House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Combat - 16

A2 - Leisure - 0

A3 - Scholarly - 2

A4 - Diplomacy - 27

A5 - Language - 9

A6 - Communications - 1

S1 - Wikipedia - 39

S2 - Steam - 5

S3 - Paradox - 0

S4 - World - 11

Ideas:

Jegyr Falcon

Gyrfalcon

Snow Shrike

Pigeon

Barn Owl

Golden Eagle

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Wikipedia

Thanks to Subutai, Willas Tyrell has just gained the memories and skills of General Subutai.

Thanks to this, he is functionally Prodigious at War, and his forces should be treated as a huge threat in battle from now on.

Praise be to RNGesus for this to have been what we got for a “L3 = Slightly Inconvenient.” Because if this were an L2, it would have gone to Joffrey, and if it were an L1, it would have gone to Euron, and either one of those would have been a DISASTER for the north.

Subutai is no joke as a military commander, for all he’s less famous than his peers like Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.

World: Forgotten Realms Wiki

Thanks to the Berronar's salve, we have developed new magic!

Not only can we revive someone from the brink of death, but we also know about this ability and will be prepared to use it should the moment come.

(See “Write-In/Questions:” for how this spell can be used…)

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Story:

Uncle Ned’s lessons on lordship had a habit of looking dry until you realized, usually too late, that he had been explaining some choice already taking shape around you.

This one was about alliances, and he spoke of them not as grand promises made once and then forgotten, but as things that had to be kept alive through letters, courtesies, shared service, fostering, and the simple fact that houses drifted apart if no one made the effort to keep them close.

A friendship between two lords was useful, he said, but if it ended with those two men, then it had never been strong enough in the first place, because a wise house made sure the next generation knew one another before the old one died and left everything formal.

That all sounded sensible enough while he was saying it, but it still felt like one more useful lesson meant for later until you realized, somewhat embarrassingly, that later had already arrived and everyone around you had noticed before you had.

Theon’s going south did not strike Rob, Yara, or even Theon like some sudden blow, and once you looked at the last few weeks honestly it became clear that this had been building for longer than you had understood.

Rob was quieter about it than he might have been if it were fresh.

Yara looked like someone who had already thought it through and decided there was no use fighting the shape of it.

Theon himself did not seem surprised so much as sharpened by it.

He was going because he was still Balon Greyjoy’s heir and the future lord of the Iron Islands, and whatever Uncle Ned and Stannis Baratheon were trying to build between them, they had plainly decided it would work better with a third point set carefully into place.

Theon, grown up in Winterfell but born to Pyke, fit that purpose better than almost anyone else could.

It was clever.

It also left the house in an odd mood, because even expected departures still hollow a place out once they become real.

Alongside that, Aunt Catelyn and Uncle Ned made it known that everyone in the family ought to send some kind of well-wishing to Princess Shireen Baratheon, which made perfect sense on its face and would not have stood out at all if they had not been so plainly interested in your part of it.

The others were encouraged to send notes.

You, just as plainly, were being steered toward sending a real letter.

That was the part you could not quite place.

Theon going south made sense once Uncle Ned’s lesson was set against it, but the emphasis on your letter, and on its being more than a courtesy, seemed to belong to some quieter piece of the design that no one had bothered explaining to you.

Still, it did not feel wrong.

A short note might satisfy manners, but a proper letter had room for kindness in it, and if Shireen Baratheon had truly chosen the old gods and come through all that pain into something better, then she deserved more than a few folded lines and a polite closing.

The house, however, did not stop moving simply because one boy was leaving and another had been nudged toward correspondence with Dragonstone.

That was when your gift for Sansa arrived, and the timing could hardly have been better if you had planned it with a maester’s charts and a prophet’s certainty.

The bird came from White Harbor as arranged, and it was a jegyr falcon bred to handle northern cold while still taking well to training, which suited Sansa far better than some finer southern creature ever would have.

Falconry was more popular below the Neck, but there were northern lines for it too, and this one had the right mix of hardiness and discipline to match the way Sansa had grown into hunting these last months.

She was delighted with it, not in some childish burst but in that deeper way people are when something fits them so neatly it feels less like a gift and more like recognition.

The whole house seemed grateful for the interruption too, because it gave everyone something living and immediate to gather around that was not Theon’s leaving or whatever larger designs were moving quietly through Winterfell.

Then the falcon noticed Janus, and that improved matters for you considerably.

Janus had enjoyed far too long as the unchallenged nuisance of Winterfell, moving about with the confidence of a creature who believed the place existed largely for his convenience.

Sansa’s new falcon took one look at him and decided at once that no raven ought carry himself with quite that much self-regard, which meant Janus, for the first time in months, found himself confronted by something bigger, sharper, and entirely unimpressed.

You found that hilarious.

Janus did not.

So the day ended in a shape stranger than it had begun, with Uncle Ned’s lesson on alliances proving much more immediate than it had first sounded, Theon riding south as part of some larger understanding between Stark, Baratheon, and Greyjoy, your letter to Shireen somehow being treated as more important than a mere courtesy ought to be, and Sansa made newly radiant by a falcon that suited her so well it felt as though it had been waiting for her all along.

And because even Winterfell deserved some little bit of comedy on a day like that, Janus also learned that having the run of the castle was one thing, but having the sky to himself was another matter entirely.

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For several nights after Theon left with Ser Davos, your sleep went strange, not with any one dream you could cleanly remember but with that heavy half-haunted feeling of having been somewhere else by morning, until about a week later you woke before dawn in the godswood and found yourself standing there barefoot with a soft glowing light caught inside your palm.

Because it was still predawn and because no good could possibly come of being found glowing in the godswood like something out of an old tale, you closed your fist and the light went out, but with it came the ugly immediate certainty that the thing was not meant for you at all, only for another who stood moments from death, and that whether it saved them or failed them the effort of calling it forth would leave you thoroughly spent afterward.

You had no idea what to do with that, except hide it until whatever grim future the old gods had seen finally came to claim it, and though you thought you acted ordinary enough the next day, Uncle Ned still seemed to notice something in you and looked a little too long once or twice, which unsettled you more than you liked because for the life of you you could not tell what had given you away.

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Skills:

Combat:

(4) Westerosi CQC - 100/100 (+15) (Skilled In North)

(4) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 60/100 (+10)

(6) Northern Archery - 65/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(4) Northern Equestrianism - 44/100 (+12) (Knack)

(4) Heavy Armour - 60/100 (+15) (Skilled)

Diplomacy:

(5) Interpersonal Communication - 85/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(2) Public Speaking - 80/100 (+5) (Skilled)

(7) Management - 40/100 (+50) (Prodigious) ←

(3) Stewardship - 51/100 (+30) (Knack)

(3) Northern Law - 33/100 (+30) (Knack)

(3) Westerosi Law - 23/100 (+30) (Knack) ←

Language:

(5) Common Speaking - 64/100 (+12) (Knack)

(5) Old Tongue Speaking - 81/100 (+12) (Knack)

(4) Valyrian Speaking - 26/100 (+12) (Knack)

(4) Common Reading - 80/100 (+15)

(2) Westerosi Runes - 25/100 (+5)

(4) Valyrian Reading - 15/100 (+10)

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(4) Math(s) - 45/100 (+20)

(4) Accounts - 45/100 (+20)

(6) Northern History - 15/100 (+15) (Knack) ←

(3) Westerosi History - 35/100 (+15)

(4) Northern Peoples - 100/100 (+15)

(4) Westerosi Peoples - 25/100 (+15)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(4) Northern Hunting - 43/100 (+12)

(2) Fishing - 80/100 (+7)

(2) Swimming - 70/100 (+7)

(1) Seacraft - 25/100 (+3)

(1) Climbing - 100/100 (+8) (Skilled In North)

(2) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 3/100 (+3) ←

(4) Gardening - 30/100 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

War:

(3) Strategy - 25/100 (+50) (Prodigious) ←

(1) Castrametation - 60/100 (+25)

(1) Poliorcetics - 60/100 (+25)

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

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

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Earning: 4

Spending: 0

Banked: 22

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T4 = Objects/Effect at Home

L6 = Very Convenient

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Voting:

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

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

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

A5 - Spend your time speaking the Old Tongue with Arya and Omek. (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 (On Cooldown 1/2)

S2 - Steam Games

S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30)

S4 - World Rolls List (D12)

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Information:

1 - Fixed some skills.

They should all be good now, but a few of them might not line up with what they were in the last chapter.

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - Should our new Healing spell be Temporary, or should it knock us out for several days with use?

Technically, all it says is it lets wounded allies get back into the fight, so it could be temporary, but if what we have really is an extremely powerful healing spell, then the cost should also be high to fit with magic in this setting, so I’d have one use instantly knock us out, even if we're mid-battle when it happens.

The choice is up to you lot:

P1 - Powerful but Dangerous

P2 - Practical but Temporary