House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Combat - 26

A2 - Leisure - 5

A3 - Scholarly - 2

A4 - Diplomacy - 0

A5 - Language - 22

A6 - Communications - 1

S1 - Wikipedia - 0

S2 - Steam - 34

S3 - Paradox - 22

S4 - World - 0

Names:

Omek, of the Steelsongs - 21

Harlon the Red - 17

Adaira Reed - 8

Preost Gairbhith - 8

Richard Forrester - 7

Auley Ironfrost - 6

Berthold - 5

Stevron - 1

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Steam Games

Thanks to Stronghold: Definitive Edition, Joffrey Baratheon is now Skilled at:

Strategy, Castrametation, Poliorcetics, and Battlewise (coup d’œil).

This means that he will naturally take to war and all its intricacies (so long as it’s on land).

This, along with his excellent lying and swordsmanship, is going to make convincing people he’s a bastard way harder than it needs to be.

To be clear, he still is a bastard in this verse, but thanks to the RNG, he’s also a great swordsman, fantastic actor, and now, a genius at war.

So even if someone were to tell Robert, there's a decent chance he’ll refuse to acknowledge that the son with all these qualities isn’t his own blood.

His only real obstacles to being a fantastic heir to the throne are his lack of black hair, his sadism, and possibly cowardice, though it’s possible his skills will cause him to be more bold in this verse than the one where he was average at best.

World: Fallout Wiki

Thanks to the Spasm Gun, your uncle, Ned Stark, will find a Spasm Gun with unlimited ammo in the godswood and will believe it is a weapon meant for him from the old gods, and that he will need it for some reason, in a similar way to your needing the raven Janus for some reason.

This will greatly unsettle him, though he will keep it hidden on his person from now on…

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Story:

Sir Rodrik was in one of his uglier moods that day, which usually meant the rest of you were about to spend an afternoon being improved against your will.

Because he had apparently decided comfort had gone unappreciated for too long, he opened not with swords or bows but with endurance.

That meant running, climbing, hauling, crawling, vaulting, and then doing all of it again before your breathing had properly settled.

The yard stopped feeling like a place where boys trained and started feeling like something an old soldier had designed after deciding youth was much too cheerful and needed taking down a little.

That hit you harder than it hit the others, because Rob and Theon still had three years on you and three years was enough at that age to matter in all the rude practical ways.

Jon had the same advantage, and worse, had the kind of build and habits that made this sort of steady misery suit him far too well.

The first run went badly for you in the way such things often did, because pride got in first and sense came panting behind it.

When Rob and Theon burst forward with the sort of open competitiveness that always seemed to wake up in them when they were side by side, you tried to keep pace and very quickly learned that wanting to look older did not actually make your lungs agree.

The course itself was ugly in a thorough way.

It sent all four of you around the yard wall, then across churned mud near the range, then over low barriers and under ropes and across narrow beams before throwing you back around again.

There was never quite enough time to decide which part you hated most before the next one arrived to compete for the honor.

Rob and Theon fell together naturally enough, because they often did now, and they pushed each other in the bright noisy way that made both of them faster at the start and rougher in the middle.

Jon moved differently.

He did not fling himself at the work as though force alone might solve it, and he did not spend extra effort where none was needed, which meant that before long he passed you without seeming to hurry at all.

That was when the real lesson started.

Jon was not better at this only because he had more years or longer legs, though both of those helped, but because he measured himself better than the rest of you did.

He did not sprint when a hard pace would do, and he did not leap bigger when smaller would carry him just as well.

He did not attack every obstacle as though it had insulted his bloodline, and by the time you noticed that, your chest was already hurting and your stride had started going ugly.

Imitation has always been one of the faster roads to wisdom when proper wisdom is still taking its time arriving.

So when Sir Rodrik sent you through again, you stopped trying to match the older boys in their first burst and started watching Jon instead.

That meant you shortened your stride, took the low wall cleaner, stopped jumping farther than you had to, and started breathing before the turn instead of after it.

The whole thing changed enough that you were still tired by the middle but not nearly so ruined as before.

Sir Rodrik noticed at once, because that was part of what made him useful and tiresome in equal measure.

He barked at Rob for spending too much of himself on the opening stretch, barked at Theon for chasing quickness where he ought to have chased endurance, and then barked at all four of you that lasting was not only strength but judgment.

Any ox could pull hard for a while, but not every man knew how to keep enough of himself for the third drill, the fourth, and the hateful little bit after that when legs went wooden and boys started making foolish choices out of tiredness.

That settled in more firmly because by then you had already felt the difference for yourself, and because Jon was still right there proving the point with every turn he took and every obstacle he crossed without wasting anything that might be needed ten minutes later.

The obstacle work came after that and was worse in a new direction.

It sent you up the practice wall, across the beam, down the far side, through the mud, over the ditch, under the rope, and then back again before any one group of muscles had finished complaining about the last insult.

The whole thing became less about any single skill and more about not letting your body fall into pieces simply because Sir Rodrik thought it was educational to watch boys discover where their limits really were.

Rob and Theon still hit parts of it faster than you did, and there was no use pretending otherwise, because they were older, stronger, and better grown for this sort of punishment.

By then their early push had begun collecting its price.

Rob came off the wall with less grace than he had started with, Theon clipped the beam once and nearly paid for it, and both of them were breathing hard enough by the middle that speed had stopped looking effortless and started looking purchased.

Jon, meanwhile, kept moving like he had made some private arrangement with exhaustion and intended to honor it exactly.

It was not graceful in any showy way, but it was steady enough that you found yourself drifting toward him without needing to think much about the choice.

That was the part that mattered most.

Nobody told you to stick with him, and no grand little moment announced itself in your head, but by then it had become clear that standing close to Jon in the yard made things easier in the plain practical way that standing near a wall helped in wind.

He wasted no words.

He gave only the kind of corrections a body could still obey while half spent, with things like lowering here, shortening there, not jumping that, using the beam, and breathing now.

You listened, copied him, and got through the course cleaner than before.

That did not feel dramatic or glorious, but it did feel solid, and solid was worth more than glory in that moment because solid kept you moving while pride mostly only made boys stupid.

One of the last rounds was the worst of the lot.

Sir Rodrik sent you all around the full yard again and then through the obstacles without pause and then had you hauling sandbags after, which seemed to prove that whenever simple suffering was available he preferred to layer it until somebody learned something useful or collapsed trying.

That was where the age gap showed most honestly.

Your arms hurt, your legs hurt, and your lungs had started feeling hot and mean, while Rob and Theon were still stronger than you and Jon was still plainly the best at the whole business.

What changed was that you no longer came apart first.

You kept your breath better, kept your steps shorter, and held enough of yourself in reserve that the last part of the work looked like hard going rather than pure survival.

That was new, and because it was new it felt good in a deep practical way that had nothing much to do with winning and everything to do with realizing you had learned something real.

By the time Sir Rodrik finally let the lot of you stop, Rob and Theon had their own red faced half laughing misery together, because they had driven each other hard enough to earn it.

You and Jon ended in something quieter, which suited you better anyway.

When he handed you water without making any sort of performance of it, you took it in the same spirit, because the yard had a way of stripping things down once it had kicked enough breath out of everybody first.

Nothing grand got said after that, and nothing needed saying.

Jon was still better than you, Rob and Theon were still older than you, and Sir Rodrik was still the sort of hard old bastard who thought boys improved best when thoroughly overworked.

But something had settled all the same.

You had learned that if you stayed near Jon, watched him closely, and copied the things he did not waste, then you did better.

Not older, not stronger, and not suddenly equal to the others either, but better, which was enough for one afternoon and more than enough to carry away from the yard.

And by the time you limped off with your legs burning and your pride feeling strangely pleased with the whole ugly business, you already knew something simple and useful, which was that next time Sir Rodrik decided the lesson was suffering, you would stick by Jon again.

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Skills:

Combat:

(4) Westerosi CQC - 55/100 (+35) (Skilled In North)

(4) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 30/100 (+25)

(5) Northern Archery - 100/100 (+35) (Skilled)

(3) Northern Equestrianism - 90/100 (+14) (Knack)

(4) Heavy Armour - 15/100 (+35) (Skilled) ←

Diplomacy:

(5) Interpersonal Communication - 40/100 (+15) (Skilled) ←

(2) Public Speaking - 65/100 (+5) (Skilled)

(6) Management - 30/100 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

(3) Stewardship - 7/100 (+7) (Knack) ←

(2) Northern Law - 89/100 (+7) (Knack)

(2) Westerosi Law - 79/100 (+7) (Knack)

Language:

(5) Common Speaking - 30/100 (+15) (Knack)

(5) Old Tongue Speaking - 22/100 (+15) (Knack)

(3) Valyrian Speaking - 90/100 (+13) (Knack)

(4) Common Reading - 35/100 (+15)

(1) Westerosi Runes - 100/100 (+4)

(3) Valyrian Reading - 85/100 (+10)

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(4) Math(s) - 5/100 (+10) ←

(4) Accounts - 5/100 (+10) ←

(5) Northern History - 70/100 (+15) (Knack)

(3) Westerosi History - 100/100 (+10)

(4) Northern Peoples - 65/100 (+10)

(3) Westerosi Peoples - 90/100 (+10)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(3) Northern Hunting - 94/100 (+12)

(2) Fishing - 41/100 (+7)

(2) Swimming - 31/100 (+7)

(1) Seacraft - 19/100 (+3)

(1) Climbing - 60/100 (+36) (Skilled In North)

(1) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 93/100 (+3)

(3) Gardening - 40/100 (+30) (Prodigious)

War:

(1) Strategy - 25/100 (+25) (Prodigious) ←

(1) Castrametation - 35/100 (+0)

(1) Poliorcetics - 10/100 (+0)

(1) Fleetcraft - 10/100 (+0)

(1) Battlewise (coup d’œil) - 10/100 (+0)

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Earning: 4

Spending: 0

Banked: 16

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T3 = Objects/Effect on Another Place

L6 = Moderately Convenient

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Voting:

Main Actions: (+ = Low, ++ = Mid, +++ = High)

A1 - Train with Jon, and sometimes Rob and Theon, in the Yard. (Combat Focus)

(Reputation: ++ Jon + Theon, + Rob)

A2 - Go on Hunts With Jon and Sansa. (Equestrianism + Leisure Focus)

(Reputation: ++ Jon, ++ Sansa, + Ned, - - Cat)

A3 - Keep up your studies with your cousin, Sansa, and Maester Lewin. (Scholarly Focus)

(Reputation: ++ Sansa, + Cat, + Ned)

A4 - Act as your Uncle Ned’s page with Rob and Theon. (Diplomacy + War Focus)

(Reputation: ++ Ned, + Theon, + Rob)

A5 - Spend your time teaching/watching little Arya and your Wolves with Yara. (Language Focus)

(Reputation: ++ Arya, + Yara, + Ned)

A6 - Follow Rob until he shares his Friends and Activities with you. (Communications Focus)

(Reputation: +Rob, + Cat, + Ned)

Personal Rolls Sources:

S1 - Wikipedia

S2 - Steam Games (On Cooldown 1/2)

S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30)

S4 - World Rolls List (D12)

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Information:

1 - Reputations as of Chapter 30

Jon - Close Friends

Sansa - Close Friends

Arya - Friends

Cat - Friendly

Ned - Friends

Rob - Good (+)

Theon - Good

Yara - Ok (+)

2 - Berenice has arrived and begun treating Shireen’s Scars.

She will stay on Dragonstone for one more turn, then return with a full report, and possibly an envoy from Stannis, depending on how well it goes…

I could spoil it at this point, but all the talk about what we could know realistically has made me realize how limited Raven's messages are.

So it’s more likely that all we know about her is her arrival on Dragonstone at the start of this turn.

For the full thing I want to write up, we’ll need to wait for her return, either in glory or shame.

However, thanks to the Art and Omakes made so far, I will guarantee that the worst outcome (us making it worse somehow) has been averted, and that no matter what, she will at least leave a lukewarm impression of you with the Dragonstone Baratheons.

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - Where should we send Omek, and what should he do there?

If we can’t afford the winning vote, then we’ll just save up until we can, and then he’ll get sent out on that turn.

But do try to keep the ideas semi-local, given his status as a Steelsongs priest of the Old Gods.