Setup:

Success! Setup took about two hours to complete. There was a little remarking about the sheer number of pages lying around the table. The instructions were rather straightforward, but there was a bit of jumping back and forth between multiple sheets (People, Household, War Companies, etc.) trying to generate them. The players have all played Dungeon World before (one of them has played Apocalypse World as well) and the similarities between the rules set helped smooth the transition.

For stronghold and peoples generation we were content to simply pass around the sheet and make small consensuses on the most exciting items.

Character sheets were smooth and easy to fill out.

One of our players had a copy of the first look and bemoaned the loss of the Outlaw Noble (Outlaw Prince?). The playbooks seemed to overlap a little with Court Wizard/Wicker Wise and War Captain/War Champion. Looking back I would have been pleased to have created our own playbooks from a pool of existing rights, maybe as a storytelling element with each right selected each turn and a character giving backstory on how they gained that right. That said, we probably wouldn't have actually got to any actual game play. (Microscope anyone?)

After the dust and unbound pages settled, this was our world:

Our Stronghold:
An unnamed village of nomad refugees in a river valley lined with slippery slate cliffs and moss. (- An outpost in an enemy land.)
Enemies:
- Fractious and rebellious free landowners. (We haven't established who these people are.)
- Hostile clans, never conquered. (There's a lot of volkswanderung going on and it's every clan for themselves.)
An unlawful crown, seized by a tyrant. (Not fully fleshed out yet: Someone got to the throne after a bloody civil war and the vassalage is weak and defenseless?)
Fortifications:
-Archers' overlooks.
-A bottleneck approach.
-Deep cellars, crypts and bolt holes. (Caves in the cliff walls.)
-A well or deep cistern.
Armory:
Surprisingly my players were eager to choose crude weapons to go with a more "dark ages" feel. We ended up with spears, hide coats, shields, and archery supplies.

What do we do with the Improvements or Want sections on the Stronghold sheet? For now we omitted them, as they seemed to be connected to game play.

Our People(s):
The Sarkozi - (Ri +2, Wr +0, We -1; 50-60 souls, 6 households, 12 warriors) A displaced tribe of tall, big-footed, steppe nomads, who worship a powerful water goddess. Hungarian language.
The Sobeska - (Ri +1, Wr +1, We +0; 80-90 souls, 20 houses, 30 warriors) A sister tribe to the Sarkozi, dispersed throughout these lands. Hungarian language.
The Thancmor - (Ri +0, Wr +2, We -1; 170 souls, 20 houses, 40 warriors) Hardy, hawk-faced men from the frozen forests of the north. Norse language.
The Arnwald - (Ri -1, Wr +2, We 0; 16 souls, 16 houses, 16 warriors) Clean shaven Germanic warriors, remnants of the last legion of the Empire of Eagles. Germanic language, Latin names.

Our Characters: (I'll post the character breakdowns if requested.)
Orban, the Last (War Champion) - Last of his family, a prideful Sarkozi warrior.
Breja (Outranger) - A Sobeska scout, always welcomed for her trinkets and stories from afar.
Sten (Troll-Killer) - An exiled Thancmor hunter, living with the Sarkozi for many years.
Adel (Wicker Wise) - A shrieking, old Sarkozi hag, buried under a ever shifting mound of soiled furs.

Adel is my character and without enough prep-time for our second MC, she takes a backseat to this adventure.

Play begins:

We settled in and announced our season turns. Orban had been working the fields for, Miklos, his lord. Breja travelled back to the village over the winter, seeing famine in the surrounding lands. Sten was enjoying a bountiful supply of rabbit from his winter hunting. And Adel was buried in her hut reciting the names of the Old Gods.

All of the characters chose rather peaceful seasonal moves. I found it difficult to press them for anything at this point. Perhaps each move could be at the expense of something else? Someone must hunt, someone must work the land, someone must pray, someone must rule, and more, each season or else the stronghold suffers. A choice between finding food or keeping your Gods satisfied (or anything else on the AW:DA Hierarchy of Needs) might be interesting here, and provide an opening conflict to build off of.

I opened the scene on Orban, bloody-handed, with a corpse at his feet of a visiting Thancmorian dignitary, and asked his player if Orban was innocent. Orban's player decided that he was guilty, and described the bloodied knife in his right hand and the gash in the dignitaries neck. I asked Breja's player why the dignitary had to die, who had an ominous Valar Morghulis-y reply. Sten's player added the detail of the emissary being his brother.

Gameplay took off rather marvelously from there. Orban's character quickly developed the story that Sten's brother was here to take Sten back to his clan and had insulted the Sarkozi, and so deserved to die. Breja called the tribes leader, Miklos back from his hunt. Sten seemed complicit at first with the act but then upon seeing his brother's body, demanded single combat with Orban.

Rolling blind for combat works great to increase the suspense of fighting. The first round of combat, both players rolled the same and bid 4 on winning. The tie resulted in this lovely break, where both players sized each other up to see if they still wanted to fight. The players of course, did not back down.

Breja broke up the fight after Orban plunged his knife into Sten's shoulder.

Adel showed up and demanded the dead body be immediately given to the Goddess of the River, to prevent the murdered ghost from returning. Sten refused to do so until he had dismembered the corpse and cut of it's tattoos.

I noted "Angry Thancmor ghost" as a future front/Troll idea.

Orban was waiting for his chief inside the main hall, brandishing his spear, which is a taboo amongst the Sarkozi, who leave their weapons outside. The old, maimed, but incredibly virile leader Miklos (who has fathered the majority of the remaining Sarkozi warriors) returned and the village gathered for an assembly. Breja went to find others of her tribe in the area and tell them to clear out, and got back in time for the assembly.

Sten and Orban chat at the falls as they wash the blood from their clothes, and Sten tells Orban that the Thancmor worship Aina, the Taker, a goddess of destruction, her symbol of two snakes twined around a man, and that is the reason why they became unsatisfied with their life in the north and have come south to pillage.

At the assembly Orban said that the emissary, Sten's brother Solveig, insulted the honor of the people and tried to reclaim their warrior ally, Sten. Orban insisted that the emissary had run off and should be brought before Miklos and the Sarkozi to be punished for his insult.

At this point, Orban's player has taken full charge of his character's story. The other players, including myself, don't actually know what happened in the cave where the emissary was murdered. Despite this being a major plot point, this nebulousness has been a very fun point of tension to bring up. What is Orban's motive? What did Breja see Orban do? Did Sten want the murder to happen?

At the beginning of the assembly I had them ask what they all wanted out of this scene. Orban's want boiled down into a Win Someone Over, and the rest of the characters focused on trying to determine the truth by Sizing Someone Up, in this case Orban. We played out the discussion at the hall with characters being able to interject with questions they received with their roll. It went smoothly.

Orban manages to get the Chief's 3rd son, Big Jenci, assigned to him as an aide.As the meeting progressed it became apparent that Miklos is dependent on Orban's strength and popularity amongst the men to keep control. It also became apparent that Orban is duty-bound not to flaunt this. Sten is looked upon as an outsider, but the Sarkozi cannot afford to lose anymore able-bodied hunters. Breja is skeptical about Orban's story and position within the tribe.

They set out the next morning on a "quest" to find the man that they murdered. Sten refuses to bring Adel along as "the witch is too loud." Adel however covers Sten's hand in a poison, to allow him to poison a meal by touching it.

For Adel's action I proposed transferring the benefits of a successful wise in poison-craft roll to Sten's player for a one-use duration. This probably won't happen again, as I can see the abuse of that becoming very popular.

Breja ends up leading the party to the Thancmor camp the long way. Along the way, Sten tracks down the last village that Solveig visited before coming to the Sarkozi camp and Orban fills Big Jenci's head with ideas about his fathers cowardice.

Classic "the thief botches a sneak roll" moment with our Outranger rolling snake-eyes while trying to find her way by road or trail, thankfully the mechanic works to advance the story and allowed them to arrive at the destination.

The text of the Troll-Killer's strike a quarry's trail is also funny to read when the quarry is dead, as option 1 becomes kind of irrelevant.

Our party finds their way to the Thancmor camp, downriver on the edge of a large swath of farmland with a distant castle (the unlawful tyrant!). They discover a language barrier problem and Sten steps in as translator. They speak with Sorley, Jarl of the Thancmor and demand that he find and bring them Sten's brother Solveig (who was, let me state again, murdered by the characters) who they claim "ran away after Orban challenged him." Sten claims that he's arrived to "claim his brother's share, in his absence" but Sorley shouts him down declaring that he is no longer Thancmor.

Orban's player pointed out that he was using his right to be known by reputation and had rolled an 8, allowing him to demand things of Sorley without retribution. Sten's character did not have that right, but attempted it anyway. Was this an acceptable response? It felt like it worked in game.
 
Sorley sends for Solveig, but Solveig can not be found (given that his dismembered remains were probably halfway to the North Sea by then). Sorley dismisses them saying if Solveig does turn up he'll send him back to the Sarkozi "for justice." Satisfied, the party leaves. Sten however wants to get rid of his poisoned hand, and so convinces them to wait for nightfall for him to sneak back in and dip it in the Thancmor well.

No sneak roll or it's equivalent was apparent in the rules. We determined that Sten would Take Stock of the scenario and find out when it was best to slip in. He botched the roll. Was the sneak mechanic left out on purpose? If so it could really change the dynamic of the game if you simply can't hide from your problems.

Sten sneaks back in to the Thancmor camp without telling anyone else in the party. He dips his hand in the well and before he can sneak back out his way is blocked by a guard out for a piss. The guard stands for longer than expected and begins singing an old Thancmor song about the raven who stole the thunder.

"Raven was so happy when he stole the thunder from the sky.
But when he brought it back to his nest, the thunder was so loud.
It chased his wife away. It broke his little eggs.
It shook poor Raven's nest apart."

The guard looks over his shoulder at Sten, and Sten feels a cold point of steel in his back.

"Don't move," says the guard behind Sten.

And we left it there. Next session I'll hope to tackle the battle mechanics. (I have a feeling the Thancmor are going to accuse the Sarkozi of poisoning their well, so war is certainly nigh.)

No real hiccups this session, but I expect as the players grow more confident and take over more of the story the cracks will appear. Most of the issues were simply in keeping the scene focused and advancing the antagonizing fronts. There is a lot of extraneous paper, especially with all the basic moves and people moves and war party moves.

We only used the People sheet and the War Party with "Notables" at the bottom as it makes it easier to keep track.

Everyone seemed very eager to get some additional Rights.

Were we supposed to engage in question asking before choosing experience? How much does the character have a say in how/where they advance? Also, when do we make the choice to open it up to the Ungiven future?