House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Patrol - 11

A2 - Hunt - 5

A3 - Feast - 13

A4 - Plants - 1

A5 - Farms - 28

A6 - Stories - 0

S1 - Wikipedia - 27

S2 - Steam - 18

S3 - Paradox - 0

S4 - World - 13

Names: So Far

Fetching Lady - 11

Wetwolf - 6

Seawolf - 6

White Wake - 6

Little Paw - 4

Fletching Lady - 1

White Waker - 1

BoatyMcBoatFace - 1

Shore-Thing - 1

Skipper - 1

Breezy - 1

Longwake - 1

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Wikipedia

Thanks to František Moravec, Euron Greyjoy will now start to regain memories of his past life as a military intelligence officer, with a particular focus on the use of psychological warfare.

He was already capital “E” Evil, but now he’s got semi-modern psychological warfare doctrine in his head and a vague “this is how they can be used” understanding of guns that Rob has combined with a WW2 officer’s understanding of how a modern(ish) military actually utilized guns in the field.

That last might be the most valuable yet, because while others have guns, Euron, more than anyone, now understands how to use them in a military sence, and has enough understanding of their creation to start innovating, or at least recreating Planetosi versions of Earth military technology.

World: Zelda Wiki

Thanks to Ordon Goat, the lonely hills, but especially the parts near Long Lake, now contain a relatively large number of Ordon Goats alongside the cows.

These goats tend to live on the more rocky or steep parts of the hills, and are largely self-sufficient, but know how to survive especially well in northern Winters.

Though quite difficult, some have been trained to pull carts, and these tend to work exceptionally well in rough or wintery terrain, much better than even the horses bred specifically for the northern winters.

Mostly, though, they serve as an additional source of meat and Darry, one that tends to last, even into the longest winters, whereas the cow populations tend to dip every winter and rise in summers.

It is speculated, though not proven, that they are related to the Skagosi Unicorn.

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Story:

You rode out from Heartsgrove with Jon and two local men who knew the southern roads well enough to tell one field from another before any marker came into view.

At first glance, the country looked plain enough, because broad farmland rarely had the dramatic beauty of hills, deep woods, or open lake water under good light.

The longer you spent in it, though, the more its worth became obvious.

This was some of the best working ground in Long Lake Province, not because it was blessed beyond the rest of the North, but because it had what so much of the North usually lacked all at once: flat land, easy freshwater, enough hands to work it, and roads and waterways close enough to move what was grown.

At first, you expected the usual northern staples and, to be fair, they were there.

You saw barley and rye, kitchen plots, cabbage, turnips, rutabagas, and all the other sturdy things people trusted in a land where winter still had a vote.

What surprised you was not that those things existed, but how little they seemed to define the place once the farmers and reeves started talking.

The crop that mattered most, the one that kept coming up until you could hardly look across a field without thinking of it, was oats.

That made more sense the longer you listened.

The southern end of Long Lake did not merely feed itself.

It helped feed the cattle country, and not just the grazing land in your own part of the Lonely Hills, either, but a much broader stretch besides.

The oats grown here moved outward in huge quantity, and those oats kept up the great numbers of cows and goats that, in turn, helped keep up the numbers of Northmen, because there came a point in any hard land where people could not live on plants alone.

So the fields stopped looking ordinary very quickly.

They started looking like the quiet engine behind a great deal of the North’s strength, with those long pale stretches of oats doing more real work than any outsider would guess from a distance.

The one thing that truly caught you off guard was flax.

Not because flax was unknown in the North, because it wasn’t, but because Long Lake seemed to have turned it into something close to a provincial specialty.

There were other places that could grow it and did, but most of those places were either too small, too scattered, or too thinly peopled to make much of the chance.

Long Lake, by contrast, had population, roads, river access, lake access, and enough workable ground to make flax worth growing in serious quantity, especially near the southern end and along the land that linked more easily toward the White Knife.

It was still mostly a trade crop, not the thing that kept people fed day by day, but it gave the province a second sort of usefulness all the same, one less obvious than oats and cattle, but useful enough that once you saw it you could not stop seeing it.

The people themselves were glad enough to see you that after the first few farmsteads, it became hard not to laugh at least a little.

More than one farmer insisted the crops had started looking better the moment their lord came home.

Some said it half-jokingly.

Others said it with the sort of country seriousness that made it harder to tell where courtesy ended, and superstition began.

You did not truly believe your presence had improved oat yields by some hidden blessing of blood and soil, but it would have been boorish to argue with people who were trying, in their own fashion, to welcome you home.

So you let them have it, thanked them as graciously as you could, and did your best to remember names, wives, sons, weather worries, and which families wanted praise almost as much as they wanted help.

That stretched the whole business out over weeks, which turned out to be for the best.

If you had tried to tear through the southern farms in a handful of hard days, you would have learned facts and missed the place.

Done more slowly, the land had time to start making sense.

You saw which roads held up after rain, which storehouses were better kept than they looked, which hamlets seemed prosperous without bragging of it, and which fields were spoken of with the sort of caution that meant they gave a fine return in good years and trouble in bad ones.

More importantly, the people had time to see you more than once, which mattered in a way no proclamation from Heartsgrove ever could.

A lord known only by parchment was one thing.

A lord who had ridden your boundaries, eaten your bread, asked after your drainage ditches, and listened while you explained why this patch flooded in spring and that one never did was something else.

In that much at least, Lady Heelis’s sparse letters had not lied.

Long Lake Province had developed its own methods in your absence.

It was not waiting helplessly for rescue.

It was not some collapsed domain full of fools who had spent years doing nothing until a boy lord came home to show them better.

The place functioned.

More than functioned, really.

It sustained itself and fed outward besides, and it had done so long enough that there were habits here, expectations, rhythms, and solutions you would be an idiot to disrupt simply because you liked the sound of your own authority.

At the same time, you were not fool enough to take Lady Heelis’s words entirely at face value either, because in your absence she had been the single most powerful person in the province, and power had a way of describing itself as necessity whether or not that was true.

So the lesson you took from those first weeks was not that there was nothing to do.

It was that there was too much already being done for you to go blundering at it blind.

Long Lake clearly had systems that worked, and if some of those systems also happened to strengthen the hands of those who had ruled in your stead, that only made them more dangerous to tamper with carelessly.

For now, patience looked wiser than display.

So you kept riding the country nearest Heartsgrove, letting the people grow used to the sight of their new lord and letting yourself grow used to the people you meant to rule.

That was slower than making grand declarations.

It was also, as Jon dryly pointed out after the third straight day of oats and mud, the first truly sensible thing you had done since coming home.

---

You rode the southern farms, listened more than you spoke, and let Long Lake slowly turn from a title on parchment into a real place under your hands.

All the while, you already knew Tulin was somewhere in the North and making his way toward you, but knowing a thing and having it in front of you were not the same.

He had sent word ahead, after all, yet word traveled much faster than a man hauling six delicate southern creatures that needed more warmth than even a northern summer much cared to provide.

So his return hung over those weeks in an odd way.

Not as a surprise, because you knew it was coming, but as a delay that made every few days feel longer than they ought to have.

The farms, the oats, the flax, the reeves, the roads, all of it continued on in its steady rhythm while somewhere to the south, Tulin crawled northward one careful mile at a time with his six strange prizes bundled against a climate they had never been meant to endure.

Which only made it all the more satisfying when he finally arrived alive, grinning, and full of stories.

He looked leaner than when he left, browner too, and entirely too pleased with himself for a man who had apparently spent half the trip one bad decision away from drowning or getting cut open.

That alone told you a fair bit.

Whatever else had happened, the journey had suited him.

The best news came first.

Dragonstone had gone exactly as you’d hoped.

Lady Shireen had received the gifts warmly, sent back several of her favorite books, and by all accounts had been sincerely grateful.

That was gratifying for you on its own.

It was even more gratifying for Berenice, who had helped turn Shireen toward the old gods in the first place and looked quietly pleased to see that connection had not only held, but deepened.

After that, unfortunately, the story got uglier.

Tulin had been attacked by pirates twice.

And he was reasonably sure the men in question had been ironborn both times.

The first attack came while crossing the Stepstones on the way to Dorne, which was bad enough.

The second came on the way back after he had deliberately taken a different route, and somehow that one struck not terribly far from Lannisport.

That detail was almost worse than the attacks themselves, because it made the whole business feel less like rotten luck in dangerous waters and more like the seas had simply become infested with scum.

Dorne itself had proven the stories half true and half exaggerated, which in your experience was exactly how most good rumors turned out.

The silk-producing beasts did exist.

That much was real.

The problem was that they were nowhere near as plentiful as the tales had made them sound, and getting even a few of them out proved harder and more expensive than anybody had guessed.

In the end, Tulin had managed to smuggle out only six.

That number might have been even worse if not for sheer luck and northern stubbornness.

By Tulin’s account, the second pirate attack had nearly taken the ship outright.

The creatures had almost been lost there, along with the whole venture and very possibly Tulin himself.

That was the point where the story stopped sounding adventurous and started sounding expensive in the sort of way that got good men killed.

Still, six had made it all the way north, which was six more than you had before, and that mattered.

The infuriating part was that Tulin seemed almost delighted by all this.

Not stupid enough to pretend it had been easy, no, but pleased in that restless way of his, as though getting nearly killed twice had only confirmed that he’d gone on a proper adventure instead of some glorified shopping trip.

He admitted readily enough that the budget had been too small and that with more coin, he likely could have brought back more than six.

But there was no real regret in him.

If anything, he sounded as though he considered the whole thing a very strong argument for being sent out again with a larger purse.

Still, six was enough to build on.

Three were male.

Three were female.

That meant you could send a breeding pair to each of the three major glass gardens and begin the slow work of making something real out of the whole mad plan.

It was not the immediate windfall you might have dreamed of when the idea first took root.

It was not enough to start draping the North in silk by next spring.

But it was a beginning, and beginnings were rarer than men liked to admit.

The creatures themselves were stranger than you had expected.

People described them as bugs, but in your own mind, they looked much more like sheep than anything else, both in size and in general fluffiness.

The locals called them Larvesta, which sounded faintly absurd and therefore was probably exactly the sort of name that would stick.

According to Tulin, they would eventually begin to grow wings, and once that happened, their silk production would increase sharply.

Unfortunately, that also meant they would become much harder to contain, because a sheep-sized thing with wings was exactly the sort of problem that stopped being funny once it got loose indoors.

Thankfully, the ones he brought back were still infants.

That gave Long Lake time.

A few years, likely.

Enough to learn how to feed them, house them, keep them alive through the cold, and work out what to do before the larger and more inconvenient stage of their lives began.

And if all three major settlements could keep even a small breeding stock going in their glass gardens, then the province might truly have the start of something the North had never had before.

As for Tulin, he had no desire at all to settle quietly back into ordinary life.

He admitted, with no shame whatsoever, that if he went home now, he strongly suspected he would be married off before he could blink, and he plainly considered this a far worse fate than pirates.

He insisted there was still adventure left in him.

All he asked, if you meant to send him out again, was a larger budget and perhaps the kindness of letting him try a land route next time instead of spending another year seeing how many armed idiots the sea could throw at him.

That left you with the sort of result that was hard to name neatly.

The mission had gone better than feared and worse than hoped.

Dragonstone had been an outright success.

Dorne had been a partial one.

The sea had done its best to turn the whole thing into a disaster.

And yet, for all that, six strange little beasts now breathed in Long Lake where before there had been none, Tulin had come home grinning, and the first faint outline of a northern silk trade existed in something more solid than wishful thinking.

That was enough for now.

Not enough to boast over.

But enough to begin.

-----

Skills:

Combat:

(10) Westerosi CQC - 10/200 (+15) (Talented In North) ←

(7) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 30/100 (+5)

(10) Northern Archery - 60/200 (+10) (Skilled)

(7) Northern Equestrianism - 65/100 (+15) (Knack)

(10) Heavy Armour - 125/200 (+30) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(9) Interpersonal Communication - 55/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(4) Public Speaking - 40/100 (+10) (Skilled)

(11) Management - 280/300 (+40) (Prodigious)

(5) Stewardship - 55/100 (+15) (Knack)

(5) Northern Law - 35/100 (+15) (Knack)

(5) Westerosi Law - 25/100 (+15) (Knack) ←

Language:

(8) Common Speaking - 90/100 (+5) (Knack)

(9) Old Tongue Speaking - 45/100 (+30) (Knack)

(7) Valyrian Speaking - 31/100 (+3) (Knack)

(6) Common Reading - 95/100 (+0)

(4) Westerosi Runes - 40/100 (+0)

(6) Valyrian Reading - 30/100 (+0)

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(8) Math(s) - 15/100 (+20) ←

(9) Accounts - 90/100 (+40) (Prodigious)

(9) Northern History - 55/100 (+5) (Knack)

(6) Westerosi History - 75/100 (+0)

(7) Northern Peoples - 70/100 (+20)

(5) Westerosi Peoples - 55/100 (+0)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(8) Northern Hunting - 75/100 (+0)

(5) Fishing - 60/100 (+15)

(4) Swimming - 95/100 (+15)

(3) Seacraft - 45/100 (+25)

(4) Climbing - 100/100 (+10) (Skilled In North)

(4) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 3/100 (+0)

(10) Herbology - 135/200 (+50) (Prodigious)

(1) Warging - 45/100 (+15) (Gifted)

War:

(8) Strategy - 50/100 (+25) (Prodigious) ←

(2) Castrametation - 10/100 (+0)

(2) Poliorcetics - 10/100 (+0)

(1) Fleetcraft - 60/100 (+25)

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

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Earning: 5

Spending: 0

Banked: 49

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T6 = Personal Power/Skill

L5 = Slightly Convenient

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Voting:

Main Actions:

A1 - Patrol the Kingsroad with Jon to prove it’s not boys returning, but men.

Reputation: Small Boost with everyone at Heartsgrove.

A2 - Invite Sir Wylis on a hunt with yourself and Jon to get to know him again.

Reputation: Large Boost with Sir Wylis

A3 - Order a small feast to celebrate your return. (-10 Resources)

Reputation: Moderate boost with everyone at Heartsgrove.

A4 - Ask Berenice to teach us about local plants and their uses.

Reputation: Moderate Boost to Local Scholars.

A5 - Ask Omek to teach some Northern History in the Godswood.

Reputation: Small Boost to everyone on the Lake’s South end.

A6 - Visit HartShore with Jon and the wolves and introduce yourself to the Chief.

Reputation: Moderate Boost with Cinaed Hund and the residents of HartShore.

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 - New Schedule Starts at Age 15.

I just wanted to leave a quick note here and say that there’s been some discussion about spacing the chapters out a bit more, so that I have time to flesh them out properly now that things are getting more complicated and taking longer to write.

That also happens to line up with some IRL stuff that was already going to affect the quest in a pretty major way.

For now, all I really want to say is that I’m thinking through how best to handle things, and I expect to have it figured out by the end of age 14.

We’ll start the new schedule at the beginning of age 15.

I just need a little more time to work out what that schedule should be.

Thank you all for the understanding, and I really do hope to keep questing with you even as the quest expands and the update pace slows down.

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Write-In/Questions:

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

Feel free to Write-In your own ideas, but here are a few Examples:

(20R) Go to Kings Landing to discover what's going on down there.

(15R) Investigate the God's Eye and the Green Men there.

(25R) Go to Braavos to see if rumors of Targaryen buildup there are true.