This is part two of a two-part episode, you can find the first part right here. If you haven’t read that one, I urge you to go back and check it out — even moreso than other PTFO episodes, this installment won’t track without a clear memory of what came just before it.
If you’ve read it and want a quick refresher, let’s get into it: In part one, Anwen was swayed by Padrig not to confront Owain directly and publicly about his behavior, which Anwen sees as abusive of his power as the village’s marshal. Anwen instead decided to approach Cerys and ask her to bring her son to heel. To assess Cerys’ trustworthiness, Vahid offered to observe the conversation from outside, using the power of his arcanum to sense Cerys’ thoughts and emotions.
Unfortunately for our Seeker, when he rolled to see what he could glean he suffered a miss, and so instead his efforts are complicated by some outside force. To determine how best to make Vahid’s life difficult, I rolled on the Ironsworn Pay the Price oracle, and got the ‘A new danger or threat appears’ result.
The threats we’re advancing this season are Owain and the hdour, and Owain and his supporters seem more appropriate to introduce here. The threat move we’ll use from his list is send someone else to do your dirty work.
With that figured out, we rejoin Vahid outside:
Scene 3: Meanwhile, outside the Healing Hut
Vahid watches as Anwen enters the healing hut. The pre-dawn darkness is cold, clear, and silent, with the fresh snowfall muffling the footsteps and calls of the few villagers out and about this early.
He stands at the village bluff’s edge, overlooking the sprawling, snowy expanse of the Great Wood, spread out on the north edge of the village, stretching to the horizon. He closes his eyes and reaches for the unearthly, luminous shape of the White Key in his mind, and when he opens his lids, his third eye awakens. It casts a strange, blue-white glow, its pure light now marked by the Azure Hand, just as Vahid’s eyes of flesh and blood are.
Scene Breakdown: Arcana + Consequences
This is a detail that the Stonetop Discord community (which you get access to if you pre-order the game) helped me brainstorm — In Session 7.5, Vahid took a consequence that turns his eyes a strange, glowing blue-white, allowing him to perceive the flow and patterns of energy in the unseen world (sometimes to the detriment of his natural sight). It makes sense that his third eye would be effected by the Azure Hand, just like the eyes he was born with, but how?
The community proposed that the third eye is now also able to perceive thought flows and patterns, which adds the following questions to the arcana’s list:
“What feelings are arrested in them?”
“What emotion drives them forward or holds them back?”
“How will they respond if __?”
This is all academic, of course, because Vahid rolled a miss, and so will not be answering any of these questions. But it was part of my prep, so I figured I’d share it!
It’s important to note that as Vahid has gotten access to these various sensory modes — energy, magic, thought and emotion — he has sacrificed some of his ability to perceive the world around him. He’s not quite blind, but his vision is definitely a weakness — and when we put our GM hat on, it’s a weakness we should push on.
He turns his attention towards Cerys’ hut, and perceives Anwen and Cerys’ auras within, a tempestuous sea of passion and anger brushing up against a cold, calm, sheet of icy reserve and calculation, as the physical world falls away into grey insubstantiality.
Vahid focuses his attention on Cerys’ mind, seeking to pierce the layers of calm to find a sign of truth or falsehood. But as her aura begins to roil and shift, providing glimpses of its true heart beneath the calm, his focus is shattered by a voice ringing in his ear.
Vahid’s lips quirk up in sour amusement, as he reflects on how many languages he has learned the word ‘foreigner’ in. He draws down the hood of his cloak, doing what little he can to conceal the third eye, before he turns to face the speaker. There are two, but he cannot perceive their faces or clothes. Their suspicion, mistrust and anger, however, are picked out in luminous detail: sickly green, flecked with a core of angry red-black.
Vahid’s third eye reveals the world of thought and mind in luminous detail, but flesh and blood fade into grey.
“I await my friend who has gone to see the priestess. She will return soon,” Vahid replies cooly. He tries to meet the speaker’s eye, but the world of flesh and blood is elusive, fading like smoke before his eyes.
Another speaker: “Casting your evil eye about, no doubt. Seeking to poison our priestess’ magic. Afraid to even show your face.”
Vahid feels an unkind hand grabbing his shoulder, and his hood is pulled back. He hears men gasp when they see his third eye, a mote of shining blue-white in the dark winter morning. Their auras sink into pale white fear, shot through with veins of red-black violence, waiting just under the surface.
“Witchcraft,” one man hisses.
“Owain was right. If there’s a sorcerer to watch, it’s this one — sneaking about, digging up the cistern, meddling in Stonefolk business,” the other says. “Perhaps we ought to teach him a lesson from the warriors’ circle.”
“Aye,” the first replies. “Or perhaps we should send him to the Great Wood — the swift way.” Vahid swallows as he thinks of the long, steep cliff face he now stands at the edge of, though he can barely make it out in the cloudy greyness of the physical world.
At this point, Vahid needs to know what these men intend, and fortunately his third eye allows him to do precisely that — if he can finally roll a hit for once.
Vahid triggers Seek Insight: 6+1+1 Wisdom = 8, Weak Hit
He gets one question, and he chooses “What do you intend to do?” He learns that they intend to talk until they work themselves up to doing violence — though Vahid perceives that answer entirely through their auras. Back to the fiction:
Vahid studies their auras as they chatter back and forth to one another, and before his mind’s eye, he sees the dark veins of violent intentions burrow closer and closer to the surface, washing away their fear and trepidation.
He feels his heart thudding, and he can perceive waves of panic rolling off himself. The sensation of seeing his own emotions in vivid color renders them strangely distant, and his heart begins to slow as he whispers the command that awakens the spirit bound into his cloak.
No roll is required to awaken and command the spirit — it acts like a follower, just like Ozbeg or Anwen’s hound, Shadow.
The first thing it does is get some distance between the attackers and Vahid, lashing at them with its storm winds. The spirit rolls with a +1 (it has a relevant move — wreak havoc on its surroundings)
Vahid triggers Order Followers: 5+4+1 Quality = 10, Strong Hit.
Vahid finally comes through with the rolls. He doesn’t want to harm these guys — yet. So the spirit pushes them back and puts a bit of a scare into them.
The storm-spirit springs to life, whipping the cloak with a howl of sharp wind that cuts through the calm of the dark morning. Vahid can feel the spirit’s invisible presence behind him, ready to fly, or to rage. Snow and cliffside scree swirl and twist around Vahid, driving his would-be assailants back, and towards the bluff’s edge. There is a crackle and a boom as Vahid summons the Azure Hand to him. Their auras again pale with fear, driving their boldness and violent intentions deep beneath the surface, and Vahid gently reins the storm spirit back with a pull from the staff.
“I have done nothing. Harmed no one. Broken no laws,” Vahid says with finality, his sky-blue eyes now glowing intensely, resonating with the Azure Hand’s presence and the electricity of the storm spirit in the air. “If you wish to challenge my word before the elders, that is your right. If you wish instead to mete out justice yourself…” he pauses, wondering what words his rhetoric tutors would’ve suggested for a moment like this. “Come back with more warriors,”2 he finishes, with a thin smile.
Vahid doesn’t want to fight here, even though his storm spirit could easily annihilate these two toughs. He wants them to run away. He suspects this violence is opportunistic, and Owain is unlikely to allow them to come at him in force, at least while he’s making himself useful to the elders as a scribe and chronicler. They also really don’t have anything specific to accuse him of when it comes to witchcraft (unless some ill fortune befalls Cerys this season, of course!)
So he’s intimidating them to shove off — let’s see how it goes. We’ll say the spirit is aiding him here, since it’s the muscle in this relationship, granting him advantage:
Vahid triggers Persuade: 6+3+2+1 Charisma = 10, Strong Hit
This is very fortunate for Vahid — if he had only gotten a weak hit, he would’ve had to at least partially follow through on the implicit threat of violence, which would’ve changed the dynamic of the broader political situation situation in the village.
Back to the action:
Their auras pale and recede, fading from Vahid’s sight. He focuses on the physical world around him, willing his mundane senses to return to him, and soon color and substance swim back into his vision as thought and mind fade away. He scans his surroundings for his assailants, but they are gone — instead, he sees Anwen, emerging from the healing hut and approaching him at a jog, snow crunching beneath her feet.
Her face lights with hope when their eyes meet, and he returns the look with a regretful shake of his head. “What happened?”
“A few of Owain’s men took issue with my presence here. I was forced to turn my attention to them.”
“Owain’s men? What were their names?” Anwen asks, her voice growing dangerous.
“I do not know. I could see only their thoughts, not their faces. How went your mission to Cerys?”
Anwen sighs. “I don’t know. I persuaded her to speak to her son. But she wants something. From Padrig. Something… big.”
“Let us go speak with the man himself, then.”
Anwen nods, and they walk together towards Padrig and the Companions’ lodgings as the day dawns and the village awakens.
Setting the Scene: Forging a truce, feeding the village, and Padrig’s decision
We’re going to bring all three PCs back together to make some decisions and plan their next move. In addition to dealing with Owain as a threat, the party has another goal to accomplish this session — the village is still short 2 Surplus, and if they don’t get it, people will starve.
Off-camera, Padrig has been working on this problem, and we’ll envision that he’s asked the hunter’s lodge to keep their eyes out for larger game animals that might make a dent in the village’s food deficit.
Recall that in the first part of this episode, Cerys agreed to intercede on the party’s and force Owain to swear a truce with them, on the condition that Padrig swear a sacred oath that he not seek the role of Marshal of Stonetop. Putting on our GM hats, the job this scene is to connect these two threads by putting Owain in charge of a valuable asset in the mission to keep the village fed.
Before we kick off the action, we’ll need an NPC to speak on behalf of the hunter’s lodge. So far, I’ve aluded to them as a vague group of hunters that the Companions have joined to earn their keep within the village, and now it’s time to put a name to at least one of them. We’ll call their leader Hywel, and roll for a descriptor and a goal:
Descriptor: Religious Goal: Advance Status
If he’s religious, and he’s the seniormost hunter, we have to assume he’s a devotee of the Slayer-of-Beasts aspect of the storm god Tor. He respects courage, and regards the hunt as a sacred endevour. Spending a lot of time in the Great Wood has probably also made him a bit odd, as far as the other Stonefolk are concerned. We’ve softly established that Owain and his warriors’ circle don’t have the most respect for the bow as a weapon or hunting as a trade, and we’ll interpret ‘Advance Status” to mean that grates on old Hywel.
We’ll jump back into the action with Hywel and Padrig for a bit before bringing Vahid and Anwen into the scene to share their news:
Scene 4: The Great Wood, not far from the village
The cold, clear morning gives way to louring grey clouds and fitful cascades of snow as the hunting party picks its way through the edges of the Great Wood. Padrig is here with Hywel and a pair of his hunters, Bryn and Iorweth. Merid, the young Hillfolk Companion, has also come, and he hangs by Padrig like a toddler to his mother’s apron strings as he gazes open-mouthed up at the silent, white-crowned giants that surround this clearing.
At the center of the cleaning, Pad and Hywel kneel around an old kill while the others keep watch. It was a deer, one of the red elk that wander the edges of the forest and often find their way into Stonetop stewpots. A crude circle of small, smooth river stones surrounds it.
Pad picks through the bones and old, dried flesh with the tip of an arrow. “Teeth marks on the bones,” he says quietly. “Lots of them. And what of this circle of stones? Did your people do this?”
Hywel shakes his head. “Most of my people do not keep the ways the Forest Folk3 taught us any longer. I do not force them to — a prayer with an empty heart is as good as a curse. No, this was the crinwin.”
“The crinwin?” Padrig’s eyes narrow. “Why?”
Hywel shrugs. “Who can say? All I know is they do not merely mimic our words and our voices. Strange things have I seen in the deep woods — altars of sticks and bone and… other remains. They watch us closely, as they watched the Forest Folk, and they make a mockery of our sacred things.”
“And this is why game has been scarce?”
“I believe so. The crinwin are hungry this winter, just like us. Anything small enough to be felled by a pack of crinwin has moved far north along the ridgeline, or southeast towards the Fen. We snare forest hares and black squirrel, but often the traps are looted before we can return for them.”
Padrig grimaces. “So there’s nothing the lodge can do?”
“Not alone. Come.” Hywel mutters a few words in the tongue of the Forest Folk and rises, gesturing to his hunters. “Bryn, take us to the place you showed me on the Moon’s Day.”
The dark-haired huntress nods warily, and leads them northwest, towards the village bluffs. As they approach the forest’s edge, the trees grow shorter and thinner, and soon the towering, grey-black cliff face can be seen. As they approach, Bryn motions for the company to fall silent, and, muffled by the fresh snowfall, they approach the cliff.
Here, there is a small, rocky incline leading a dozen feet up to a narrow, triangular cavern entrance set into the bluffs. The smaller of the nearby trees are pressed flat or snapped at the trunk, and a tall, spreading sycamore has had its bark deeply scored with claw marks. The highest of the marks is well out of Padrig’s reach.
“A bear?”
Hywel nods. “Aye. And not a little grizzly — a cave bear, near two thousand pounds. Waiting out the winter in there. Bryn found a spoor and a pair of badly mauled crinwin last week, and tracked it here. By now it will have lost much of its autumn fat, but it would still feed many. If it could be taken.”
“How do you take a cave bear?”
“A good bowshot to the flank can cut the heart or the liver, if the Slayer-of-Beasts smiles on you, and leave it bleeding to death. But as it bleeds, it will fight. A bear that knows it’s dying fights like the Thunderhead himself. We’d want a thicket of spears, and folk with stout hearts to hold them.”
Padrig paces the site, examining signs of the beast’s passing, and searching for the right killing ground. “You want the warriors’ circle to help?”4
Hywel draws himself up. “Time was, back in Llewelyn’s day, the warrior’s circle would join us on the hunt once a season, to take big game and to give the Slayer-of-Beasts his due reverence.”
“And now?”
“Owain and his circle still go into the wood to hunt boar, when the mood strikes them. But not with us. He says boar is a warrior’s prey, and we should keep to hare and squirrel.”
Padrig grimaces. “What did he say of this?”
“He declined. He says there will be plenty of food, if we just tighten our belts. And if the lodge pulls its weight,” Hywel says flatly.
“I fear he won’t have much else to say to me,” Padrig replies, sighing deeply. “Might be we have to look elsewhere."
Before Hywel can respond, there is a low whistle from the underbrush. Padrig looks to the source, and sees Merid, gesturing at an approaching party.
Padrig peers through the trees and sees Ozbeg, leading Anwen and Vahid behind him. Pad quirks an eyebrow curiously, and goes to intercept them before they wander too close to the bear’s lair.
They shelter beneath a thick, fallen redwood trunk. They stand apart from Hywel and his hunters, who pass a skin of whiskey and a skin of snowmelt between them and Merid as they wait. Meanwhile, Anwen breathlessly recounts her conversation with Cerys.
To punctuate the final moments of the story, she draws the rune-carved seed from her pouch, and places it in Padrig’s gloved hand. He holds it between his thumb and forefinger up to the light, studying it. “Is there magic here, Vahid?”
Vahid triggers Know Things: 5+4+2 Intelligence = 11
We’ll deliver the answer in-fiction, but this roll would reveal the following card to Vahid’s player:
Source: Jeremy Strandberg // Stonetop
In her wisdom, Cerys has made some modifications to the Truth Seed formula to allow her to bind individuals, but this is the underlying function of the seed — if Padrig breaks the oath, he suffers an extremely painful fate.
Vahid nods. “I consulted the village chronicle before we departed. This is old, family magic. There is a story of Cerys’ great grandmother, who was herself a priestess of Danu, binding Logain, the battle-mad village champion, to a promise that he would never again shed the blood of a fellow Stonefolk.”
“And did he?”
“He did — he was prone to fits of terrible rage, in battle and out. When the curse took hold, he fled the village, howling in pain, and his body was found by the old wall, overgrown by stinging gwir-nettles, ‘as though the seed had been planted in his flesh.’
Padrig turns back to Anwen, placing the seed back in her palm. “So I must swear a truce with Owain, and if I break it, I will die screaming? Anwen, surely you can see how many ways that could go awry.”
Anwen shakes her head. “That’s not what she wants you to swear. She wants you to promise never to take the title of Marshal of Stonetop.”
Ozbeg snorts. “She’s seen where the game is headed, no doubt about that.”
Padrig’s tone is as frosty as the falling snow. “Explain yourself, Oz.”
Ozbeg raises an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you ain’t seen it, Pad. Owain is a stuffed breastplate; a Marshal of the training circle. That’s fine for a backwater like Stonetop, in a season of peace. But with real trouble brewing? And a proper soldier waiting in the wings? It won’t be long before folk start to realize what’s missing, and belike that’ll split the village in two.”
His eyes dart to the hunters, waiting out of earshot, and his voice drops to a whisper. “It’s him or us. Always has been.” The old mountain bandit shrugs apologetically. “I thought you knew.”
Anwen’s jaw drops open. Vahid waits, his blue eyes glowing softly, his face an impassive mask.
“I had hoped things didn’t have to end that way. That if we gave it time, and Owain saw the good we could do, that we could at least live and let live,” Padrig replies. “If you’re right, we can’t be sure it will stay just between him and me — it could be bloody kinstrife. Neighbor against neighbor.” His eyes again fall on the seed, carved with Cerys’ rune.
“What do you make of it, Vahid?” he asks. “You seem always seem… learned in what lies in folks’ hearts.”
Vahid wasn’t able to read Cerys’ thoughts, so he must use his intuition instead. Here, Vahid is using a broader application of the Seek Insight move — the trigger for the move says “When you study a person orsituation,” and so Vahid is considering the broad, political situation of Stonetop. Normally, Padrig might be better suited for this task, with his +2 Wisdom vs. Vahid’s +1. But Vahid has the Let’s Make a Deal move, which allows him to ask the question “What do you really want?” as part of a Seek Insight roll, possibly giving him another chance to learn Cerys’ motivations.
Vahid triggers Seek Insight: 5+4+1 Wisdom = 10, Strong Hit
The Seeker delivers! Here are his three questions, with some brief answers:
What is about to happen here? Vahid is confident that Owain will escalate to violence soon, based on the behavior of his thugs earlier today, and the general trend of his behavior that Vahid has observed over the past few years. It might be possible for Cerys to rein him in, but the Seeker has observed that Owain seems to truly delight in his bullying and domineering ways, so he may not be able to help himself.
What should I be on the lookout for? It occurs to Vahid that Cerys is not totally wrong about the risks of Padrig becoming Marshal — the bosses in Gordin’s Delve and some of the Hillfolk might see their bad blood with Pad as bad blood with Stonetop, if he were to rise to prominence.
What does Cerys really want? Control. Cerys has repeatedly tried to bring Anwen back under her control, and exert influence on the young Would-Be Hero. For the same reason, she mistrusts Padrig — she believes because he abandoned the village once, she cannot trust her hold over him.
Back to the action:
Vahid is still as he considers the question, turning over in his mind what Anwen has said, what he has seen as an outsider watching the village these years, and the tales he has read of Cerys, Owain, and their family in the chronicle. The cold, snow-dusted forest is silent, save for the creaking of Anwen’s leather harness as she shifts anxiously from one foot to the other.
Finally, he breaks his silence. “Without Cerys’ intervention, Owain will strike at one of us soon. Perhaps Cerys can rein him in, but perhaps not. Ozbeg, as insightful as ever, has the right of it: Iron cannot abide being laid against steel,” he nods respectfully to Ozbeg, who returns the gesture with a sardonic salute.
Vahid turn back to Padrig. “I believe agreeing to Cerys’ terms will merely delay our conflict with Owain. Sooner or later, I believe he will feel slighted, and make a move against one of us. But, if you have made this oath to Cerys, and he has likewise made an oath to her, we will be in the right. He will be forsworn before an elder of the village. Tradition would demand she send him into exile. Victory, but without kinstrife.”
Ozbeg grunts. “But then who’ll be Marshal? You, Seeker?”
Vahid looks pointedly at Anwen. Anwen’s eyes grow wide. “Me?!”
“Her?” Ozbeg blurts.
“The Marshal need not be a tactician. They need to inspire the militia, they need to lead courageously in battle. I have already seen warriors follow you, Anwen. You led us to free Padrig.”5 Ozbeg looks down at the snowy ground, abashed as he remembers that night in Marshedge. “And you were the first to the fight with the storm demon, alongside Kirs.”
Anwen looks to Padrig uncertainly and shakes her head. “I don’t know, Pad.”
Vahid smiles sadly. “It is much to ask of one so young. But this is the only path I see through the days ahead that might keep the village strong and undivided. And I must regretfully say, it protects the village from some of the bad blood you have left in your wake, Padrig. There, Cerys is not mistaken.” Pad looks away, while Anwen’s gaze grows a bit more determined.
“In the end, it comes down to what we know of elder Cerys. She is Owain’s mother, but as the priestess of Danu, she must look after the whole village, not just her own family. Can we trust her to cleave to the traditions of Stonetop, truly and justly? Or will she rule on her son’s behalf?”
We’ll break here, and leave the decision with you! This is the decision the party has to make, and here are the two paths I see them considering:
Put their trust in Cerys. Padrig agrees to take the oath, and Cerys likewise extracts a promise from Owain. We make nice with Owain, persuade him to work with us to bring down the bear and feed the village, and watch and wait for his next move as best we can. But if Cerys can’t be trusted, this could very easily take a turn for the worst, and she will have her magical hooks in Padrig.
Don’t trust Cerys. Refuse to make the deal, and await and plan against Owain’s inevitable countermove. When he strikes, strike back as hard and as decisively as possible, forcing Cerys into exile or otherwise containing her influence. Once Owain’s dealt with, either Anwen or Padrig makes a bid to assume the position of Marshal. Once that’s done, we’ll have the spears to take the cave bears and feed the village. But if Cerys can be trusted, likely some of the village will take her side, no matter how cleanly we’ve dealt with Owain.
To try to stay true to our titular maxim of ‘Play to Find Out,’ I put the question “Can Cerys be trusted?” to the Ironsworn Yes/No oracle6. I've recorded the answer in my notes, and will be sticking by it, even if things get a bit ugly for the party. Of course, Vahid can try to guess at the answer using his third eye at a later opportunity, but at the gaming table, it would be incumbent on the GM to give answers vague enough to give the players some fits.
A few ways this could end in tragedy (For example: We strike first, but find out that Cerys could’ve been trusted, and now we’ve divided the village and made an enemy for life), and a few ways they could end well. Choose wisely, readers. And let me know your reasons in the comments!
This is ‘stranger' in Welsh, which is the language Stonetongue is based on. Thanks to Welsh’s shared linguistic heritage with Breton (the language Steptongue is based on), it has a similar sound to “stren,” the Hillfolk word for ‘stranger,’ since both Breton and Welsh have some Celtic roots. It also makes sense in-universe because the Hillfolk and the Stonefolk have a common linguistic heritage (specifically, the ancient language of the Stone Lords). I think this is implied, but not outright stated, in Stonetop’s worldbuilding materials, but for our campaign, it seems well-established based on the ruins beneath Stonetop.
A worldbuilding detail we’ve dealt with only lightly — The Forest Folk inhabited the Great Wood, built settlements there, traded with the Stonefolk, and kept the crinwin in check. A generation ago they began to vanish — Padrig probably has some memories of them from when he was very young, but they haven’t been seen in years.
Padrig is using Read the Land here, searching for the ideal ground to take the bear, but we’re not going to go into the details, since the battle won’t be happening now.
That's quite the choice. Being British and suffering from some of the worst political infighting for a generation part of me if loath to risk strife in the village.
But Owain is a crinwin's arse! Plus, voluntarily swallowing that magic seed, no matter if Padrig honestly intended to keep his vow, is madness when dealing with Cerys and Owain.
That's quite the choice. Being British and suffering from some of the worst political infighting for a generation part of me if loath to risk strife in the village.
But Owain is a crinwin's arse! Plus, voluntarily swallowing that magic seed, no matter if Padrig honestly intended to keep his vow, is madness when dealing with Cerys and Owain.
Reluctantly, I vote no to the seed.
"Iron cannot abide being laid against steel"🔥🔥🔥 god dayum