Eldersworn
Written and Designed by Wasteland Sniper
You can access this game through the Ironsworn Discord server.
Read Part One here.
I had yet to mention this in my first part, but Eldersworn has adapted the dungeon design mechanics from Ironsworn: Delve to build mysteries. Mysteries operate with the same progress tracks that everything else in the Ironsworn family does, but developed with help from Crime and Narrative cards. Like the Theme and Domain cards in Delve, these provide two Oracles to work with. They contain Plot Features and Threats/Dangers.
Some of the investigative moves trigger rolls on these lists, but I like to use them when I feel as if I’m not sure what should happen next, and like a good horror story, I want a sudden twist to catch my investigator’s eyes. For this story, I chose the Crime of Smuggling or Trafficking, and for the Narrative, my pick was Foreign Espionage. The story I ended up with didn’t match these, though they worked well. I might read over the cards more closely on my next time with Eldersworn and find something with elements that play into my idea a little better.
Gordon Puckett followed Oliver’s car out of Gainesville and to the neighborhood of Duckpond. To the detective, it seemed like something out of a 1950s movie. This wasn’t Gordon’s first time tailing a suspect; he knew how to keep the proper distance and not lose track of his target. They went past large old houses likely built in the early/mid-20th century, and eventually, Oliver’s sedan pulled into the driveway of one of them.
A campaign sign for Governor Patrick Boone was on display in the yard. Gordon didn’t know much about the guy other than he was looking for a chance to get his name & face plastered all over the national news. The grease of Gordon’s late-night dinner seeped through the brown paper bag that sat on the floorboard of the passenger side. He opened it, pulled out one of three cheeseburgers, settled in to watch the sunrise in a couple hours, and waited for Oliver to leave for work.
The crunch of a garbage thrush devouring its fresh meal brought Gordon back to the land of the living. A couple houses down from where he was parked, the metal arms brought in another can and emptied its contents. A quick glance across the street, Gordon could see the house was likely unoccupied; the car was missing from the driveway. Exiting his vehicle, the detective went to the front yard and glanced around before moving to the back of the house. A security fence posed a temporary problem. Gordon hadn’t been made to scale a wall since boot camp over thirty years ago. He was out of practice but eventually pulled himself over.
On the other side was an ordinary enough backyard, a tool shed in the far eastern corner, and a charcoal grill sat on a cement patio. Gordon made quick work of a window, jimmying it open and climbing through. He found this particular room, and each subsequent one he walked through was surprisingly sparse. Most rooms were only occupied by moving boxes. It looked like Oliver was moving in, and Gordon scanned for any markings on a box that might indicate something important was inside.
In one box, he discovers some photos. Gordon thumbs through one stack. Nothing. Tossed to the side. Another handful. Just regular boring holidays and special events. Then he finds it. A photo that stops him. The smiling face of Kristi Briggs is what does it. He estimates she was 15 or 16 here. She’s standing a few meters in front of a palm tree. A sizeable mid-century house off to the left. Her parents are standing on either side of Kristi. Gordon flipped the photo over and saw scrawled in pen on the back: “Soltan Isle, 2018.” The exact location as the Congregation of Hope.
The room felt like it was spinning. Pieces of a puzzle were laid out on a table in Gordon’s mind, yet he couldn’t determine how they fit together or how any of it made sense. Why wouldn’t Kristi’s parents have mentioned this place? They told him about the Congregation and how she met van der Zwan at a campus meeting. The floorboards upstairs creak so slightly that the detective’s blood runs cold. He moved without thought, following his path back to the house, scrambling out the window.
He must not have noticed it before, but his hand scraped something. A sting throbbed across his palm. Embedded in the windowsill was a gnarled piece of metal, like the barb on a barbed wire fence. It had dug deep, and blood was dripping down his palm, his arm. Once Gordon was in the car, he tried to staunch the bleeding with napkins from the Beachside Burger bag. Every instinct told him to get out of there and drive without stopping back to the motel in Gainesville. He only ventured out once the rest of the day, walking to a CVS across the street to grab alcohol, gauze, and other first aid basics. This wasn’t his expertise, but Gordon felt he patched himself up as best he could. The brochure for the Congregation’s headquarters on Soltan Isle seemed to glow in the darkness of the motel room. He had to get there.
He’s hungry. Gordon watched through a gap between the blinds for the better part of an hour before slipping outside to get more food. His right hand still throbbed a little, the body flooding the wound with blood, trying to scab it over to avoid infection. As he slid the key into the driver’s side door lock, darkness enveloped his head, and his arms were pulled back, restrained. Pushed, almost lifted, he was thrown into a vehicle, and it started moving. Hushed voices whisper indecipherable words. The cold pinch of a needle slid into Gordon’s right shoulder. His blood turned to ice, and the world shrunk away into nothing.
Gordon woke up to the sound of sloshing water, not waves. He struggled against his bonds; they appeared to have been cut so that he could get free. Pulls the bag off his head. He was on a boat in the middle of a lake. An oar was lying on the boat floor, and Gordon paddled slowly back to the shore. After wandering through the woods for hours, he found a road and began the long walk. He eventually comes across Kate’s Fish Camp, a camping ground in the park. After a quick phone call, a taxi arrived to take him back to his motel; the driver was happy to collect the inflated fare.
Gordon’s room has been trashed. He finds his gun hidden in the bathroom where he’d stashed it with the photo of Kristi. He needed to get to Soltan Isle and learn what was happening. Plates are stolen from another car in the parking lot, and he keeps going west through the day and into the night until he arrives at the bridge leading to Soltan Isle. There’s a small town on the coastal side of the bridge, Roseview, where Gordon finds a quaint B&B to rest at for the evening. He was running on adrenaline, unable to stop glancing over his shoulder every few minutes. It was hard to recall a time when he’d felt such constant terror.
The bed & breakfast was run by a retired couple, The Bleekers – Raymond & Vera. Gordon was able to slow his pulse in the car and make himself look somewhat presentable before entering the inn and finding that this was the off-season, so they certainly had a room available. One of the nicest, overlooking the bridge to Soltan, is a beautiful ocean view. As the sunset on the western horizon, Gordon stared out at the lights that came on across the water on that strange island. From a distance, things were bustling. A Ferris wheel lit up with rainbow colors as the perfect accent.
Downstairs, Gordon struck up a conversation with the Bleekers. They are odd and eccentric, but that’s to be expected. He didn’t get the sense that many guests frequent Roseview, so they were delighted to give him a grand seat at the table. It was the first home-cooked meal Gordon could remember having in years, probably since his family was killed in that accident. There hadn’t been much reason to be at home after that. It was easier grabbing something that came off a factory line through a drive-thru window, eating in his car, staring out the windshield at the blasted concrete nothingness of the world.
The Bleekers’ home was a different story altogether. Warm, inviting. Songs from decades ago floated from Raymond’s vintage record player and filled the house. Vera covered the table with so many steaming dishes and plates. Gordon felt the pain in his hand fade away and started chatting them up about Roseview and Soltan. He learned the Bleekers had moved here in the 1970s. They share unimportant bits & pieces about the town, but Gordon perks up when they talk about the strange lights and sounds that come from Soltan on occasion. The detective kept pushing in that direction and asked about the Congregation of Hope.
The table grew quiet. Then Vera started telling a story about the Congregation’s old church on the mainland. It was abandoned once the island was purchased, but a cemetery was left behind. About twenty years ago, Vera was driving back through the night after visiting her sister in Pensacola. She passed the cemetery on her drive through town and remembers seeing half a dozen hooded figures digging away by lantern light, unearthing those graves. The next day, news spread through town about the grave robberies, but no one ever learned who had done it or why. The people on Soltan keep to themselves, Raymond chimed in.
The following day, Gordon went to look at the cemetery for himself to see if anything could help his case. Another person stood by one of the filled-in, unmarked graves. Gordon strategically circled the area using trees for cover. It was Walter van der Zwan. Gordon confronted the man, demanding to know where Kristi was. Walter burst into panic and tears. Gordon got the kid to calm down, and Walter explained through sniffles & sobs that Kristi wasn’t allowed to leave the island; he wanted to bring her back with him, but they wouldn’t let him. Who? The Congregation. Gordon took Walter’s wallet, telling him to stick around town.
At the Bleeker’s for lunch, Gordon started talking about his plans to drive into Soltan the next day. The Bleekers were extremely cagey, talking in circles. Gordon felt woozy. Vera was smiling so strangely at him. Raymond told him to eat and drink. Gordon tried to get up from the table, but he stumbled and fell over, unconscious. The Bleekers removed a body bag from the hall closet and pulled Gordon into it.
He was in a trunk. He was moving. Pulling himself out of the body bag, Gordon felt around for the emergency release latch. There it was. He popped it but held onto the lid, lifting it just enough to peek out. He was crossing a bridge, the ocean stretched out into a seeming infinity on either side of the railing. A quick tuck and roll. Gordon stayed on the ground until the Bleekers’ car became a speck. He didn’t want to chance one of them glancing in a mirror and seeing him standing there. He walked by moonlight back to Roseview, where his car waited for him. Grabbing the gun he’d hidden in the trunk, Gordon started the engine and returned to the bridge, ready to find out what happened to Kristi Briggs.
He didn’t see the spike strip laid out across the bridge’s width. It took all Gordon’s strength to keep the car from going over the railing, holding the wheel, and guiding the vehicle to a stop. He’d slammed his knee in the process, reawakening an old college injury. The Bleekers must have found he’d escaped and laid out the spike strip in anticipation of him coming back in his own vehicle. It hurt like hell, but the detective limped his way into Soltan Isle, gun strapped under his shoulder.
Gordon hobbled into town and was met with something strange. Soltan Isle was lit up, but there was not a single person in a shop or out on the street. No signs of life beyond the trappings of civilization. It was like a fake city in the middle of a theme park. Gordon decided to see if he could find the spot where the photo of Kristi and her family was taken.
Gordon cut through an alley, trying to stay out of view of any shop or home windows. He came to a square and saw a large palm tree standing there, which appeared in the photo’s background. It was part of the front yard of a massive house. The sign on the gate read “Cygne.” Gordon watched the lit-up windows of the house closely, letting time flow by him, scanning for signs of life.
Gordon saw a figure moving on the ground floor. The figure wore a black dress and a veil. They walked through a series of rooms and stopped in a front room where Gordon could see part of a painting on an easel. He could only make out the bottom half, a nude woman standing on a beach. The figure looks at the painting for a couple minutes and then retreats deeper into the house.
As Gordon crosses the street, he hears things moving in the shadows of the town, things glimpsed in the corners of his eyes. He tells himself not to focus on them, to keep moving forward. He reaches the house’s front yard, finding the gate unlocked; he positions himself by the palm tree, looking for a clear way into the house.
Gordon noticed a side door to the right as he followed the wrap-around porch. A servant’s entrance to the kitchen. He watched for a beat. No one seemed to be in the kitchen, so he slipped inside. Gordon went into the kitchen and found it clear. Though there are pots and pans on the stovetop. Someone’s cooking a meal. Gordon stepped further into the house, looking for anything related to the Congregation of Hope that would connect them with this. A copy of the previous day’s The Gainesville Sun sits folded on the kitchen table. Gordon’s eye was immediately drawn to a bloody fingerprint on the paper. Is there a story in this paper that can illuminate the role of the Congregation in all this?
Gordon opened the paper and scanned the pages, eventually coming across an article announcing “Heir to Cygne Fortune Still Missing.” It explains that elderly Angelique Cygne had been at a party, a fundraiser for Governor Boone in Miami when she disappeared from a balcony she was last seen standing on with a drink. Several white feathers were found on the balcony, so it was suspected that she became spooked by a bird and toppled over the railing. No body has been found or signs of such a fall at the venue, and authorities have expanded the search.
He felt like a better look at the painting he glimpsed in the front room was in order. Gordon didn’t bump into the mysterious figure he saw in this house and was able to get to the front room with the painting. The human elements of the figure ended at the waist. From there up to the head was a profoundly unsettling mass of muscle, nerves, and sinew. A figure whose skin has been stripped off. It resembled something human, but not entirely so. The neck was slightly elongated, but only if you examined it closely. The arms were extended out, and the face pointed heavenward. The face seemed to stretch at the nose and mouth. The eyes glanced at something out of frame with a look that made Gordon think of the word “reverent.” He found himself shaking in fear, unable to understand why. The urgent sense of flight lit up his brain.
He panicked, rushing for the front door, his mind locked on that bridge and hoping he could make it across before he was found. Gordon heard noises and kept from opening the door all the way, slowly closing it. He found a hall closet and slipped into it as the voices came closer, descending from the stairs. It sounded like Raymond Bleeker and someone with a garbled, damaged voice. They mentioned something about “the pit” and “feeding” and needing to “finish things with that detective.” Gordon had to get out of there and waited for the voices to fade before peeking out. He resumed his attempt to flee Soltan Island, looking for the Bleekers’ car.
Gordon slipped out of the house and started scouring the block for that car. He found it, or it found him. Vera Bleeker was behind the wheel and gunned for the detective. The doors to the other houses and shops were locked tight. He couldn’t find a way to escape those headlights. The car connected with his body. He tumbled over the hood, feeling the windshield crack under his weight, falling off to the side, feeling bones crunch.
The feel of dragging, his body being moved across different surfaces: asphalt, cobblestone, wood floor, then cold concrete. Eye flickering, opening to not much else but continued darkness. Sound of movement, fluttering. Gordon raises his head. The aches echo through his skull, and he feels his stomach turn. He wretches; the sound seems to cause the fluttering to stop. Focus comes slowly.
There is a shape, a person hunched over, sitting in the only slim sliver of light that appears to sneak into this damp cavern-like space through a small window. The rising sun is just coming over the horizon, allowing Gordon to see better than he would have a few hours ago. The figure shifts and rises.
White feathers with some black. They covered the figure’s upper torso in sparse patches, growing on top of glossy, wet meat and exposed muscle where skin was cut away. A stretched face with thin, wispy strands of clumped blonde hair hanging from a scalped head. Gordon can now see what this is. A human bird. It stands on wobbly legs and steps closer to Gordon. He instinctively recoils, using his hands to push himself away, forgetting his broken limbs and freezing as the pain sears through his body. The bird person stands over him. He looks into its bright hazel eyes. Gordon weeps. His body is torn apart in the feeding.
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