House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Combat - 2

A2 - Leisure - 8

A3 - Scholarly - 3

A4 - Diplomacy - 4

A5 - Language - 38

A6 - Communications - 5

S1 - Wikipedia - 16

S2 - Steam - 0

S3 - Paradox - 0

S4 - World - 44

Ideas: (Tie Means Both Win!)

(17R) Go to Dorne and bring back some Larvesta for Northern Silk. - 21

(6R) Take a Weirwood Sapling and Book on the Old Gods to Dragonstone for Shireen - 21

(6R) Go to Kings Landing to discover what's going on down there. - 19

(12R) Protect Shireen Baratheon for a year + Teach her about Old Gods and Long Lake. - 8

(20R) Advertise the Springlords in the South for a Year. - 4

(9R) Meet Domeric Bolton in the Veil and invite him to Winterfell on the way back. - 4

(4R) Investigate the God's Eye and the Green Men there. - 2

(20R) Capture the Larvasta in Dorne and give one to Shireen on the way back. - 3

(9R) Go to Braavos to see if rumors of Targaryen buildup there are true. - 1

(20R) Travel the south seeking any recent changes or a Year. - 1

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Forgotten Realms Wiki

Thanks to Tarnheel Embuirhan, Edmure Tully will now remember his past life as Lord of Mintarn and the second-best swordsman in the Realms.

As a result of this, he gains a decent buff to all the loardly skills and sailing skills, but also a pretty huge buff to his Swordsmanship and CQC skills.

He has suddenly gone from average at best in most of these skills to above average in most, and among the best with swordsmanship.

(Is it just me, or is the RNG really favoring Swordsmanship in this Quest?

Eh, probably just the result of the Wikis we’re using this time.)

(But seriously, this guy’s page was two paragraphs about him losing a duel to the greatest swordsman, and that's it.

Not exactly a ton of ways to interpret this roll other than “suddenly you're a great swordsman.”)

World: Coppermind Wiki

Thanks to Ivy, Joffrey "Baratheon" now has Ivy as an Aspect or a hallucination of a woman who holds on to his suddenly gained knowledge of Psychology and Cold Reading.

He does not have direct access to this new knowledge, but Ivy is on his side and will provide him with advice based on his goals and the information he has about a situation.

It’s a kind of wacky way of doing things, but make no mistake that this will prove to be a great boon for Joffrey in the long run.

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Story:

Tulin, heir to Clan Rito, came down to Winterfell looking for adventure and said so plain enough that nobody had to guess at it, because in his mind if you were to be his lord in a few years then it only made sense to start asking you for dangerous work now, while he was young enough to enjoy it properly and summer still made the roads worth trusting.

What made that land a little harder was that he was barely a man grown, only a few years older than you, and yet already handsome in the easy, (unfair) way some people simply are, with quick confidence, a ready grin, and the sort of bright impatience that made it obvious he wanted to get moving before the season turned against him.

Any thought that he might be more enthusiasm than substance died in the yard, though, because when he stood against you, Sansa, and Jon in an archery match he did not merely win, he made the rest of you look half trained by comparison, and by the end of it you were seriously wondering whether he might be the best archer in Winterfell.

Jon was still the better swordsman, certainly, but after that, there was no real doubt that Tulin had the skill to make a long journey alone if he kept his head and did not boast too loudly in the wrong places.

Sansa, meanwhile, spent a truly noticeable amount of time blushing whenever he was near, which you caught first and Jon caught soon after, and from there the 2 of you took a great deal of pleasure in teasing her whenever Tulin was safely out of earshot, which only made her turn pinker and deny everything much too quickly to be believed.

That made the rest of it easier.

Tulin offered to pay part of the journey himself so long as the task was worth the road, and because he was young enough to want glory, skilled enough to justify the risk, and eager enough that he would never forgive you for wasting the chance, you judged him well suited to what you had in mind.

With Uncle Ned’s permission, you had a sapling taken from the Winterfell godswood, paired it with a book on the old gods and their most basic myths and lessons, and ordered Tulin to carry both south to Princess Shireen Baratheon as gifts from you.

After that, he was not to turn north but continue on to Dorne, where he was to chase rumors of some local creature said to produce silk and bring back as many as he could keep alive if the tales proved true.

The whole thing ought to take him the better part of a year and carry him across most of Westeros, which was exactly the sort of adventure he had come asking for, and when he rode out of Winterfell with most of your saved coin in his purse and delight written plain across his face, he looked very much like a young man stepping into the first story of his life that he would someday think worth retelling.

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When Sansa asked to join you, Yara, and Arya for one of Omek’s stories, nobody refused her, though Arya did look briefly suspicious of any tale chosen at Sansa’s request and Yara looked amused enough by that to let it pass without comment.

Omek settled himself by the fire, gave Sansa a long look that said he knew exactly what sort of story she wanted, and then began in the Common Tongue for once, though his voice still carried the weight of something older.

He told of Diarmuid of the Pines, a young archer from an old hill clan sworn to Winterfell in an age when the wolfswood ran deeper and the winters bit harder.

Diarmuid, Omek said, had been handsome in the way songs always insist upon and real men tend to resent, with quick hands, quicker eyes, and a face that made old women bless him and young women stare longer than courtesy required.

Old Nan would likely have called that a poor foundation for wisdom, but Omek let it stand because beauty was not the point, only one more thing the story refused to leave out.

Diarmuid’s true gift was the bow.

Not merely that he could shoot straight, because plenty of men could do that on a still day from a flat field, but that he could send an arrow through moving brush, over broken ground, and into the narrow living places where a beast kept its luck.

He knew the woods the way some men knew halls, and could read from bent stems, one print, or a scrap of hair on bark what had passed and how long ago.

In those years, there came a white hart into the Wolfswood, though hart was perhaps too simple a word for it.

This beast was pale as old bone, with antlers like bleached branches and eyes that men swore showed too much thought in them to belong to any honest creature.

It did not merely raid orchards or strip gardens.

It led hunters astray, drew hounds into bog water, and was seen too often near old weirwoods for sensible people to be easy about it.

Three hunting parties went after it in one autumn.

One came back empty-handed.

One came back short two men.

The third never returned at all.

So the beast stopped being game and became a grievance.

The hill lord whose lands bordered that part of the wood sent for hunters from all around, and among those who came was Diarmuid, still young enough that older men smiled at him before he shot and stopped smiling after.

The lord promised rich reward for the hart’s death, but the old ones in his hall wanted proof, because by then half the country had decided it was no beast at all but some spiteful thing sent to test whether men still deserved to keep the old woods.

Yara muttered that half the country was usually stupid, which made Arya grin at once and made Sansa hide a smile.

Diarmuid went alone.

That, Omek said, was where the story proved him worth remembering, because a party makes noise, argues over sign, and brings too many fears into one place at once, while one good hunter may pass where six poor ones ruin the ground just by breathing on it.

He took his bow, a long knife, a coil of rope, and food enough for a week, then passed under the trees and followed the white hart’s sign deeper than any of the others had dared.

He found where it had crossed streams without sinking.

He found where it had stood under branches too low for any stag of its size.

He found where wolves had seen it and turned away.

For three days, he tracked it, and for three days it kept ahead of him, never fleeing wildly, always just near enough that he knew he had not lost it and just far enough that he could not catch a clean sight of it.

That was when he began to understand that the hunt itself was being managed, and not by him.

On the fourth evening, he reached a clearing ringed by old pines, and at the center of it stood a half-buried stone older than any holdfast still standing in the North.

There, the white hart waited for him in the last of the light.

It did not paw the earth or lower its head like a common stag.

It only stood and watched while Diarmuid fitted an arrow to the string and held himself still enough that even the trees seemed to lean closer.

Then the hart moved.

Omek said no arrow in the world could have taken it then unless the shot had already been living in the bow before the fingers drew, but Diarmuid had tracked too long and learned too much to loose at panic.

He watched the line of the beast instead.

He watched where it favored one foreleg.

He watched how it turned when it meant to break for cover.

And when it sprang, he shot not at where it was but where it had already decided to be.

The arrow went in low behind the shoulder.

The hart ran.

Diarmuid followed the blood through dusk, through bramble, through a strip of dark wet ground that should have swallowed any normal creature, and at last he found it down in a run of stones below a weirwood whose roots had broken the earth into long pale claws.

There the white hart lay dying, and there, Omek said, Diarmuid saw what no one else had lived to see.

It was a beast.

Only a beast.

No spirit.

No god thing.

But it was old beyond reason, cunning beyond any natural measure, and scarred with half a dozen old wounds that would have killed lesser creatures, so men had made a monster of it because they had not known what else to call something that had survived so long and learned so much.

Diarmuid knelt beside it, placed a hand on its neck as it died, and thanked it for the hunt before cutting free the antlers as proof.

Sansa, who had not stopped listening properly since the story began, asked whether the impossible shot had really been impossible or only impossible for everyone except him.

Omek said that was the right question.

Then he said yes.

Diarmuid returned with the antlers and the hide, and when the hill lord laid eyes on them, he paid what he had promised and offered more besides, but the tale did not keep Diarmuid for his reward or for his looks or even for the white hart itself.

It kept him because he had gone where better-equipped men had failed, because he had trusted skill over fear, and because when the strange thing in the wood turned out to be flesh and blood after all, he had still met it on its own terms and won.

Then Omek looked at Sansa, not at Arya or you, and said that was the better lesson in the tale.

Most people want a monster because monsters excuse failure.

A monster lets a man say no arrow could have done it, no hunter could have found it, no skill could have mattered.

But Diarmuid’s greatness lay in seeing that the thing could be known, and once it was known, it could be hunted.

Sansa smiled at that in the quiet inward way she had when something struck home deeper than she meant to show, and Arya immediately declared that if she ever found a white hart, she would not wait three days to shoot it just to prove she had better sense than old heroes.

Yara rolled her eyes.

Omek endured it.

And the story, solemn as he had meant it, ended up belonging to all four of you all the same.

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Skills:

Combat:

(6) Westerosi CQC - 75/100 (+20) (Talented In North)

(5) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 65/100 (+10)

(8) Northern Archery - 20/100 (+30) (Skilled) ←

(5) Northern Equestrianism - 40/100 (+10) (Knack)

(6) Heavy Armour - 75/100 (+30) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(6) Interpersonal Communication - 90/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(2) Public Speaking - 15/100 (+5) (Skilled)

(10) Management - 50/200 (+30) (Prodigious)

(4) Stewardship - 24/100 (+7) (Knack)

(4) Northern Law - 4/100 (+7) (Knack) ←

(3) Westerosi Law - 94/100 (+7) (Knack)

Language:

(7) Common Speaking - 5/100 (+30) (Knack) ←

(7) Old Tongue Speaking - 20/100 (+30) (Knack) ←

(5) Valyrian Speaking - 60/100 (+30) (Knack)

(5) Common Reading - 85/100 (+20)

(3) Westerosi Runes - 30/100 (+20)

(5) Valyrian Reading - 20/100 (+20) ←

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(5) Math(s) - 30/100 (+10)

(5) Accounts - 30/100 (+10)

(7) Northern History - 35/100 (+15) (Knack)

(3) Westerosi History - 20/100 (+10)

(5) Northern Peoples - 85/100 (+10)

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

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(6) Northern Hunting - 15/100 (+13)

(3) Fishing - 65/100 (+7)

(3) Swimming - 25/100 (+7)

(1) Seacraft - 65/100 (+7)

(3) Climbing - 38/100 (+7) (Skilled In North)

(2) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 55/100 (+3)

(6) Herbology - 100/100 (+30) (Prodigious)

War:

(4) Strategy - 100/100 (+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)

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Earning: 4

Spending: 18

Banked: 8

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T6 = Personal Power/Skill

L4 = Just what's described

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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: ++ 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

S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30)

S4 - World Rolls List (D12) (On Cooldown 1/1)

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Information:

1 - Reputations as of Chapter 39 (In order of best to least.)

Jon - Lifelong Friends

Sansa - Lifelong Friends

Ned - Lifelong Friends

Arya - Lifelong Friends (-)

Rob - Friendly

Yara - Friendly

Cat - Ok

(Neutral → Fine → Ok → Good → Friendly → Friends → Close Friends → BFF’s)

(+) Means we’re one “+” with that person from it going up a rank.

(-) Means we’re one “-” with that person from it going down a rank.

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - Where should we send our Minion(s)?

Ideas can include both of them, but the cost will increase.

Examples:

(0R) Keep them both in Winterfell

(6R) Berenice - to Castle Black as a Healer (Investigate the Watch/Our Father).

(10R) Omek - to Domeric Bolton in the Veil and invite him to Winterfell.

(6R) Omek - to investigate the God's Eye and the Green Men there.

(6R) Berenice - to investigate the God's Eye and the Green Men there.

(6R) Omek - to help the Last Rite Order to buff our reputation with the North.

(6R) Berenice - to help the Last Rite Order to buff our reputation with the North.

(12R) Omek - to King’s Landing to discover what's going on down there.

(12R) Berenice - to King's Landing to discover what's going on down there.