ironsworn – PopCult Reviews

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Starforged: Messiahs Part Four

I had hoped to get this finished in 2024, but it took me a little longer. Hope you enjoy this final, extra long (nearly 7,000 words) final part to Messiahs.

[Begin a Session: Flashback reveals an aspect of another character, place, or faction]

One of the first things Gerard Linnaeus saw that made him want to go running from Dakhnour was watching a soldier from his house beat a frail al-Raml man to death for stealing a bowl of grain meal. The heir to the corporate house of Celadon felt a rage grow in him that had been there since he was a child. Now in his twenties, as he was being prepped to lead the House by his father, Gerard felt even more disgusted getting to see the Enclave treatment of the natives.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Starforged: Messiahs Part Three

Read the previous chapter here

Read the previous part here

[Begin a Session: Seemingly unrelated situations are shown to be connected]

A figure rides a wooly sandfoot across the desert, cresting a ridge. Thousands have been set up around a mountain range at the base. The figure is greeted by one of the al-Raml. The figure removes his straw hat and face covering to reveal a young man. This is Gerard Linnaeus, the heir to a House of the same surname. The attendant is Ghazi, Gerard’s greatest acolyte among the al Raml. He brings Gerard into the encampment to a more lavish tent than the others. Here, Gerard cleans himself with the special powder used by the al Raml. He prepares himself and rests.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Starforged: Messiahs Part Two

Read Part One here

[Begin a Session: Important character is put in danger or suffers a misadventure]

Dreng Wraithus wakes with a gasp for air. He is lying on a cold metallic floor. A hand reaches down and lifts him up by the scruff of the collar of his black robe. Wraithus’s legs still flop about like cold noodles as he’s drug through the halls of this strangely humid vessel.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Starforged: Messiahs Part One

The Starforged story being told here is the culmination of over a year of playing in my little homemade science fiction toy box. Listed below are the various interconnected chapters where you’ll see several characters mentioned here. I can’t guarantee it’s good writing, but it exists.
Starforged | Starforged: Nexus of Destiny | Starforged: Abyss of Shadows | Starforged: Wrath of the Vok | Sundered Isles

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Eight

Read the previous chapter here

Plot Thread: Time Cops on Patrol
[Begin a Session: External factors create new danger, urgency, or importance for a quest]Oracle: Capture Greed

Tempus Wright got a ping on his wristband. He had returned from a meeting with the police commissioner and Aiden Bell a couple hours earlier. Posing as Thomas Wright, a former CIA operative, he’d convinced them to give him access to the Victory Academy and its files. All that mattered was finding exactly where Jude Olmeda/Kismet altered the timeline to become Epoch in the future. This ping seemed problematic, though.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Seven

Read the previous chapter here

[Begin a Session: Flashback reveals an aspect of another character, place, or faction]
Plot Thread: Coup at the Academy
Oracle: Evade Superstition

One year ago.

Aiden Bell enjoys the quiet of the Academy around midnight. The new students are settled in at the dorms. Days earlier, they had attended a speech from one of the Victory Vanguard founders, Master Destiny. Bell had chatted briefly with the seemingly immortal man, elderly during World War II and looking unchanged in 2024. Master Destiny mentioned how the Book of Destiny became lost inside the Academy during The Whisper’s siege of the grounds in the late 1970s. Master D had also mentioned rumors of a secret arcane library that had grown organically but is said to only be visible to those it wishes to find it.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Six

I chose to do something a little strange with this one. I wrote up two d6 lists of memories for Jude and Cortex, then scrambled those memories up. In this chapter we’ll float with Jude’s consciousness as it is pinballed through time and see how his power is unraveling reality.

Read the previous chapter here

Kismet – Jude Olmeda – knows he has a body that exists on the physical plane. Right now, all that exists is the endless void. He has no form but feels psychic extensions of his arms, legs, head, eyes, and mouth. There is something else here with him. It is metallic and cold. It pierces through his chest, tendrils linking up with a nervous system that floats aimlessly in the darkness of total oblivion. He has to reconnect with himself – his body to his mind before this alien thing replaces one or both.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Five

Read the previous chapter here

[Begin a Session: External factors create new danger, urgency, or importance for a quest]
Thread: Alien Tech Aftermath
Oracle: Find Target

Everything fell apart for Ryker Vane the day the Space Agents filled the sky above his home world, Essifum. Vane’s tribe consisted of pacifist farmers. It was the Space Agents’ war against Bale and his Deathvoid Inquisitors that ended this idyll. Crops were burnt and houses razed as both cosmic forces battled, taking little heed of the innocents caught in the middle. Ryker would learn that to many, the Space Agents were considered heroes. He found the truth to be far different.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Two

Read our previous chapter here.

[Begin a Session: External factors create new danger, urgency, or importance for a quest]

Thread: Time Cop on Patrol
Oracle: Strengthen Alliance

Tempus Wright is hurtling through the time stream and picks up an anomaly from the year 2080. He reroutes his journey to 2024 to make this stop further into the future. When he emerges, Forge City is in ruins, and strange cybernetic spires rise above a black cloud-choked sky.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Sundered Isles Part Four

You can purchase Sundered Isles here.
You can purchase Starforged here.
You can purchase Sea of Sands here.

Read the previous chapter in Jadyn Farani’s journey here.

Oracle: Share Tool

Jadyn is roughly chucked into the torchlit basement cell by two of General Selima’s soldiers. The bar slams shut with a clink behind her. Standing up, dusting herself off, she notices a figure curled up in the corner – Qasim. The rest of the crew of The Erasmus has been split up into different parts of the dungeon. Jadyn rushes over to check on Qasim. He’s conscious but in poor health, his body continuing its transformation due to ingesting muqadas Essence over a year ago. Jadyn can tell he is not doing well and attempts to stabilize him.