House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Patrol - 2

A2 - Feast - 7

A3 - Plants - 29

A4 - Hunt - 1

A5 - HOTG - 16

S1 - Wikipedia - 9

S2 - Steam - 0

S3 - Paradox - 46

S4 - World - 0

Ideas:

(25R) Investigate the God's Eye and the Green Men there w/ a guard. - 25

(15R) Investigate the God's Eye and the Green Men there - 5

(15R) Seek out the Church of Starry Wisdom and invite a priest back to Long Lake. - 4

(30R) Go to Willas Tyrel and try to heal his leg - 2

(25R) Go to Braavos to see if rumors of Targaryen buildup there are true. - 1

(15R) Bring a weirwood sapling to the Blackwoods Family. - 1

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Millennia Wiki

Thanks to the Population, the North is now retconned to have experienced a Baby Boom following Robert's Rebellion.

Meaning that not only has the Long Lake population gone up from around 140K to 190K, but a larger-than-average percentage of that population is young people of perfect “Join The Army” age.

(See Information Section about the Population Numbers and Army Size.)

World: RuneScape Wiki

Thanks to the Mithril grapple, people in the Gift/Wall/Far North are now Talented at learning and utilising Climbing and related skills.

(This is going to make the Night's Watch’s job much harder…)

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Story:

You sought Berenice out in the Heartsgrove glass gardens on purpose this time, rather than simply stumbling across her in the course of the day, because by now it had become obvious that the place mattered and you were getting a little tired of not knowing exactly why.

You knew it was important.

You knew people watched it like the province would starve if somebody sneezed on the wrong pane of glass.

You even knew enough now to be dragged into blessing the damned place every now and then.

But none of that was the same as actually understanding it.

The glass gardens were not one building, but a whole little complex of them, linked by covered paths, work spaces, storage rooms, hot beds, and the sort of careful arrangement that only happened when generations of people had slowly learned what did and didn't survive the North.

They smelled warm, damp, green, and faintly sharp in places where crushed leaves or medicinal cuttings had been left to dry.

It felt wrong in a way that made the whole place more impressive, because the air inside carried the soft lushness of somewhere farther south, while just outside the panes lay the plain hard truth of northern weather.

Berenice put it simply enough when you asked.

The point of the glass gardens, she said, was not to grow what the North already knew how to grow.

The point was to force the sort of things to live here that would otherwise have to be imported dear from much warmer lands.

Before she could get properly into the plants, your attention got stolen by the Larvesta.

Two of them were presently housed in this part of the glass garden, and both had, with what seemed to be complete certainty, chosen a favorite worker to follow about.

One trailed after an older woman with a basket and pruning knife as though convinced she was its mother, while the other had attached itself to a younger lad in the herb rooms and waddled after him with such stubborn devotion that the poor boy could not take three steps without checking not to tread on it.

When you pointed this out, half-amused, the workers only shrugged and said it was perfectly fine.

Apparently, the creatures were calmer that way, and if they were kept busy trailing their chosen people, then they stayed out of trouble besides.

For your own part, you found it rather cute, though you suspected it would become significantly less cute once they were large enough to flatten a table by accident.

Berenice, who had long since grown used to the absurd becoming ordinary, simply stepped around one of the little beasts and began pointing things out properly.

The first things she showed you were the kitchen herbs and flavorings, the sort of plants no one strictly needed to stay alive and yet which still mattered an awful lot once a person had lived without them long enough.

Mint, sage, thyme, parsley, mustard greens, and rosemary kept alive by stubbornness more than by nature.

A little fennel too, and some other odds and ends you only half remembered the names of until she repeated them.

She explained that a province like Long Lake spent far too much silver importing such things if it could not grow any of its own, and more than that, people simply lived worse without them.

A stew tasted different with thyme in it.

Preserved meat stopped feeling like a punishment with sage and mustard.

Mint settled the stomach, brightened tea, and reminded people that food need not always taste of salt, cabbage, and surrender.

Then she moved on to the medicinal beds, and there she became much more herself.

Berenice had always been most alive when discussing something that could save a life if you got it right or ruin one if you didn't.

She showed you poppy first, explaining again what you already half knew, that it dulled pain, brought sleep, and must be treated with care by anyone with more mercy than sense.

There were bitter herbs for stomach complaints, soft-leaved things for poultices, and a number of delicate plants whose names were less memorable than their uses, though Berenice remembered every one of them.

Some settled the chest or helped with fevers.

Others were best dried and ground, or were only useful fresh.

The point, she explained, was that a healer in the North could not afford to depend entirely on traders showing up at the right time with the right bundle of leaves on the right cart.

Every useful thing grown here was one less remedy the province had to beg from a distance.

The next rooms held the more ambitious plants, the ones that made the whole complex feel less like gardening and more like a conspiracy against geography.

There were delicate things there that would never have survived a week outside, a few spice-bearing plants kept in modest numbers because even a modest number could matter, and others grown less for daily use than for the sheer cost they saved by existing at all.

Berenice explained that a tiny local supply of something expensive could still mean real silver, not leaving Long Lake every year.

That was when the thing clicked for you a little more fully.

The glass gardens were not merely warm rooms full of fussy plants.

They were insurance.

Against hunger, yes, but also against dependence, bad trade, late caravans, southern prices, and the thousand small humiliations that came from knowing you needed something and knowing it must come from somewhere else.

She seemed pleased when you said as much, though only in the quiet way she had when a student finally managed to stop being thick-headed for five minutes.

Then she made the point even plainer.

Some plants, she said, were grown here because people would sicken without them.

Some were grown because paying import prices for them year after year was idiotic.

And some were grown because people didn't break all at once, they wore thin.

A little better medicine, more flavor.

A smell of something green in the dead of a northern winter.

A little proof that life was more than enduring until spring.

Those things mattered too.

Not because they sounded impressive in ledgers, but because sane people worked better than half-maddened ones.

That was about where the whole conversation began to shift.

Perhaps it was because the glass gardens were full of things that should not have survived here and yet somehow did.

Perhaps it was because Berenice had taught you long enough that there was no point keeping certain things from her once they had started troubling you properly.

Whatever the reason, you found yourself telling her more than you had originally meant to.

First came the gift.

The one you knew, somehow, that should restore a mortally wounded ally in a time of need.

Then from there it widened.

The rumors about your presence helping plants.

The increasingly ridiculous number of people who seemed willing to believe it.

And finally, the stranger part still, which was that both you and Jon had begun waking from dreams that didn't feel like ordinary dreams at all.

Berenice didn't laugh.

She also didn't rush to reassure you with some easy nonsense, which you appreciated more.

Instead, she went still in that very particular way of hers and thought about it.

When she spoke again, it was carefully and unpleasantly measured.

She said that if she had only heard one of those things by itself, she might have called it chance, gossip, or overactive nerves.

Taken together, though, they looked less accidental.

She said there was at least the possibility that you and Jon might be wargs, or near enough to the thing that the difference was not worth much yet.

Then she admitted, after only a small pause, that she didn't know anyone in Long Lake who could teach either of you what to do with such a thing if it proved true.

That was worrying enough.

Then she made it worse.

Berenice reminded you of something you had not thought about properly in years, which was the story of Uncle Ned finding you in the Winterfell godswood and how Janus had stayed near you ever since.

At the time, it had simply been one more odd little story from childhood.

In hindsight, it looked a little less.

Not proof exactly, but a pattern.

And if it was a pattern, then the truly uncomfortable possibility was not simply that you had one strange gift, but that the gods, or whatever old power had touched you more than once.

You didn't enjoy that thought.

Neither, judging by her face, did she.

A few days later, she came back to you with a plan.

It was one of those plans that sounded slightly mad at first hearing and much more reasonable the longer you sat with it, which generally meant it had some merit.

If there was anywhere south of the Wall where the old ways might still be remembered properly enough to explain blessings, dreams, or skinchanger-like gifts, then the Gods Eye was the likeliest place she knew.

The Green Men still held the Isle of Faces, at least by every tale that mattered, and if anyone alive in the south knew why the gods had decided to meddle in you and Jon, or knew someone who might teach the two of you how not to drown in your own dreams, then they were as good a hope as any.

So you brought Jon in.

Then Ser Wylis.

Jon listened with the particular flat seriousness he had whenever something frightened him, and he was trying not to show it.

Ser Wylis looked more skeptical at first, though not dismissive, because he was too northern and too old to sneer at old gods matters simply because they were inconvenient.

The real objections were practical ones.

Distance and safety.

Whether sending Berenice at all was wise.

Whether the Green Men would even speak to her if she got that far.

But by the end of it, the answer was still yes.

If there was a chance of learning something useful, then the chance had to be taken.

It was Ser Wylis who solved the worst of the practical problem.

Berenice would not go alone.

Instead, he suggested Pate, one of the quieter men in Long Lake’s service, the sort of man who could pass through places without making anyone remember his face afterward.

Trustworthy, devout enough not to mock the purpose of the journey, and sensible enough not to become an additional problem halfway through it.

Ser Wylis swore he was one of the soundest men in your service, and that if Berenice had to go as far as the Riverlands in search of half-remembered old-gods nonsense, then Pate was exactly the man to send with her.

That left the matter of how the trip would be paid for.

In the end, you decided against sending her as some open official envoy of Long Lake.

There was no reason to have the journey start appearing in ledgers or accounts where it might later demand tedious explanations.

So instead, you paid for it yourself, quietly, from your personal purse, with enough coin for travel, food, lodging, and the thousand little costs that always appeared on long journeys and only ever became visible once it was too late to avoid them.

And so that was how you found yourself seeing Berenice and Pate off not long after, with more unease than a mission should ideally inspire and rather less certainty than you would have liked.

You wished them luck.

Pate nodded in the calm way of a man who had already decided to do the thing and saw no point in dressing it up.

Berenice promised to come back with some answers, and hopefully not too many questions as well.

Then they were gone, and all you could really do after that was wait and hope the road to the Riverlands returned something better than more questions.

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Skills:

Combat:

(10) Westerosi CQC - 55/200 (+15) (Talented In North)

(7) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 45/100 (+5)

(10) Northern Archery - 130/200 (+15) (Skilled)

(8) Northern Equestrianism - 10/100 (+10) (Knack) ←

(11) Heavy Armour - 15/300 (+30) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(10) Interpersonal Communication - 15/200 (+15) (Skilled) ←

(4) Public Speaking - 75/100 (+10) (Skilled)

(12) Management - 100/400 (+40) (Prodigious)

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

(5) Northern Law - 80/100 (+15) (Knack)

(5) Westerosi Law - 70/100 (+15) (Knack)

Language:

(9) Common Speaking - 5/100 (+5) (Knack) ←

(10) Old Tongue Speaking - 35/200 (+30) (Knack)

(7) Valyrian Speaking - 40/100 (+3) (Knack)

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

(4) Westerosi Runes - 55/100 (+5)

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

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(8) Math(s) - 75/100 (+20)

(10) Accounts - 110/200 (+40) (Prodigious)

(10) Northern History - 20/200 (+20) (Knack) ←

(6) Westerosi History - 100/100 (+25)

(8) Northern Peoples - 20/100 (+25) ←

(5) Westerosi Peoples - 80/100 (+25)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(9) Northern Hunting - 45/100 (+10)

(6) Fishing - 25/100 (+25) ←

(5) Swimming - 40/100 (+15)

(4) Seacraft - 70/100 (+50)

(5) Climbing - 30/100 (+10) (Skilled In North)

(4) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 20/100 (+17)

(11) Herbology - 90/300 (+75) (Prodigious) ←

(1) Warging - 100/100 (+25) (Gifted)

War:

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

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

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

(2) Fleetcraft - 35/100 (+25) ←

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

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Earning: 5

Spending: 25

Banked: 9

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T3 = Objects/Effect on Another Place

L4 = Just what's described

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Voting:

Main Actions:

A1 - Patrol the Kingsroad from one end to the other with Jon and Sir Wylis.

Reputation: Small Boost with everyone in Long Lake Province.

A2 - Host a boat race from Heartsgrove to Heart of the Gods and back.

Reputation: Moderate boost with everyone who lives on Long Lake itself.

A3 - Spend a few days visiting Wolfswood hamlets, hearing local concerns.

Reputation: Moderate Boost to everyone in the Northern End of the Wolfswood.

A4 - Visit Heart of the Gods market and buy local wares publicly.

Reputation: Moderate boost with everyone at Heart of the Gods.

A5 - Visit the Cattle Preserves in the Lonely Hills, hearing local concerns.

Reputation: Large Boost with the few people of the Western-Lonely Hills.

A6 - Announce and Hold a formal Day of Dispute Resolution/Judgement at Heartsgrove.

Reputation: Small Boost with everyone in Long Lake Province, Moderate Loss with Lady Heelis.

A7 - Visit the North-end Farms to inspect (and bless) the harvest.

Reputation: Moderate Boost with North-End Farmers, Small Boost w/ rest of LLP.

A8 - Go Mud-Crabbing at HartShore with Clan Hund.

Reputation: Moderate boost with everyone at HartShore and Cinaed.

A9 - Visit the Academy in Heart of the Gods and question them on what the province needs.

Reputation: Moderate boost with Scholarly Types, Small boost with everyone in HotG.

Personal Rolls Sources:

S1 - Wikipedia

S2 - Steam Games

S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30) (On Cooldown 1/1)

S4 - World Rolls List (D12)

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Information:

1 - Maximum theoretical Northern Army after the post-rebellion baby boom:

House Stark of Winterfell and greater Stark lands: 6,500

House Manderly of White Harbor: 5,000

Long Lake Province: 4,000

House Bolton of the Dreadfort: 4,000

Mountain clans together: 3,750

House Karstark of Karhold: 2,700

House Umber of Last Hearth: 2,650

House Dustin of Barrowton and the Barrowlands: 1,800

House Ryswell of the Rills: 1,800

House Glover of Deepwood Motte: 1,500

House Reed of Greywater Watch and the Neck: 1,500

House Tallhart of Torrhen’s Square: 1,400

House Hornwood of Hornwood: 1,250

House Cerwyn of Cerwyn: 1,200

House Flint of Flint’s Finger: 950

House Mormont of Bear Island: 900

House Locke of Oldcastle: 900

House Flint of Widow’s Watch: 850

House Forrester of Ironrath: 850

House Woods of Wolfswood-Hall: 750

House Stout of Goldgrass: 650

House Slate of Blackpool: 600

Other minor landed houses and holdfasts: 3,500

Total: 49,000

2 - Northern Army, without causing massive problems back home (w/ baby boom):

House Stark of Winterfell and close Stark lands: 3,500

House Manderly of White Harbor: 2,600

Long Lake Province: 2,500

House Bolton of the Dreadfort: 2,300

Mountain clans together: 2,000

House Karstark of Karhold: 1,600

House Umber of Last Hearth: 1,550

House Dustin of Barrowton and the Barrowlands: 1,050

House Ryswell of the Rills: 1,000

House Glover of Deepwood Motte: 900

House Reed of Greywater Watch and the Neck: 900

House Tallhart of Torrhen’s Square: 800

House Hornwood of Hornwood: 700

House Cerwyn of Cerwyn: 700

House Flint of Flint’s Finger: 550

House Mormont of Bear Island: 550

House Locke of Oldcastle: 500

House Flint of Widow’s Watch: 500

House Forrester of Ironrath: 500

House Woods of Wolfswood-Hall: 450

House Stout of Goldgrass: 350

House Slate of Blackpool: 300

Other minor landed houses and holdfasts: 1,200

Total: 27,000

3 - Long Lake Province population, post baby boom:

Heart of the Gods (City, and Nearest Lands): 29,000

Heart of the GodsCounty (North-End Farmland): 45,000

Rito County/Clan (North-Western Woods and some of North-End Farmland) - 18,000

Heartsgrove County (Castle, Town, and South-End Farms): 29,000

HartShore County (Town and Western-Lonely-Hills): 22,000

Northern Wolfswood Communities: 28,000

Other scattered Communities: 19,000

Total population: 190,000

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - What do you think is going to start this quest's version of the War of Five Kings?

And who do you think the sides will be?

There are a few known quantities, such as Viserys, Daeny, and their seer, or Young Griff and the Golden company, but who do you think the other Kings will be, and who do you think will side with them?