Mythic Bastionland solo play featuring Breanne the Brave. Narrative elements are generated using the core roll tables, with prompts presented in bold.
Introduction
It was a collision of two things: finishing A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and finally getting my hands on the copy of Mythic Bastionland. Regarded as one of the best and most anticipated TTRPGs of 2025, Mythic Bastionland quickly proved to meet the high expectations: easy, narrative-focused rules for a tale of knighthood, where you explore the realm and seek its myths. Duels and jousting, masquerade schemes and forgotten legends, tournaments, cults, curses, dragons, bastions, and realm building—this game has it all.
Rules are concise and sharp like the tip of a lance and fit on 21 pages. The rest are roll tables and a plethora of knight characters, each rich in flavor, each different thematically and mechanically, so no two are the same.
Breanne the Brave
In wood, hide, or iron, as armor meek or grand
No greater shield for the weak than the oath-sworn knight’s own hand.
Breanne the Brave is a dame who reaches for a song and charm more than her weapons. With a big heart, keen mind, and average physique, she steals hearts as much as her red hair steals attention. After only an 8 for Vigor, I was worried she wouldn’t perform well on the battlefield. However, when a maximum of 6 smiled on me for the Guard attribute, Breanne was born: a Shield Knight with an oversized shield who fears no enemy.
Hailing from Haskia, a land of frozen, dank glades where tribes worship the moonlight goddess, she brought only her equipment and a mysterious object—a scaled daisy. And with stars above and yet untested mount beneath, the tale of this hedge knight began like they always do: chasing glory, epicness, and difficult answers.
I generated a hex-grid map, rolled the dice, and found myself in a realm I had only heard of in stories, near a settlement called Bogwallow.
Depressed and Diseased
“Bogwallow was true to its name at least—three dozen tattered houses huddled around a well, inside a wall that kept the swamp at bay. A disappointment from start to finish, surpassed only by the villagers’ rude stares. I reckon it’s been a few years since they last saw a knight, and they were just as disappointed by what the world finally offered.
The incessant rain hadn’t stopped for days, so I followed the furrows of the road to the only inn within a hundred leagues. Everyone was trying to keep the cold autumn wind out of their bones, one cup of hot wine at a time, so I entered and pushed my way to the bar. It was evening, and I should’ve been grateful for the warmth and the low buzz of the voices, but I was just…deflated. I imagined my entrance into the Realm as something grand—foretold by the wyverns and mythic omens. I would ride into the Capital, ready to take on the City Quest.
Reality, however, was quicker to strike.
Morose faces greeted me as I took a tankard of ale. With a few coppers I had left, I bought a round for those at the bar. One drink turned into three until only lint remained in my pockets, but I needed the ale to grease their tongues. The villagers of Bogwallow drank like mules long denied a trough and spoke grimly, with an air of finality.
“We just wait for the bog to swallow us, miss—that’s all. No point in trying to be grand or anythin’.”
“I once served a knight like you, miss. Finest days of my life. That’s until—”
“Nah, me family’s done for. Lost our cattle in the plague, now we live off mushrooms. Thought the Seer would help us, but—”
The Seer—whom they called the Worst Seer—settled a short walk away in the bog and had done little to help. Occasionally, he offered a remedy he’d brewed, but never enough to change their fate. Worse still, since his arrival, the villagers claimed the violence had grown more common, as if he saw the worst in people and drew it to the surface. I nodded and offered what comfort I could, waiting for a chance to ask for more details.
In the Realm, Seers guide Knights to Myths—ancient tales that might yet become true. Knights chase them, hoping to help the Realm along the way. At least that’s how it’s meant to be. My own Seer warned me that not all knights are chivalrous, and not all Seers well-intentioned. Still we needed these strange humans, for they knew the shadow and the light; they knew things of old and where sleeping dragons lie.
“Well, I can’t help much,” I told the man, offering a handkerchief, “but when I go to meet him tomorrow, I will ask for the remedy he owes you. I promise…”
“That’s all we need, miss. That’s all we need,” he said. “Otherwise, it will swallow us, it will. This place. This life. We need a knight to be a knight.””
The Many-Eyed Meeting
The next morning, I had Breanne survey the bog and rolled a 2 on Luck—this endeavor would prove far more difficult than I’d expected. The Seer’s Sanctum lay within an abandoned tree trunk, deep in the swamp, guarded by monsters and treacherous terrain. Lurking bog folk and awakened trees forced me to play into Breanne’s strengths. I turned back and asked villagers for anything they could spare: information, aid, supplies, or a secret way to the Sanctum—but a failed Spirit roll told me they were still afraid.
So I spoke to the head of the village, doubled my promise that I would bring back the remedy no matter the cost, and finally slogged once more into the knee-deep water. Of course, there was a safe path locals used. I only had to commit to being the knight they needed.
“The inside of the Sanctum brimmed with herbs and ingredients—vials of moss and animal parts, and jars of fireflies hanging from the roots above. The Seer sat at a tree stump that was a dining table as much as an alchemical workbench. Layers of skin dropped and drooped from his frame as if melting from the bone, and three dozen eyes stared at me from across his body: elbows, shoulders, forearms, palms, stomach, calves, and head. Lidless, wet, and shiny—enough eyes for every house in Bogwallow. Perhaps exactly that many.
For a moment, I toyed with the idea of throwing my shield at his abominable face.
“Don’t lose a life for wrong beliefs, knight,” he rasped. “Tell me what you need, and I will name my price.”
I clenched my teeth, knowing well I have no luxury to deny.
“I need information about the Myth of the Mountain.”
A sly grin crept across his face, barely visible beneath the loose skin of his mouth.”
“Ah,” he said softly, “so you want to know of Windalar. Oh, that will cost you…yes. Very much.””
The Seer told me of the fallen House of Bray, the Sky Lords of Windalar. Ruling from their castle atop the Mountain of Winds, the Brays were a proud house with an impeccable military tradition. Their footmen and cavalry were formidable, only crowned by their most famous and feared unit—hawk riders. No army could withstand a charge from a beast-hawk kettle, ridden by the finest spearmen in the Realm.
The Brays used their advantage to amass power and influence, quickly becoming one of the most dominant houses in the Realm. Yet their strength masked a rot within. Castellans and jealous nobles plotted in shadows, and the house eventually collapsed from internal treachery. After their fall, the southern Realm descended into brutal war as rival knights and houses scrambled to fill the void they left behind. For decades after, the name Bray survived only in glorious stories—or as a punchline, hurled at passing knights who claimed to wear their colors. Sometimes, it was spoken in hushed voices, carrying rumors picked up along the road: of something dark and ominous stirring in Windalar and within its Mountain of Winds.
But what is it to Breanne?
Beyond glory and curiosity, beyond the coin and honor promised by solving the Myth, there had to be something more to explain her resolve. I rolled on the Relationship table and got secret allies. The truth became clear as day—the Brays had aided her family decades ago, during their skirmishes in the frozen wilderness. Old debts, long remembered.
Bray Outpost
The ruined outpost lay deep within the bog, a forgotten relic of an older age. Once a formidable tower, it was now little more than a shell of its former self. Yet beneath its crumbling stones stretched a sprawling network of catacombs and chambers, still heavy with secrets.
The approach was treacherous. This time, Breanne was completely alone.
Roots and vines rose from the muck like loyal guardians, pinning her the moment Bogwallow vanished behind the fog. She recoiled and fought, fumbling for her dulled sword. With a successful Vigor check, she hacked the growths apart. Progress was slow—each step chipping away at her armor and draining her stamina—but at last, the Bray outpost pierced the gloom.
Wet, cold, and slick with slime, the catacombs offered little light. Breanne moved cautiously, navigating the hallways with the careful step of a cat—or at least tried to, when her shield didn’t scrape against the walls.
A successful Clarity check let her avoid traps and pitfalls: magical runes, half-buried mechanisms, and creatures that claimed the outpost as their lair. In one chamber, a roll from the Monument table revealed a wall carved with names. She traced the etchings with her fingers, wondering whether they marked fallen Bray soldiers or their enemies.
Behind a false wall, a hidden chamber opened. Small and square, it had an altar with a leafed sword embedded within the stone. Fearing a trap, I switched to a gamer approach, thinking to use the rope and yank it free. Clearly, this was the ward Seer had warned her about, the one that blocked his powers and had to be broken. This was his price.
And yet, there was no glory in tying a magical blade to a rope and beating the obstacle with no story to be told. King Arthur would’ve been ashamed. Breanne took a deep breath, tightened her boots and belt, and with all her might pulled at the sword.
It came loose.
The stone lurched as searing steam burst forth. A damage die showed a 5, reduced by her Armor and Guard, as both her gear and her training spared her from the brunt of it. She emerged unscathed—and ran.
Jets of steam and boiling, filthy bog water flooded the catacombs, slowing her escape. Worse still, a Luck roll came up to 2 out of possible 6—the second worst result. The scene shifted violently as a ceiling collapsed just ahead of her, nearly burying her beneath it. The corridor beyond was blocked, the water already rising to waist depth.
“Think, Breanne. Think,” she muttered.
Death loomed—bleak and ignoble, she was about to be drowned by the bog like a helpless villager. But bogs created more than mud and rot. They created gas—fire gas, as the folks of the Realm called it.
Without hesitation, Breanne struck her torch and hurled it toward the vent, throwing herself in the opposite direction.
She took 2 damage, out of the 8 Vigor she had left.
Two points for a glorious escape through now exposed vent—followed by a thunderous collapse and an explosion seen and heard all the way to the Bogwallow.
