House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Combat - 5

A2 - Leisure - 31

A3 - Scholarly - 0

A4 - Diplomacy - 0

A5 - Language - 6

A6 - Communications - 13

S1 - Wikipedia - 0

S2 - Steam - 0

S3 - Paradox - 40

S4 - World - 15

Ideas: So Far

(2R) A Hunting Tutor to bond better with Jon and Sansa. - 22

(5R) A Book of Old Gods Legends for Shireen. - 14

(4R) A Weirwood Bow for Sansa. - 9

(2R) A Kraken necklace for Yara. - 7

(10R) A Kraken necklace for Rob, Theon, and Yara - 4

(8R) A Kraken necklace for Theon and Yara. - 3

(0R) Some weirwood saplings for Shireen - 3

(8R) A Weirwood Bow for Jon and Sansa. - 2

-----

Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Europa Universalis 2 Wiki

Thanks to the Manufactories, the Wildlings and Men of the Night's Watch have now been given knowledge of how to improve the manufacturing of goods.

This wasn't a packet of new knowledge per-say, just that every wildling now has an instinctive understanding of how to make anything they already know how to make more efficiently and on a larger or even mass scale.

Standardization is a bit of a weird gift to be given, but make no mistake that the wildlings view this as a gift from the Old Gods and will make use of it to upgrade their equipment and improve their lives.

In the long run, this would probably have caused the centralization of society beyond the wall, but with the looming threat… who knows what it’ll do.

World: Legend of Zelda Wiki

Thanks to Tulin, we have just acquired a 3rd minion!

Specifically, one of your soon-to-be Vassels (Lord Teba of Clan Rito) sent over his eldest son after he attained his majority.

While he could technically serve as your bodyguard, Tulin has requested some kind of Quest from you and has promised that he will partially use his own funds to do it, if you can give him a good one.

Notes:

1. The Rito are now a clan of First Men, not bird people, sorry.

2. There will be a 50% discount on whatever quest we want Tulin to perform.

3. Tulin’s quest must involve him leaving the North, or he will grow to resent you.

4. Keep in mind that while he’s a great archer (Level 9) and decent at most other things, he’s still only one guy, so don't go too crazy here.

-----

Story:

It had occurred to you that there was a difference between being children who hunted often and being hunters, and if the 3 of you meant to keep doing this well into later years, then it seemed foolish not to learn from somebody who made a living from the thing instead of simply a pastime.

So you went down into Winter Town asking after the best hunter currently to hand, which turned out not to be nearly so difficult as expected, because enough people knew exactly who you meant the moment you framed it properly, and before long all fingers started pointing toward one man who had come in from the Wolfswood with hides, smoked meat, and the sort of reputation that only attaches itself to people after enough winters fail to kill them.

That was how you found Harlan Pike.

He was broad-shouldered, weathered, and looked as though cold had spent years trying to carve the softness out of him and had mostly succeeded, while his beard had the rough, neglected quality of something that had never once been grown for appearance.

He did not bow prettily, did not look awed by rank, and did not waste a great many words before deciding whether any given person deserved more of them, which made him seem trustworthy almost at once.

His story came out in pieces rather than one neat telling, because that was the way of some men worth listening to, but the shape of it was plain enough, with him being the bastard of a bastard sent to the Night’s Watch, and with Mole’s Town being as near to a childhood home as he cared to claim.

He had chosen Pike instead of Snow when he was old enough to decide such things for himself, partly because Snow was a name every northern bastard could wear and partly because Pike, as he put it, was sharp, hard to grab, and his by choice instead of charity.

From there, he had grown into one of those men who ranged wide simply because sitting still did not suit him, and because Mole’s Town, the Wolfswood, the edge of the Gift, and all the long rough spaces between them were easier to understand than most people.

He was in Winter Town by luck more than anything else, selling what he had brought down before heading back north again, and once you explained what you wanted, he gave you a look that suggested noble children asking for real instruction had rarely improved his day in the past.

That skepticism lasted right up until Jon answered a few plain questions about spoor and sign without embarrassing himself, Sansa spoke cleanly enough about handling Tundra to show she had not spent months merely admiring the bird from a safe distance, and you made it plain that this was not meant to be some toy outing with ribbons tied around it afterward.

Even then, he still looked doubtful, but fair pay, honest interest, and the wolves likely helped more than any title did, and in the end, he agreed to take the 3 of you into the Wolfswood the next morning and show you what you had been missing.

Sansa left Tundra behind for that one, which was wise.

A falcon had its uses, and she was getting good enough with the bird now that there was real pride in it, but this was to be a lesson about the hunt itself, and Harlan Pike plainly had no interest in splitting his attention between half-trained birds and half-trained children on the same morning.

So it was Jon with Ghost, Sansa with Lady Vi, and you with Jinx, while Harlan took one long look at the wolves, grunted in what seemed to be approval, and then started teaching before the trees had even properly closed around you.

His first lesson was that game usually smelled you before it saw you and heard you before it smelled you, so if a hunter walked only where the ground was easiest and never once checked the air, then he deserved to go hungry.

He showed you how to feel the wind with damp fingers, how to watch what it did around trunks and low rises instead of pretending it blew one way merely because it had done so half a field ago, and how morning air, shaded ground, and open patches all shifted scent in ways people ignored because the nose seemed less noble than the eye.

That alone changed the way the wood felt, because once he said it, the whole forest stopped being only trees and cover and started becoming something that carried you outward to every creature ahead if you were not careful.

After that, he made the 3 of you stop looking only at tracks.

Tracks mattered, he said, but tracks were for fools and fresh snow if a man relied on them alone, because the real story lay in everything else, with bent grass, feeding sign, droppings, bark rubbed raw, paths worn by habit instead of panic, and low hidden beds where deer had lain up and left only the shape of themselves behind.

He pointed out where brush had been pushed through too recently to have sprung back, where soft ground had dried at the edges and where it had not, where something had passed feeding and where something had passed running, and every time he did it you found your mind catching the pattern faster than before, because once the signs stopped being separate little mysteries and started fitting together, the whole wood became easier to read.

Jon took to that in the way he took to most practical things, with quiet attention and no wasted pride.

Sansa surprised Harlan Pike more than once, which pleased you rather a lot, because though she was not the strongest tracker among you she had grown wonderfully sharp at noticing things once told where to look, and she spotted broken growth ahead twice before either you or Jon did, and caught the strange restless behavior of a few birds high in the brush that made Harlan nod and say she had good eyes for movement where other people saw only branches.

He sounded almost reluctant about the compliment, which made it land better.

You, for your own part, found yourself taking most strongly to the way all the pieces fit together.

A track mattered, yes, but only in company with everything else.

A path through brush mattered, but more if the ground, droppings, and feeding sign all agreed.

Harlan seemed to notice that you were not merely seeing what was there but also asking where an animal would choose to go next and why, and once he caught that, he began pressing you harder, with questions about slope, cover, scent, and whether a beast would turn toward water, away from wind, or into thicker growth once disturbed.

That was where the lesson became properly interesting, because it was no longer only about reading what had happened, but thinking ahead of it.

He showed you, too, that animals moved differently when feeding, bedding, traveling, or frightened, and that a hunter who learned the difference could save himself half a day’s wandering.

A stretched stride, churned mud, and broken brush spoke one language.

Steady spacing and an easy path spoke another.

An animal going somewhere it knew well left different signs from one driven out of cover in haste, and once Harlan pointed that out, you could not stop seeing it.

Ghost was the best at confirming such guesses, because Ghost had that cold, clean way of moving onto a line as though it had been laid down for him alone, but even Jinx, for all her bolder style, helped once the work sharpened and the sign freshened.

The hunt itself mattered less by then than the lesson, though it was no small thing that you did, in fact, get game before the day was done.

Harlan kept the wolves back longer than any of you would have on your own, and when Sansa looked as though she might object, he said that children too used to letting wolves solve their mistakes did not become hunters so much as well-accompanied spectators, which shut that down neatly enough.

So you worked the line yourselves, with Jon steady as ever, Sansa patient and quicker to notice than Harlan had expected, and you fitting the signs together with a growing sense that all of this was not simpler than you had thought before but larger.

By the time the prey was finally brought down, the satisfaction of it had less to do with meat than with knowing you had earned it differently than before.

Harlan did not praise people easily, which made his approval mean something when it came, and at the end of it, he told the 3 of you that you were all almost competent, which, from another man, might have sounded insulting, but from him felt near enough to a laurel crown.

Jon took that as he took most things, with quiet pleasure.

Sansa tried not to smile too broadly and failed.

You found yourself feeling oddly light under it, because what he had given you was not only instruction but the sense that the last few years of these hunts had amounted to something real.

And on the ride back toward Winterfell, with wolves trotting easily, the trees thinning, and the day settling into the sort of memory you knew would stay bright for a while, it struck you that this had become one of the few things you, Jon, and Sansa truly shared without strain.

The hunts had started as outings.

Then they had become a habit.

Now, with somebody like Harlan Pike taking them seriously enough to sharpen them, they had become something closer to a craft, and in learning it together, the 3 of you had, without quite meaning to, grown closer as family in the process.

-----

Skills:

Combat:

(6) Westerosi CQC - 55/100 (+20) (Talented In North)

(5) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 55/100 (+10)

(7) Northern Archery - 90/100 (+30) (Skilled)

(5) Northern Equestrianism - 30/100 (+26) (Knack)

(6) Heavy Armour - 45/100 (+30) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(6) Interpersonal Communication - 75/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(2) Public Speaking - 10/100 (+5) (Skilled)

(10) Management - 20/200 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

(4) Stewardship - 17/100 (+7) (Knack)

(3) Northern Law - 97/100 (+7) (Knack)

(3) Westerosi Law - 87/100 (+7) (Knack)

Language:

(6) Common Speaking - 75/100 (+15) (Knack)

(6) Old Tongue Speaking - 90/100 (+15) (Knack)

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

(5) Common Reading - 65/100 (+10)

(3) Westerosi Runes - 10/100 (+10) ←

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

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(5) Math(s) - 20/100 (+10)

(5) Accounts - 20/100 (+10)

(7) Northern History - 20/100 (+15) (Knack)

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

(5) Northern Peoples - 75/100 (+10)

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

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(6) Northern Hunting - 2/100 (+75) ←

(3) Fishing - 58/100 (+25)

(3) Swimming - 18/100 (+25) ←

(1) Seacraft - 58/100 (+7)

(3) Climbing - 31/100 (+50) (Skilled In North) ←

(2) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 52/100 (+10)

(6) Herbology - 70/100 (+50) (Prodigious) ←

War:

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

(1) Castrametation - 85/100 (+0)

(1) Poliorcetics - 85/100 (+0)

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

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

-----

Earning: 4

Spending: 2

Banked: 22

-----

Rolls for Next Turn:

T1 = Person/Event in the World

L6 = Moderately Convenient

-----

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: ++ Yara, + Arya, + 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)

-----

Information:

1 - Spent/Earned

Spent: 2 Resources

Gained: +++++ Jon, +++++ Sansa

(2 for the Tutor, 2 for the Hunting Action, and 1 for the synergy of doing both things on the same turn.)

(This helped a ton, so don't worry as much about getting to BFF.

Don’t ignore how close to the end we're getting.

But you lot shouldn't feel obligated to do nothing but Jon and Sansa actions for the next year.)

-----

Write-In/Questions:

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

Some ideas, with the discount applied:

(4R) Investigate the God’s Eye and the Green Men there.

(6R) Go to Kings Landing to discover what’s going on down there.

(9R) Go to Braavos to see if rumors of Targaryen buildup there are true.

(12R) Protect Shireen Baratheon for a year + Teach her about the Old Gods and Long Lake.

(17R) Go to Dorne and bring back some Larvesta for Northern Silk.