House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Wylis - 2

A2 - Jon - 10

A3 - Berenice - 2

A4 - Training - 8

A5 - Omek - 20

S1 - Wikipedia - 0

S2 - Steam - 15

S3 - Paradox - 23

S4 - World - 4

Pacing:

Same: - 20

Faster: - 10

Result:

I won’t skip to the destination, but I’ll avoid having us only make it partway to places.

So, in this chapter, rather than getting partway across the riverlands and stopping nowhere in particular or skipping directly to the battles in the Southern Crownlands, we go directly to Harrenhal, since that's the next point of interest.

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

Thanks to Equestria At War, everyone in the riverlands goes up two skill ranks for whichever type of Equestrianism Skill they’re best at.

(For us, that’s Knack → Talented)

(I was tempted to break the streak of balanced rolls and make every horse sapient, but that would pretty much derail the whole plot, unfortunately.)

World: Elder Scrolls Wiki

Thanks to the Warlock's Ring (Skyrim Creation Club), we are now 1/3 sturdier and recover stamina 1/3 faster while wearing Heavy Armor and/or blocking with a Shield (such as Hart Weard).

As a cherry on top, we are also 1/3 more resistant to magical attacks in heavy armor and/or when wielding a shield.

(So Firebolt? Yes.

Rock thrown at us with Telekinesis? No.)

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Story:

Rob pushed the army across the riverlands as hard as he dared, and with every new bit of news from the south, it got easier to see why.

There had been a time, not very long ago, when marching to war still felt half like a story.

Banners, armor, old songs, all that.

That feeling did not survive very far past Moat Cailin.

By now, the host was tired, the road was long, and every rider who reached camp seemed to bring some fresh report that made the whole war look worse.

Nobody had much room left in them for romance.

For your own part, most of the march became less about distance and more about the men.

With Omek’s help, you did what you could to spread the little real war knowledge the army actually had, not by pretending you could make soldiers out of everyone in a fortnight, but by getting the right men teaching the right things to the right groups.

The veterans from Robert’s Rebellion, the men who had seen the Greyjoy fighting, and the steadier soldiers Omek had already marked out as worth developing all became part of the work.

The point was not to make everyone seasoned.

The point was to keep the green men from staying completely green.

That left your own role a little different from Ser Wylis’s.

With him, most of the work had been about fighting in the direct sense, how to hold a shield, how to keep a line, how to plant a spear, and how not to shame yourself in the first rush.

Now, your work was more about making sure the right men were passing that on and that the smaller groups within the host were beginning to act like parts of an army instead of a crowd with spears.

You got:

The veterans instructing.

The newer men listening to them.

The little squads beginning to form around the sort of men who could hear an order once and repeat it properly.

That mattered more than any one lesson with Sir Wylis ever could.

A lot of it came down to habit.

Men had to learn to keep one ear open for commands from above instead of waiting until confusion had already set in.

They had to learn to look first to their own little group, then to the next man over, then to the corporal or sergeant above them, instead of all turning at once into a mess of frightened guesswork.

They had to learn that once battle started, a man who tried to decide everything for himself usually made life worse for everyone near him.

So you had them practicing simple things over and over, moving when told, halting when told, dressing on the nearest steady man, and passing orders down a line without mangling them beyond recognition.

The drills themselves were not much to look at.

Veterans put younger men through the same movements again and again until the motions started to stick, how to close up without drifting, how to keep their shoulders square, how not to bunch together every time they felt pressure, and how to hear an order without standing there like they needed the gods themselves to repeat it.

You were not trying to make them brilliant.

You were trying to make them dependable.

That is uglier work, but it is also the kind that keeps men alive.

The harder part came once strain entered it.

Men can look decent enough on open ground, in daylight, with no enemy near and no reason to think they might be dead by sundown.

They can even look respectable in a drill yard.

The real test is what they do when they are tired, wet, hungry, and no longer sure the men beside them know any more than they do.

That was where these last months of work really came in.

You and the men helping you pushed them toward something a little firmer.

Not perfect discipline.

Not some impossible machine.

Just enough order that they would not melt into one frightened knot the first time the line bent.

They learned how to give ground without making it a rout, how to keep their place while the men around them shouted and shoved, and how to trust that if they held where they were told, the army might hold with them.

That was the hope of it.

You were not trying to make Unsullied out of farmers.

You were trying to make them a little less likely to die stupidly.

Omek proved useful there too, though in a quieter way.

While you and Ser Wylis handled the more obvious work, he moved through the host watching, listening, and sorting men by the shape of their minds.

Not the loud ones.

Not the boastful ones.

The steady ones.

The ones who could keep their heads, take an order cleanly, pass it on without adornment, and get three other men moving in the same direction.

He wanted the beginnings of corporals and sergeants, men fit to keep a unit together when no lord or knight was near enough to do it for them.

That sort of work never looks impressive.

It still matters.

The whole business suited your house more than you liked saying out loud.

None of it was grand.

None of it was likely to impress a singer.

It was muddy, repetitive, and useful.

That fit the Long Lake Starks well enough.

Winterfell got to be the proud face of the North.

Your line had always made more sense as the sort that kept things from coming apart when the weather turned bad, and the ground went soft.

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

Nobody pretended you were working wonders.

The march was still hard.

The men still spent half their time huddling from the weather and the other half trying not to fall behind.

There was only so much strength left in them after a full day on the road.

What training you managed was uneven and broken up, and nowhere near enough to turn raw men into proper soldiers in a handful of weeks.

Still, broken training was better than none, and most of them had started with none.

The specialists already knew their trade, the archers, the household troops, Long Lake’s own heavy infantry, and the small knot of heavy horse that would have its own place when battle came.

The rest just had to be dragged upward a little at a time.

By the time the army reached Harrenhal, it no longer felt like you were traveling toward war.

It felt like you were in it.

Harrenhal itself was worse than large.

It was wrong.

Too big, too black, too broken, and too old, as though somebody long ago had tried to build a castle large enough to bully the rest of the world, and the world had taken offense.

Even ruined, it dwarfed the eye.

Even shattered, it still looked large enough to swallow banners, camps, and pride alike.

You had seen old places before.

You had seen large places before.

You had never seen anything like Harrenhal.

It did not feel haunted in the childish sense.

It felt spoiled, as if too much pride and too much death had soaked too deep into the stone for the place to ever sit right again.

There, at last, the northern host joined up with Edmure Tully and Brynden Tully, the Blackfish, and there you got your first full picture of the war beyond scraps and rumor.

The picture was bad.

There were several different forces now hitting the Reach and Stormlander army under Renly, which on its face ought to have been good news.

The problem was that none of them had actually declared for Joffrey.

That made them useful enemies for Renly, but not useful allies for you.

At the same time there was still a huge army sitting not far from King’s Landing, and even if it had slowed now that it had gathered into one great body, it was still likely to reach the city ahead of you.

A city can survive a siege in theory.

In practice, the city in question was King’s Landing, which meant hunger, riot, fear, and all the rest of the usual ugliness, only made worse by the fact that the Baratheon hold on the crownlands had never been especially deep.

Elsewhere, the realm seemed determined to grow new problems by the day.

Dorne had begun raiding into the Stormlands, and the rumors about the Golden Company had turned out to be true.

That was bad enough on its own.

A large disciplined sellsword army in Dornish service was the kind of thing nobody liked hearing about.

For the moment, there was still another kingdom between you and them, which at least meant it was not today’s trouble.

Then there were the ironborn, or pirates, or whoever in hell they really were.

A fleet had locked down the Whispering Sound and taken the Arbor, though from the reports it seemed more interested in stripping what it could and moving on than in proper conquest.

Whether they served the Iron Islands or were simply sea raiders of another kind hardly mattered at the moment.

They were hitting Reach interests and somehow dodging around the Westerlands besides.

If they truly were ironborn, then one day somebody was going to have to ask where Rodrik the Reader had been hiding all those ships.

For now, it was only one more thing wrong.

The riverlanders turned out to be almost as irritating in their own way.

They had come, yes, but not with anything like the spirit Rob wanted.

Many of their lords had brought smaller forces than hoped, and there was plenty of muttering among them about how the wiser course would have been to do as the Vale had done and stay out of it if possible.

From their point of view, no likely winner in this war seemed likely to improve their lives enough to make the cost worth it.

That made Rob furious, though it was the kind of fury that comes from hearing something selfish and still not being able to call it stupid.

Edmure at least said it plainly.

Honor mattered, he said, but it was not the first duty of House Tully.

Before honor came duty to their people, which meant not dragging them into every war that blew across the realm unless there was some real gain in it.

Still, family came before even that, and Arya was his niece and would-be queen beside Joffrey.

So the riverlanders were here.

For your own part, all of that mattered less than the simple fact that battle was close.

Jon agreed that the two of you were about as ready as you could reasonably be, which was comforting right up until you thought about what it meant.

When the fighting came, Rob was almost certainly going to use the men he trusted most where the work was hardest.

Other lords might angle for the places that looked most honorable, but there was exactly one lord in the North Rob could trust completely to obey, hold, and stay true no matter what.

Usually, that was a comforting thing to know about your cousin.

As battle drew nearer, though, you were beginning to see the less pleasant side of being trusted that completely.

Still, there was nothing to be done that night.

So you rested as best you could under the shadow of Harrenhal while Rob tried to push the riverlords toward King’s Landing.

And while the wind moved through those broken towers and the camp settled below them, you found yourself staring up at that great black ruin and thinking that the world had chosen a very bad time to become even stranger than usual.

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Skills:

Combat:

(11) Westerosi CQC - 85/300 (+20)

(9) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 45/100 (+20)

(11) Northern Archery - 105/300 (+15) (Skilled)

(10) Northern Equestrianism - 125/200 (+30) (Talented)

(12) Heavy Armour - 55/600 (+40) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(10) Interpersonal Communication - 195/200 (+30) (Skilled)

(6) Public Speaking - 95/100 (+20) (Skilled)

(12) Management - 360/400 (+40) (Prodigious)

(7) Stewardship - 5/100 (+5) (Knack) ←

(6) Northern Law - 85/100 (+5) (Knack)

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

Language:

(9) Common Speaking - 90/100 (+20) (Knack)

(11) Old Tongue Speaking - 90/300 (+15) (Knack)

(7) Valyrian Speaking - 54/100 (+0) (Knack)

(7) Common Reading - 25/100 (+0)

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

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

Scholarly:

(9) Math(s) - 10/100 (+5)

(11) Accounts - 234/300 (+25) (Prodigious)

(10) Northern History - 165/200 (+5) (Knack)

(7) Westerosi History - 40/100 (+0)

(8) Northern Peoples - 80/100 (+0)

(6) Westerosi Peoples - 20/100 (+0)

Leisure:

(10) Northern Hunting - 8/200 (+0)

(7) Fishing - 59/100 (+0)

(6) Swimming - 39/100 (+0)

(6) Seacraft - 6/100 (+0)

(6) Climbing - 60/100 (+0)

(4) Acting (Lying Convincingly) - 60/100 (+0)

(12) Herbology - 100/400 (+30) (Prodigious)

(3) Warging - 110/100 (+25) (Gifted)

War:

(10) Strategy - 70/200 (+30) (Prodigious +)

(3) Castrametation - 110/100 (+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: 43

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T5 = Power/Skill for a Prominent Figure

L7 = Most convenient

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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 2/2)

S2 - Steam Games

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

S4 - World Rolls List (D12)

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Information/Maps:

1 - War Map - So Far

Updated to include the movement of other Armies/Navies along with the battles (X) that have already taken place.

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - Is there anything confusing about the War Map?

I don't want to spoil stuff, but just in terms of what information the Army gets from the Riverlanders at Harrenhal, I’m down to clarify if needed.