# Ironsworn: Bronzebound *Created:* 2025-01-22, *Modified:* 2026-10-07 ![[Bronzebound (cover).jpg|600]] **Ironsworn: Bronzebound** is Ed S. R. Lee's "an Ironsworn origins setting" — a fan supplement that rewinds the sworn-vow engine to before vows were sworn on iron, planting you in the Bronze Age Mediterranean the way the Ironlands' own story-weavers remember the Old World: a gentler land of sunlit islands, olive groves, and the wine-dark sea. The twist that keeps it from being just another reskin is that it's a *prequel* — this is the Old World the Ironlands came from — so the whole "sworn to perilous quests" business gets re-founded on bronze oaths made to the gods rather than on iron made to each other. Born out of the Ironsworn 1Jam in 2023 and released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, it's the fantasy-hack's answer to a question nobody asked: what if the engine's grim northlanders were once Aegean islanders with an entire pantheon of meddling deities? ## Setting Bronzebound trades the Ironlands for the **Old World**, a Bronze Age Mediterranean inspired by Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece, and the world of Homer's *Iliad* and *Odyssey*. The default region is the **Sea Peoples** (~1500–1000 BCE), bound together by the sea routes — the home of herders, seafarers, fish traders, and wine merchants, where few dare sail out of sight of land. The gods and goddesses rule openly here: their rivalries shape your destiny, and your character's very stats are governed by them — **Iron** by Ares or Athena, **Edge** by Apollo or Artemis, **Heart** by Dionysus or Aphrodite, **Wits** by Hephaistos or Hera, **Shadow** by Hermes or Demeter. Your strongest stat marks your **patron deity**; your two weakest mark your **antagonists**, who seek to undermine you out of rivalry with your patron. Vows are sworn on bronze to your patron — a treasured statue, a weapon handed down the generations, a beloved's brooch — and the place-name oracle supplies all the *-agos*, *-inos*, and *-kremos* you need to sound properly Homeric. Future regions (the Great River of Egypt, the Ruined Coast of Assyria and Babylon, the Horse Lands of the Hittites) were promised for later versions. ## Mechanics The engine is Ironsworn's action roll; Bronzebound layers its identity on top. - **Patron & antagonists.** Your patron's stat adds to your action dice in moves. Your two antagonistic deities become your **challenge dice**, named and personalized — their rolls represent the gods' continual interference in your quests, out of rivalry with your patron. - **The Hybris track.** Your own ten-box progress track, labeled **Hybris**. When a move other than a progress move comes up a strong hit with a **6 on the action die**, you mark a tick — charting your character's growing faith in their own power and independence from their patron. It's the game's slow-burn mortal-hubris arc. - **Forswear the Gods.** The signature progress move and the whole point of the setting. When you're ready to free your destiny from both patron and antagonists, envisage a significant bronze artefact to destroy or cast beyond use, then roll against your **Hybris** track. A strong hit makes you Ironsworn and in control of your fate — leave the Old World past the Iron pillars for the Ironlands, or stay and help other Ironsworn end the gods' reign. A weak hit frees you but exiles you, adding the Outcast path. A miss angers every god without escaping their reach: clear all but one Hybris box and Pay the Price. Most base-game assets carry over — the Kindred, Owl, and Hound companions, and the combat talents, with **Ironclad** reskinned as **Bronzeclad** — and the foe table adds **Harpies** (Dangerous, the gods' winged enforcers) and the **local deities**, offspring of the major gods tied to a natural place, as likely to punish as to aid. ## Editions - **Bronzebound: an Ironsworn origins setting** (2023) — by Ed S. R. Lee, for the Ironsworn 1Jam; CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. *In the library.* A first version; the text notes future regions and an expanded patron/antagonist section still to come. ## References - [Bronzebound: an Ironsworn origins setting — itch.io](https://edsrlee.itch.io/bronzebound-an-ironsworn-origins-setting) - [Ironsworn — official website](https://tomkinpress.com/pages/ironsworn)