Winter 1/Turn 1
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
- Pronouns
- He/They
[x] Plan: Axeing Questions
-[X] (Seasonal) Top off the firewood supply.
-[X] (Steinarr's Teaching) Its time, you feel, that you had a weapon in hand. What weapon do you want to ask for?
--[X] An axe!
-[X] (Training) Hamr (4 successes to rank up)
--[X] (Optional) Train a hamr skill
---[X] 3d6 axe
--[X] (Steinarr's Training) (Optional) Ask Steinarr to teach you a trick (Write in the skill you want to try for a trick with)
---[X] 4d6 Axe - Shield-Breaking Trick
-[X] (Orthstirr Usage)
--[X] 2 into Hamr
--[X] 2 left free for combat tricks
-[X] (Seasonal) Top off the firewood supply.
-[X] (Steinarr's Teaching) Its time, you feel, that you had a weapon in hand. What weapon do you want to ask for?
--[X] An axe!
-[X] (Training) Hamr (4 successes to rank up)
--[X] (Optional) Train a hamr skill
---[X] 3d6 axe
--[X] (Steinarr's Training) (Optional) Ask Steinarr to teach you a trick (Write in the skill you want to try for a trick with)
---[X] 4d6 Axe - Shield-Breaking Trick
-[X] (Orthstirr Usage)
--[X] 2 into Hamr
--[X] 2 left free for combat tricks
"Dad told me to bring it, so I am." You smile big and wide, like you know something she doesn't — because you do! Asva glares and leans out the door.
"Dad!" She calls, getting a muffled 'yeah?' back from the woodshed. "Did you ask Halla to bring the wood axe?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Never mind!" She calls back to Steinarr, who, presumably, shrugs and continues on as normal. Asva glances back at you with suspicion in her eyes, but steps out of your way.
You stick your tongue out at her as you pass through, which she ignores, and giggle as Flekkr gives her a big old doggy kiss as he follows you, which causes Asva to shriek at the slobber on her clothes.
You give the dog a pat and he gives you a doggy smile in return, his tail wagging so hard that you almost worry it might fly right off.
With that out of the way, you take the axe over to where Steinarr's piling together a small stack of shields. His eyes light up as he sees you, they get even brighter when he lays eyes on the dog trailing behind. "Hello Halla! And hello, Flekkr!"
You exchange greetings, Flekkr giving a bark of his own.
Steinarr looks over your shoulder, searching for any onlookers. "Alright," he says, not seeing any in the distance. He grabs a nearby cloth sack and hands it to you, "take this, fill it with shields, and then follow me."
You nod, doing just that as he hefts another bag over his shoulder. This one, though, is full.
"What's in the bag?" You ask as you work.
"Training weapons. Wood ones, before you get too excited." Steinarr knows you too well.
And speaking of weapons... "So, I'm gonna be training, right?"
"Yeah..." Steinarr narrows his eyes, but gestures for you to go on.
"And using weapons."
"Get to the point."
"Well, I was wondering," you throw the now-filled sack over a shoulder, its weight not as bad as you thought, "since I'm going to be training with weapons, shouldn't I get a weapon of my own?"
He looks to the ceiling of the woodshed — more a cover than anything like an actual building — and sighs. "What were you thinking of? You can't have a sword."
"I was thinking more like an axe, perhaps a sax."
"Oh, sorry, I thought you'd want a sword, like Crowfeeder here." He taps the ever-present sword on his hip. "Should have known my little warrior would be more reasonable than that!"
There's a smile that springs to your face whenever he calls you 'his little warrior'. You're not entirely sure that you could stop it, not that you even want to!
"Well, if an axe is what you want, there's two, well, three I guess, ways of going about it." He holds up a finger, its siblings joining it one-by-one as he runs through your options. "The first is by buying one from the smiths at Asvir." Which you've never been to. "And the second option is to use the outlaw's axe, remember the one you killed?"
You blink, long and slowly. "I remember."
"Good that you remember, sometimes people try and forget memories like that, which I've always felt is cowardly." He nods, happy with your answer. "Anyways, I'm pretty sure that he stole it from someone, it had a bit of silver on the haft and he didn't look like someone who had the silver to spare on something like that. So you can either use it as is and hope that it doesn't consider you as another thief and betray you at the worst time, like it did for the outlaw."
"It betrayed him?" You quirk your head, confusion written on your face.
"He was good enough to put me on the back foot." He mutters something about being 'out of practice'. "Even as wounded as he was, he should've been able to block a strike from you. But he didn't."
"But he didn't." You repeat to yourself, remembering how the axe had failed to stop you. Now that you think about it, it almost looked like it was loose in his hand.
"I don't want that to happen to you, so!" He claps his hands, bringing your attention back to the present. "So I'm thinking we smelt it down, which gets rid of all lingering hamingja, and then make a new axe for you. I can even show you how to do it!"
"But," he shrugs in a particularly stiff way, like he's forcing himself to do something, "it's up to you."
[ ] Buy one from Asvir (-1.5 Silver)
[ ] Use the Outlaw's
-[ ] (Optional) But smelt it down first and make a new axe.
0~0~0
The flimsy shield wiggles and wobbles as you hold it, a frown on your face. Steinarr must have seen the question in your eyes as he handed the shield over, as he quickly has an answer.
"Many men train with their fighting shields, those men are fools." A scoff rolls off his tongue like a stone from a sling. "Most shields won't last more than, oh, three or four hits. Less if you hold it wrong or they get a good, solid blow in. Furthermore," he holds up a blunt axe, "these won't hit like if they were sharp, meaning that most unbloodied men have an inflated idea of how many strikes a shield can take."
"And so you've built these shields weaker, to compensate?" You guess as you put two-and-two together.
Steinarr nods, a smile on his red-bearded face as he pats the stack of shields. "Correct, though, after all of these break, you'll be making your own in the future."
"I will?"
He nods again. "I'll show you the ropes, but a warrior must know how to mend his own arms and armor."
Well, you've never exactly been very eager to practice crafts, at least the crafts available to you as a woman, but making a shield? That sounds right up your valley!
0~0~0
(Axe Training: 1, 1, 5. Neutral outcome, counts as 1 Success) (Trick Training: 2, 3, 4, 4: 2 Successes)
"Let your instincts move your feet and guide the axe," Steinarr explains as you pant heavily, hands on knees and sweat on brow. "But temper it with your hugr."
You nod, swallowing a mouthful from your waterskin before standing up straight. Training axe and flimsy shield back in hand, you leap into action.
And then find yourself sitting on the ground, after a swift exchange of axe against shield and a response of sword to stomach.
"Alright," Steinarr holds out a hand and hauls you to your feet, "what went wrong?"
Your lips quirk downwards as you think. At some point, though you hardly notice, you start stroking your jaw with a finger and the underside of your chin with your thumb, much like Steinarr when he focuses.
"You're too quick." You eventually declare, though that's not everything there is to it.
"Eh," Steinarr wiggles his hand and shrugs, "while that is true, that's not the major problem I'm seeing. Try thinking less on me and more on what you're doing."
"Trying to hit you?"
"Trying to hit my shield."
You blink and frown, not really seeing the problem. "How am I supposed to hit you if there's a shield in the way? Wouldn't trying to get rid of it be a good idea?"
"My shield is in the way, yes, but how many blows would it take to break it?"
"Three or four, that's what you said."
"And how many strikes should it take to end a fight?"
"...as... few as possible?" You try, not super sure where he's go- oh... Oh that's what he means! "You're saying that by trying to destroy the shield, I'm wasting attacks that could be made towards ending the fight, right?"
The pride in his eyes sends your spirits soaring sky high. "That's my little warrior, always using her incredible mind." He ruffles your hair and you smile before he continues. "Any move that doesn't bring the end closer is a useless and often deadly mistake."
"So, how do I get around a shield, then? Is there a trick or something that destroys shields?"
"A trick that destroys shields..." Steinarr frowns as he strokes his bearded chin. "I'm not sure why anyone would want to have something that specifically destroys shields. Any trick that isn't either dodged or countered by another trick will have to be stopped by sacrificing a shield. And if they don't," he shrugs, "then they're probably dead, so it doesn't matter anymore."
"Now," he continues, a thought coming to mind, "there's something called Shatter-Wrist, which is a trick aimed at the shield that damages the hand holding it. Of course, it also does destroy the shield."
"There's also the Shieldlock-Hand-Swipe Trick, but," he frowns and taps Crowfeeder, "it wouldn't be very easy to do with an axe, though, so I wouldn't recommend you learning it just yet. Use it with a sax or a sword as a longer edge makes blind cutting easier."
Shatter-Wrist sounds pretty good to you, but you might as well find out what Shieldlock-Hand-Swipe is. "Well, what is it?"
"It's a trick used after you've forced someone to use both hands to reinforce the shield." He draws Crowfeeder and begins pantomiming out grabbing onto a shield and sending Crowfeeder down behind it. "Not the smartest of moves, as if you've got them like that, you could just stab them or something, but if you're not looking to kill but still want to take them out of the fight, then removing their hands will do the trick. You can put a hand back on, but you can't put a life back in a body, at least not a living one."
"Ah, okay. Can you show me how Shatter-Wrist works, then?"
A raven caws and flutters off as Steinarr begins showing you. You pay it no heed, though Flekkr clearly does. He growls, hackles raised, as it circles high in the sky.
(+1 to Axe ranking up. 1 Success remaining)
(+2 to learning Shatter-Wrist Trick. 7 Successes remaining (2/9))
0~0~0
Seasonal:
[ ] (Seasonal) Help prepare the yearly offering to the gods.
[ ] (Seasonal) Begin marking out the next year's plot of farm land.
[ ] (Seasonal) Help fill the wagon with the yearly tax.
[ ] (Seasonal) The animals need to be moved inside, for the snowfall that's surely coming.
0~0~0
Personal:
[ ] (Personal) You've heard about the nearby village of Asvir for many years now, but have never been. Lets see if you can't wring a promise out of your father to take you some time.
[ ] (Personal) Ask Randi to tell you some stories
-[ ] (Optional) Write in
[ ] (Violent) Pick a fight or spar with...
-[ ] Eric, your older brother, for fun
-[ ] Steinarr, as part of your training
-[ ] One of the local boys, for violence! (Optional Write In)
-[ ] Asva (You doubt she'd be willing to fight you, but maybe you can needle her enough?)
[ ] (Personal) Spend time with... (Write in)
[ ] (Exploration) Go on a walk through...
-[ ] The fields!
-[ ] The woods!
-[ ] The hills!
-[ ] One of the neighboring farms! You think that there's seven of them that you haven't yet discovered.
0~0~0
Training: You have 7d6 training dice to spend as you see fit.
[ ] (Training) Hamr (3 successes to rank up)
-[ ] (Optional) Train a hamr skill (Write in)
-[ ] (Steinarr's Training) (Optional) Ask Steinarr to teach you a trick (Write in)
[ ] (Training) Hugr (4 successes to rank up)
-[ ] (Optional) Train a hugr skill (Write in)
[ ] (Training) What in the heck is a 'fylgja'?
0~0~0
Orthstirr Available: 4
How do you want to use your orthstirr?
[ ] (Orthstirr Usage) (Write in)
0~0~0
A blonde and handsome young man sits in a tent surrounded by trees made of ice. He sips from a steaming mug of some kind of deep brown, bitter liquid before setting it down on the table. It refills the moment he lets go, as it always does, as it always will. He knew not what the liquid was, only that it filled him with an energy unlike anything he'd experienced before.
Naturally, he'd killed the merchant selling it, alongside any potential onlookers, before taking the stock for himself. Only he could be allowed to have this wonder.
"What does he see in you that I can't?" The young man asks his fylgja as it shows him all it had witnessed. He strokes his short beard, a finger on his jaw and a thumb on his chin. "What do you have that I don't?"
One day, he would escape from this prison.
One day, he would have his revenge.
0~0~0
AN: And so, a distant threat is revealed. Will it stay so distant in the future?
Of course not.
Every time the seasons change, instead of a random event, I'll give you a POV of something else in the world.
25-minute moratorium.
Last edited:
Will fix.
