House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Combat - 11

A2 - Leisure - 8

A3 - Scholarly - 34

A4 - Diplomacy - 2

A5 - Language - 1

A6 - Communications - 4

S1 - Wikipedia - 0

S2 - Steam - 4? (On Cooldown??)

S3 - Paradox - 43

S4 - World - 13

Ideas:

(0R) Teach Gardening and Northern Healing - 15

(6R) Go to Castle Black as a Healer (Investigate the circumstances of the Watch/Our Father) - 14

(0R) Stay Local to buff our Local Reputation - 8

(6R) Investigate Long Lake people's contentment/problems - 5

(0R) Ask how much damage the calamities caused, + other info she learned in her travels. - 3

(25R) Try to heal Willas Tyrell's leg in Highgarden - 3

(35R) Try to heal Doran Martell's Gout in the Water Guardens - 3

(6R) White Harbour to ask merchants how much damage the calamities caused - 2

(6R) Help the Last Rite Order as a Healer to buff our Reputation in the North - 2

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

Thanks to Armor technology (Basic), you are now Prodigious at the use of Armour.

This can be seen in particular with your Heavy Armour Skill.

Though it will also show up if you should ever find yourself in any other kind of armour.

World: Elder Scrolls Wiki

Thanks to Rahd-m'Athra, Viserys Targaryen will discover and bond with an immortal magical horse, along with his ability to call it forth to him at any time and place, with said horse teleporting to his location near instantly.

Clearly, this is proof that the Gods favour him!

/s

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Story:

For several days, Aunt Catelyn had been caught in the long, grinding misery of labour pains, which left the whole castle moving more carefully than usual and left her in no mood at all for either you or Jon.

In truth, neither of you had done anything beyond existing within reach of a woman in pain, but that was more than enough to earn some extra frost from her while the labour dragged on and everyone around her tried not to make a hard thing worse.

Jon, being near enough grown to take himself usefully out of the way, had escaped on a hunt meant to last several days, while you, being younger and much harder to lose in the woods without comment, were left in Winterfell with the strained air of the place pressing in from all sides.

Uncle Ned had gone taut and quiet in the way he always did when another Stark birth drew near, and the rest of the household seemed to be holding its breath with him, so in the end it was Maester Luwin who offered a better use for the day.

He said he meant to get a little fresh air anyway, and that gathering some nearby herbs as a lesson would serve just as well as sitting indoors pretending not to hear the castle brood, while Berenice agreed to join him since Winterfell’s usual Springlord was already attending your aunt.

Sansa came too, not because herbs were her first choice of diversion, but because she was just as eager as you were to escape the stifled feeling that had settled over Winterfell while her mother suffered and her father waited.

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The lesson began simply enough, with you and Sansa walking out under Maester Luwin’s care for what sounded at first like one more practical exercise in knowing the lands around Winterfell, because a house did not truly rule what it could not name and did not safely keep what it never properly understood.

Luwin started broad, as he often did when he meant to build something orderly in the mind before narrowing it, so he had the 2 of you look first at the ground itself and only after that at what grew from it, with the wetter places showing one sort of growth, the firmer ridges showing another, and the countryside giving up its little truths to anybody patient enough to notice them.

Sansa liked that more than she had expected, because there was a pleasing structure in it once somebody showed her how to look, while you followed well enough but still thought of the thing as useful rather than surprising.

The first plant Luwin truly stopped for was a willow growing near water, and he had you both take in the tree as a tree before he let the lesson become anything else, with its narrow leaves, its bend in the wind, and the way its roots drank deep from damp ground that would not have suited every other growth nearby.

Then Berenice took over, because naming a thing and understanding its uses were not the same art, and she explained that willow mattered to a healer for its bark, which could be gathered against pain and fever if taken properly and dried with care.

She showed at once where foolish people ruined useful knowledge, because a greedy man might strip bark all around a living trunk and kill the tree for one season’s need, while a healer who meant to keep the land useful took lightly from smaller growth or from what could be pruned without killing the whole, then left the stand time enough to recover before coming back again.

That caught your attention sharply, because the logic of it was clean, and once she set it before you, your mind took hold of it at once, since this was not only healing but stewardship, and the 2 fit together better than anyone had apparently expected.

Then she had the 2 of you help with the preparation, which meant cutting bark into smaller strips, laying it to dry properly instead of leaving it to damp and spoil, and learning the difference between what could be stored for later and what had to be used fresh if it was to be trusted at all.

When Berenice asked what part mattered most, you answered before Sansa had finished thinking, and when she asked why bark taken badly was worth less than bark taken well, you answered that too, not because you had guessed but because the whole chain of sense already seemed to lie neatly in front of you once she began.

The second plant was yarrow, and the change mattered because it widened the lesson instead of merely deepening the same groove.

This time, Berenice knelt in a drier open stretch and pointed out the feathered leaves and pale clustered flowers, and though Sansa took a little longer to fix its shape in her mind, she did so eagerly, because she liked once again that there were signs to be read if one learned them properly.

Yarrow, Berenice said, was too often walked past by people who did not know better, which was foolish because it served well enough where cuts, bleeding, and lesser hurts were concerned, and in a place like the North, a useful herb was worth far more than its size suggested.

She showed how the flowering tops and useful growth were taken without ripping the whole thing up by the root, because a fool who tore out every plant from one patch left himself with nothing when the season turned again, while a wiser gatherer took lightly from many places, left enough behind to seed, and returned only when the land had had time to renew itself.

That part came to you with astonishing ease.

It was not only that you remembered which part of the willow mattered and which part of the yarrow was worth gathering, but that once Berenice began comparing their uses your mind seemed to sort them on its own, with pain and fever falling to one side, bleeding and wound care to another, and methods of gathering settling into place beside the uses as though they had always belonged together.

Sansa was still interested and still listening closely, but she was learning the way most clever students learned, while you had somehow stepped into something faster and stranger, where each new fact seemed to arrive already connected to the last.

Berenice noticed first, or at least said something first.

She asked a harder question then, perhaps to test whether the thing was real and not some burst of good guessing, and had you tell her not only which plant did what but how each ought be gathered, what mistake would spoil the work, and which sort of careless person did the most harm.

When you answered cleanly and without much pause, she sat back on her heels and said that if you were not already meant to become a lord of the North, she would be recommending you to the Springlords to train as a healer, because this sort of talent did not arrive often and was too good to ignore when it did.

Nobody had expected this from you, not Sansa, not Luwin, not Berenice, and certainly not yourself, because for all the things people had begun noticing in you these last years, herbology had not seemed an obvious road toward any of them.

Yet the moment it had been set before you in its living shape, with roots, bark, flowers, and the good sense not to strip a useful patch bare for one day’s advantage, you had taken to it as though some part of your mind had only been waiting for somebody to place the right subject in front of it.

Luwin, once he had recovered from the surprise of it, looked quietly delighted, and by the end of the walk back, he and Berenice had between them already decided that herbology would be added to your regular studies from then on, not as a passing interest but as something worth developing properly.

Sansa took that well, because though the gift had proved to be yours more than hers, her interest had been real enough that she was pleased the lesson itself would continue.

So the 3 of you came back to Winterfell with more than anyone had set out expecting to find, because somewhere between one willow and one patch of yarrow, a part of you no one had known to look for had stepped forward plain enough that now it could not be ignored.

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Not long after you and Sansa returned, Maester Luwin and Berenice were sent hurrying to your aunt’s rooms with the unmistakable speed of people no longer pretending there was time enough to walk.

What followed felt both brief and endless, until at last the word came and you were brought in to meet the newest member of House Stark, and any strain left in the day went soft at once when you learned his name was Rickon Stark, which pleased you more than you could have ever said aloud.

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Skills:

Combat:

(5) Westerosi CQC - 50/100 (+15) (Talented In North)

(4) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 100/100 (+15)

(6) Northern Archery - 95/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(4) Northern Equestrianism - 68/100 (+12) (Knack)

(5) Heavy Armour - 5/100 (+30) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(6) Interpersonal Communication - 15/100 (+15) (Skilled) ←

(2) Public Speaking - 90/100 (+5) (Skilled)

(7) Management - 100/100 (+30) (Prodigious)

(3) Stewardship - 65/100 (+7) (Knack)

(3) Northern Law - 47/100 (+7) (Knack)

(3) Westerosi Law - 37/100 (+7) (Knack)

Language:

(6) Common Speaking - 15/100 (+15) (Knack) ←

(6) Old Tongue Speaking - 30/100 (+15) (Knack)

(4) Valyrian Speaking - 70/100 (+15) (Knack)

(5) Common Reading - 25/100 (+20)

(2) Westerosi Runes - 70/100 (+20)

(4) Valyrian Reading - 60/100 (+20)

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(4) Math(s) - 80/100 (+25)

(4) Accounts - 80/100 (+25)

(6) Northern History - 60/100 (+30) (Knack)

(3) Westerosi History - 70/100 (+25)

(5) Northern Peoples - 35/100 (+25)

(4) Westerosi Peoples - 60/100 (+25)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(4) Northern Hunting - 67/100 (+12)

(2) Fishing - 94/100 (+7)

(2) Swimming - 54/100 (+7)

(1) Seacraft - 31/100 (+3)

(2) Climbing - 14/100 (+7) (Skilled In North)

(2) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 9/100 (+3)

(5) Herbology - 10/100 (+50) (Prodigious) ←

War:

(3) Strategy - 75/100 (+25) (Prodigious)

(1) Castrametation - 60/100 (+0)

(1) Poliorcetics - 60/100 (+0)

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

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

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Earning: 4

Spending: 0

Banked: 30

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T3 = Objects/Effect at Home

L7 = Most convenient

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Voting:

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

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

(Reputation: +++ Arya, ++ Jon, + Rob, - Cat)

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

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

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

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

A4 - Learn Lordship from your Uncle Ned with Rob. (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

S2 - Steam Games (On Cooldown 2/2)

S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30) (On Cooldown 1/1)

S4 - World Rolls List (D12)

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Information:

1 - I changed “Gardening” to “Herbology.”

Just because Gardening implies it's mostly about growing plants by hand in a cultivated garden.

But what I was intending for that skill was “knowledge of the use and cultivation of plants,” so Herbology seems to be closer to that meaning.

(It also helps that Herbology implies magic more than guarding does, even if we don't know any plant magic… yet.)

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - What should we buy and for whom? (Budget = 34R)

A few ideas and their costs:

(2R) A Hunting Tutor to bond better with Jon and Sansa.

(5R) A Book of northern teachings and legends for Shireen.

(34R) A Simple Set of Full-Plate Armour for Jon (will require him to start training with it).

(20R) A Northern Lord's Armour for Jon (Gambeson, Chainmail, Brigandine, etc.)

(2R) A Custom-Crafted necklace for Yara, meant to look like a Kraken.

(4R) A Custom-Crafted Weirwood Bow for Sansa with the family's familiars carved into it.

Or Write-In…