House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Combat - 0

A2 - Leisure - 22

A3 - Scholarly - 6

A4 - Diplomacy - 10

A5 - Language - 0

A6 - Communications - 5

S1 - Wikipedia - 35

S2 - Steam - 4

S3 - Paradox - 2

S4 - World - 1

Ideas: So Far

Kyndnes - A Valyrian Misericorde Dagger - 13

Bloodstar - A Valyrian blade created using Starmetal - 2

Caerbannog - Extinct First Men house in the Veil of Arryn. - 2

Dragon's Tooth - A Targaryen ancestor for Daughter. - 2

Silver Bite - A Targaryen ancestor for Daughter. - 1

Wyrmtooth - A Targaryen ancestor for Daughter. - 1

Embersteel - A Targaryen ancestor for Daughter. - 1

CynderSpit - A Targaryen ancestor for Daughter. - 1

Companion - A Targaryen ancestor for Daughter. - 1

Remembrance - Extinct First Men house in the Veil of Arryn. - 1

Keepsake - Found in the Stepstones in the Ninepenny Kings War - 1

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Wikipedia

Thanks to Nizam al-Mulk, Young Griff will, much like Willas Tyrell before him, discover memories of a past life on an alternate earth.

Unlike Willas, whose memories made him functionally a war genius, however, Griff’s new talents are more spread around, though no less dangerous for that.

In particular, he suddenly gained a large boost in:

Management, Stewardship, Accounts, Interpersonal Communication, Public Speaking, and a smaller buff to Strategy, Castrametation, and Battlewise (coup d’œil).

Basically, he just got the “Great King” package uploaded into his brain, on top of any skills he already had.

Gaining the memories of Nizam al Mulk has, if anything, set up Young Griff to be the Next Jaehaerys as opposed to Willas’s Aegon the Conqueror.

World: Coppermind Wiki

Thanks to the Highstorm, there has now been a Highstorm that came to Westeros from the South-West that did massive damage to Dorne, the Reach, and a bit less to the well-prepared Stormlands before sweeping over to Essos, where it caused great damage to several cities, but most particularly Pentos, where the magister Illyrio Mopatis has been set back decades due to this calamity.

(Basically, this was an L7, meaning it made a sweep on some of our enemies, from Dorne and the Reach to the Stormalands to the Targaryen supporting Illyrio Mopatis.

Meanwhile, the North’s allies, such as the Riverlands, were untouched beyond some harsh winds for a few days.)

The funny part is that the Stormlanders call this some variation of “a big one” or “quite a doosy.”

Meanwhile, everyone else is wondering what god/gods they must have incurred the wrath of.

After all, the Stormlanders KNOW which god they pissed off, and were fully prepared for something like this, unlike all the ruined crops and buildings in the reach and Pentos, or the flooding in Dorne.

(For the curious, the storm also did some damage to Norvos before continuing off into the Shivering Sea, never to be seen again… unless we roll it again.)

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Story:

The morning ride out felt easy in the way only a well-planned hunt ever could, with Jon beside Ghost, Sansa a little straighter than usual beside Lady Vi, and you keeping Jinx close while Janus floated above the whole party like a black feathered nuisance nobody had invited and nobody had any hope of dismissing.

Sansa had her new falcon with her as well, hooded and calm for the moment on the glove, and though she tried very hard to look composed about the whole thing there was still a brightness in her that gave her away, because this was one of the first times the bird was being folded into a true outing instead of another patient round of training near the castle.

It made for a strange enough hunting party, because most did not include three wolves and two birds with entirely opposite ideas about discipline.

Sansa’s falcon had spent months learning what was expected of it, which meant she had to watch its mood, mind it, and judge when it was ready to be loosed, while Janus had taken no instruction whatsoever and still behaved as though natural superiority ought to cover any gaps in training.

That difference became entertaining almost at once.

Janus was playful in the maddening way only a creature entirely convinced of his own charm could manage, hopping from branch to branch, gliding low over the path just to make Jinx’s ears twitch, and giving the occasional pleased little croak as though he believed the whole ride had been arranged for his amusement.

Sansa’s falcon, by contrast, had a dignity about it that seemed almost excessive for something with feathers, because it held itself still, watched everything with that hard bright eye of its, and looked so grave in the morning light that more than once you became reasonably sure it was judging Janus.

That pleased you more than it likely should have, because everyone else seemed to find Janus adorable, clever, and friendly, whereas you had long since discovered that he was also a menace, so it was nice to have someone else plainly on your side, even if that someone else was another bird.

The first stretch of the outing belonged mostly to Sansa and her falcon, since Jon and you were sensible enough to let the new thing be tested before the larger business began.

She loosed the bird cleanly enough once you reached more open ground, and it rose sharp and quick into the pale air before circling back over the field in a pattern that was not yet perfect but was close enough to make Sansa’s whole face come alive when she saw it.

The falcon flushed smaller game once and nearly took it before losing the line at the last moment, which was not failure so much as roughness, and Sansa took the near success well because by then she had enough experience to know that a bird could be improving without yet being finished.

Janus, unfortunately, had no respect at all for carefully built progress and made that known almost at once.

He drifted too close during the falcon’s second pass, perched where he plainly had no business perching, and gave one of his hoarse judgmental cries at exactly the moment Sansa least needed distraction, which made the falcon flare sideways in annoyance and sent Sansa into a low, furious mutter that would probably have scandalized a septa and certainly would have delighted Arya.

The falcon landed again and turned its sharp head toward Janus with such direct offense that even Jon laughed under his breath, while Janus, far from being chastened, only puffed himself up and looked smug enough to deserve immediate consequences.

You caught the falcon looking at him once more after that, cold and unimpressed, and found yourself warming to it even further.

The ride went on more quietly after that, and because the ground had not yet offered anything worth following in earnest, you and Sansa found yourselves doing something else with the time.

Herbalore had only recently been folded into your studies, but once the lesson had been given it had become difficult not to see the land in new layers, so what had once been only brush, bark, or field growth now came with uses trailing after it in your mind.

Sansa spotted willow first near a damp stretch and pointed it out with some satisfaction, because she had not forgotten the earlier lesson and liked proving as much.

You answered that the bark was what mattered most to a healer, especially for pain and fever, and that Berenice had said only a fool stripped it all around a living trunk because that killed the tree for one season’s gain.

Sansa remembered the rest after that, and added that it should be taken sparingly, then dried properly and kept sound instead of left to spoil.

You told her that was right, and she looked absurdly pleased with herself for it.

A little later you were the one who noticed yarrow in a drier patch where the ground opened enough to let the pale clustered flowers show clearly.

Sansa knew it this time without help, which in fairness she had earned, and said at once that it was used for cuts and bleeding.

You added that the flowering tops and the useful growth were what mattered, not the whole root, and that if a person tore every plant in one patch from the earth, then next year he deserved to do without.

Sansa laughed at that and said Berenice had not phrased it nearly so sharply, though she agreed with the thought, and for a little while the two of you kept pointing things out back and forth in that way, half lesson and half game, until Jon finally observed that if you kept it up much longer the pair of you would start sounding like a traveling hedge healer and his apprentice.

The hunt shifted after that, because once the bird had been flown a little and Sansa had proved to herself that the training was beginning to hold, the ground started showing signs of something larger.

Jon spotted the first good sign near a muddier stretch where the earth kept marks honestly, and after that, Ghost lowered his nose and moved with more serious intent while Jinx picked up the line a little later with her usual boldness.

Boar, from the look of it, and a respectable one too.

Sansa called the falcon back rather than trying to force it into work it was not suited for, which was a wiser choice than a younger or prouder version of her might have made.

You dismounted once the ground thickened and the boar sign led toward rougher cover, and from there the hunt became the sort of work you liked best, with no wasted speech and everybody turning useful in their own way.

Jon remained the steadiest, because he always seemed to get quieter the more a thing mattered, while Sansa had more to manage than before with Lady Vi near her, the falcon resettled, and bow in hand, yet somehow handled all of it better than she would have half a year ago.

You found yourself taking the center of the thing without much thought, watching the wolves, checking the sign, and keeping the line from turning sloppy while Janus, having decided the whole business finally deserved his continued attention, moved branch to branch above you all like a dark little herald of poor manners.

The falcon, by contrast, stayed where Sansa put it and watched the woods with such restrained severity that it looked less like a bird and more like a disapproving little lord.

The boar had gone into thornier cover near water and did not mean to be found, which made the tracking slower and the air tighter.

Ghost found the turn first, Lady Vi caught it a breath later, and Jinx gave that low eager movement of hers that always meant she knew something living was close enough to matter, so all three of you slowed and spread a little.

Sansa was the one who first saw the brush shift where there ought not have been any wind, and because she hissed the warning instead of shouting it the rest of you had time to ready yourselves before the boar burst properly out.

Janus, who had until then contributed mainly arrogance, suddenly began cawing with such violent indignation from somewhere above and behind the beast that the boar broke a heartbeat sooner than it might have, and that one stupid miraculous piece of timing gave all of you the opening you needed.

Jon shot first and struck well, because his virtue in a hunt had always been that he wasted nothing, and Sansa loosed just after him with a steadier hand than you might once have expected under pressure.

Your own shot landed last but hardest, because by then the boar had committed itself and the line of it was clear, and once the shafts were in the wolves were on it too, with Ghost swift and relentless, Jinx all savage momentum, and Lady Vi far more controlled than either of the others while still every bit as serious.

The thing did not last long after that, though it felt longer in the blood of it.

When it was done, and the boar lay still while the wolves paced and huffed around it with the high bright energy of creatures pleased with their work, the three of you stood there breathing hard and looking at one another with that startled satisfaction real hunts sometimes leave behind when they have gone right but not too easily.

Above all of that, Janus landed nearby and gave one self important croak that made it very difficult not to accuse him of taking full credit.

The falcon turned its head toward him then with that same severe expression as before, and if a bird could convey the thought that another bird was a disgrace to the sky, then Sansa’s falcon managed it beautifully.

The ride home was easier than the walk in had been, though not quieter, because Sansa could no longer hide how pleased she was.

Her falcon had not mastered the hunt in a single morning, but it had worked, it had obeyed, and more importantly, it had begun to feel like a true hunting companion rather than an elegant project.

Janus, meanwhile, spent much of the ride being watched with cool contempt by the falcon whenever it was allowed to turn his way, which amused you enough that even the weight of the boar seemed lighter.

By the time Winterfell came back into view, the whole outing had settled into one of those bright, useful memories that feel solid almost as soon as they are made.

Sansa had proven something to herself, Jon had been exactly as dependable as ever, the wolves had worked well together, and Janus had somehow managed to remain both a nuisance and an accidental asset, which was likely the most Janus outcome possible.

If the falcon meant to settle accounts with him later, and all signs suggested it did, then that was a matter for another day, but for the moment, you were simply glad to know that at least one other creature in Winterfell had finally taken the proper measure of him.

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Skills:

Combat:

(6) Westerosi CQC - 15/100 (+20) (Talented In North)

(5) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 35/100 (+10)

(7) Northern Archery - 45/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(4) Northern Equestrianism - 92/100 (+12) (Knack)

(5) Heavy Armour - 85/100 (+30) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(6) Interpersonal Communication - 45/100 (+15) (Skilled)

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

(9) Management - 60/100 (+30) (Prodigious)

(3) Stewardship - 79/100 (+7) (Knack)

(3) Northern Law - 61/100 (+7) (Knack)

(3) Westerosi Law - 51/100 (+7) (Knack)

Language:

(6) Common Speaking - 45/100 (+15) (Knack)

(6) Old Tongue Speaking - 60/100 (+15) (Knack)

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

(5) Common Reading - 45/100 (+10)

(2) Westerosi Runes - 90/100 (+10)

(4) Valyrian Reading - 80/100 (+10)

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(4) Math(s) - 100/100 (+10)

(4) Accounts - 100/100 (+10)

(6) Northern History - 90/100 (+15) (Knack)

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

(5) Northern Peoples - 55/100 (+10)

(4) Westerosi Peoples - 80/100 (+10)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(5) Northern Hunting - 15/100 (+26)

(3) Fishing - 26/100 (+25)

(2) Swimming - 86/100 (+25)

(1) Seacraft - 44/100 (+10)

(2) Climbing - 74/100 (+30) (Skilled In North)

(2) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 32/100 (+10)

(5) Herbology - 90/100 (+50) (Prodigious)

War:

(4) Strategy - 25/100 (+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: 18

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T5 = Power/Skill for a Prominent Figure

L5 = Slightly 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 (On Cooldown 1/2)

S2 - Steam Games

S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30)

S4 - World Rolls List (D12)

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Information:

1 - Clearing up the Long Lake Situation:

There seems to be some confusion around the recent history of Long Lake, so I want to clear a few things up before people start building headcanons on the wrong foundation.

First, the political baseline.

The family that built Heartsgrove Castle at the southern end of Long Lake died out several centuries ago, and since then the people of the lake, especially those living in Long Lake Province outside Heart of the Gods Town, have grown very used to the idea of simply not having a lord close at hand.

When House Stark had a younger sibling they trusted, that sibling would sometimes be sent out to become Lord of Long Lake, and every so often that even produced a cadet Stark branch, but for one reason or another that arrangement never held in the long run.

So what you get instead are long stretches where Long Lake is ruled from afar by the Starks of Winterfell, and when Winterfell rules the province at a distance their usual policy is to keep taxes and dues at the absolute minimum, mostly so the place can sustain itself without demanding much attention.

That worked well enough to keep the province alive, but it also left it stagnant.

Now, one thing I think people are flattening too much is the geography of the place.

Heartsgrove in the south and Heart of the Gods Town in the north are both fairly self-governing in practice, and neither of them is exactly crying out for constant lordly intervention.

Heart of the Gods Town is established, active, and important in its own right.

Heartsgrove Castle can take care of itself.

If Long Lake Province consisted only of those 2 places, then the current arrangement would look a lot less broken than it actually is.

The issue is that Long Lake Province is not just Heartsgrove and Heart of the Gods Town.

It also includes a whole chain of little villages up and down Long Lake itself, plus smaller villages and hamlets farther inland, especially to the west, and there are also settlements nearer the Kingsroad that are much less impressive, much less secure, and much more used to being left to fend for themselves.

That is where a lot of the real weakness of the province sits, and that is also where this woman has much of her strength.

The bigger places can weather neglect.

The smaller ones cannot do so nearly as well, but they have had to get used to it anyway.

Over time that has produced a local political instinct that values low taxes and local self reliance above ambitious improvement, because from their point of view support rarely arrives, but taxes always can.

So when people suggest all sorts of ways to improve the Long Lake economy, and a lot of those ideas are good, it is worth remembering that very little of that development already exists not because no one ever thought of it, but because nobody with enough authority, money, and long term focus has actually been present long enough to push it through and keep pushing.

That brings us to the more recent history.

When Uncle Ned returned from the war and sent his brother to Long Lake to become its lord, the first thing our father tried to do was start some of those long delayed improvement efforts.

The problem is that he never got very far, and most of what he began stayed small, uncertain, or half formed.

Then his wife died, and he left for the Wall, which meant he departed with most of those projects unfinished and the province left in an awkward middle state.

That included the extra taxes that had been built up into some sort of development fund, or at least something meant to become one, except by the time enough years had passed nobody seems to have known clearly what the money was still for.

That is where the tax crisis came from.

The woman we rolled last round helped bring it to a head, yes, but the crisis itself was going to happen sooner or later anyway, because people will only keep paying a tax for so long if they cannot see what it is doing, and by that point they had been asked to do exactly that for more than a decade.

This is why I keep stressing that she is not secretly evil.

She is not laundering the money.

She is not plotting some grand usurpation.

She is not trying to seize resources that everybody knows are sitting somewhere waiting to be stolen.

What she is doing is defending what she sees as the traditional and practical way of keeping these poorer villages alive, which is to leave as much of their labor and produce in their own hands as possible so they can solve their own problems with their own limited resources.

From her point of view, and from the point of view of a lot of the smaller settlements, extra taxation does not look like investment.

It looks like unnecessary greed directed at places that already have enough trouble and not enough margin.

That is why she has legitimacy.

Her authority is not based on pure obstruction.

It is based on the fact that the places most dependent on that low tax tradition are not the impressive endpoints of the province.

They are the smaller villages and hamlets that have spent generations learning not to expect help, and therefore learning to value being left alone almost as much as being protected.

So our first problem when we arrive is not a lack of ideas.

It is legitimacy.

If we get there and immediately start raising taxes, people are going to question us, and they are going to expect quick visible results, because the last lord who raised taxes for improvement spent years producing nothing the locals could actually point at and say, yes, that is where our money went.

That existing resentment is what gives this woman so much weight.

She is not the Mountain that Rides.

She is not some creature of pure malice.

She is a fair obstacle with a long local memory behind her, and that makes her more dangerous politically than a simple villain would be.

That also means getting rid of her by force would be an risky idea.

Within Long Lake Province there is technically very little we could not do if we were determined enough, and banishing her is not beyond our reach, but law and wisdom are not the same thing, and being seen driving out or crushing a woman the locals view as fair and protective would be catastrophic for our standing.

The same goes for anything darker.

We do not need to hire a Faceless Man or anything equally unhinged.

If we were even remotely implicated in her death, it would do dramatic damage to our reputation and make ruling the province harder, not easier.

So the real solution is not removal.

It is outclassing her.

If we want people to trust our martial skill, then we need to show it in ways they respect.

If we want people to trust our administrative skill, then we need to rule well, spend visibly, and start implementing some of the improvements people in thread have already been suggesting.

That is how we get the people on side.

That is how we weaken her position without making ourselves look like tyrants.

And if it comes to it later, that is also how we make retirement look more attractive to her than continued resistance.

The good news is that we are not walking in empty-handed.

When we reach Long Lake we should have a very respectable nest egg to work with, and that gives us something the previous regime never really had in coherent form, which is the ability to start producing immediate visible results before asking too much patience from people who have every reason to be suspicious.

So the core issue is not whether Long Lake can be improved, because it absolutely can.

The issue is that it has spent centuries getting used to distance and neglect, and more than a decade being asked to trust a tax that never turned into anything concrete.

That makes the people wary, makes this woman influential, and means our first victories there are going to have to be practical, obvious, and hard to argue with.

That is the real shape of the problem as I see it.

2 - Letters with Shireen Baratheon.

We have an ongoing correspondence with Shireen.

But there have been some requests to bring this forward somehow, and I want to emphasise that I’ve heard it, I’m just not sure how to implement something like this.

Would you want to vote on what to write her about?

Or is it just that you'd like us to be attempting some kind of goal with the letters?

Or did you lot want to actually write some short (they’d be carried by ravens) letters to include in the chapters?

I’m open to ideas here.

I’m just not sure what the desired form of this would be, beyond steadily increasing our reputation with her, as we have been in the background, just like the language training or background hunting.

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - What should Sansa’s new Birb be named?

Funny Examples:

Hawkeye

Wingston

Flapjack

Beakman

Serious Examples:

Merlin

Winter

Rowan

Tempest