Solo Test Record!

This playtest is using a version of Awen somewhere in between the second draft of the cards and the third; it may not exactly match what you've got if you download files.  Also, in it, I'm totally messing around with the procedure in some small ways - just as I would expect any other person mucking with it solo to do.

So, here's the start of my setup, with the "claw" map, cards, record sheets, and cards, plus a journal I didn't end up using and a bowl full of houses from Settlers of Catan to use as tokens:

LAYING OUT THE BASICS:

• Climate: I picked the Cold-Temperate card and set it to say "It's cold in the north, temperate in the south."
• Firmament cards: Legacy: This isn't the first iteration of the world; there are precursor ruins and buried, ancient titans.  Patterned: There are arcane rules that can be learned.  Overseen: There are gods that like making demigods!
• Landforms: I shuffled these, dealt them out to the regions in order (1, 2, 3, 4,5, 6), and then swapped a few around (and decided I wanted two shrublands) to get a layout I liked, which was: It's all plains on the left/west (with flooding in some places), mountains in the middle (metals and quarries), then hills (draining into the eastern bay) and highlands (with lively caves) on the eastern points.

• Biomes: The big island (1) is a shrubland, with a hutch animal there; something like a rabbit.  The flooding coastal plains I put on (2) is a marshland, with fruiting shrubs.  The northwestern plain (3) is a grassland - and it's cold, so: A Steppe!  The mountains (4) are a second shrubland, with loads of pitfalls and hidden bits.  The highlands (5) are a barrens, but one visited by migratory birds.  And the east-centre-south peninsular hills (6) are a forest, with ferny vegetation - I'm calling it "The fernwood".

KITHS AND UH, I FORGOT A THING

Most of my playtests so far have gone light on the kiths, so I'm going heavy here:

• Duende (gnome/goblin/knocker) on the island and in the fernwood.  
• Rusalka on the island and... In the highland caves?  Some of those must be flooded.
• Puka (shapechangers) in the marshes and the fernwood.
• Abratu (humans) in the grasslands and marsh.
• Jotunn in both north areas...
• Duergar in highlands and mountains.
• Aaaaaand Fauns in the mountains and fernwood.

And....   I was really trying to get through the early stages fast here, and completely blanked out on answering the kith questions.  So I decided during culture creation to answer them on a culture-by-culture basis, to be like "Oh, the Duende of this region are like this, while the ones over there are like that".

STARTING CULTURES

I decided to put together four cultures, leaving two areas as being disorganized/sparsely populated/unknown to this history in the early days.

• The Kondi: First up, I picked the Longhall culture and the Fuchan language, and cobbled together the Deshu Kondi Vartruvi (white mountain people, who'll mostly just get called "the Kondi" from here on) who live up in the cold northern mountains (4).  That region has Jotunn, Fauns, and Duergar, so that's their makeup.  Their longhall feature:  They raid each other for captives, whom they adopt.  I decide to use white tokens for them.  In term of kith traits, I decide these Fauns are into brewing, these Jotunn feel confined in small spaces (and thus build big), and these Duergar use their vibrationy stuff on structures a lot.  Which gives kind of a "mountain builders" tone to the set, giant stone greathalls up in the mountains.
• The Rezenot: I went for a pastoral (herding) culture, for the fernwood, speaking Kurit.  The area means they're made up of Puka, Fauns, and Duende.  I decide they herd bigass birds (big enough to carry kids and Duende for sure).  Doing Kith features, decide these Fauns have communal singing, these Duende have an ancient feather-textile lore, and these Puka like to peacock wild forms.  Lotsa colour.  I pick green tokens for them, because: Fernwood..
• The Fose: I picked the northern steppe for the third culture,the Urbane (hardass city-states) culture card, and decided to repeat the Fuchan language.  So, the Fosa Fone Vartruvi - people of the long cold, who I'm mostly just going to call the Fosa.  Demographics are Jotunn and Abratu (human), so that's a mix likely to produce a nice continuum of pale blue-ish people in a pretty huge height range. That  Urbane culture - fortified city-states, tyrants and governors, severe outlooks; that's interesting with the cold.  I'm thinking that their fortifications are about heat and food as much as war, and the severity is like dune's fremen: A harsh survival discipline gone critical and all-encompassing.  I decide that these Jotunn find small spaces amusing, and these Abratu have historically been big on gardening (which, sheltered gardens in the cold, not a bad idea).
• The Pozi: Making the obvious choice for the big island, a wavebourne culture, super into boats.  They speak Pristi, and are properly the  Pozmiste Ustu, but "Pozi" is fun.  Demographics are Rusalka and Duende, so natural swimmers and great crafters.  I decide that these Duende have been weaving reeds since forever, which is like the other Duende and their feather-weaving, and I decide these Rusalka like floating homes.  For the culture choice, I like "build and disassemble ships as appropriate".  This gives a neat "expertly made reed-bundle construction, for boats and homes and etc" cultural starter feel.  Reed-woven houseboats that the inhabitants can rebuild on the fly!

Here's my map at the end of this; I've been scribbling kind of crappy little landform and biome symbols on it, as one does, and I put up houses for where the cultures are centred:

HISTORY, IN ERAS?

Just because it seems fun, instead of throwing history around all over, I'm going to do five "eras" where I draw five or six cards, give each culture a history card, and discard what's left over.

THE FIRST ERA

Assigning some cards....

• The Pozi (blue, reedboats) get Expansion; they boat around all the southern shores and set up anchorages to live at.
• The Rezenot (green) get Organized Faith; the faith is supposed to reflect the Firmament, and one of the features there is "demigods", so: In the fernwood, demigods become the spiritual champions of their groups (and likely are encouraged to have loads of kids).
• The Kondi (white) get Raiding; they already do kidnap-and-adopt raids, so more of that!  I add all the surrounding kiths to their list; there's a few of almost everyone there now.  Also they probably get a terrible rep from this, and maybe some fights if they grab a god-blood from the ferns....
• Finally, the Fosa (brown) cold steppe folk get Ascendant Skill.  There's something some of them are *wildly* good at.  I decide...   para-skiing.  Like, giant cloak, snowboard, wind catching travel.

Those feel like pretty solid starter identity bits; I kinda want to build on them for the next round....

THE SECOND ERA

• The Kondi get an Endless Dispute, which, like, that's gotta be an internal fight about all the kidnappings?  Let's say there's now a now-dominant faction that only "steals" away those who *want* to leave wherever they go, and other softenings of the practice, and one that wants to go back to the old ways.
• The Rezenot get Virtuous Structure; moral customs!  I'm going with "Godblooded who behave badly (in the standard asshole demigod ways) get drummed out of their groups", and I mean drummed literally - a Rough Music tradition, with drums; the community marching around their camp banging things to say "get lost, you jackass".
• The icy Fosa get a Mystic Praxis, and I'm gonna have that be arcane wind witches, who ease storms and drive wind sailing.
• I also drew Monstrous Spread, which is for regions, not culture, and Professional Guild.  So I'm putting those together saying that the Pozi woke up monsters - swamp things, with big mouths, sharp teeth, and tentacles -in the southern swamps, and now their actual land-walkers have had some meetings and set up rules and safety demands which they won't go ashore without.

THE THIRD ERA

• Cataclysm in the steppes!  The Fosa get hit with....   even colder weather, over a prolonged period.  A lot of death, and many people flee into the marshier, still-warmer regions of the south - I put down a new wing on the culture to reflect this.  Many likely trade in their snowboards for waveboards, and there's still wind witches so we've got giant blue people whooshing along through the swamps now.  So there's the Old Cold Fosa, and the New Marsh Fosa.
• I also drew Averted Calamity, and I drop that on the Kondi - so the mountains get a lot of cold, too, but overcome it.  I'm saying there's a wave of construction, absorbtion of some Fosa refugees.  The giant stone halls get greenhouse wings, and the culture generally gets it's shit together.
• The Rezenot, in the fernwood, get Firmament Schools, which I'm going to say are former generic mystics that have gone from accompanying herding groups to running herding groups completely chock-full of apprentices.  Magic for all (in the group), not just for the Godbloods!   A sort-of equalizing movement (that's more "alternate hierarchy", but it does mean anyone can learn magic).
• For the reed-boat Pozi, I have Rush Seasons.  That's big stretches of plentiful work; so plentiful, in fact, that they hire from outside the culture.  I'm going to say there are actually a couple of these a year, for different fish hauls, and that they attract a few of everyone to join them, so they're picking up a full demographic set (though the original set is still the most common).

THE FOURTH ERA

• I drew Firmament Breach, which again is regional rather than culture.  So, up in the steppes, the reason for the extreme new cold is the slow awakening of one of the buried titans, a monstrous thing of ice and cold flame, which is now active, and slowly spawning a new generation of ice monsters.  I didn't pull anything that seems like great interaction with it, though, so it's just going to kind of sit there for now?
• The Fosa, both old cold and new marsh, get Refined Methods; they're both (for different reasons) learning a lot more about fortifications and greenhouse building, likely with a bit of imitation of the Kondi greathalls.
• The Rezenot, in the fernwood, are meanwhile undergoing a Cultural Split.  I'm going to say that the arcane herd-groups and the godblood herd-groups are actively getting into little brushfire wars; they're functionally two separate cultures at this point.   And since they are separating, I'm also going to say that the arcane side is getting much more settled in place, while the godblood types are getting more nomadic.  I'm also going to say that the arcane types are the bigger group already; the godbloods are the 'wing', while the arcanists are the main cultural body.
• The Kondi in the mountains get a Golden Age.  The efforts of the last generations to build and secure themselves for all time have paid off; there's abundance for everyone, under relatively trusted leaders.  I'm also going to say this is in reality an era of significant power consolidations; kings of kings and such.
• And the Pozi get Trade Routes.  This is a pretty obvious one; they're the sailors, and all - they trade with everyone, running metals from the mountains, marsh crops, bird from the fernwood, and more, all over the map.

THE FIFTH ERA

• Another regional card: Resource Rush, which I put on the barren eastern highlands - massive reserves of coal, bitumen, and other easily-mined resources, which attract opportunists from most/all of the cultures, building temporary settlements, aaaaand....
• I also drew Polity Conquest, and that goes directly onto the Kondi.  They come out of their golden age of abundance with a big appetite for resources and strong government - So I decide they've almost all unified under a High King who promises to keep the party going, and moves troops to annex a big chunk of the highlands and areas on the fringe of the fernwood while he's at it.
• The Rezenot, who are basically having a bunch of wars of cultural division - Godbloods vs. Arcanists, get New Breed.  So they're breeding bigger, hardier giant birds, to use as mounts - and fighting each other from the backs of these new mounts.  But they're not organized in big states, so the Kondi still get to grab a bunch of their turf.
• The Pozi get Mixed Wing, a new cultural section that mixes up their traits with someone else.  I decide these are Pozi that have been learning magic from Rezenot teachers, and are now basically wavebourne arcanists.  Which, incidentally, means the Arcanists are getting allied fleets coming right up.
• And the Fosa get Great Work, a giant megaproject.  This, I decide, is a culture-wide militarization dedicated to reunifying their two halves, building roads, outposts, and killing the shit out of every monster in the marshes, on the steppes, and finally the Titan itself.  
  

RECAP

Okay, that's history.  So let's see what we've got.

• The Great Kingdom of the Kondi, an imperialistic polity built on a longhall culture (which sounds kind of unstable, honestly), which is buisily trying to grab land and resources to recapture a golden age that wasn't actually the big good bit - the big good bit was everyone pulling together in the years of ice.  They're still arguing about their ancient kidnapping tradition; at this point, it's mostly a traditional relic, but there's still heat there.
• The strife-riddled Rezenot of the Fernwood, organized around herds of giant birds, and now a bit combative while riding them; divided into the personal herd-bands of the Godblooded and the semi-scholastic bands of the Arcanists.  Also, tradition of massed drumming to issue group disapproval - a round of applause from these folks might not be good thing.
• The hardass Fosa of the west, who've made a lifestyle of food and weather-management discipline and are at war with the monsters of the world, wind-catchers and wind-callers, fortified to hell and back.
• And the Pozi, ocean-loving traders, with their modular boats, harvest seasons, special rules and professional union for going ashore. Diverse enough to include everyone, and now with a whole branch devoted to magic.

CURRENT EVENTS

• Major Polity goes to the Fosa; the great work basically puts them there anyway, this is just them formally unifying.  I'm gonna say, just to reverse expectations, that they're absolutely democratic within their city-state fortresses; it's just they like tough bastard leaders.  So that entire side of the map is in the process of becoming The Fortress Republic; the elected mayor-tyrants are preparing to hold their own election for the leader of the great work.
• The Rezenot get Cults.  I'm gonna say that this means the arcanists are winning (with the help of their Pozi-wing allies) the cultural war, and the godblooded groups are scattering and trying desperately to "go underground", becoming bloodline cults, each of which will worship their own divine progenitor in secret and conceal their powers as arcane magic.
• The Pozi, meanwhile, are getting Reversal & Taboo; the arcanist wing is starting to collapse under pressure from the main culture, with accusations (and kinda accurate ones) of "You've been used; the Rezenot Arcanists only taught you to buy your help in their war".  Rather than outlawing arcana, though, they're outlawing it as a private program, and starting to set up mentor exchanges that will universalize education, including arcane education.  Public learning beats secret mystery, they figure.
• The Kondi get High Society; their High King and his court have started to develop a taste for military parades and triumphal feasts, all of which disgust the common people - they are ultimately a longhall culture of champions and petty kings; violence and seizure don't bother them, but putting steps and airs on between them and the top of the culture is repugnant behaviour.

DESIGN VERDICT

This version of the rules is a pretty good solo tool, but it IS different than group play. I get a clearer vision, but it's also a bit more work without the chaos of a group bouncing stuff around, and the clarity of the vision also means the result would need more variety piled on top to finish it up - it needs a bit more mess.