So after some deliberation, I finally settled on an Iron Vow for Althus.
On arriving in Wyvern’s Rest, Althus finds a peaceful town and spends an evening at the Broken Bottle, hearing a wonderful tale from the drunk vagrant Vigo! The next morning, he is awakened by members of the Baron’s bannersworn attempting to press-gang him into service. They also try to take his mammoth as a warbeast.
After some action, he finds out that a warband of Bannersworn of the Baron Servan, leader of the city of Dragonshadow, are on their way to siege the town. Apparently the Baron’s daughter Sarria has gone missing and she blames Quinn, the Baron of Wyvern’s Rest. Supposedly Sarria was quite taken with Lestara, Quinn’s daughter. Quinn claims his daughter has also disappeared, but Servan will not accept that answer and will tear Wyvern’s Rest apart until she finds Sarria.
Rather than get pressed into service fighting a senseless battle, Althus instead offers to find Sarria (and Lestara most likely) and return them home.
So we’ve got an Iron Vow to Swear. We make the move (Swear an Iron Vow, pg. 98) rolling +heart and we get a miss. Looking at the result, we see we face a significant obstacle before we can start our quest. With the given fiction, I think the Baron doesn’t believe that Althus’ intentions are genuine and that’s just trying to cut and run before Servan’s forces arrive. Seems Althus was a bit premature in swearing that vow. As such, we suffer -2 Momentum (as the alternative if forsaking our vow) putting us at 0 Momentum.
Uncertain of how difficult to make this challenge, I turn to the Challenge Rank Oracle and see that it is going to be Dangerous. I feel the most obvious challenge is for Althus to challenge one of the Baron’s men to a duel to show his intentions through force of arms. And there’s a move for that: Draw the Circle (pg. 73).
We get a strong hit and an opportunity (the two challenge dice are the same number), which I thinks means that if Althus wins, he can attempt to Forge a Bond with the Baron. We get +1 momentum and can get additional momentum if we make some boasts. I think we’re going to take both that we can to get up to +3 momentum total and select “Grant first strike” and “Hold no iron”: Althus is going to take on the Baron’s Head Bannersworn and their spear barehanded and even lets them take the first shot. I think this is a good time to zoom in on the fiction. Which I’ll update as soon as I can on my trip.
Next time, Althus fights for the right to save the Baron’s city.