House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Combat - 0

A2 - Leisure - 19

A3 - Scholarly - 2

A4 - Diplomacy - 17

A5 - Language - 1

A6 - Communications - 23

S1 - Wikipedia - 12

S2 - Steam - 0

S3 - Paradox - 34

S4 - World - 16

Names: So Far

Deamon's Pyre - 10

Widowmaker - 8

Avalanche - 3

Armads - 2

Tor - 2

Tyrfing - 1

Drake Slayer - 1

Widow's Wail - 1

Ruin - 1

Kingsbane - 1

Mercy’s End - 1

Last Word - 1

Red Harvest - 1

Reckoning - 1

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Europa Universalis 4 Wiki

Thanks to All Roads Lead To Rome, all roads in Westeros are brought back to their maximum quality condition.

They are not upgraded, and this is a one-time buff, so they will go back to degrading after this.

But following this, anything in Westeros that someone thinks of as a road just became as clear and high-quality as it ever was in the past.

This change will occur not at the same time, but whenever nobody is looking at the road.

So the full change will likely take a few days, but the key is that nobody will see it change, even if it’s obvious that there was some kind of rapid change.

(Also, FYI, but there is not one single page on any of the paradox Wikis about a single object.

There are a few lists of objects available in the game, but nothing where it’s just one object.

In terms of quest mechanics, this means that using Paradox Wiki’s on an Object/Effect roll will guarantee that what we get is an effect, not an object.

If this doesn't bother you, then carry on, but I figured I’d tell you regardless as an FYI.)

World: Warhammer Fantasy Wiki

Thanks to the Scarzini, we now have shares in an Essosi Trading company, and thus gain an additional +1 Resources per turn from now on.

This brings us up to 5 Resources Per Turn!

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Story:

By the time Domeric Bolton had been in Winterfell a few days, Rob had already decided he was more useful than most guests had any right to be.

That was partly because Domeric had the sense to be impressed by Rob’s little troupe instead of treating it like childish nonsense, and partly because once Rob started talking about mummeries and old tales and favorite roles, Domeric admitted he liked plays well enough even if he preferred providing music to acting himself.

That was all Rob needed to hear.

The moment Domeric mentioned he could play the harp well enough to carry a full performance, Rob looked at him like the old gods themselves had wrapped him up and dropped him into Winterfell’s yard.

From there, it was settled with almost insulting speed that Domeric was joining the troupe, whether he had meant to or not.

Since that was happening anyway, you asked if you could join in as well.

Rob gave you a measuring look, then decided that if you were going to hover around him anyway, you might as well be useful.

He told you flatly that if they were doing the tale he had in mind, then somebody needed to explain what in seven hells was happening before the audience got lost between one beast shape and the next.

So that became your role, not a hero, not a fool, and not even a proper player.

You were the narrator, which suited you well enough.

The play itself was one of the older stories, the sort Rob had lately taken a shine to once the troupe started poking at riverlander myths and tales from the age of heroes.

This one had been twisted northward and made older still.

Instead of some southern sorceress, the tale centered on an ancient greenseer woman from back when the First Men were everywhere, and the old gods were not something whispered over in one corner of a hall but the gods of nearly everyone worth naming.

Instead of pretty little transformations, the story had skinchanging in it, or at least the half-remembered storybook version of skinchanging that people in the North still liked to pretend had once been common.

That alone made it feel grander than the troupe’s usual farces.

Domeric helped more than anyone had expected.

He did not act, and Rob never tried to force him into it once he heard the first few notes Domeric could pull from the harp.

Instead, he sat off to one side with the instrument across his lap, plucking and shifting the mood of the whole thing scene by scene in a way that made even rehearsal feel more serious.

Rob, of course, had taken the lead for himself.

He played the servant boy who was meant to be invisible at first and then became the center of the whole story after one foolish mistake.

One of his friends played the old greenseer.

Another played her son.

The rest handled whatever else was needed: beast shapes, field hands, the man who found the child, and all the little parts between.

You were the one who opened it.

When the day came, and the audience had gathered, with winter town folk mixed among servants and children and the usual handful of curious onlookers, you stepped forward and did your best not to think too hard about how many eyes had landed on you.

Then you began telling them this was a tale from the elder days, from when the First Men still ruled almost all the land worth naming, and greenseers had not yet passed so far into story that sensible men could pretend they had never existed at all.

You said that in those days there had lived a greenseer woman of great power, and that she had one son whom she meant to make wise above all others.

That was when the music began.

Domeric kept it low at first, something slow and watchful that made the scene feel older than Winterfell’s walls.

The greenseer set to brewing her strange draught, speaking over it in half-remembered words, while the son stood near and the servant boy did as he was told and nothing more.

Rob played that part better than you had expected.

He kept himself small in the role at first, quiet and useful and easy to overlook, which only made the turn sharper when it came.

You explained how the brew was meant to gift deep wisdom, old memory, and sight beyond the common lot of men, and how such a thing was too powerful to be handled carelessly.

Then came the mistake.

The draught spat from the fire, as tales like that always seem to require, and the servant boy burned his hand and raised it to his mouth on instinct.

That was all it took, and Rob jerked back like he had been struck, while Domeric cut the music so sharply that more than one person in the crowd jumped.

You told the audience that in that instant the servant boy had taken in the wisdom meant for another, and that with it had come the knowledge that the greenseer would never forgive the theft, whether it had been meant or not.

So he ran, and that was where the play truly began.

The music quickened, and from there, your job mattered a great deal more.

You had to tell the audience what they were seeing before each shift happened, otherwise it would have turned into a mess of cloaks and props and children trying to work out why one boy had dropped to all fours while another had grabbed a pair of feathered sleeves.

You explained that the servant boy fled by the old skinchanging arts, slipping his spirit into one beast after another in hopes of escape.

You told them he first wore the shape of a hare and fled through brush and root, and the greenseer answered him in the shape of a hound.

After that, he took to the water as a trout, only for her to pursue him as a river hunter, leaner, and crueler than he was.

Then he rose into the air as a dark-winged bird, and she followed as a hawk.

Domeric changed the music each time, and that was what made the whole thing work.

He did not just fill the silence.

He made each turn feel different, quick and panicked on land, cold and strange on the water, then sharp and open once the thing took to the sky.

By then, the audience was fully with the story.

Children leaned forward, grown men stopped pretending they were only half paying attention, and one old woman from the winter town even muttered a prayer to the old gods when the greenseer took the hawk shape.

At last, you told them that the servant boy, desperate and running out of both shapes and luck, hid himself in something small and humble among the harvest.

The greenseer found him anyway.

That part was stranger than the rest, and the music turned softer and tenser all at once.

Then the tale shifted again.

You explained that what the greenseer had swallowed was not only the servant boy, but the stolen gift itself, and that in time she found herself carrying a child marked by old power.

When the child was born, she could not bring herself to kill him, for whether it was pity, fear, or the hand of the old gods on the matter, even the tale could not say.

So instead, she gave him over to fate.

That part played quieter than the chase.

One of the boys carried out a wrapped bundle, while another played the man who found the child.

The harp softened with it all until the thing felt less like a play and more like some old hall story that had wandered into the world by mistake.

Then came the end.

You told them the child grew into a singer of the First Men, one whose songs held memory and old truth so tightly that names which should have vanished instead endured.

Rob stepped back into the center for that part, no longer the frightened servant boy from the opening, but the grown singer the story had been bending toward the whole time.

He had the crowd by then and knew it.

You could hear it in the way he spoke, and see it in the little smile he wore when the last of Domeric’s music rose behind him, and your own final lines tied the whole tale shut.

When it was done, people clapped harder than they usually did for Rob’s little productions.

Not wildly, but with the honest kind of approval that meant they had followed it and liked what they found at the end.

Rob looked pleased enough to burst, though he did a fair job pretending he had expected no less.

Domeric got his own share of praise as well, and rightly so, because without the harp the whole thing would’ve been half a tale and twice as confusing.

As for you, you were mostly just glad you had not stumbled over your words and turned the whole business into a public hanging of your dignity.

Better than that, though, you had actually been useful.

Rob had not handed you some pity role to keep you busy while the real players did the work.

He had given you a job that mattered, and by the end of it, you had done it well enough that nobody could say the play would’ve worked as cleanly without you.

That felt nice, and as the crowd broke apart and people drifted off smiling, while Rob and Domeric were already half-talking over what they might do next, you had the odd little feeling that the troupe had crossed some invisible line without quite meaning to.

It was still a game, still children playing at old stories and mummeries, but now it was a game they were actually getting good at.

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Only a few days later, whatever warmth the play had left behind got swept aside by news so sudden that for a little while Winterfell seemed to forget how to breathe.

It was Uncle Ned himself who announced it.

Jon Arryn, his foster father and one of his oldest friends, was dead, and he had died suddenly in King’s Landing.

That alone cast a shadow over the hall, because even those of you too young to know the man well could hear what the loss meant in Uncle Ned’s voice.

Then he went on to say that the royal family would be visiting Winterfell in a few weeks.

That changed the mood at once, not because anyone stopped caring that Jon Arryn was dead, but because even grief had a hard time standing unchallenged against the sheer shock and excitement of a royal visit.

So the hall ended up in the strange position of trying to keep solemn faces for Uncle Ned’s sake while everyone’s thoughts were already racing ahead to kings, queens, princes, and all the chaos that would come with them.

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Skills:

Combat:

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

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

(8) Northern Archery - 85/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(5) Northern Equestrianism - 75/100 (+10) (Knack)

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

Diplomacy:

(7) Interpersonal Communication - 55/100 (+35) (Skilled)

(3) Public Speaking - 75/100 (+50) (Skilled)

(10) Management - 140/200 (+30) (Prodigious)

(4) Stewardship - 45/100 (+7) (Knack)

(4) Northern Law - 25/100 (+7) (Knack)

(4) Westerosi Law - 15/100 (+7) (Knack)

Language:

(7) Common Speaking - 50/100 (+15) (Knack)

(7) Old Tongue Speaking - 65/100 (+15) (Knack)

(6) Valyrian Speaking - 5/100 (+15) (Knack) ←

(6) Common Reading - 15/100 (+10)

(3) Westerosi Runes - 60/100 (+10)

(5) Valyrian Reading - 50/100 (+10)

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(5) Math(s) - 80/100 (+10)

(6) Accounts - 50/100 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

(8) Northern History - 5/100 (+20) (Knack) ←

(3) Westerosi History - 75/100 (+15)

(6) Northern Peoples - 35/100 (+10)

(5) Westerosi Peoples - 60/100 (+10)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(6) Northern Hunting - 60/100 (+15)

(3) Fishing - 86/100 (+7)

(3) Swimming - 46/100 (+7)

(1) Seacraft - 86/100 (+7)

(3) Climbing - 59/100 (+7) (Skilled In North)

(3) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 11/100 (+50) ←

(7) Herbology - 90/100 (+30) (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)

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Earning: 5

Spending: 0

Banked: 13

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Rolls for Next Turn: (BEST ROLL!)

T6 = Personal Power/Skill

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, + Domeric. - 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: ++ Domeric, ++ 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 - Reputations as of Chapter 43 (In order of best to least.)

Jon - Lifelong Friends

Sansa - Lifelong Friends

Arya - Lifelong Friends

Ned - Lifelong Friends

Rob - Friendly (+)

Yara - Friendly

Cat - Good (-)

(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 - The royal family won't arrive until Turn 2 of age 14, so should we buy someone something in the meantime?

Examples:

(20R) A Horse for Jon (save up until we can afford it, then buy)

(14R) Buy 7 Small statues of Cat’s 7 Gods (+++++ Cat)

(2R) A Kraken necklace for Yara.

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

(1R) Some Veil-style food for Ned.

(4R) Get Needle for Arya (+++++ Arya)