Oathsworn

How Oathsworn actually works

The line is the opposite kind of enemy from Ashore's raiders: it does not hunt you, and it does not retreat. Every warrior on it holds one exact spot for the whole stand, which means the fight is never about your reflexes — it is entirely about where you choose to stand. Walk into the middle of the line and you put two men's reach on you for most of the fight. Walk the flank — clear the nearest end first, then the next one in — and only one man can ever touch you at a time. The verbs are the same ones Ashore already taught you: strike, raise a shield, roll clear. What differs is the shape of the ground you use them on.

Three stands, and a war table between each

Clear a line and you do not walk straight into the next one — you stand at Alfred's table first, with supplies and renown to spend and four choices in front of you. Fortify softens every hit the next line lands on you. Scout thins the next line by a man and pays you renown for the risk. Muster closes your wounds and refills your strength before you need it again. Raid costs nothing to attempt and nothing is guaranteed — supplies and renown if it goes well, a real wound if it doesn't. You start with enough supplies for two of the three priced choices, never all three, so every visit to the table is a real trade against the fight still ahead of you.

The burh, and the men holding the gate to it

Uhtred is the same rigged, animated fighter Ashore already plays him as — one Uhtred across both real-time games, not two different men wearing his name. The Danish line reuses the only other combat-animated fighter this pack ships, re-dressed colder and carrying a shield of its own, standing in front of a burh built from the same vendored building and prop set the main game's keep view already uses. Nothing in this page was fetched at runtime to build it — see the credits below.

The same fight for everybody who takes it on

Nothing inside a stand is left to chance — the only roll in the whole campaign is the raid's coin flip at the war table, and that is seeded on your campaign and the stand you took it after, so replaying the exact same choice always lands the exact same way. Everything else is a straight fight between your hands and the line in front of you.

It runs in your browser and stays there

No account, no sign-in, and the game itself makes no network call. Your campaign is a short code you can share; the link opens on what you did. There is no code in the game that could send anything anywhere — the tools in this corner are forbidden to make requests at all, and a test enforces that rather than anybody remembering. The one thing on this page that does talk to our server is the comment box at the foot, and only when you post in it.

The burh, the line and the fighters are drawn with a 3D engine built for this corner, and it does not touch a network to do it: every model is a file already vendored into this build, licensed CC0 and credited with thanks on the game's own in-game Credits screen.

Argue about it in the forum

The board's forum has a room for this. Post the stand that broke you and be told, at length, exactly which flank you should have taken instead.

This is fan-made, and unofficial

This is an unofficial fan game inspired by The Last Kingdom — the television series and the novels of Bernard Cornwell it is based on — naming the work, its setting and its premise under nominative fair use. It is a free, unofficial fan tribute, made for fun. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Carnival Film & Television, Netflix, or Bernard Cornwell and his publishers.

Every line of text in this game was written fresh for it. No dialogue, novel text, script text, scene, still, logo or artwork from any television series or book is reproduced anywhere in it. Iron Realms — the strategy game the rest of this site is about — is an original fantasy world with its own map, its own houses and its own art, and has no connection to the world of The Last Kingdom. This corner is kept separate on purpose, and nothing in it should be read as suggesting otherwise.

The rest of the corner

The other real-time game puts you on a beach against raiders who come to you one at a time, which is the opposite tactical problem from a line that never moves at all. The Last Kingdom wing has the reign game, the trivia rounds and the character pages besides. The fan tributes hub has the Westeros, Supernatural, King of the Hill and Fringe wings alongside this one, and the free tools that are not about anybody's fiction. If you would rather play something with a map in it, Iron Realms is free and runs in a browser tab.