The Weight of Memory
Red Crag - Chapter 1:1 The story of Tamsin Stonebreaker and the village of Red Crag begins
Red Crag is a serialized story that I am creating by playing a solo role-playing game. The main character, Tamsin Stonebreaker, is an iron miner from a small village who is compelled to restore her family’s honor. I have no idea where her story will go. I just create the characters, set the scene, think about what Tamsin will try to do, and roll the dice.
The Weight of Memory
“Wait, I’m not ready.” Kneeling in the mud, Becca Stonebreaker moved her small hands lower down the long iron chisel trying to hold the bevel steady against the rock while keeping the shank upright.
“Ready?” Looking down at her, Becca’s older sister, Tamsin, raised the iron sledgehammer.
“Yes?”
“You don’t sound sure. Are you sure?” Tamsin asked, suppressing a smirk.
Small for eleven years, the long chisel wobbled in Becca’s hands. “I’m sure.” Becca scowled at it willing it to cooperate.
Single-handed, Tamsin swung the hammer down.
“No!” Letting go, Becca pulled away and tumbled backward.
Clang! With her free hand, Tamsin caught the chisel and held it steady as the hammer head came down. Chips flew from the face of the boulder. Resting the tools against the rock, Tamsin squatted next to Becca and held out her hand.
“Bec, you can’t let go.”
Becca put her hand into Tamsin’s much larger, rougher hand.
“I was afraid you’d smash my brains.”
Tamsin laughed as she pulled her sister to her feet.
“I’ve been doing this for a dozen years. Have you ever heard of me - or anyone in Red Crag - braining someone holding the chisel?”
“No, but, like Denric says, there’s always a first time.” It was Becca’s turn to smirk.
Tamsin ruffled Becca’s strawberry curls noting, not for the first time, how different they were. Tamsin’s dark hair, dark eyes, and tan skin contrasted sharply with her little sister’s fair skin, freckles, and light blue eyes. So like their mother. They both had Gwynne’s high cheekbones and stubborn chin, but only Becca had her shine.
Mud sucked at their boots as Tamsin and Becca made their way back to the village circle. The Barrier Mountains far to the north were still white, but most of the snow had melted here in the foothill village of Red Crag. The incessant banging and clanging of the smiths pounding out the Winter’s Work at the forges had given way to chirping birds and children splashing through puddles. The day was fine enough that the villagers propped open the doors and windows of their small, domed stone houses. Freshly washed bed clothes, rugs, and blankets flapped as the breeze carried away the sooty smell of winter.
Spring was Tamsin’s favorite time of the year. She enjoyed the time outside with the fresh, cool air and new light. The time to stretch and re-strengthen her body before the hard work of mining, smelting and hammering iron resumed. She even enjoyed early Spring’s Work like repairing the furnaces, cutting peat, and foraging for fiddleheads, ramps, nettle, and morels.
Tamsin looked toward the woods and whistled two short, loud notes. Jack, a black mutt with a white muzzle and chest bounded out from the bushes and raced toward them. Tamsin picked up a stick and threw it for him.
“Want to head up to Flat Rock today after breakfast?” Tamsin asked Becca. “We can check the bog on the way.”
“Maybe,” Becca considered her options, “it depends on if they come back today. Coryn said he’d bring me sweets.”
Tamsin frowned. Their older brother, Coryn, was a village sentinel. He had traveled with the village Voice, Fair Nan, and several others down river to Green Meadow to trade the products of Red Crag’s Winter’s Work for coin, grain, and other supplies. The group left over two weeks ago and their return was a few days over due.
“Coryn says a lot of things,” Tamsin grumbled.
Tamsin’s mood shifted as they approached the village circle. The massive whitethorn tree in the center was showing its new green leaves. Neighbors nodded hello as they all walked toward the circle fire to share the morning meal. The scent of savory onion, barley, and boar sausage drifted to them and Tamsin broke into a smile. Sausage soup!
“Yes!” Becca thrust her hands joyfully in the air as she broke into a run, “Denric’s cooking!”
Tamsin watched as her little sister raced over and wrapped her arms around their foster-father, Denric Rockfoot. Denric, Red Crag’s mine master, was an excellent cook, particularly gifted at making something out of the dwindling end-of-winter food stores.
Tamsin joined the other sixty or so hungry villagers gathered around the circle fire. Denric, with his thinning black hair and graying stubble, took a sip from the ladle and smiled. “Ready!”
A cheerful mood passed through the circle as villagers reached out to one another placing their hands on each other’s shoulders. Denric helped his wife, Moll Stillhand, step up onto the Speaker’s Stump.
“All right then,” she started, “I suppose we should thank Dennie for the soup. And, of course, we thank Mandy for safekeeping the stores and getting us into Spring.” Several villagers murmured their agreement. Moll continued, “We thank Fair Nan and the rest for making the journey to Green Meadows. I’d soon like to thank them for returning, though. Erm… oh, yes, I’d also like to thank everyone who helped pull Tucker out of the mud last night.”
“I was hopin’ he’d be in the pot this mornin’!” Someone shouted.
“Ha! He’s an old ox, but he’s our old ox,” Denric responded.
“Enough of that,” Moll cut them off quickly. “For today’s Work, I suppose most folks will continue with their gardens. Lodgers, we’ll expect to see each of you lending a hand. Can a couple of you help Alyce today? She’s putting in a new bed.”
“Ya, ya” said several of the younger adults as they looked fondly toward old Alyce Lichenfinder, the brightly clothed village healer.
“Good,” Moll nodded approvingly. Her gaze turned toward Tamsin as she continued, “And, I’ll need help with the furnaces.”
Tamsin met her foster-mother’s gaze, “Ya, I’ll help you. Assuming you ever let us eat.”
Moll scowled slightly, “Fine then, will you keep the Peace and the Faith of Red Crag?”
In unison, “Ya!” Then the community gathered their bowls and lined up to eat.
Tamsin stretched her back and sighed as Moll explained, again, her plans to reorganize the layout of the bloomery furnaces for this year’s smelting. All morning, Tamsin had been knocking down the furnace shafts that Moll deemed too broken to mend and hauling chunks of clay to the heap behind the charcoal shed. Moll had spent her time pacing out distances on the hard-packed surface of the furnace field and marking locations for new slag pits adjacent to the old ones.
“There’s got to be a better way to set the bellows.” Moll scratched her head then pulled her woolen cap back over her thick, unruly red hair. “There’s got to be a away to blow two stacks at once.”
“Moll,” Tamsin shook her head, “it’s the way it’s always been done. Don’t you think that if there was a better way, somebody would’ve figured it out by now?”
“And, why shouldn’t I be that somebody?” Moll shot back.
Tamsin rolled her eyes.
“You’re a Stonebreaker, Tam. You’ve got to always be thinking about how we do things. How we can do things better. Like your gram did. Like your great-gram did.”
“Like my mother did?” Tam asked, sarcastically.
Moll turned and looked up at Tam. A deep scowl divided her iron gray eyes as she drew a slow breath and then let it go. Moll took a half a step closer. Though she was a head shorter than Tamsin and considerably stouter, Moll could always make her feel small. She waited until Tamsin looked down. When she finally spoke, her voice was low and clear.
“Others in Red Crag may take that tone about Gwynne. Let them. But, I’ll not hear it from you. Your mother wasn’t afraid of change. Yes, she took risks, but she was smart about them. I’ll never be convinced that what happened was her fault.”
Tamsin met Moll’s gaze. “I was there.”
Moll shook her head. “You were twelve. And, you were scared. You don’t know what you saw.”
“It’s what everyone said happened. It’s what Fair Nan said happened.”
“Nan wasn’t there.”
“Neither were you.”
Moll and Denric had been Gwynne’s closest friends when a cave collapse killed her and five others. Tamsin had been there that day in Meadowsweet Cavern. She and the other scrapers were chipping silver near the mouth of the cave under the watchful gaze of Karin Flatknock. Gywnne Stonebreaker, the Voice of Red Crag, was convinced that there was a vein of red iron deeper in, so she led a team of miners down into the tunnels to find it.
Bored from chipping, Tamsin and her best friend, Gilli, sneaked away to explore a nearby cavern. They had been playing among the stumpy stalagmites when they first heard shouts echoing from the tunnels. The shouts became screams. Then there was silence. Moments passed. Tamsin heard the grinding of stone shifting against stone. And then, she felt more than heard the thunder of rocks falling. The ground under her feet moved and she fell backward. Gilli pulled her back to her feet and they ran. When they reached the mouth of the cave they helped Karin get the other youngsters to safety. When the rumbling stopped, Tamsin looked back as clouds of dust billowed out of the cave’s opening.
The consensus in the village had been that Gwynne must have been trying to tap into a vein in an unstable part of the cave. That view was supported by Karin’s report of hearing the familiar clang of hammers striking chisels. That view was also supported by the apparently common belief that Gwynne Stonebreaker was reckless when it came to finding the rare and precious red iron even when there was plenty of rich black iron that could be more easily mined.
Tamsin didn’t remember the sounds of hammer and chisel. But, then she and Gilli had been absorbed in their games. Maybe she just didn’t hear it. Maybe she just didn’t remember it. Didn’t mean it didn’t happen. Memory plays tricks, doesn’t it?
Tamsin shook her doubts from her mind as she had a hundred times.
“How do I keep Faith with the village if I deny what they say happened?” Tamsin asked. As she had since that day, Tamsin searched Moll’s face for the answer.
Moll gently gripped the front of Tamsin’s heavy tunic with both of her hands and gave her a shake. “Faith starts with family, Tam. Break faith with them and--”
Her words broke off with the sound of Jack’s barking and Becca’s voice, sharp and panicked. “Moll! Tam! Come quick.”
The two women turned toward the path to the village. Becca Stonebreaker rushed toward them with Jack at her heels.
“They’re back. The caravan’s back,” she gasped. She looked up at Tam, serious as winter. “It’s not good.”
The Game Behind the Story #1
[For those of you who are interested, keep reading for a peek into how I play the game and then turn it into the fiction you are reading. Each episode, I will try to highlight a particular mechanic or important moment in the game.]
Like most tabletop roleplaying games, Ironsworn begins with character creation and world building. I’ve written prior posts explaining how I created Tamsin and the basics of Storm’s End, the world and time in which she lives.
This scene reflects an aspect of the game called bonds. Bonds are basically important relationships that the main character develops with other characters and communities in the story. As play progresses, I will make moves called Forge a Bond and Test a Bond to mark the beginning and deepening of the main character’s relationship with another character or community. My successes (and failures) on those moves are recorded using a progress track.
Mechanically, having a bond with another character or community can provide bonuses to actions the main character takes while acting with that other character or within that community.
Narratively, the bonds mechanic emphasizes the importance in Ironsworn of developing a rich world full of interesting people and places. It pushes the player to focus on roleplay and fleshing out interpersonal scenes, downtime, and interactions with different communities rather than just going from action to action. Ironsworn is an RPG that values the fictional narrative just as much as it does battles with monsters or adventurous derring-do. Failures on the bond moves are just as important as successes. Interestingly, when the main character’s story finally ends, the epilogue is determined by her bond progress tracks. (But, we have a long way to go before Tamsin reaches the end of her story.)
At the character creation stage of this game, I got to pick up to three people or communities with whom Tamsin has already forged a bond. (Of course, that doesn’t mean she won’t have other relationships, it just means that these bonds will be a focus of gameplay and will have mechanical significance.)
From the start, I knew that Tamsin would have a bond with her mentor and foster-father, Denric Rockfoot, and with her home village, Red Crag. I wasn’t sure about the third bond, so I deferred that choice until I actually got started playing.
The story drew me in. I was especially intrigued by the bonds that Tamsin has with other characters and her village, and her internal struggle to reconcile her instincts with her loyalty to her clan. I am looking forward to reading more!