Starforged: Solo Campaign I

This is a detailed log of my current Ironsworn Starforged solo campaign. Here, I outline the general truths and details about my campaign world and describe my character.

Campaign Truths

These truths are selected from the source book. I’ve added a couple of tweaks for my campaign.

• Cataclysm: Interdimensional entities invaded our reality. Without warning, these implacable and enigmatic beings ravaged our homeworlds. We could not stand against them. With the last of our defenses destroyed, our hope gone, we cast our fate to the Forge. Here, we can hide. Survive.
  • The beings took the ‘form’ of incomprehensible chaos energy.
• Exodus: When the Exodus fleet set off on a ponderous journey to a new home outside our galaxy, they marked the Forge as their destination. Countless generations lived out their lives aboard those titanic ships during the millennia-long passage.
  • An intricate family legacy was preserved and maintained on long voyage between galaxies.
  • The Ironhomes – the original ships – still explore the Forge, mostly cut off from the powerful influence of the Covenant.
• Communities: We have made our mark in this galaxy, but the energy storms we call balefires threaten to undo that progress, leaving our communities isolated and vulnerable. Starships navigate along bustling trade routes between settlements. We’ve built burgeoning outposts on the fringes of known sectors, and bold spacers chart new paths into unexplored domains. But this hard-earned success is threatened by the chaotic balefires, intense energy anomalies that cut off trade routes and threaten entire planets.
  • There are some who suspect that the balefires have a connection to the chaotic beings that drove us from our original galaxy, and that the Covenant might be trying to stifle any information about the spread of the Balefire.
• Iron: Iron vows are sworn upon the remnants of ships that carried our people to the Forge. Many of our outposts were built from the iron bones of the Exodus ships. Fragments of the ships were also given to survivors as a remembrance, and passed from one generation to the next.
  • The remnants of these ships carry the lost essence of the former galaxy.
  • Many of the fragments circulate between enthusiasts in the forge like antique pieces of scrimshaw that were once part of the ancient fishing boats long ago.
• Laws: Our communities are bound under the terms of the Covenant, a charter established after the Exodus. The organization called the Keepers is sworn to uphold those laws. Most settlements are still governed under the Covenant and yield to the authority of the Keepers. But a few view the Covenant as a dogmatic, impractical, and unjust relic of our past; in those places, the Keepers find no welcome.
  • For those who do not fully embrace the rule of the Covenant, it has become a prime example of the blind assumption of historical superiority, a ‘golden age’ mentality that serves no future or idea of progress beyond itself, preaching the idea that its ruling body evolved out of the chaos that it fled long ago. This narrative sets the Covenant as the pinnacle of this historical progress.
  • The Keepers have become increasingly militaristic and the cult of personality within the government is on the rise.
• Religion: Our gods failed us. We left them behind. The Exodus was a tipping point. The gods offered no help to the billions who died in the cataclysm.
  • We abandoned our former gods in the chaos we fled. They could not explain it for us. There is a new religion on the rise, one attuned to political power, technology and the galactic economy. But there is also another, stirring in the older parts of our minds, in the chaos that we brought with us from our former home.
• Magic: Supernatural powers are wielded by those rare people we call paragons. While not magic in the truest sense, the abilities of the paragons are as close to magic as we can conjure. These powers are born of: genetic engineering and Magitech augmentations.
  • The Keepers have harnessed the power of the paragons in order to maintain their dominant rule in the Forge. The paragons swear an oath to annihilate every last trace of chaos in the galaxy. They believe they are the supreme products of the universe.
  • Some paragons have evolved in secret so as not to alert the Keepers or the Covenant.
• Communication and Data: Information is life. We rely on spaceborne couriers to transport messages and data across the vast distances between settlements. Direct communication and transmissions beyond the near-space of a ship or outpost are impossible. Digital archives are available at larger outposts, but the information is not always up-to-date or reliable. Therefore, the most important communications and discoveries are carried by couriers who swear vows to see that data safely to its destination.
  • Some communication and data-sharing between worlds is better than others. The Covenant prioritizes some networks over other. Only a few stretch the full distance between planets.
• Medicine: To help offset a scarcity of medical supplies and knowledge, the resourceful technicians we call riggers create basic organ and limb replacements. Much was lost in the Exodus, and what remains of our medical technologies and expertise is co-opted by the privileged and powerful. For most, advanced medical care is out of reach. When someone suffers a grievous injury, they’ll often turn to a rigger for a makeshift mechanical solution.
• Artificial Intelligence: The vestiges of advanced machine intelligence are coveted and wielded by those in power. Much of our AI technology was lost in the Exodus. What remains is under the control of powerful organizations and people, and is often wielded as a weapon or deterrent. The rest of us must make do with primitive systems.
  • Much of the AI tech has been deemed illegal beyond the scope of Covenant use. There are many who are savvy enough to develop or repair their own constructs outside of this jurisdiction. It’s a given fact of life that contraband AI tech has flooded the galactic market.
• Wars: Professional soldiers defend or expand the holdings of those who are able to pay. The rest of us are on our own. Mercenary guilds wield power in the Forge. Some are scrappy outfits of no more than a dozen soldiers. Others are sector-spanning enterprises deploying legions of skilled fighting forces and fleets of powerful starships. Most hold no loyalty except to the highest bidder.
  • The Covenant holds the largest number of troops and armed forces. The Keepers, at heart, are a rampant mercenary guild answering to the people who claim to be in charge.
  • There are many ongoing conflicts on the outer worlds of the Forge, those distant from the Covenant’s hub of influence. Although many Keepers have been dispatched to these regions in order to stretch the influence of the Covenant’s rule.
• Lifeforms: This is a perilous and often inhospitable galaxy, but life finds a way. Life in the Forge is diverse. Planets are often home to a vast array of creatures, and our starships cruise with spaceborne lifeforms riding their wake. Even animals from our homeworld—carried aboard the Exodus ships—have adapted to live with us in the Forge.
  • The exacting documentation on worlds has become an obsession in the Covenant. Nobody outside of the government knows why, or fully understands this endeavor, or the true purpose that is undoubtedly lurking beneath.
• Precursors: The Ascendancy, an advanced spacefaring empire, once ruled the entirety of the Forge. Vaults of inscrutable purpose are all that remain to mark the Ascendancy’s legacy, but those places are untethered from our own reality. Ascendancy vaults can appear spontaneously, washed up like flotsam in the tides of time. Their gravity and atmospheres pay no heed to natural laws. Some are corrupted and ruined. Others are unmarred and intact. Some are both at once. They are chaos.
  • These vaults of the Ascendancy are deemed the chaos pits of the Forge. They represent a true idealogical threat to the Covenant’s imposed dominion.
• Horrors: Most insist that horrors aren’t real. Spacers know the truth. When you travel the depths of the Forge, be wary. Some say we are cursed by those who did not survive the cataclysm, and the veil between life and death is forever weakened. Supernatural occurrences and entities are especially common near a white dwarf star. These stellar objects, which spacers call ghost lights, are the decaying remnants of a dead star.

My character

Name: Zaramirra Wolfe (goes by Zara, or simply Z) (she/her)

Occupation: Exobiologist

Appearance: Zaramirra Wolfe is a striking figure that stands at an imposing six feet two inches tall. Her presence is undeniable, her demeanor a seamless blend of confidence and curiosity. Raven-black hair cascades down her back, often tied into a loose braid to keep it out of her way as she delves into her scientific pursuits. Zaramirra’s piercing eyes are like windows into her analytical mind, always observing, always assessing, though strangely they seem to shift in color depending on her moods or her location. She prefers that other people don’t comment on this particular aspect.

Her features hold an air of mystery, accentuated by a few faint, enigmatic scars on her cheeks—a reminder of the trials and challenges she’s faced in her quest to understand the universe’s secrets. She also has a curious symbol tattooed on the top of her left bicep. 

She is often accompanied by her seasoned survey bot, Ria.

Attire: Zaramirra’s attire is a fusion of practicality and style. She favors form-fitting jumpsuits in shades of deep indigo and cosmic blue, adorned with subtle patterns resembling constellations or other interstellar phenomena. Pockets and compartments are strategically placed to hold her various scientific tools, data devices, and specimen containers. Over her jumpsuit, she often wears a hooded cloak made from an otherworldly fabric that seems to shimmer with ethereal hues when caught in the light. 

A pendant around her neck holds a multifaceted gemstone fashioned into a jagged star — a family heirloom that she feels personally tied to because of her ancestors, though she questions the object’s origins.

Zaramirra’s Secrets:

• The mysterious pendant I carry is similar to the Ironhome ship fragments, and could easily pass as duplicate. I know deep down that it is of another kind entirely. It’s a mystery I hold close, but I can’t help feel the burden of it. I know that it extends further back into my history than I would like to imagine or admit, a place I have always kept a reasonable, cautious distance.
• The artifact I carry holds the key to something important. There is some bio-chemical compound it contains that goes beyond my understanding.
• I spent several years working as a basic machine intelligence tech, making money repairing outlawed robotic devices.
• I have been involved in several armed conflicts, mainly as a field scout.
• The Covenant pays people like me well to collect data on faraway worlds. This is primarily what I do for work, freelancing as an exobiologist. I can’t help the feeling of guilt, knowing my work only accelerates or aids the Covenant’s nebulous plan to document the Forge. I have my own reasons to keep exploring. Their money keeps me afloat for now.
• Working as a freelance exobiologist, I send data files of collected samples and other discoveries through the network. But I sometimes trade these discoveries for more valuable or rare information in the outer survey areas.
• Sometimes I fear that I was born in one of the chaos pits of the Ascendancy.
• The ghosts of our past have more than a few ways of showing their faces to us in the Forge.
• I have always questioned the dual reality living in my brain, ancestor thoughts and visions that seemingly have no place in the Forge.

In the next article, Session Zero, I will provide a little backstory about Zaramirra and describe the starting sector and inciting incident that launches the campaign.

Campaign Sessions: