House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Combat - 8

A2 - Leisure - 30

A3 - Scholarly - 1

A4 - Diplomacy - 21

A5 - Language - 0

A6 - Communications - 10

S1 - Wikipedia - 16

S2 - Steam - 0

S3 - Paradox - 0

S4 - World - 54

Ideas: So Far

(4R) Get Needle for Arya (+++++ Arya) - 24

(2R) A Kraken necklace for Yara. - 16

(20R) A Horse for Jon (save up until we can afford it, then buy) - 11

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

(8R) A Kraken necklace for Theon and Yara. - 5

(1R) Some Veil-style food for Ned. - 2

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Forgotten Realms Wiki

Thanks to Heartsense, you are now immune to being snuck up on while conscious.

Specifically, you gain the ability to sense any creature or person nearby, along with a vague sense of direction and distance in reference to yourself.

World: Dragonlance Wiki

Thanks to the Sheath of Concealment, nobody will notice or remark upon the Valyrian steel catspaw dagger that Joffrey “Baratheon” took from his father's things.

Thanks to his ghostly tag-along, he will be aware of this effect, and so the dagger will be with him, even when it’s inappropriate, given its apparent ability to be unseen while sheathed.

Basically, it’s best to assume Joffrey is armed at all times, and with Valyrian steel at that.

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Story:

With the royal visit now only a few weeks away, Aunt Catelyn had taken on the air of a commander preparing for siege, except her battlefield was Winterfell itself and her enemies were dust, disorder, and any servant foolish enough to leave a task half done.

Every hall seemed to be getting scrubbed, counted, sorted, aired out, and then checked all over again, while every storeroom in the castle had apparently become a matter of grave importance.

Before long you had been roped into carrying messages, checking on deliveries, fetching small items from one end of the castle to the other, and standing in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time often enough that you began to suspect the whole place had turned against you.

Even Sansa, who liked order far more than you ever would, had begun to look a little worn around the edges by all of it, though she still tried her best to be useful whenever Aunt Catelyn fixed her with that sharp assessing stare.

Jon had it worse, or at least stranger, because Aunt Catelyn seemed to grow twice as tense whenever she happened to catch sight of him, as if his very existence made the whole business harder to bear.

So Jon had taken to spending as much time away from the castle as he could manage, and Uncle Ned, perhaps wisely, had not objected.

It was on one of those days that Jon came and found you, muttered that he had something worth seeing, and then quietly led you off before anyone could think of another errand to throw your way.

That plan would likely have worked better if Arya had not spotted the two of you first, and if Sansa had not decided at once that any escape from preparation was worth following.

By the time the four of you were outside the walls with the wolves at your heels and Janus drifting above like a black scrap of judgment with wings, the whole world felt easier to breathe in.

Arya was mostly just pleased not to be sent away, and when people did not speak to her like she was a fool or a baby she was genuinely pleasant company, lively without being bothersome and curious without needing everything explained twice.

Sansa, for her part, seemed openly delighted to have another excuse to use the bow you had gotten her, and she had already begun running her thumb along the smooth grip in that absent little way of hers that meant she was thinking about shooting something.

Jon only looked relieved to be back where the air did not feel so strained, though he soon enough reminded the rest of you that this was not merely an excuse to flee Winterfell, because he had found signs out in the wolfswood and wanted a second opinion before deciding what they meant.

So the four of you followed where Jon led, first along a narrow game trail, then down across a stretch of softer ground where prints held better, and then over a rocky stream where the trail grew meaner and made you all work for it.

What made the whole thing pleasant rather than tedious was that the three of you who had taken lessons from Pike now had enough practice to actually see things in the ground and brush instead of just pretending you did.

Jon would point out a bent fern or a place where moss had been disturbed on the north side of a stone, and then Sansa would note a scrape on bark or the faint sign of crossing hooves near the riverbank, and then you would catch something else a little farther on and feel the thread of it pull together in your head.

Arya listened with the bright sharp look she got when she was storing things away for later, and every now and then she would ask one blunt question that forced one of you to explain not just what you had noticed but why it mattered.

The land did not make it easy either, which only made the whole business feel more real.

You crossed the river where the bank dipped lowest, with boots sinking a little in the softer mud, and then climbed a long low rise where roots clawed through the earth and every few steps one of the wolves had to leap ahead and wait for the rest of you.

Janus took particular pleasure in this, because he kept fluttering down from branch to branch just far enough ahead that he always looked as if he had expected all of you to keep up better than you were.

By the time you reached the top of the hill, you had begun to understand why Jon had wanted other eyes on the thing, because the signs no longer looked like the trail of one animal or even several deer passing through.

There was too much of it, too much scattered movement, too many old prints mixed with fresher ones, and a strange nervous feel in the silence ahead.

What you found on the other side of the rise answered that quickly enough.

It was a pack, or what remained of one, and even before you counted them you could see something had gone wrong for them.

There were too few adults by half, and the ones that were left looked lean and hard in the bad way rather than the good one, with ribs just beginning to show and movement that carried more hunger than confidence.

The pups were worse, not dying perhaps but certainly not thriving, and for a moment all you could think was that if your own wolves had not been found and fed and folded into your household years ago they might have looked something like this.

That thought landed hard enough that nobody spoke at first, not even Arya.

Then, because the four of you were still yourselves, the arguing started almost at once.

Jon said that hungry wolves were still wolves and that getting closer without a plan would be stupid, which was fair enough coming from him because he was not frightened so much as practical.

Sansa said she did not like leaving them like this, but she also very much did not like the idea of one of the adults deciding that a child would make a better meal than mercy, which was also fair enough.

You found yourself stuck between those two thoughts, because these were clearly the same strange breed as your own wolves, and leaving the pups where they were sat badly with you, but wanting to help did not make you eager to be torn apart.

Arya listened to all this for perhaps half a minute before deciding she had heard enough.

Without asking leave from any of you, she simply stepped forward with Silco padding at her side as calm as you pleased.

At once all three of you hissed at her to stop, which she ignored so completely that it might have been impressive if it had not also been terrifying.

Then, in the same matter of fact voice she might have used to explain why she wanted another roll at supper, Arya told the wolves that her baby brothers should have companions too, and that she promised the two she took would be fed, trained, and looked after properly.

The truly strange part was not that she said it, because that was pure Arya, but that the few remaining adults all seemed to sharpen at one word in particular.

Train.

You saw it happen.

Their ears twitched, their heads lifted, and after a long tense moment of sniffing at Arya and Silco they did not lunge at all, but backed off just enough to leave the pups where they lay.

When Arya bent and scooped up two of them like this happened every day, you, Sansa, and Jon could only stare.

One pup squirmed a little and the other only made a weak complaint, while Arya turned and marched back up the slope wearing the expression of somebody who had just solved a very obvious problem for three much slower people.

Sansa looked half astonished and half delighted, which was a familiar enough expression for her where Arya was concerned.

Jon recovered first, as he usually did when something needed doing, and said that somebody had to get Arya and the pups back safely while they were still small and manageable.

That left the two of you looking at one another, and when you both remembered the lead of stag sign you had noticed on the way up, the rest of the plan settled itself neatly enough.

So Jon turned back toward Winterfell with Arya, Silco, Ghost, and the two pups moving slowly enough not to jostle them too much, while you and Sansa circled down the far side of the hill to pick up the older trail.

Tracking the stag without Jon proved harder, though not impossibly so, and it was the sort of difficulty that felt useful rather than discouraging.

Sansa’s eye was as good as ever once she had something to work from, while you found yourself better at holding the shape of the trail in your head and guessing where it might bend next.

In the end the stag itself did not fall to either of you, but the hunt still proved a good one, because Sansa took a rabbit cleanly and you brought down a fat bird not long after, which was enough for the two of you to return tired, pleased, and carrying something worth showing.

By the time you made it back to Winterfell, Jon and Arya had arrived ahead of you and caused exactly the sort of uproar you would expect from bringing home two more wolf pups.

Aunt Catelyn looked as if the sight of them might push her directly into prayer or madness, and given how the castle had been running lately the difference was not entirely clear.

Bran, on the other hand, looked so openly delighted that it would have taken a harder heart than most to refuse him anything right then, and when he realized one of the pups might truly be his his whole face lit up like sunrise on snow.

Rickon was still too young to understand much beyond the excitement, but he was excited enough for two people anyway.

It was Rob, of all people, who steadied the room.

He looked from Bran to the pups and then said, in a tone so matter of fact that nobody could mistake it for a grand gesture, that he would supervise Bran’s wolf himself and see to Rickon’s training as well until he was old enough to manage the beast on his own.

That landed better than a speech would have, perhaps because Rob did not make a show of it, and perhaps because by now everyone knew he did genuinely care when it came to his family.

Uncle Ned thanked all of you then, not just for the catch or for bringing back the pups, but for caring enough about one another to act.

Something about the way he said it eased the room.

Even Aunt Catelyn, tense and frayed as she was, calmed enough to smile at all of you for a little while, and that alone made the whole day feel like more than a lucky hunt.

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A few days later you woke from another strange dream and found yourself standing in the godswood again, though this time the thing left behind was less frightening for being unclear and more profound for being impossible to ignore.

After that morning, no matter where you went in Winterfell, you could always sense when someone was near you, even through walls or around corners or behind enough noise that you should not have heard a thing.

It was not truly hearing, not exactly, but something close enough to it that you kept thinking of heartbeats and breath and the weight of a person pressing against the world nearby.

Worse, once you noticed it you could not stop noticing it, and for a day or two the whole business nearly drove you mad as you kept turning your head at servants before they entered rooms and knowing when someone stood beyond a door before they knocked.

After a while you decided that if you kept brooding on it you were going to go strange in truth, so you did your best to take your mind elsewhere and, while you were at it, add a little more life to Winterfell before the royal visit arrived and turned every meal stiff.

So that night at supper you stood up in full view of everyone and presented Arya with two Braavosi swords, one wooden for practice and one steel for proper training later, both slimmer and better suited to the kind of fighting she was clearly being shaped toward.

You explained, plainly enough, that if Arya was meant to be swift and nimble then there was only so much sense in making her learn forever with blades built for the heavier and more brutal Westerosi fashion.

Arya looked so delighted that for a moment even Sansa forgot to act solemn, while Rob laughed into his cup and Jon gave you the sort of look that said he thought this was a very good idea and an even better way of causing trouble.

Aunt Catelyn, unsurprisingly, wanted the steel sword confiscated almost at once, and the look she sent you could have chilled soup from across the table.

Uncle Ned, however, only made Arya promise that she would use the steel blade under Ser Rodrik’s supervision and by the same rules as everyone else who trained in the yard.

After that he said, with that calm tone of his that usually meant the matter was settled, that you were not wrong and that Arya ought to start getting used to the sort of weapon she was actually training for.

Then he thanked you for the thought behind the gift, which made Arya sit straighter than ever and made Aunt Catelyn glare at you all through the rest of the meal.

You considered that a small price to pay, because Arya looked as though you had handed her the moon, and Winterfell felt a little livelier for it.

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Skills:

Combat:

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

(6) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 20/100 (+10)

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

(5) Northern Equestrianism - 85/100 (+10) (Knack)

(8) Heavy Armour - 15/100 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

Diplomacy:

(7) Interpersonal Communication - 70/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(3) Public Speaking - 8/100 (+5) (Skilled)

(10) Management - 170/200 (+30) (Prodigious)

(4) Stewardship - 52/100 (+7) (Knack)

(4) Northern Law - 32/100 (+7) (Knack)

(4) Westerosi Law - 22/100 (+7) (Knack)

Language:

(7) Common Speaking - 65/100 (+15) (Knack)

(7) Old Tongue Speaking - 80/100 (+15) (Knack)

(6) Valyrian Speaking - 20/100 (+15) (Knack)

(6) Common Reading - 25/100 (+10)

(3) Westerosi Runes - 70/100 (+10)

(5) Valyrian Reading - 60/100 (+10)

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(5) Math(s) - 90/100 (+10)

(6) Accounts - 80/100 (+30) (Prodigious)

(8) Northern History - 25/100 (+20) (Knack)

(3) Westerosi History - 90/100 (+15)

(6) Northern Peoples - 45/100 (+10)

(5) Westerosi Peoples - 70/100 (+10)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(6) Northern Hunting - 75/100 (+15)

(3) Fishing - 93/100 (+7)

(3) Swimming - 53/100 (+7)

(1) Seacraft - 93/100 (+7)

(3) Climbing - 66/100 (+7) (Skilled In North)

(3) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 14/100 (+3)

(8) Herbology - 20/100 (+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: 5

Spending: 4

Banked: 14

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T5 = Power/Skill for a Prominent Figure

L1 = Inconvenient

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Voting:

Main Actions: The Royal Family Arrives Next Turn. What will you be doing when they do?

Warning ⚠️: What we pick here will alter what happens with the Main Plot.

A1 - Training in the yard with Jon, Arya and…?

Risk: Mid

Reward: Mid

A2 - Out hunting with Jon and Sansa, keeping away from the Royals.

Risk: Low

Reward: ???

A3 - Training in Academics with Sansa and…?

Risk: Low

Reward: Low

A4 - Staying near your Uncle Ned and the King.

Risk: High

Reward: Mid

A5 - Staying with your Aunt Cat, The Queen, and the Younger Children.

Risk: High

Reward: Low

A6 - Putting on a play for the Royals with Rob and Domeric.

Risk: Mid

Reward: High

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 44 (In order of best to least.)

Jon - Lifelong Friends

Sansa - Lifelong Friends

Arya - Lifelong Friends

Ned - 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.

2 - NEXT TURN IS IMPORTANT!!!

I really am tempted to spoil what some of these choices will mean for us, both now and later, but I’m going to restrain myself because I do think this quest works better when people are making decisions without already knowing exactly where every road leads.

That said, I do want to be very clear that next turn matters a great deal.

Not just in the usual quest sense where we’re adjusting reputation a bit, checking in on characters we haven’t spent time with lately, or trying to round out our skills.

I mean that this is probably the most important turn we’ve had so far, including those early turns where we picked up our buffs with Jon and Sansa and more or less set the tone for who Wulfric would end up closest to in the Stark household.

I also think it’s important to stress that, while we’ve done our best with a number of people, we are not actually BFF with anyone.

And because of that, we do not have the kind of locked in protection that would let us assume certain outcomes are safely off the table.

There are genuine possibilities here for one or more characters to end up on paths we’ve been actively trying to avoid, depending on what choices we make this turn.

So when you vote, I’d really ask that you think a little beyond the immediate payoff.

Think about what kind of future you want us building toward, what sort of plot you want to lean into, and what kind of relationships you actually want to shape, because this turn is going to have real consequences for the direction of the story.

About the closest I’m willing to get to spoiling anything is saying this:

One of these options is about as close to canon as this quest can still reasonably get, one of them goes very much the other way, and the rest sit at different points in between.

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - Why did you vote for the Action that you did?

What is your hoped-for outcome of this vote?