House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Wylis - 21

A2 - Jon - 3

A3 - Berenice - 0

A4 - Training - 8

S1 - Wikipedia - 20

S2 - Steam - 9

S3 - Paradox - 5

S4 - World - 0

Ideas:

Seek any soldiers with “Talented” or better in Combat skills and make officers of them. - 15

Put him in charge of maintaining the supply logistics and train people to help him. - 2

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Wikipedia

Thanks to the North Saskatchewan River flood of 1915, much of Westeros is experiencing abnormally heavy rains followed by moderate flooding during this turn.

(It’s “L3 = Slightly Inconvenient” so it inconveniences us, at the same time it inconveniences everyone else, so it’s only slightly inconvenient, because all armies move slowly (if at all) during weather like this.)

World: Bulbapedia

Thanks to the Spinarak (Darkness Ablaze 102), Spinarak and Ariados are now retconned to have been creatures native to the Neck.

Thanks to this being a high roll, it IS possible to have a Spinarak in addition to other Pokémon, and several Crannogmen troops joining the army from the Kneck will come with Spinarak and Ariados companions who are trained to fight on command.

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Story:

You waited at Moat Cailin for weeks while Rob grew more impatient with every passing day, and the steady trickle of riders from the south never seemed to bring anything that made the waiting easier to bear.

The army settled as well as an army can while standing still for too long, which mostly meant the men learned where to sleep, where to eat, and how far they could wander before some captain or sworn sword shouted them back into line.

Nobody liked the delay, though Rob liked it least of all, and by the end of it, he looked like a man being forced to sit still while the world moved on without him.

What finally put an end to the waiting was word that Renly Baratheon had sent part of his strength into the crownlands and taken the town of Templeton, which seemed to settle the matter in Rob’s mind more cleanly than any amount of fretting ever could.

Whatever army the North had gathered by then was the army it would have to use, because he was plainly done waiting for every last slow lord and every trailing banner still somewhere on the road.

So the order finally came down, and the host began to move.

Unfortunately, the moment that happened, the weather turned against it.

Hard rain began falling and then simply refused to stop, so that almost at once the march through the Neck became a long lesson in discomfort, bad temper, and cold misery.

Cloaks stayed wet, boots stayed wet, bedding stayed wet, and every camp the army made dissolved into muck within an hour of stopping, while the men cursed the weather, the road, their horses, their feet, and each other with the sort of weary dedication only soldiers and farmers ever really mastered.

Nobody stayed dry for long, and nobody stayed comfortable at all.

Still, for all that, the Kingsroad through the Neck had been kept in good order by the crannogmen, and that was the one thing that kept the march from slipping from miserable into disastrous.

The host had to stretch into one long slow line in order to keep moving through such country in such weather, but it did keep moving, and in the end, that was all that mattered.

As you passed through the Neck, crannogmen joined the army in little knots rather than one grand body, appearing when the host came near them and not before, which seemed to suit both them and their country well enough.

For you, the march stopped being about distance fairly quickly and became instead about the men under your eye.

Rob had heard what you and Ser Wylis had done with Long Lake’s own troops and decided that the wider host needed the same treatment, so different groups of men were sent through the two of you in turn, spending a day under your instruction before being returned to their own banners with drills they were meant to keep practicing until you circled back and gave them something else to work on.

It was plain work, and there was nothing about it that would ever sound impressive in a hall, but plain, useful work was exactly what the army needed.

The first lessons were the ones most likely to keep the men from breaking apart once battle ceased to be a story and became a crush of bodies on wet ground.

You taught them how to keep a line without drifting, how to step together over bad footing without tangling themselves, how to turn without folding the rank into confusion, how to recover after a stumble without carrying half the line down with them, how to close a gap quickly, and how to keep their heads when the men around them started bunching, shoving, or losing nerve.

It did not feel like teaching men how to win so much as teaching them how not to shame themselves and everyone around them the first time things went wrong, which in truth was probably the more important lesson.

After that came the weapon work, and that proved just as ugly and just as necessary.

The men learned how to carry a shield without letting the arm sag too soon, how to keep a spear level without burning through their strength in the first minute, how to brace at the right moment rather than too early or too late, and how to thrust and recover instead of freezing after the first strike as if the battle had ended simply because they had moved once.

Those with shorter weapons had to learn how not to crowd their own side, how to strike without fouling the man beside them, and how to shove as part of a line rather than as individual fools all trying to prove they were the boldest.

It was wet work, ugly work, and tiring work, though there was some comfort in that too, because if the men could learn under rain, mud, and cold fingers, then perhaps they might remember some of it when the weather stopped being merely unpleasant and started trying to kill them.

While you and Ser Wylis handled that side of things, Omek moved through the host doing quieter work that mattered just as much.

He watched the men, listened to them, tested them where he could, and slowly began sorting out who among them might prove useful later, not the loudest or proudest but the steady ones, the men who followed instructions cleanly, noticed when others started slipping, and kept their heads even when the men beside them did not.

His aim was to begin building the bones of corporals and sergeants out of men who had the right turn of mind for it, rather than leaving all such work to whichever old veterans of Robert’s Rebellion or the Greyjoy war happened to be nearby and sober enough to keep order.

It was the sort of work nobody ever praised in song, though by then you were beginning to understand that armies lived or died on such things far more often than on noble flourishes.

The whole business suited your house more than you liked admitting out loud, because none of it was grand and none of it was likely to make any singer care, while all of it was muddy, repetitive, useful, and necessary.

That fit the Long Lake Starks well enough.

Winterfell got to be the proud face of the North, while your line had always made more sense as the sort that kept the whole structure from falling over when the weather turned bad and the ground went soft.

So you took the lesson for what it was and figured Rob would likely have more need of that kind of service from you before this war was done.

Nobody pretended that some miracle of training was being accomplished in a matter of days, because the host spent as much time huddling from the rain as it did marching, and a man only had so much strength left for drills after a full day in wet clothes on a bad road.

What training you managed was patchy, uneven, and nowhere near enough to turn raw men into proper soldiers overnight.

Still, patchy training was better than none, and most of these men had begun with none.

The specialists already knew their trade, the archers, the household troops, Long Lake’s own heavy infantry, and the small hard knot of heavy horse that would have their own work when battle came, while the rest simply had to be dragged upward a little at a time.

That was not glorious, but it was better than leaving them as they were.

So the North kept moving through the Neck, wet, tired, and learning what it could in scraps and repetitions while the rain hammered down and the road dragged on beneath it.

There was nothing pretty in any of it, and nothing in it that would look half so fine once written down as it did in the heads of boys who had never marched to war, but it was real, and by the end of those weeks you could feel the host beginning to take shape in the mud, the shouting, the routine, and the endless slow movement south.

It was still rough, the war was still ahead, and no one with sense would have called the army ready in any full and comfortable way, but the North was moving now, and every step south made that harder to ignore.

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Skills:

Combat:

(11) Westerosi CQC - 65/300 (+50) (Talented In North)

(9) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 25/100 (+40) ←

(11) Northern Archery - 90/300 (+25) (Skilled)

(10) Northern Equestrianism - 95/200 (+25) (Knack)

(12) Heavy Armour - 15/600 (+40) (Prodigious) ←

Diplomacy:

(10) Interpersonal Communication - 165/200 (+30) (Skilled)

(6) Public Speaking - 75/100 (+40) (Skilled)

(12) Management - 320/400 (+40) (Prodigious)

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

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

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

Language:

(9) Common Speaking - 70/100 (+20) (Knack)

(11) Old Tongue Speaking - 75/300 (+15) (Knack)

(7) Valyrian Speaking - 54/100 (+3) (Knack)

(7) Common Reading - 25/100 (+5)

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

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

Scholarly: (Knack in North)

(9) Math(s) - 5/100 (+5) ←

(11) Accounts - 210/300 (+25) (Prodigious)

(10) Northern History - 160/200 (+25) (Knack)

(7) Westerosi History - 40/100 (+5)

(8) Northern Peoples - 80/100 (+5)

(6) Westerosi Peoples - 20/100 (+5)

Leisure: (Knack in North)

(10) Northern Hunting - 8/200 (+3)

(7) Fishing - 59/100 (+3)

(6) Swimming - 39/100 (+3)

(6) Seacraft - 6/100 (+3)

(6) Climbing - 60/100 (+5) (Skilled In North)

(4) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 60/100 (+5)

(12) Herbology - 70/400 (+30) (Prodigious) ←

(3) Warging - 85/100 (+25) (Gifted)

War:

(10) Strategy - 40/200 (+30) (Prodigious +) ←

(3) Castrametation - 60/100 (+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: 37

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T2 = Person/Event at Home

L4 = Just what's described

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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 practising with Unhalig and Hart Weard in Heavy Plate before the men.

A5 - Put Omek’s new Non-Coms through a crash course in Fighting and War.

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/Maps:

1 - Travel Map - So Far

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - Would you prefer the current, more realistic travel speed for armies, with more chances for chaos from rolls, or faster travel, more like the show, where we get to the action sooner?

I’m tempted to move faster and get to the bigger action sooner, but in the past, you lot seemed to prefer more travel chapters if it means more rolls and, with them, more chances for chaos.

That said, even if I speed things up, I wouldn’t cut travel chapters entirely.

It’d just usually mean a “going there” chapter followed by an arrival chapter for any distance beyond a few miles/kilometres.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother, but with the current weekly schedule, a realistic pace is kind of dragging us.

Still, if you lot don’t mind that, then I’ll stick with the current pace.