House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Patrol - 11

A2 - Race - 2

A3 - Market - 6

A4 - Hills - 17

A5 - Judge - 1

A6 - Crabs - 8

A7 - School - 14

S1 - Wikipedia - 0

S2 - Steam - 21

S3 - Paradox - 32

S4 - World - 6

Ideas: So Far

(20R) Gather craftsmen to train on The Wall + Send Father a Hund Poochyena. - 18

(0R) Stay in Heartsgrove to help Wulfric & Jon figure out their magic from Northern History. - 13

(6R) Go to Wintertown and find a Master Beekeeper to boost the LLP Honey Industry. - 8

(12R) Go to the Neck to see if House Reed knows someone able to teach Warging. - 5

(0R) Stay in LLP and try to determine for sure if Wulfric’s Plant Blessings are real or not. - 2

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Cities: Skylines Wiki

Thanks to the Snowfall, you are now immune to cold damage.

You're still capable of being injured by cold things, such as being cut by an Other’s Ice Blade, or having ice fall on you, but the damage is no longer due to the cold but due to other factors, such as the blade’s sharpness or the ice’s weight.

As an interesting side effect, if you should ever capture the weapon of an Other, you’ll now be capable of wielding it, without getting frostbite or other related repercussions.

However, this is an “L2 = Moderately Inconvenient”, so this power won't effect your behavior much as you're still fully capable of getting uncomfortably cold, just not to the point of injury.

Warm is still the preferable state of being for you, so this power will likely take a while to discover.

(It’s a good power, just not an obvious one.)

World: Witcher Wiki

Thanks to the Sensitivity to Steel, all Pokémon are now ret-conned to be slightly stronger, but with a condition called “Sensitivity to Steel” until they bond with a Human.

As a result of this, unbonded Pokémon are now easier to kill by humans, while bonded ones are slightly stronger than previously.

(This roll basically gives us a reason why they would bother to bond with random smallfolk here.

Because if they do, they lose their weakness to human (and steel Pokémon) attacks.)

(It also gives a better reason why something that can 1-hit a full-grown deer, like a Mightyena, would lose to something as measly as a smallfolk with a spear.

Answer: Because it was unbonded and thus weak to steel, so that smallfolk’s attack was a crit.)

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Story:

Berenice returned from the Gods Eye with Pate at her side and a look on her face that killed any hope she had come back only with answers.

What she carried with her was not certainty, nor anything so easy as a prophecy with names and dates, but something vaguer and in its own way worse.

The Green Men, or those who still kept to the old ways near enough to speak for them, had given warning of a hard winter and great danger rising from beyond the Wall.

That was the sort of thing a sensible man might have liked to dismiss if it had come from almost anyone else.

Unfortunately for your peace of mind, it had not.

Worse still, that old warning did not remain only an old warning for very long.

Word had already come from Rob that the northern lords were to begin preparing for the possibility of a King Beyond the Wall.

Apparently, Winterfell had been in contact with the Lord Commander in a way you had not, which sat a little sourly with you once it became clear.

Your own message to the Wall had only asked what supplies and practical assistance they might need.

It had not asked what exactly they feared, nor what they believed themselves to be preparing for.

Now that you knew, both messages seemed to lock together in an ugly enough fashion.

That mattered more for Long Lake than for many other parts of the North.

You were not the first land beyond the Wall’s shadow, not with the Gift and the lands nearest Castle Black existing for exactly that reason, but Long Lake was still one of the northernmost provinces and therefore one of the likelier places to feel the pressure early if the wildlings came south in serious numbers.

That was an unpleasant thing to sit with, especially since it made every practical problem in the province feel just a little less theoretical than it had the week before.

Your first instinct, once the warning and the order had both landed properly, was to start taking a greater interest in the local garrisons.

If danger was coming, then you ought to know the men who would answer it, how they were organized, how quickly they could gather, and what sort of strength they actually represented once all the boasting got stripped away.

Unfortunately, when you started probing at that idea, the reaction you got was not exactly inspiring.

No one refused you.

No one was stupid enough for that.

But there was a quiet sort of doubt in the way people looked at you, and it did not take long to understand why.

At present, your reputation is not a martial one.

You were the lord who had spent his first months learning the farms, the villages, the roads, the glass gardens, the woods, and the shape of local life.

You were known for practical civil matters, for asking sensible questions, for fixing bridges, and for blessing crops often enough that the province had begun to treat you like some peculiar agricultural saint.

Useful qualities all.

Military ones, rather less so.

Ser Wylis said the ugly truth plainly enough once the two of you were alone.

People would listen to your military ideas because you were their lord, and they would nod at the appropriate times because they were not fools, but most of them would not truly trust those ideas until you had proven yourself in that world somehow.

That stung.

Mostly because it was fair.

You had built a reputation already.

It simply happened to be the wrong one for this particular moment.

Still, Long Lake had not survived this long by pretending threats from beyond the Wall were some unimaginable novelty.

The traditional answer to wildling danger was already buried deep enough into local life that most people probably thought of it as simple common sense rather than strategy.

The danger was not some swift-mounted enemy sweeping through and vanishing over the horizon.

It was slower and heavier than that, the pressure of foot raiders and larger warbands moving down through the land, threatening whatever looked isolated, weak, or slow to respond.

So the answer was warning and withdrawal.

Watchtowers, signal points, horns, old paths of retreat, and habits passed down long enough to feel half instinct gave people notice.

Then the scattered farmfolk pulled inward toward their nearest hamlet villages, where small wooden walls, rough ditches, sharpened stakes, and other prepared defenses gave them at least a better chance than any lone farmstead could ever offer.

It was not a glorious answer.

That was perhaps the part you trusted most about it.

No one was pretending that every field could be defended where it stood, or that every family in the province could simply stiffen its spine and murder a warband on its own doorstep.

The point was to make sure people knew when to run, where to run, and how to hold together long enough for stronger hands to answer.

That was the sort of wisdom rough country bred, whether a man liked it or not.

Even so, old answers did not excuse present inaction.

Now that you knew what the Wall might actually be bracing for, merely sending the requested tools and fittings no longer felt like enough.

That was where the first truly large decision of your lordship took shape.

Long Lake would not only send the ironwork Castle Black had asked for.

It would also send as many willing volunteers as could be gathered for a few months, men who would go north to help build up the Wall’s defenses before winter, and a larger danger made every weakness more expensive.

The logic of it seemed sound enough once laid out.

These men would not be joining the Night’s Watch.

They would not be taking the black, vanishing from their homes, or being offered up as some polite local sacrifice to northern duty.

They would go north to help the Watch and then come back.

If the Wall was preparing for something larger, then Long Lake could spare men for a few months to strengthen defenses now, and in return those men would return with more experience, more hard knowledge, and a better understanding of what danger from beyond the Wall actually looked like in practice.

That seemed as close to a clean exchange as one could reasonably hope for.

Technically, the money used for the effort came out of the funds meant for winter preparation and the defense of the province.

That was close enough to honest to stand without too much twisting.

A stronger Wall meant a safer Long Lake, and if Long Lake stood among the northern provinces likeliest to feel the first shock of trouble, then helping the Wall prepare counted as provincial defense, whether anyone found the accounting elegant or not.

There would be grumbling, certainly.

There was always grumbling once reserve funds started moving.

Still, the money had built up in your absence, and hoarded coin was of limited use if it never turned into anything but self-congratulation.

You sent Omek with the volunteers as well, because you had no intention of letting the Watch misunderstand what you were offering.

He was to oversee the arrangement, make clear that these men were not conscripts, not criminals, and not bodies being rid of, but willing helpers sent north in good faith for a limited term.

He was also to make equally clear that they were expected back when that term was done, and that one of the purposes of the whole venture was for them to return with more knowledge and more experience than they had possessed when they left.

That mattered.

If Long Lake was going to spend coin and men on the Wall, then Long Lake had every right to gain something useful from it besides goodwill and colder weather.

Then came the more personal addition, which sat badly enough in your mind that you almost talked yourself out of it twice before deciding not to be a coward over a hound.

As a separate boon for the early return of Unhalig, you decided to send your father a wolfhound trained by the people of Clan Hund, something in the mold of Jinx or Ghost.

The thought behind it was practical more than affectionate.

A hound could guard a man, keep him company, and perhaps keep him alive if the coming winter truly did turn ugly.

Jon thought you were doing the right thing.

He knew perfectly well how reluctant you were to give your father anything at all, and he knew better than most how foul the whole subject made your temper.

Still, from his point of view, your father had done you a real kindness in returning Unhalig early, and that in itself created a sort of debt.

Not enough to make him a good man, or to wash away abandonment, silence, or years of absence.

But enough that repaying the gesture, if you could do so without debasing yourself, was honorable.

That was the sort of answer Jon would give, and infuriatingly enough, it was difficult to argue with without sounding smaller than you wished to be.

Even so, you made certain the hound was paid for from your own purse rather than the province’s funds.

The tools, the volunteers, and Omek all went north as part of your first large act of lordship.

The hound did not.

That was no affair of Long Lake.

It was a gift, or something uncomfortably close to one, from a son to the reluctant father who had returned the family sword early and still somehow managed to make even that sit badly.

In the end, everything went north all the same.

The tools, the volunteers, Omek, and the hound went north.

And you were left behind at Heartsgrove with the deeply unpleasant sense that you had done something both useful and personal, necessary and bitter, lordly and resentful, all at once.

Perhaps that was the truest sort of preparation after all.

Winter had not yet arrived, the enemy had not yet crossed the Wall, and no war had yet begun.

But the shape of things was already moving, and the best you could do was start setting your own pieces into place before the cold forced everyone’s hand.

---

It was Jon who came up with the next task, which was probably for the best, given how sour your thoughts had become after sending so much of your effort north.

Ser Wylis was busy enough with the province’s defenses that neither of you could reasonably demand his time for anything less urgent, and Jon, with the irritating practicality he so often fell into, suggested that the two of you ought to spend the meantime trying to get a better handle on this new and unwelcome skill you had both begun to develop.

At the same time, there was no reason the effort could not serve a second purpose.

The Lonely Hills on the eastern side of Long Lake were among the province’s more rural districts, full of herding folk who did not always hear important news quickly unless Clan Hund chose to carry it to them, so the two of you might as well ride there with the wolves and Janus and spread word of possible raiding from beyond the Wall while you were at it.

The Lonely Hills were not mountains, though there were moments when they seemed determined to pretend otherwise.

The land rolled and broke and rose again in long rough folds, with great open stretches of wind-bitten grass between them and shallow valleys where water ran in colder months and shrank back in drier ones.

It was cattle country first and foremost, though goats cropped at the steeper ground where cows grew stubborn or sensible enough to avoid it.

You could ride for quite some time and see little besides herds, rough shelters, distant smoke, and the occasional wandering family with house, goods, children, dogs, and future all tied to whatever beasts they moved beside.

Most of them had little reason to deal with outsiders often, and when they did it was usually through Clan Hund and the settlements closer to HartShore, not through Heartsgrove or any of the more settled stretches of Long Lake.

That gave the whole trip a different feel from the others.

You were not moving between little villages or lesser halls in the same way.

You were moving through a country where people lived much farther apart, where their wealth walked on four legs, and where a man could go a very long time without seeing anyone he did not already know.

Even so, they took the warning seriously enough once it was given.

They were not the sort of folk to laugh at northern danger just because it was still far away, and they were grateful enough for the news that several families took the chance to offer meals, fires, and places to sleep once they understood who you were.

That part struck you more than you had expected.

For many of them, this was the first time in living memory they had ever met a Stark at all.

Not simply you, specifically, but any Stark.

Your father had never come among them in all his years as Lord of Long Lake, and the lord before him belonged to a past so distant that for most of the people speaking to you, he may as well have been some half-remembered tale told by grandparents.

So they welcomed you with the sort of careful hospitality country folk gave when something important wandered unexpectedly into their lives, and there was something quietly humbling in realizing that for all the work you had done learning the province, there were still whole pieces of it for whom your presence was less a return than a first arrival.

While the warning and the visits gave the journey its excuse, the true purpose of it lived in the hours between, when you and Jon turned your attention to the strange gift growing in both of you and tried to get some kind of handle on it before it got a handle on you instead.

Jon took to Ghost first, which somehow felt both unfair and entirely predictable.

Over the course of the trip, he developed not full control exactly, but a steady and growing sense of where Ghost was in relation to him, even when the wolf had ranged far off on his own hunt.

It started subtly enough, a pause, a tilt of the head, a certainty that Ghost had gone east or north or doubled back along some ridge.

Then it became stronger.

By the end of the trip, Jon could simply stop, lift an arm, and point directly toward where Ghost was, even when the wolf was far enough off that neither of you could have tracked him by sound or sight.

Jon, being Jon, treated this with his usual quiet seriousness, which only made it more irritating that he was so obviously better at it than you were.

Your own progress proved less dignified.

For a while, you thought perhaps you simply had no talent for it at all, which would have been humiliating but at least straightforward.

Instead, much to your annoyance, the strongest connection you managed was not with Jinx but with Janus.

When you focused hard enough, usually while the raven had taken to the air in search of whatever it was ravens considered worth their time, you would sometimes catch a strange glimpse of the world from above, crooked and quick and wrong in the way all stolen perspectives ought to be.

Not enough to hold for long or to guide the bird.

Just enough to know with unpleasant certainty that the skill was there and that, for some reason, the old gods, or whatever force lay behind them, had decided your first proper bond ought to be with a sarcastic bird.

Still, between Jon’s growing sense for Ghost and your own stolen fragments of Janus’s view, the two of you managed to confirm the important thing, which was that the skill was real.

Jon had only the vaguest beginnings of whatever this was, and your own progress was hardly something to boast of, but it was enough to know that the thing had taken root.

Given the warning Berenice had brought back from the Gods Eye and the likelihood of war with the wildlings if winter turned cruel enough, the two of you agreed that it was a skill worth continuing to work at.

If the old gods had seen fit to hand out gifts, then it seemed a poor thing to do nothing with them.

It was on that trip, too, with the hills wide around you and no one but wolves and cattle likely to overhear, that the two of you finally began trading the deeper secrets you had both been holding back.

You told Jon first.

About the strange gift you were certain you possessed, the one that ought to let you pull an ally back from the brink of death if the moment ever came.

You told him that you had never used it, not truly, and that the nearest you had ever come had perhaps been Bran, though by the time you reached him, he was no longer balanced on that final edge, and so the question had become meaningless.

It was an absurd thing to say aloud, and all the more absurd because you knew it was true even without understanding how you knew.

Jon listened in the same quiet way he listened to most things that mattered.

Then, after a moment of thought that you mistook for contemplation rather than stupidity, he stood up, pulled off one glove, and, like the most committed idiot in the Seven Kingdoms, shoved his whole arm straight into the campfire.

You did not think.

You panicked!

You swore, lunged, and tackled him away from the flames with more force than dignity, only for Jon to pull back, blinking at you like he was the wronged party in all this, and hold up an arm that was entirely untouched.

That was when he explained, in a tone far calmer than the moment deserved, that he thought some part of his Targaryen blood might be showing.

He had discovered, much to his own displeasure, that fire simply did not burn him.

You called him an idiot, which was only fair, and told him that if he ever tested a theory like that again without warning you first, then you would personally beat sense into him with the flat of Unhalig.

Even so, once the first rush of fury and relief had worn off, the thing left behind was not comfort.

Whether it was Targaryen blood, the old gods, or some uglier knot of fate tying both together, it was plainly a boon and plainly a concern.

If the world, or the gods behind it, felt the need to hand out multiple blessings to the two of you, then something large was probably coming sooner or later.

After that, the fire seemed louder than before, and the hills seemed much too empty.

The two of you sat in the dark with the wolves close, Janus somewhere above, and the wind moving slowly through the grass while neither of you said much for a while.

There was no need.

Berenice and Pate had returned with warnings vague enough to be maddening and serious enough to linger, and now the both of you sat there carrying fresh proof that whatever was moving in the dark around your lives was not content with half measures.

That was enough to quiet even Jon, and more than enough to leave you staring into the fire and wondering just how much worse things were going to get before they ever had the decency to start making sense.

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Skills:

Combat:

(10) Westerosi CQC - 100/200 (+15) (Talented In North)

(7) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 70/100 (+15)

(10) Northern Archery - 175/200 (+15) (Skilled)

(9) Northern Equestrianism - 20/100 (+50) (Knack) ←

(11) Heavy Armour - 105/300 (+30) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(10) Interpersonal Communication - 60/200 (+15) (Skilled)

(5) Public Speaking - 25/100 (+15) (Skilled)

(12) Management - 220/400 (+40) (Prodigious)

(6) Stewardship - 45/100 (+15) (Knack)

(6) Northern Law - 25/100 (+15) (Knack)

(6) Westerosi Law - 15/100 (+15) (Knack) ←

Language:

(9) Common Speaking - 20/100 (+5) (Knack)

(10) Old Tongue Speaking - 145/200 (+50) (Knack)

(7) Valyrian Speaking - 49/100 (+3) (Knack)

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

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

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

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(9) Math(s) - 35/100 (+20)

(11) Accounts - 30/300 (+40) (Prodigious) ←

(10) Northern History - 50/200 (+10) (Knack)

(7) Westerosi History - 15/100 (+5)

(8) Northern Peoples - 35/100 (+5)

(5) Westerosi Peoples - 95/100 (+6)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(9) Northern Hunting - 75/100 (+10)

(6) Fishing - 100/100 (+25)

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

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

(5) Climbing - 100/100 (+50) (Skilled In North)

(4) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 35/100 (+5)

(11) Herbology - 200/300 (+30) (Prodigious)

(2) Warging - 60/100 (+20) (Gifted)

War:

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

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

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

(3) Fleetcraft - 10/100 (+25) ←

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

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Earning: 6

Spending: 20

Banked: 7

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T5 = Power/Skill for a Prominent Figure

L6 = Moderately Convenient

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

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

A4 - 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.

A5 - Go Mud-Crabbing at HartShore with Clan Hund.

Reputation: Moderate boost with everyone at HartShore and Cinaed.

A6 - 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 (On Cooldown 2/2)

S2 - Steam Games

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

S4 - World Rolls List (D12)

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Information:

1 - Long Lake Province Map

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - What should Berenice do in Heartsgrove or Long Lake for the next few months?

Normally, I’d let you vote to send her off on another task, but we just spent all our money on that Wolf for our Father.

Plus, in 2 turns, the priorities are going to shift, so instead, I’m going to hold off on the regular Minion vote for a few Turns.

That said, this is still the best method of Reader contribution to the Quest, so Write-In:

What task should Berenice be working on (nearby) for the next 2 turns/4 months?