Session 13.1: The Tenements

The party braves Odo's demesne. Anwen and Vahid make a strange discovery. Padrig must make a bloody choice.

Last episode, we did some GM planning for Session 13, in which we will descend into the ruins hidden beneath the tenements of Gordin’s Delve, seeking to defeat the enigmatic and dangerous Odo Thriceborn, who bears and spreads the corrupting Howling Curse.

We closed out our prep by deciding what initial approach the party will take to this mission — do they call on their allies’ forces to take the tenements by storm, hopefully taking some of Odo’s forces by surprise before descending into his hidden lair to confront the man himself? Or do they keep their mission small and secretive, attempting to steal into Odos’s lair unseen? Each plan has its own risks — let’s see what you all chose:

A strong majority for the stealthy approach. While an argument can be made for the overt over the covert, this approach certainly keeps better with the party’s values — storming the tenements would put innocents in danger, and if the PCs didn’t care about that, they may well have left Gordin’s Delve to its fate days ago.

We’ll open the session with the party laying out the plan to reach Odo’s lair — the routes the three groups are taking were generated using the Domain oracles outlined in the GM prep, so along with triggered moves, I’ll show what oracle results led to what descriptions.

Scene 1: Mutra’s Place

Anwen paces like a caged lioness around the near-deserted common room of Mutra’s spartan home, while Padrig sits quietly at the long table with Mutra and her men, quietly watching Vahid make his preparations.

The Seeker sits cross-legged in the center of a circle of dark iron shavings, the Azure Hand balanced across his lap. In the palm of the staff’s headpiece is a lump of burning incense, its blue-grey smoke curling towards the ceiling. “When will he be ready?” Mutra whispers to Pad. Around her are her hand-picked men — Cerdic Snake-Eye and Lucky Finbar, and a third bravo they name Ollem the Stone, a quiet and unsmiling man with black hair and narrow, suspicious eyes.

“I’m no magus, Mutra. I give the man what time he needs, and no less.”

“You said it yourself — Odo will be preparing a welcome for us. The man has ears everywhere; The longer we wait, the more likely he will know exactly what we are about.”

Vahid clears his throat, brushing the ash from his staff and rising to his feet. “Fortunately, that is not the case. Whatever unnatural methods he has of rooting out plots against him, I have taken steps to conceal us from them.”

Vahid has used his moves Safety First and Proof Against Detection, which we discussed a bit during the leveling up Vahid section of the Session 13 prep. His meditation and incense ritual was the trigger, and now as long as he has hold for Safety First, they cannot be magically scried upon (by Odo, or by Cirl-of-the-Storms, for that matter). That doesn’t mean Odo is totally incapable of learning what they’re up to — he still has spies, after all — but if the party moves fast and keeps their company small, he won’t see them coming.

“He struck against us and failed — belike he will expect a counterstroke, but he’ll be expecting it days from now, while we muster our strength and seek allies from among the other bosses,” Padrig says. “Even so, his people in the tenements will be looking for large crews moving against him, so we should split up — take different routes through and meet… where, Vahid?”

Vahid pauses, uncertainty clouding his face only for a moment. “My vision showed a great stone gateway into darkness in a cavern, and above it, a tall wooden insula, like those back in the Beggar’s Quarter in Lygos. In my mind’s eye, it was bent at an alarming angle, as though it was about to collapse under its own weight.”

“The Crooked Tower, most like,” Finbar supplies. “One of the larger flats, smack in the center of the tenements. Odo’s Family runs a mess hall there.”

“Yes,” Vahid nods grimly, the visions of bloody feasts and red-stained teeth flashing through his mind. “Beneath the cellar there, there is a tunnel that connects to the ruins below.”

Vahid’s vision means the party doesn’t have to search through the tenements to find the entrance to Odo’s Lair. To envision the route each of them takes, we’ll use the Domains and Themes we selected during session prep, with one small change: On the Stonetop Discord, a reader shared some additional, fan-made Domains and Themes for Ironsworn: Delve, one of which fits the tenements a little better than the Stronghold domain I selected before:

And we’ll still use the Corrupted theme, which you can see here.

For the first route: 45, Corrupted Settlement Oracle Roll, 45: Shop or Market.
For the second route: 59, Corrupted Settlement Oracle Roll, 59: Public Square or Common.
For the third route, Corrupted Settlement Oracle Roll, 75: Factory, workshop, or artisan.

“Do you know the ground well?” Padrig asks Finbar. “What are the surest routes into Odo’s territory?”

Finbar furrows his brow. “The Crooked Tower was first built atop a Forge Lord ruin on the fifth terrace, but you can’t even see the old walls anymore — folk just added to it with timber and scrap until it reached the sixth terrace and kept growing and sprawling. The main entrance is at the end of the stairs and boardwalks of Splinterfoot Way — even late at night, it’s a gathering place — it’ll be crowded there, and Odo’s lanternmen will be out, keeping an eye on things. And there’s the covered market on the fifth terrace — at night, it spills out from the Crooked Tower into the street with the pharmakeia¹ trade.”

“I’ll lead Cerdic and Ollem east, through the night market — even past midnight there will be crowds there.” Mutra says. "If we spend a little coin with the bhang-sellers, most like no one will look twice at us.”

She then nods to Finbar, who in turn looks to Pad. “I’ll be going with you, Padrig. No offense, but you were one of Brennan’s lot. Even if we’re throwing in together, needs must keep an eye on you.”

Padrig shrugs. “Fine by me. I’ve another fighter who can come with us² — if you’re busy watching me, we’ll need one more pair of eyes. We’ll take the straight path, up Splinterfoot Way, and across the rooftops to the tower’s front door.”

Anwen comes to the table now. “Baraz³ has offered to join our endeavor — he’ll accompany the Seeker and me. How do we get in?”

Finbar considers this. “The rear entrance to the Crooked Tower is through a longhouse on the north side, on the sixth terrace. It’s a sweatshop for folk who can’t work the mines anymore — can’t say for sure what they do in there, but it’s quiet at night. Whatever’s in there, Odo must not think it’s worth guarding. That’s your best way in.”

Anwen meets Mutra’s eyes. “Alright, then. We don’t turn back until Odo’s dead. Agreed?”

Mutra nods firmly. “Yes. It should have been done long ago.”

“Let’s be about it, then,” Padrig growls.

Setting the Scene: Recruiting and Delving

First off, Padrig spends a few hours making contact with Jens and bringing him to the cause — when last they spoke, Padrig handed Jens quite a few gold coins (quite a payment, in this region) to thank him for his help in defending the caravan, leaving the man quite impressed. We’ll be using the Recruit move from the Gordin’s Delve section of Stonetop’s world almanac:

We’ll give Pad +2, since he’s got a good reputation (with Jens specifically) and Jens knows he pays well:

Padrig triggers Recruit: 6+2+2 Bonus = 10, Strong Hit

Jens is onboard. We don’t need to play out that scene, he can just show up when we see how Padrig’s first Delve the Depths roll goes — which we’ll tackle next. Each group will roll once to navigate the tenements⁴. For a refresher, here’s the Delve the Depths move from Ironworn, which we’re adapting as a modified Defy Danger roll:

We’ll start with Mutra. This roll is simple, but high-stakes: If Mutra scores a Miss, she’ll go missing, either dead or captured by the cult, which would then seriously hamper the party’s defense of Gordin’s Delve when Cirl-of-the-Storms arrives in a little less than two weeks.

Mutra’s company triggers Delve the Depths: 6+5+1 Quality = 12, Strong Hit

The party breathes a sigh of relief — Mutra’s party navigates the night market and makes their way into the Crooked Tower. Next, Anwen’s route through the sweatshop — Vahid takes the lead here, using his memory of his vision to guide them as they get closer to their quarry (this allows him to use +Intelligence in the roll), and Anwen aids, watching their backs while Vahid does his best to cross reference Finbar’s descriptions with his own remembered visions.

Vahid’s company triggers Delve the Depths: 4+3+2+2 Intelligence = 9, Weak Hit.

Rather than getting bogged down by potentially encountering a danger, Anwen is going to use the Burn Brightly move: she has 4 XP more than she needs to level, and Burn Brightly allows her to spend 2 of those banked XP to increase the result of the roll by +1 after she’s made it, raising this result to a Strong Hit. Way back in April, reader D.G. suggested that with all the banked XP, our heroes might make use of this option, and this seemed as good a time as any: A high stakes stealth mission through the territory of a dangerous cult. Since she scores a strong hit, we also trigger Discover an Opportunity in the Delve ruleset, which calls for a roll on an oracle table. Our result is an aspect of the history or nature of this place is revealed, so in the course of their navigation through the sweatshop, they must learn something useful (and hopefully interesting) about Odo’s operations in the sweatshop.

And last, but not least, Padrig’s group, rolling with Wisdom, as Pad keeps a weather eye out for threats, with Finbar’s Aid granting advantage:

Padrig’s company triggers Delve the Depths: 1+1+1+2 Wisdom = 4, Miss

Rolls don’t get much worse than this. Not even spending XP can salvage it. We roll on the oracle to Discover a Danger for Pad, and our result from the Corrupted theme is a denizen corrupted by dark magic. Here, in the tenements, it likely isn’t a half-man, half-beast berserker — it’ll be someone a little more shifty than that, and the danger they present is that Odo will be warned prematurely.

We’ll start with Anwen and Vahid’s good fortune, before learning how things go awry for Padrig:

Scene 2: Odo’s Sweatshop

It is dark and quiet on the sixth terrace when Anwen, Baraz, and Vahid make their way towards the ramshackle sweatshop, built haphazardly against the side of the Crooked Tower, as it climbs up and over the wall of the fifth terrace to loom above the sixth.

The three walk along the side of the deserted street, keeping beneath the overhangs and in the shadows, hiding from any prying eyes watching from the tower above. Anwen’s fighting leathers are concealed by a worn goat-hide vest, and Bearkiller’s makerglass blade is wrapped in linen. Vahid’s sky-blue robes are hidden beneath a threadbare cloak of black sackcloth, while the Azure Hand is hidden elsewhere, ready to be summoned to the Seeker’s hand with a thought and a gesture.⁵ Baraz is at Anwen’s shoulder, his eyes watching the shadowed alleyways as they approach, with his iron chain, barbed with thick, curving spikes slung around his shoulders.

The longhouse’s entryway is covered by no more than a dirty linen curtain. A generous distance from the door is a single, sleeping guard, slumped against the cracked wall. The bravo wears a stained white scarf, marking him as one of Odo’s, and the trio slips past him silently, pushing aside the curtain and revealing a cavernous space beyond, shrouded in dim shadows⁶. The faint glimmers of the moons filter through cracks and holes in the roofing, casting silver light on heaps of… something.

Vahid moves closer, his storm-touched blue eye glowing with curiosity. Anwen and Baraz crouch low and follow behind him, watching for any signs or sounds of movement deeper within the workhouse.

As his sight adjusts to the shadows, Vahid now sees what is stored here: Heaps of scrap metal — iron and bronze, cast into rods, gears, and curved plates — even through the thick corrosion Vahid can make out the delicate engravings of the Forge Lords, motifs of flames and shining light that decorate the intricate metalwork, reduced by time and neglect to little more than junk.

Vahid’s eye widens in wonder when he sees the sheer amount of Maker-craft here. Piles of broken automata and artifice, mixed in with hunks of ore and stone, heaped high beneath the sagging roof. “Such a waste,” he whispers. “What do they do with it all?”

“Melt it down, belike?” Baraz whispers back. “The iron caravans from the Manmarches and Lygos come three times a year, and they have a terrible appetite. The marcher Jarls and the Despot’s swordbearers need all the iron they can get.”

Then, a clatter and scrape of metal on metal arrests their attention, and all three snap their heads to look for the source, falling silent and crouching low in the darkness. The air seems to thicken and grow cold in anticipation. Vahid is the first to see her —he squints, peering into the gloom, and his storm-marked eye can see⁷ the strange, unnatural chill that raises the hair on the back of his neck, and the cold vis swirls around the form of a young girl.

Her face is deathly pale, and her eyes are sad, but focused. An old, patched dress clings to her form, its patchy fabric fluttering in an unfelt breeze. Her small hands are a mess of bleeding cuts and scars as they dart in and out of the scrap heap.

“Vahid?” Anwen whispers, barely a breath. “What is it?”

Vahid triggers Know Things: 5+1+2 Intelligence = 8, Weak Hit. Something interesting, but nothing immediately useful.

“One of the unquiet dead — a young girl. Have you ever seen a ghost, Anwen? I suspect her presence is why Odo’s men do not guard this place closely.”

Anwen pales. “There are a pair of children who haunt the village stream, by the edge of the Great Wood. I thought I saw them looking at me, through the rushes, when Cadoc and I went down there one night when we were small⁸.”

“I know little of the stories of the dead. I suspect whatever cruelty this girl suffered at the hands of Odo’s Family has bound her here.”

“What should we do? Is she dangerous?”

“She need not be — we have not wronged her, after all. She may know something about this place, or about Odo.”

Anwen nods warily. “Do what you think is right, Seeker. But remember our mission.” Vahid inclines his head, in thanks for Anwen’s trust, before returning his attention to the restless spirit.

Her attention is rapt on her work, as she tries to dig through the piles of scrap with her ethereal hands, growing more frustrated and more focused by turns. “What’s your name? Are you looking for something?” Vahid whispers. “They say the Delve is full of seekers.”

Her eyes dart to Vahid, and then back to her labors. “Senah, Senah. Seeking, seeking. Silver gets you fed, gold gets you a bed. But then back to seeking, Senah, until you find it and you’re free!” she whispers in a childlike singsong. Her eyes return to Vahid’s face, narrowing with suspicion. “If we’re seeking the same thing, we can’t be friends. No friends here, only seekers.”

Vahid hides his fear behind a kind smile. “I’m only passing through, you have my word. What do you seek, my friend?

“Silver and gold would be nice. But there’s little bobs that are gold like the sun, and red like a dying fire. Put one in the Thriceborn’s hands, and you and your family will walk free with his thanks.” She returns to her labors, seeming to forget the scholar had even spoken.

“Orichalcum,” Vahid whispers, backing away from the spirit. “Odo is gathering it for some purpose — but why? The substance is anathema to those corrupted by the Things Below.”

“Plenty of time to wonder while we move, Seeker,” Anwen whispers. “Let’s not keep Mutra and Padrig waiting.”

Just a quick note about this scene before we move on to Padrig — I generated some of the elements of the description of the workhouse and the ghost girl using ChatGPT. I had decided the broad strokes of the sweatshop — that it’s dedicated to hunting for rare metals inside the discarded artifice of the Forge Lords, brought up from the deeper mines, and then gave a few prompts to see if I could get some worthwhile prose. I ended up using only a few sentences here and there, and editing pretty heavily. If you’re interested in this part of the process, you can see my conversation with the GPT model here — you’ll have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see the most recent prompts.

Scene 3: Splinterfoot Way, meanwhile

Splinterfoot Way follows a winding path — a rickety boardwalk up and over the shanties of the fifth terrace, over rooftops, scaffolding, and ancient stones laid by the Makers, twisting through and between insula-style flat blocks and even rougher constructions. The path is crowded with tenants of the flats, whiling away the evening hours under the open sky, rather than surrendering to restless sleep in the cramped and squalid apartments within.

The trio do their best to blend in with the crush, ragged cloaks covering their battle gear, and Pad’s bow unstrung and hidden in a bundle of kindling, slung over his shoulder. Finbar’s hood is pulled down over his eyes, while Jens, not well known in these parts, leads the three through the crush, shouldering between knots of folk going about their nightly amusements, throwing dice or playing more outré and dangerous games of chance and skill, or simply chopping up the day’s travails over clay cups of rotgut. Here and there, pairs of lanternmen in dirty white scarves patrol, scanning the crowd for malefactors — or easy marks for shakedowns.

As they near the middle of their climb up the switchbacked stairway, a tatter-cloaked cutpurse leaps from a tilted rooftop onto the stair and past Jens, colliding roughly with him as he rips his purse from his belt. A few bent coppers come rolling out, down the stairs, and before Pad can react, Jens seizes up the street rat, grasping the arm that holds his ruined purse.

Pad now scans their surroundings trying to find out how screwed they are: 

Padrig triggers Seek Insight: 5+3+2 Wisdom = 10, Strong Hit

A little better luck for the old bandit. A strong hit yields three questions, and I easily can imagine the rapid-fire, somewhat panicked questions coming from a PC in this situation: what should I be on the lookout for, what here is not what it seems, and what is about to happen. Padrig likely knows that any cutpurses who are operating here pay a tax to Odo’s people, assuming he’s not one of them to begin with. He’ll also be able to glean that the cutpurse is corrupted, per the danger we received from the oracle roll. Finally, he learns (perhaps not surprisingly) that this cutpurse is about to take off, and will try to lose them on the rooftops. The next move Pad triggers based on this information now has advantage, as well. Back to the fiction:

The thief tightens his grip on Jen's torn purse, and through the ripped leather, the gold coins Pad paid the caravan guard gleam in the dim light. His eyes widen, and Pad spots a predatory, yellow shine -- it is one of the Thriceborn’s accursed thralls.

"Hold him fast!" Pad hisses. "He's one of Odo's!"

Pad is ordering Jens here — he’s not using Stentorian to give the order, since he’s not using his battlefield voice to avoid drawing attention, but he can still get advantage thanks to the Seek Insight roll.

Padrig triggers Order Followers: 6+2+1+1 Quality = 9, Weak Hit

We’ll offer Jens a lesser outcome — he can’t hold the cutpurse, but he can get an attack off instead. He chooses to do so, and deals his damage. He rolls a 2, not enough to drop the man.

Pad then takes off after the cutpurse, knowing that if he escapes, the gold coins in Jen’s purse, plus their armaments, could raise suspicion and forewarn Odo that they’re coming.

Pad triggers Defy Danger with Dexterity: 6+4+1 Dexterity = 11, Strong Hit

Success! Back to the fiction:

The man twists away, and Jens desperately wrenches his shortsword from its place hidden beneath his cloak and lashes out. The thief cries out in pain but keeps his feet and scrambles onto the rooftops. Without hesitation, Padrig takes off after him with Jens and Finbar close behind, pelting over the rickety, unstable rooftops.

The wound Jens dealt him slows the thief's flight, and Pad is quickly upon him, tackling him to the ground and drawing a knife from its place in his boot. The shanty's roof beneath them creaks and groans as they wrestle, but his struggles cease when Pad presses iron to his throat. Now that he is eye to yellow eye with the cutpurse, the man's menace melts away -- Pad puts him at barely past 20 winters, and though his eyes are marked by the Howling Curse, they dart about wildly with fear, taking in the weapons and grim faces worn by his pursuers.

"The purse," Pad whispers. Without a word, the thief drops it, and the heavy gold coins hit the wooden roof with a thud.

Finbar comes to Padrig's side. "Best do it quickly." He nods to the knots of onlookers, gathering on the roofs above and below, and on the stairway behind them. "They've seen folk die for lesser offenses." Jens nods in confirmation, and gathers the coins up, before placing himself between the onlookers and Pad. Most of the watchers fade away, melting into shadowed doorways and windows -- only a few remain, afraid for the cutpurse's fate, or eager to see it for themselves.

The man’s eyes hold both the fear of death and the unmistakable mark of his corruption. Source: Midjourney

The man's yellow eyes search Pad's face for a sign of what he will do.

We will pause here and put this decision up to you all in this week’s reader poll. This moment is intended to be a mirror of Pad’s decision all the way back in Session 3.3, when a Hillfolk bandit was fleeing from a fight with the party, and Pad had to decide whether to shoot the man down as he retreated, lest he bring reinforcements down on them.

Back then, Pad wasn’t one to risk the mission to keep his hands clean, but a lot has happened to the man. Back in Session 8.3, he tried to spare one of the Stormcrow assassins who attacked the Sun-Spear encampment, though he failed that time. Here, if anything, the stakes are higher. What will he do, this time?

His current Instinct is Caution: To keep everyone safe, to agonize over decisions. Another Instinct option on the Marshal playbook is Honor: To keep your word, to follow a moral code, and this could be a moment where Pad’s Instinct starts to shift (which we could then ratify when we level him up). To leave behind his bloody past, Pad’s trying to be a protector — and this cutpurse, even corrupted by the Howling Curse, is one of the people in Gordin’s Delve the party is here trying to protect.

If he chooses to spare the cutpurse, we’ll use the Persaude move and/or the Ironsworn oracles to determine the man’s course of action — Pad might be able to persuade him to go home and lay low, rather than reporting to whichever of Odo’s lieutenants holds his leash. If Pad kills him, all they’ll have to worry about is making it away from the scene without giving any onlookers a reason to report to Odo’s Family — fortunately, in the tenements, life is relatively cheap.

Smash the button below to make your choice. If you choose to spare the cutpurse, let us know in the comments section whether you think a change in the old bandit’s instinct is due!

1. This is a Lygosi (by way of ancient Greek) term that encompasses both wine and other mind-altering substances.

2. This is Jens, the caravan guard whose life Padrig and the party saved on the road in Session 10.4.

3. Madam Parvati’s bouncer, who we first met in Session 11.4. Anwen made fast friends with him as a result of a 10+ Carouse roll, so she does not need to trigger Recruit to bring him on board, as Pad will have to do with Jens.

4. If they didn’t already know the route through, thanks to Vahid’s mind meld with Young Brogan and his communion with Odo’s unholy patron in Session 12.6, and were instead searching for the entrance, they would likely have to make 2-3 successful Delve the Depths rolls to fill the site’s progress track and locate it)

5. As the party was heading into the mission, I wanted to do some thinking about their gear — they’re trying to move unnoticed, and being heavily armed would definitely attract notice, so I tried to envision what important gear they’d have and how it would be concealed. Smaller items can simply be produced with the Have what you need move, and for that purpose, we’ll assume that everyone is carrying a Light load.

6. No roll for this — the Delve the Depths roll took care of it, until their fictional position changes substantively.

7. Recall that in addition to being able to see thoughts and auras, Vahid can also perceive the flow of elemental energy, thanks to his bond with the Azure Hand.

8. This is drawn from Stonetop’s world almanac — it’s a detail about the village we haven’t gone into, but it seemed fun to mention here.