House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Wylis - 19

A2 - Jon - 11

A3 - Berenice - 1

A4 - Training - 11

A5 - Omek - 2

S1 - Wikipedia - 0

S2 - Steam - 30

S3 - Paradox - 0

S4 - World - 14

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Steam Games

Thanks to the Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles, Jon Snow will gain the abilities of a master of one of the 13 Breathing Styles.

Thanks to a further bit of RNG (D14’s don’t exist, but I happen to own 2 D7’s), Jon is now the master of Stone Breathing.

This will integrate well with his existing Sword skills as it focuses on Heavy Weapons, like the two-handed swords John already prefers to use.

This is essentially an entirely new Sword and CQC Style downloaded into his head and muscle memory: “(10) Stone Breathing Swordsmanship - 200/200 (Prodigious)” and “(10) Stone Breathing CQC - 200/200 (Prodigious).”

Though ironically, it’s actually the style he’s less skilled with thanks to all his work on “Westerosi Swordsmanship” and “Westerosi CQC.”

Also, just like the canon of the show/manga, the VFX is purely a visualization thing, to help the wielder get in the right mindset.

Sadly, there will be no magic stone VFX when John fights… well, outside of his (and Ghost’s) heads, anyway.

World: Coppermind

Thanks to the Nightmaw, Flocks of Nightmaw will begin to appear on any moderately sized or larger Island on Planetos.

(Fanart of the Nightmaw.)

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Story:

Eventually, Rob got the riverlanders moving.

It was not through some great speech that left every man aflame with purpose, and it was certainly not because the riverlords had all at once decided they liked the war better than they had the day before.

He simply kept at them until the plain truth could no longer be dodged, which was that if King’s Landing was under siege by the time the army reached it, then reaching it mattered more than any fresh excuse for delay.

So the combined host finally began the long push toward the city, bigger now, slower now, and more politically tiresome than the northern army had been on its own.

On that march, Rob found a use for you that did not involve arguing with riverlords or pretending to enjoy councils.

He asked you to start cycling through the riverlander levies and try to drag them up to something like the same basic level of order the northern army had managed to reach.

Not all of the northern host had truly gotten there, of course, but enough of it had that the others had learned to follow their lead and not get in the way too badly.

That alone was worth a great deal, and if the riverlanders could be made to do even half as well, then the army as a whole would be better for it.

The first lessons were the same ugly ones you had already taught a hundred times over, because ugly lessons were usually the useful ones.

You taught them how to stand in line without drifting into one another, how to keep the right distance from the man at either shoulder, how to step together when ordered, and how to stop turning inward every time something startled them.

Most of them were not cowards.

That was never the real issue.

The problem was that men unused to war tended to forget they were part of a body the moment they felt fear, and then all at once a line became a crowd.

So you worked them until they began to understand that even when frightened, tired, wet, and sick of being shouted at, they were still expected to hold shape.

After that came the harder work, which was teaching them how to move and react as a group rather than as a hundred separate men all trying to save themselves first.

They learned to turn by shouted command, to follow the nearest steady man if their own thoughts went blank, and to pass the order down the line instead of holding it like fools until it died in their mouths.

They learned how to give ground without turning that first backward step into a panic, how to stop when told, how to dress on the line again after a rough patch of road or a bump of confusion, and how to trust that if the order came from above there was probably a reason for it beyond their own sight.

It was repetitive work, but that was the point.

Habits had to be built before fear could knock them loose.

For yourself, you were mostly just glad not to be in Rob’s boots.

Or Edmure Tully’s, either, for that matter.

Men like you and the Blackfish had the simpler burden, which was to keep the host moving and try to pound some useful habits into it while the miles passed underfoot.

Rob and his uncle, meanwhile, seemed to spend every waking hour soothing one lord’s pride, answering another man’s complaints, or trying to build a strategy out of a war that changed shape every time a fresh rider came in from the south.

It was not that you failed to understand the value of strategy.

You had been taught too much of it for that.

You were simply grateful that your own work remained the kind where the answer was usually plain enough to be seen from across a muddy field.

That was why the war councils ended up amusing you more than frightening you.

Even the men attending them seemed to understand that there was not much true strategy to be had before the army actually reached King’s Landing.

Still, politics demanded councils, and politics was a stubborn beast.

So every few weeks the lords would gather, spend hours bruising one another’s pride, pretending every opinion voiced was of grave importance, and then arrive at the same conclusion they had started with, namely that the army should keep marching in more or less the same way it had been marching before.

You worked out rather quickly, mostly by watching the Blackfish, that the best way for you to survive such gatherings was to agree with your liege lord whenever possible, keep your face serious, and otherwise stand there looking like you belonged in armor.

The only real break in the monotony came when the host passed through Brindlewood.

Nothing especially dramatic happened there.

You simply slept in an actual bed for the first time in months, and discovered that after long enough on campaign, such a thing could feel close to holy.

It was almost insulting how much difference a proper mattress made to a man’s mood.

Eventually, even the plotting pace of the combined armies reached the war, or something near enough to count.

It was at Hayford Castle, of all places, that you first caught up not only with events, but with Uncle Ned and with Tulin besides.

Uncle Ned, as Hand of King Joffrey, was quickly claimed by Rob, Edmure, and the Blackfish for the sort of strategic discussion that kept older men tired and younger men grateful not to be older.

Tulin, after greeting his father, was kind enough to take the less thankless task and fill you, Jon, and the rest of the Long Lake men in on what was actually happening.

The first and most important part of it was that King Renly’s army had turned around.

Not all of it, exactly.

He had left a garrison south of King’s Landing to make sure no army under Joffrey took too much advantage of the shift, but the great host itself was no longer pressing on the city.

The reason was simple enough once laid out.

While Renly’s big, impressive army had been marching toward the capital, the rest of the south had begun coming apart behind it.

The Ironborn had struck Oldtown and the Arbor hard enough that there were now rumors of the Citadel’s library having burned partly or entirely, depending on who was telling the tale.

Stannis had taken Tarth and then, by ways only a man raised at Storm’s End could have known, seized the castle itself from the sea.

On top of that, the Dornish army with the Golden Company had begun raiding the Dornish Marches.

Three fronts had opened behind Renly before he could even reach the city, and neither his Reachmen nor his Stormlanders had enough control over their own people to pretend otherwise.

The Tyrell side of that made easy enough sense.

None of their bannermen had ever seemed to hold Mace Tyrell in especially high regard, and men had been peeling away from that host for months already.

Recent reports suggested there had been some sort of confrontation between Mace and his own lords that ended with him giving way and turning the army around, though whether he meant to answer the westerlanders marching toward Highgarden, the raiders in Oldtown and the Arbor, or the Dornish in the Marches first was anybody’s guess.

As for Renly himself, he was still popular enough with the stormlords, but only a little more popular than Stannis, and Stannis at least had the cleaner claim as the elder brother.

That claim depended, of course, on believing his accusations about Joffrey’s birth, but even so it was a claim.

Renly, by contrast, was simply trying to make himself king because he thought he could.

So when the Dornish began raiding the marches and Storm’s End itself was taken, Renly had little real choice but to turn south and deal with his own lands first.

That was the part Tulin seemed to find funniest.

Renly had gathered this huge bright host and meant to take King’s Landing with all the confidence in the world, only to leave behind a token force and hope it would somehow stop the now very large northern, riverlander, and westerlander armies from causing him new problems while he sorted out the three old ones already chewing on his flanks.

There was good news in that, of course.

A force left behind in haste was still a force left behind, and likely your first taste of battle would come against it.

The outcome of that battle was not especially in doubt.

What came after was another question entirely.

That was the part that stayed with you when the talking was done.

The army would smash whatever Renly had left in the way.

That much seemed simple enough, but then what?

The South was still a mess.

Too many kings had too many armies in too many places, and every answer seemed to create two fresh problems before the first was even settled.

So while the news from Hayford was, on balance, better than it might have been, you still found yourself lying awake later and wondering what the army was meant to do once the easy part was over.

If nothing else, it seemed very likely that your first battle would come soon.

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Skills:

Combat:

(11) Westerosi CQC - 120/300 (+35)

(9) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 80/100 (+35)

(11) Northern Archery - 120/300 (+15) (Skilled)

(10) Northern Equestrianism - 155/200 (+30) (Talented)

(12) Heavy Armour - 105/400 (+50) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(11) Interpersonal Communication - 25/300 (+30) (Skilled) ←

(7) Public Speaking - 15/100 (+20) (Skilled) ←

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

(7) Stewardship - 10/100 (+5) (Knack)

(6) Northern Law - 90/100 (+5) (Knack)

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

Language:

(10) Common Speaking - 15/200 (+25) (Knack) ←

(11) Old Tongue Speaking - 100/300 (+10) (Knack)

(7) Valyrian Speaking - 60/100 (+6) (Knack)

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

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

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

Scholarly:

(9) Math(s) - 15/100 (+5)

(11) Accounts - 260/300 (+25) (Prodigious)

(10) Northern History - 170/200 (+5) (Knack)

(7) Westerosi History - 55/100 (+15)

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

(6) Westerosi Peoples - 35/100 (+15)

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 - 125/400 (+25) (Prodigious)

(4) Warging - 35/100 (+25) (Gifted)

War:

(10) Strategy - 100/200 (+30) (Prodigious +)

(4) Castrametation - 50/100 (+40) (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: 49

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Rolls for Next Turn:

T4 = Objects/Effect at Home

L1 = 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 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

S2 - Steam Games (On Cooldown 1/2)

S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30)

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.

2 - Things Might be Strange for 2-3 Weeks.

Due to a multitude of IRL factors, I am currently in the process of moving both apartments and cities, and thanks to my new work schedule, the weekends are my only time to do this.

Also, as part of moving, I’ve taken apart my work area and computer setup.

So both the place and time for my writing are gone.

Luckily, I do have other ways to write (a cheap Chromebook) and a tiny amount of time during the week to do it.

So, in the meantime, I’ll do my best to pre-write as much of the next chapter when I can and to publish them at the normal time.

Though if I’m late, the chapter is shorter than usual, or I’m not responding as much in the replies, at least you know why, and that it’s temporary.

I’ll be fully in the new place by the start of July (Chapter 69) and should have my weekends and computer back up by then.

But in the meantime, I apologize for any jankiness in these chapters.

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Write-In/Questions:

1 - To those who like Demon Slayer:

What's your favorite Breathing Style and why?

And do you think Stone Breathing will be a good/bad fit for Jon? Why?