House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Wylis - 4

A2 - Jon - 2

A3 - Berenice - 2

A4 - Omek - 30

A5 - Training - 3

S1 - Wikipedia - 6

S2 - Steam - 0

S3 - Paradox - 0

S4 - World - 35

Idea(s):

Train up and lead a corps of field-medics in whatever healing skills she can give them - 24

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Might and Magic Wiki

Thanks to Water Magic (H7), Shireen Baratheon will wake up in her little godswood and will, in the following nights, begin to dream about water magic, which, if she experiments, she will discover a burgeoning ability to perform.

(How do you think Melisandre will take this?

On the one hand, Azor Ahai’s daughter has magic! That's great proof she’s right about him.

On the other hand… Water Magic? That seems very Great-Other-esk to a fire priestess…)

World: Coppermind Wiki

Thanks to the Dreamer people, across the world will, rather than dying, become wandering spirits with the ability to take control of weak-willed or intoxicated individuals.

When they do, their puppets will gain slightly superhuman capabilities (multiple Olympic sports level, not Captain America) that they get to keep, but only after the wandering spirit has had its fun with their body.

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Story:

You found Omek once the day’s drilling had eased enough that a man could think without somebody nearby shouting about shield height or foot placement.

You gave him the broad shape of things first, the work Ser Wylis had been doing with the host, the steady improvement of the infantry, the camp order, and the slow, ugly process by which a provincial levy was being hammered into something less likely to disgrace itself.

Only after that did you turn the question back on him and ask what news he had brought from the Wall besides his own return.

Omek’s answer was calm in the way northern bad news often was.

The Wall did not much like the northern army marching south at a time like this, he said, but neither was it wholly alarmed by the choice.

What spared everyone worse arguments was the fact that Rob had not called the full strength of the North, only the regular field force that could be gathered and moved quickly.

That distinction mattered to the men at Castle Black.

They did not enjoy losing any measure of northern strength while a threat gathered beyond the Wall, but they could at least take some comfort in knowing that the North had not stripped itself bare for a southern quarrel.

From there, he gave the darker estimate.

Best guess, as far as the Watch could make one, put Mance Rayder perhaps a year away from fully uniting the wildlings, and after that, only a few months more from making a true attempt on the Wall.

The timeline was rough enough to be maddening, close enough to matter terribly, and not close enough to let a man stop pretending he still had time.

Omek did not need to explain who Mance was.

The name was bad enough on its own, a former brother of the Watch turned traitor and king to the people he ought to have spent his life guarding against.

That made the whole thing sit worse than if he had been some nameless raider with a crown of bone and delusion.

There was more, though Omek gave it reluctantly.

He had heard talk of stranger things beyond the Wall, the sort of vague muttering sensible men disliked because it gave them nothing solid to seize and refused to die all the same.

He had found no proof worth naming as proof, and he said so plainly enough.

Even so, there was one detail that gave the rumors more bite than he liked, which was that the wildlings, especially the more northern clans, did not seem to be pushing south out of mere hunger or ambition.

Many of them seemed to be running from something.

That was not enough to build a plan upon, but it was more than enough to leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Not long after that conversation, Berenice found the three of you together and decided to take advantage of it before any of you could slip away.

She wanted men.

Not many, she admitted at once, and not the best swords or the strongest backs either, but soldiers with the right disposition, men able to keep their heads while other people screamed, bled, or panicked.

What she wanted to build out of them was not true healers, because true healers took years and she was too honest to pretend otherwise, but the beginnings of something useful, a small core of men with enough knowledge to act as field medics, to keep the wounded from dying of stupidity in the first minutes and hours after battle, and if nothing else to serve as proper assistants when the real work began.

She said it plainly enough that the sense of it hit all three of you at once.

In war, many men died because nobody nearby knew what to do.

If she could reduce that even slightly, then she ought to be allowed to try.

It did not take much discussion after that.

Ser Wylis saw the military value immediately, Omek saw the practical value, and you were not fool enough to argue with the woman most likely to be elbow deep in the consequences if battle came.

So she got her approval, and Omek, perhaps because the Wall had left him even less sentimental than before, went off to help her find the right sort of men and convince them that learning how to bind wounds, move the injured, and keep somebody breathing was a noble enough duty for any man not too proud to survive.

That in itself became part of the shape of the march, one more skill being quietly built behind the larger and noisier business of war.

Time passed as marching time always did, half tedious and half unsettling, long enough that the days blurred and short enough that no one ever felt entirely settled in them.

The host moved, and the men drilled.

The camps rose and came down.

Berenice gathered her first rough assistants and began filling their heads with the ugly, practical lessons she thought most urgent.

Ser Wylis kept hammering orders into the infantry.

Lord Teba and the rest of the experienced men did what they could to turn stubbornness into something a little closer to discipline.

Eventually, after enough road and enough weather and enough of the whole slow business, Long Lake’s army reached Moat Cailin to find that most of the rest of the northern host was already there.

That was impressive and annoying in almost equal measure.

A few forces were still absent, the mountain clans, House Glover of Deepwood Motte, and House Karstark among them, but enough of the North had arrived already that the whole place looked less like one mustering ground and more like the North itself had decided to camp in a muddy knot.

More embarrassingly, the Umbers of Last Hearth had beaten you there despite having what ought to have been a less direct journey.

Rob waved that away when you saw him, saying that Long Lake had always gathered a larger share of its population for war than most provinces did, and that it was doing the same now.

The implication was that you had more men to drag into line and more mess to sort before marching, which was not exactly flattering but was at least fair.

Rob himself looked half pulled apart by the work before him.

He was everywhere at once, or trying to be, moving between camps, banners, officers, arguments, and endless little problems that all wanted deciding before the army could take another honest step south.

He did not have much time to spare for you, and perhaps that was one of the few advantages of being one of the commanders least likely to take offense, because it meant he could speak plainly and quickly instead of wasting half the meeting on reassurance.

Even so, he stayed long enough to bring you up to speed, and what he had to say made it clear that the mess in the south had not improved itself in your absence.

If anything, it had gotten worse.

Renly Baratheon had now declared himself king as well, with the backing of most of the Reach and a grand public marriage to Margaery Tyrell that made the whole thing look less like a claim and more like a second court setting itself up against the first.

Still, not all the news was bad.

Uncle Ned and King Joffrey had apparently managed to fight off an attempted assault on King’s Landing by Stannis and the royal fleet, and in doing so had damaged his support rather badly.

That ought to have been good enough to settle your nerves a little.

Unfortunately, there were other pieces moving on the board as well.

The Vale had not answered inquiries.

Dorne was rumored to be hiring the Golden Company, though no one seemed able to say for whose cause.

At that point, it was difficult to tell whether the war was clarifying or simply growing more heads.

That uncertainty sat on Rob badly.

More than anything else, he seemed anxious to get south before the whole thing became even more tangled than it already was, and his patience for waiting on the slower northern banners had plainly worn thin.

As things stood, he did not seem likely to wait more than another moon.

Whatever had gathered by then would march, and whatever had not would simply have to catch up later if it could.

That was the shape of it, in the end.

The North had gathered at Moat Cailin, but not fully.

The South was already on fire.

The Wall watched the horizon and counted its months.

Berenice built her rough little corps of field medics.

Rob wore himself down trying to hold all the moving pieces in one hand long enough to drive them south.

And you, standing among the camps, banners, mud, horses, and endless noise of a northern army making ready for war, were left with the clear, ugly sense that all of this had only just begun.

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Skills:

Combat:

(11) Westerosi CQC - 15/300 (+20) (Talented In North) ←

(8) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 85/100 (+15)

(11) Northern Archery - 65/300 (+25) (Skilled)

(10) Northern Equestrianism - 70/200 (+25) (Knack)

(11) Heavy Armour - 275/300 (+40) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(10) Interpersonal Communication - 135/200 (+30) (Skilled)

(6) Public Speaking - 35/100 (+20) (Skilled)

(12) Management - 280/400 (+40) (Prodigious)

(6) Stewardship - 95/100 (+5) (Knack)

(6) Northern Law - 75/100 (+5) (Knack)

(6) Westerosi Law - 65/100 (+5) (Knack)

Language:

(9) Common Speaking - 50/100 (+5) (Knack)

(11) Old Tongue Speaking - 60/300 (+30) (Knack)

(7) Valyrian Speaking - 51/100 (+3) (Knack)

(7) Common Reading - 20/100 (+5)

(4) Westerosi Runes - 90/100 (+0)

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

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

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

(11) Accounts - 185/300 (+25) (Prodigious)

(10) Northern History - 135/200 (+25) (Knack)

(7) Westerosi History - 35/100 (+5)

(8) Northern Peoples - 75/100 (+5)

(6) Westerosi Peoples - 15/100 (+5)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(10) Northern Hunting - 5/200 (+3)

(7) Fishing - 56/100 (+3)

(6) Swimming - 36/100 (+3)

(6) Seacraft - 3/100 (+3) ←

(6) Climbing - 55/100 (+5) (Skilled In North)

(4) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 55/100 (+5)

(12) Herbology - 40/400 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

(3) Warging - 60/100 (+25) (Gifted)

War:

(10) Strategy - 10/200 (+30) (Prodigious +) ←

(3) Castrametation - 10/100 (+50) (Knack)

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

(3) Fleetcraft - 60/100 (+0)

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

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Earning: 6

Spending: 0

Banked: 31

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T4 = Objects/Effect at Home

L3 = Slightly Inconvenient

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Voting:

Main Actions: Who should we focus on during the march South?

A1 - Drill the less experienced troops with Sir Wylis until they grok the basics.

A2 - Train with Jon and build a reputation for arms with your new Personal Guard.

A3 - Work with Berenice on camp medicine and healing any injuries.

A4 - Make a show of practicing with Unhalig and Hart Weard in Heavy Plate before the men.

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 - Travel Map - So Far

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - What should Omek’s job be in the army?

Should he train up his own little corps for some kind of job?

Should he stick close to you to advise you?

Something else?