House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Joffrey - 11

A2 - Hunt - 31

A3 - Study - 0

A4 - Robert - 8

A5 - Cersei - 0

A6 - Theater - 8

S1 - Wikipedia - 44

S2 - Steam - 9

S3 - Paradox - 3

S4 - World - 0

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Wikipedia

Thanks to Bird's eye view (disambiguation), Daenerys Targaryen is now Prodigious at Warging, with a particular ability to warg into any sort of Bird.

As an insult to injury, her brother's seer foresaw this ability developing and has encouraged Viserys Targaryen to assemble a wild variety of resources to aid his sister, including a growing menagerie of Birds which she has already begun bonding with.

As a result, the Warging skill is going to start developing at MAX speed, and her brother will be taking maximum use of it.

This ability would also let her see through the eyes of and send mental commands to any bonded dragon, including the ones whose eggs her brother purchased from Illyrio Mopatis following the disaster in Pentos some years back.

The eggs are not hatched, and even the seer can't see how this is done, but Danny and Viserys have the eggs and are actively trying things to hatch them…

World: Might and Magic Wiki

Thanks to the Juggler, Mummers across Planetos now have the random possibility of going mad and attacking people.

If they do, they gain peak human reflexes and strength as well as the unique ability for magical weapons not to work against them. (Up to and including Valyrian steel.)

Still, it’s not so bad, after all, mummers are much more common in the south than the north, so this isn't much of an issue up here.

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Story:

After all the frantic preparation, the royal party finally arrived, and they were every bit as stuffy and formal as you had expected.

For all that the king was Uncle Ned’s oldest friend, the rest of the royal family seemed to require more bowing, more courtesy, and more careful words than you had ever seen demanded in Winterfell before.

So you did your best to stay out of their way when you could, if only because the easiest way to avoid embarrassing yourself before royalty was not to stand in front of them long enough to make a mistake.

That alone felt reason enough to keep scarce, especially with Aunt Catelyn and Uncle Ned both so clearly determined that Winterfell give no offense.

As for the royals themselves, they were mostly what you might’ve expected.

The queen was indeed every bit as haughty as rumor said, though unfortunately, rumor had also been quite fair to her beauty.

Her children were much the same, all golden hair and polished manners and the sort of careful courtesy that felt a little too smooth to be called warmth.

The Kingsguard, meanwhile, were another matter entirely, because no matter what stories clung to their names, the sight of them in their white cloaks made it plain why songs were full of such men.

Even the Kingslayer, for all the dishonor tied to him, was hard to look away from once he entered a room.

The heir, Joffrey, seemed normal enough at first, though that likely had more to do with his paying almost no mind to you.

He’d mostly fixed his attention on Rob, which made sense enough since Rob was heir to the North while you were only one bannerman’s son among many.

Even so, you’d been pleasantly surprised to find the two of them speaking together about plays of all things the last time you’d seen them in the same space.

That was interesting, if only because it was not at all the subject you would’ve expected to catch from the future king of the Seven Kingdoms.

As for King Robert, he looked about how you would’ve expected him to.

There had been some rumor beforehand that he’d gone badly to fat, but if this was fat, then your standards for the word were plainly different from southern ones.

True, he did not look like the warrior from all the old stories, the Demon of the Trident that had broken princes and won a throne with a hammer in his hands, but he certainly did not look soft either.

He looked older, broader, heavier perhaps, but still like a man you would not have wanted angry with you.

You found out later, mostly by overhearing one of the loud and cheerful dinners he shared with Uncle Ned, that there had apparently been some kind of monsters in the Kingswood and that for a moment he’d thought they had done him in.

He laughed about it when he told the tale, loudly enough that half the hall had no choice but to hear, and declared that the whole thing had been the kick in the arse he’d needed to start training properly again and win back some of his old strength.

For his part, Uncle Ned seemed as pleased as you had ever seen him, following the king about, speaking with him for hours, and smiling more easily than he usually did.

It was strange in a good way, seeing that much life in him, as though some older and lighter version of your uncle had come north with the royal baggage train.

In the end, though, it was the king himself who gave you the excuse you needed.

After yet another day of stiff politeness and careful manners, you’d gone and gotten your hunting gear together with every intention of slipping out into the Wolfswood to find Jon, who had been doing his level best to remain out of sight while the royals crowded Winterfell.

Uncle Ned caught sight of you before you could make your escape and asked whether you, Jon, and Sansa were planning another little hunt.

Before you could answer, the king clapped approval onto the idea at once and declared that the three of you ought not come back until you’d caught something worth eating.

That was about as close to a blessing from the old gods as a child was likely to get while standing in a castle yard.

So you wasted no time at all, finding Sansa first and explaining that the king himself had more or less ordered the three of you into the woods for a few days.

She understood the value of that immediately, and after only the briefest delay to gather her things, the two of you went off to find Jon, both of you no doubt thinking the same thing.

If Winterfell meant to spend the next few days drowning in silk, courtesy, and southern ceremony, then the Wolfswood suddenly seemed an even finer place than usual.

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While it wasn’t unheard of for the three of you to come back from a single day’s hunt with a boar or a stag, it was certainly rarer than the alternative, and on this trip none of you were in any hurry to rush your luck.

That was partly because hunting was hunting, and partly because the three of you had very quietly agreed not to try especially hard until you were at least a day’s ride out from Winterfell.

After all, it would’ve been a terrible waste of a perfectly good excuse if you came trotting back into all that stuffy politeness only a day after escaping it.

So the first stretch of the trip was taken at an easy pace, with more time spent ranging, watching, and enjoying yourselves than making any determined effort to bring down the biggest thing in the forest.

In the end, you needn’t have worried about stretching the hunt out, because the woods handled that problem for you.

The three of you did well enough for yourselves and brought in a respectable amount of smaller game along the way, while the evenings gave you plenty of time to practice campcraft, cooking over the fire, and all the little habits that made a hunt feel less like a dash out from the castle and more like a life of its own.

It still took five full days before any of you managed to bring down something properly large, and on that same day, fortune finally turned generous enough to give you both a boar and a stag.

Of course, catching them was only the start of the matter.

Getting that much meat back to Winterfell took time, even with the extra horses you’d brought precisely for that purpose, and so what had begun as a brief and convenient escape from royal company ended by stretching into the better part of a week.

Still, none of you were complaining by then, because you returned just as promised with enough meat to make a fine showing before the royal family, which meant you had satisfied the king’s unofficial command and bought yourselves several days of peace in the bargain.

So the three of you rode back into Winterfell feeling accomplished, well rested, and very pleased with yourselves, though none of you had the slightest idea what announcement would be waiting that night.

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That night, after the three of you had been toasted for your hunt and the meal your catch had made possible, King Robert managed the impressive feat of surprising, quite literally, everyone in Winterfell by rising from his seat and all but announcing on the spot the betrothal of Joffrey Baratheon and Arya Stark!

It was one of those moments where the whole hall seemed to stop at once, because even the people who kept eating did so with the sort of care that meant they were no longer paying the food much mind.

You only found out afterward that the match had, in fact, already been under discussion, but the king had apparently wanted it settled badly enough that he chose to drag the matter into the open before anyone could hedge, delay, or decide to be careful about it.

That was very much in keeping with the man, now that you’d had a few days to watch him at close range.

The reason for his sudden enthusiasm, as it turned out, was that while you, Jon, and Sansa had been away in the Wolfswood, Joffrey and Arya had spent much of that time in the yard training with one another and had somehow managed to strike up a friendship that nobody in the castle would’ve predicted beforehand.

More than that, Joffrey had apparently given a solemn promise that if Arya came south, she’d still be allowed to train, and on the day that oath was made, both King Robert and Uncle Ned had been there to see it.

Somewhere in the middle of that, the king had declared Arya to be Lyanna reborn and decided that, naturally, this meant his heir ought to marry her.

As it happened, Uncle Ned and Aunt Catelyn had not been against the match at all, they just had not finished discussing it before the king chose to turn the whole thing into public fact before the feast.

Even Uncle Ned, who was at least a little put out with his friend for springing it on everyone that way, admitted later in private that it was likely the finest marriage offer any Stark was going to receive this generation.

More importantly still, he said he could plainly see that Arya and Joffrey genuinely liked one another, and when he asked whether anyone present had anything ill to say of the prince, nobody did.

So by the end of it he and Aunt Catelyn decided they would accept the betrothal formally at breakfast the next morning.

It was also mentioned, before the conversation changed shape, that Sansa would have to be married suitably as well before the whole matter was done, if only because such things were never allowed to sit alone where great houses were concerned.

That was the point where Aunt Catelyn promptly sent all the men from the room, though not before you caught the name Domeric Bolton among a few others as you were being ushered out.

That alone left you with more than enough to think about before sleep.

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Skills:

Combat:

(7) Westerosi CQC - 95/100 (+20) (Talented In North)

(6) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 30/100 (+10)

(9) Northern Archery - 15/100 (+15) (Skilled) ←

(5) Northern Equestrianism - 95/100 (+10) (Knack)

(8) Heavy Armour - 45/100 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

Diplomacy:

(7) Interpersonal Communication - 85/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(3) Public Speaking - 13/100 (+5) (Skilled)

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

(4) Stewardship - 59/100 (+7) (Knack)

(4) Northern Law - 39/100 (+7) (Knack)

(4) Westerosi Law - 29/100 (+7) (Knack)

Language:

(7) Common Speaking - 80/100 (+15) (Knack)

(7) Old Tongue Speaking - 95/100 (+15) (Knack)

(6) Valyrian Speaking - 35/100 (+15) (Knack)

(6) Common Reading - 35/100 (+10)

(3) Westerosi Runes - 80/100 (+10)

(5) Valyrian Reading - 70/100 (+10)

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

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

(7) Accounts - 10/100 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

(8) Northern History - 40/100 (+15) (Knack)

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

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

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

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(7) Northern Hunting - 50/100 (+75) ←

(4) Fishing - 30/100 (+37) ←

(3) Swimming - 90/100 (+37)

(2) Seacraft - 30/100 (+37) ←

(4) Climbing - 16/100 (+50) (Skilled In North) ←

(3) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 17/100 (+3)

(8) Herbology - 50/100 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

War:

(6) Strategy - 25/100 (+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: 19

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T3 = Objects/Effect on Another Place

L5 = Slightly Convenient

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Voting:

Main Actions: What will you be doing with the Royal family next turn?

A1 - Training in the yard with Jon, Arya, and Joffrey

Risk: Mid

Reward: Gain a Friendly reputation with Joffrey.

A2 - (On Cooldown)

Risk: Low

Reward: A different betrothal.

A3 - Training in Academics with Sansa and…?

Risk: Low

Reward: Meet a new person, and gain a friendly reputation with them.

A4 - Go on the Hunt with your Uncle Ned and the King, and Jon.

Risk: Mid

Reward: Gain a Friendly reputation with the King, and +++ Uncle Ned.

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

Risk: Extremely High

Reward: Piss off EVERYONE and ???

A6 - Putting on a play for the Royals with Rob, Domeric, and…?

Risk: Low

Reward: Gain an Ok reputation with the whole royal party and a Friendly one with…?

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 - Reputations as of Chapter 45 (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.

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - What should we buy and for whom?

Examples:

(2R) Some Veil-style food for Ned and the King.

(2R) Some Westerlands food for the Queen.

(2R) Some Crownlander food for the Royal Family.

(2R) A wolf pendant for Arya.

(2R) A Kraken necklace for Yara.

(4R) A wolf pendant for Sansa and Jon.

(6R) Hire a beekeeper for Long Lake.

(8R) A Kraken necklace for Theon and Yara

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

(20R) A Horse for Jon