing and expanding your personal magical fortress, **Reign** gives us far more detailed and flushed out mechanics for building, expanding, and maintaining an entire community – which is part of the whole idea, here. It's one thing to have a Wizard's Tower, it's quite another to start putting together a small community of people for mutual support in the shadow of your mage's tower. There's really good meat to be had. | Just starting with those four books, we have all the tools necessary to create the first organization of mages in the Ironlands. Something that's never been done before. ## New Truths We probably should touch on a few questions that would have normally been covered in *Your Truths* back in the first episode. We're going to be tackling this from the perspective of **Arcanum** with the questions found at the end of the book. | Question | Answer | | ---- | ---- | | ***Is there a source of magic other than Chaos?*** | Of course. There are the traditional Rituals and lesser magics of the Ironlands – but they don't have the flexibility and structure of the framework used by what we are going to refer to as mages. Our character isn't the first to discover the framework, but he is going to be the first to popularize it. | | ***How common are mages throughout the land?*** | Extremely rare. Magic in general is fairly rare and practitioners of formalized magic believe that either they have pioneered the practice or, more likely, spent the time and effort dredging it up from some ancient source. | | ***How do mages fit into the power structures of Ironlands society?*** | Poorly. The effect of the Mark on *heart* (we'll come back to this in a moment) means that most normal people feel at best disquiet around mages and at worst active visceral distaste and discomfort. Some mages have used this as a leveraging tool and some leaders have sought out the consultation of wise women and men of all stripes. Usually it ends poorly for all involved. | | ***What beasts or horrors exist that are frightening even to a mage of significant power?*** | There's nothing really necessary besides the inherent horrors and beasts of the Ironlands. Magic sometimes pools and sours but there's nothing specific targeting mages. Most of the time. | | ***Does the use and practice of magic vary from region to region or is there a universal approach?*** | The formalized, structured, teachable approach is exceedingly rare. Most magical practitioners in the Ironlands are limited to a couple of rituals which have extremely specific applications. Serious mages are few. There very well may be considerably more who bear the Mark and never receive any training. | | ***How do mages relate to one another?*** | Few of them even know that others exist. The ones that do generally feel that they are a threat rather than brothers and sisters in arms. | | ***How were magic and mages viewed in the Old World?*** | Magic and mages were still quite rare before fleeing to the Ironlands and mage organization had gone through several cycles of consolidation and being fragmented or deliberately broken up. The exodus was probably responsible for the vast bulk of formalized magical texts that exist in the Ironlands today. | This is probably exactly the place to bring up a slight change to the rules that I'm going to make to **Arcanum**: - The -1 to *heart* will only apply when trying to have a positive social interaction with someone without the Mark who is not an Attendant (character with which a mage has a positive Bond and who lives in the Arcanum) or another mage. If you're just trying to terrify or intimidate someone, or be brave – the Mark has no negative effect. It only makes people distrust, dislike, and hate you if they don't associate with you on a regular basis. This means that you're probably going to want to build some Grounds for your Arcanum relatively early to have a place for servants and other small folk who do things around the place to live and be comforted by in order to kill that modifier from the Mark when dealing with them. And that won't apply to the folks in the settlement you're going to be cultivating, unless you work on that, too. Oh look, more projects! ## Chargen Finally! This show you all came to see! Also the discharge of my responsibility for CCC 2024 for the day. Let's all flip to page 31 in the **Ironsworn** text and start putting things together. We've talked about the tools we're going to use and some of the ideas that are on the table, so let's get cracking on making the mechanical bits shiny. Needless to say, we are going to be incredibly awesome. The founder of the first organized mage community in the Ironlands. Possibly the one who will be given credit for regularizing the study of magic itself! Or we could die early in the snow, freezing to death, clawing at the sky. You can never tell! We are going to just sort of run through putting these basic bits together because you have seen me do that in systems which are very closely related a lot. ### Name *Beinbrytr Kroppkunstner* (not his given name) ### Stats A pretty solid spread here, with a surprising emphasis on intellectual and emotional values. It's interesting to me that all of the stats could be used for a physical *or* intellectual action; it's just a matter of working out your justification and explaining it. > • *Edge:* Quickness, agility, and prowess in ranged combat. > • *Heart:* Courage, willpower, empathy, sociability, and loyalty. > • *Iron:* Physical strength, endurance, aggressiveness, and prowess in close combat. > • *Shadow:* Sneakiness, deceptiveness, and cunning. > • *Wits:* Expertise, knowledge, and observation Stats only run 1-3, which is a very narrow range – especially when all resolutions involve taking your stat, modifying it by any Assets you have or environmental situations which generally don't change anything more than +1, adding a D6 (your *Action Die*) and then rolling 2D10 to get your *Challenge Dice* to compare your roll to. You want your action score to be higher than each of the individual values of the challenge dice. You can see how the stats are not necessarily going to be friendly. Especially with the following allocation: 3, 2, 2, 1, 1. This could be a bit rough. | Stat | Value | | ---- | ---: | | **Edge** | 1 | | **Heart** | 2 | | **Iron** | 1 | | **Shadow** | 2 | | **Wits** | 3 | If we *are* going to establish the formulaic basis of magic and its first organization, we have to lean hard on the *wits*. I don't think we have any choice there. That's going to come with some pretty serious requirements for getting along with people – or at least convincing them that we want to, so *heart* has to be in that second tier. Beinbrytr is not above some deeply underhanded shenanigans to get what he wants so we'll boost *shadow* along with it. He's not particularly quick and agile nor is he particularly strong, which may be a little bit too much like being a traditional mage but I think we'll be okay. ### Health, Spirit, Supply, Momentum Most of this is just setting the default values so should go pretty quick. **Health:** 5 The usual tool for endearing harm; you can take a little bit of a beating but if you take a hit when you're at zero health, you're taking a debility or dying. Neither of which is great. **Spirit:** 5 Your psychological state, as health is for your physical state. You can take damage to it. Of course, take a hit to your spirit when you're at 0 and you could spiral into an endless depression, go crazy, or other unpleasant, character-ending pleasures. **Supply:** 5 We don't track ammo, we don't track how many torches you've got, we don't keep up with how many iron rations are in the backpack. We track *supply*. You need something? It's in there, maybe. If you run out of it? You're probably going to starve, get dispirited, or feel a bit of a setback going on. It's not good. Stay supplied. **Momentum:** +2/+10 Here is one of the key mechanics for **Ironsworn**, in my opinion. Momentum is the accumulation of positive success toward your goal. Yes, it can go negative and that's bad. Lots of moves affect your momentum and you can burn your momentum to turn a challenge die (or both) into a hit as long as the value on the die is less than your momentum. Do that and your value resets to +2 unless you have a debility (+1). If you have two debilities marked, then it's 0. One of the things I see in a lot of actual plays of **Ironsworn** is forgetting about momentum and how it can be used. You want to build it up but you also don't want to sit on it; you want to burn it so that you can build it up again if at all possible. You want to take moves to build it up before you go in for the big hit you want to *really* have an effect. Paying attention to management of momentum is a bigger deal than I see people making it. ### Vows Speaking of mechanics which are critical to understanding Ironsworn, now we have our *vows*. These are huge parts of what make the game engine turnover, and not just because of the numbers on them – because of what they mean in the context of the character. Vows are an instant kick in the ass at the beginning of the game. They are things that your character has truly and deeply sworn to accomplish and provide immediate motivation to prioritize and figure out your next action on every vow. If at any moment you find yourself at loose ends, you should have a vow that's pushing you to do something. If you find yourself without a vow, you have probably fucked up and not gotten yourself into situations where people are going to ask things of you or you have things that you want to accomplish. Vows are huge. All vows have a rank (troublesome, dangerous, formidable, extreme, or epic), just like every other progress track system in the game, which determines how much you get to mark it when you make a successful action which advances the resolution of your goal. Progress tracks have 10 boxes, a troublesome track marks three boxes on progress whereas an epic track marks a single tick in a single box on progress. (Boxes take three ticks to be full.) Vows can be very long term plans. We start our first session with two vows, one which is long term (from our background, generally) and one which is an immediate situation which must be dealt with (referred to as your *inciting incident* in the text, but back in the early 2000's the story games community was referring to these as "kickers"^[[Oh, Ron Edwards, you magnificent bastard.](https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Kicker)]). I think we can do something with this. | Vow | Progress | | ---- | ---- | | Create a new organization that draws together the mages of the Ironlands into a cohesive (or at least not mutually murderous) whole. (Epic) | OOOOOOOOOO (1-tick) | | Get out of town safely before the rioting villagers get us. (Dangerous) | OOOOOOOOOO (2-box) | Creating a new organization made up of rare, distrustful, generally emotionally damaged people who may have the power to set you on fire with a glance and a wave of their fingers seems like it is of a sufficient scale to be worth referring to as "epic." There are going to be lots of waypoints along the way, from recruiting people, to finding new forms of magic (like some sort of magical defense that you can put up at a moment's notice, a "magical shield"^[See: https://arsmagica.fandom.com/wiki/Parma_Magica] if you will), to helping others establish their own Arcanum… It's a big job. It'll take time. The first thing we need to do, however, is make sure that we can get out of town before they decide to lynch us. The problem with being a mage is people generally don't like you and if you have a little accident with a little bit of magic here or there, people can get grumpy. And by that I mean light the torches and grab some pitchforks. It's time to leave. ### Bonds Specifically mechanizing the connection between characters, places, and the player's intent is another thing that **Ironsworn** does with a certain amount of style. Like vows, *bonds* provide a mechanized way to communicate what things, places, and other characters are important to the player's character. They provide a way to invoke both history and desire. We get to start out with up to three bonds already in place. There is an overall bonds progress track (epic, of course) that fills up as you forge bonds over the course of play. When this particular Ironsworn's story is done, through death or retirement, you make the *Write Your Epilogue move*, count up the filled boxes, and use that to determine some things about what happens afterwards. Let's get on this for ourselves… - ***Granfoss***, my home village. Just because they gave me a torch and pitchfork send-off doesn't mean it's not home. Or that I won't go back. - ***Tore (the Truflari)***, my 10 year old brother who's been there, thick or thin, since he was born. Troublemaker, probably going to grow up to be a guard or a prisoner one day. I'll hold onto the third one for now and maybe use it later to have a bond with someone from somewhere else. You never know when *"knowing a guy"* will come in handy. Especially if you might be on the run – or looking for a place to settle down. ### Debilities, Banes, Burdens We don't have any of these, but they are states that your character take on if they have bad things happen to them. I'm particularly fond of *Corrupted* and *Tormented* – and if my luck holds out as it usually does when I play RPGs, I'll have the opportunity to find out what they feel like from the inside. For now though, we march onward. ### Assets The meat of character generation in **Ironsworn** and all of its derivatives. Assets are backgrounds, they're skills, they're traits, they are the things that have a significant mechanical influence on the game in the sense of allowing you to change outcomes. Sometimes they merely provide a fictional mechanism which allows you to do something you wouldn't otherwise be able to. Sometimes they define your career and all the skills that are associated with it. Each asset has its own three abilities which can be activated or unlocked by investing experience, and this along with acquiring more assets is how a character progresses. Also they tend to be really cool. We get to start with three assets – but one of them is already spoken for because of our plans, so let's get that one out of the way. ![[Beinbrytr Asset The Mark.png]] We've already made our little change to the Shunned bit, but the rest makes perfect sense. We are going to be a *Muto Corpus* mage, a flesh crafter and a bone shifter. Not for ourselves, of course… That's tacky. Most of the time. Just think of all the fun you can have with this.^[No, I have never played [a Tzimisce with Vicissitude](https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Vicissitude) or [a Tytalus](https://www.redcap.org/page/House_Tytalus) with Rego Corpus. Never happened. Nope.] It also might have something to do with why our village doesn't want us around right now. We'll figure it out. ![[Beinbrytr Asset Herbalist.png]] It's one thing to be able to directly manipulate flesh and bone, bending it to your will, twisting it to your desires – you should probably have another reason for people to come and see you. Expertise of the flesh can be applied in many ways. There has to be some reason that people keep you around, right? I mean, aside from being able to make them more beautiful, more capable, or twisted into a screaming servitor by repeated applications of torture. ![[Beinbrytr Asset Companion Tore.png]] I swear, I was just going to let it go. I was just going to have Tore be a narrative construct that we could reify later – but the idea of having him be an actual game mechanical entity that gives us a bonus when they help us fast talk somebody and have their own health/death track was just too big a lure. Somehow I imagine getting through a few years with this kid helping us out, finding a place to live, getting it set up – and then creating him as his own character, with his own bonds and assets, informed by the history of what came before. Tell me that's not cool. I dare you. ### Experience and Equipment We don't *have* any experience, which makes it really easy. You get experience by fulfilling your vows – and there is a literal mechanical move for that. You use experience to upgrade and acquire more assets which then make it easier for you to fulfill larger, more powerful vows. Plus get in over your head even more, which is the best part. In terms of gear, anything that's consumable, disposable, or fairly random is handled by the supply trait so there's no real reason to wrestle with that in terms of a complicated checklist. We'll start with a couple of tomes, one for *Control* and one for *Body*, which we almost always keep in an oilskin bag slung across our back out of a mix of good sense and paranoia. We have a relatively unremarkable village outfit, a heavy coat (which we will need), and a couple of long, pointy knives. They're good for impromptu surgery. I promise. That's it. That's the mechanics. Let's put this together in a nice, narrative form in terms of description. ### Summary **Beinbrytr Kroppkunstner** *Muto Corpus magus, healer, and occasional underhanded bastard.* | Stat | Value | | ---- | ---: | | **Edge** | 1 | | **Heart** | 2 | | **Iron** | 1 | | **Shadow** | 2 | | **Wits** | 3 | **Vows:** | Vow | Progress | | ---- | ---- | | Create a new organization that draws together the mages of the Ironlands into a cohesive (or at least not mutually murderous) whole. (Epic) | OOOOOOOOOO (1-tick) | | Get out of town safely before the rioting villagers get us. (Dangerous) | OOOOOOOOOO (2-box) | **Bonds:** - ***Granfoss***, my home village. Just because they gave me a torch and pitchfork send-off doesn't mean it's not home. Or that I won't go back. - ***Tore (the Truflari)***, my 10 year old brother who's been there, thick or thin, since he was born. Troublemaker, probably going to grow up to be a guard or in prison one day. ![[Beinbrytr Asset The Mark.png]] ![[Beinbrytr Asset Herbalist.png|200]] ![[Beinbrytr Asset Companion Tore.png|200]] Beinbrytr is a 22-year-old Ironlander of middling height with long dark hair and what looks like three days scruff, which is about all the beard he manages to grow. His eyes are piercing blue, like Arctic ice. There's something vaguely disquieting about him, unsettling. His simple jerkin is fastidiously clean. He has a big oilskin pack thrown over his shoulder and a couple of daggers at his belt. His younger brother (10), Tore, is usually somewhere nearby. The kid has a fast tongue and a fast sprint, which comes in handy more often than perhaps it should. Unfortunately for both of them, Beinbrytr managed to stir up some trouble in Granfoss as one of the young ladies from the village may have engaged in some psychological transference after her parents sent her to him to "take care of the little problem" she had gotten into with one of the village gentlemen. Quite all right, the young man and his brother have ambitious dreams, the creation of an organization of mages that could engage in mutual protection against the depredations of smaller minds. ![[Beinbrytr Kroppkunstner, Muto Corpus Mage.jpg]] ## Exunt And that's it! We are all set up for an exploration of what it takes to unite an entire continent of mages who don't want to be found, don't like each other, and might be a little bit terrifying. But first we'll have to find a place to lay low, get our ducks in a row, maybe even find a few magical artifacts to make things easier. And Tore, what kind of ridiculous shenanigans is he going to get up to? Are they going to lead to deaths? More pitchforks? His mouth might be the biggest gun we have. Stay tuned for the next daring adventure – or the first – of **[[Hollow Places of the Soul]]**! --- ## Dramatis Personae - **[[Beinbrytr Kroppkunstner]]**: Ambitious young mage with the reach that probably exceeds his grasp. Currently evading the people of his village. Torches and pitchforks may be involved. - **Tore (the Truflari)**: 10-year-old brother of Beinbrytr, troublemaker, fast talker, and probably a good sneak thief. Mostly fast talker.