House Among Chaotic Kingdoms

Votes for this Turn:

A1 - Wylis - 7

A2 - Jon - 11

A3 - Berenice - 27

A4 - Training - 3

A5 - Omek - 2

S1 - Wikipedia - 5

S2 - Steam - 34

S3 - Paradox - 0

S4 - World - 11

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Rolls for this Turn:

Personal: Steam Games

Thanks to LEGO Star Wars - The Complete Saga, The Force is now a thing in Westeros/Planetos, and anyone with pre-existing magic is now capable of manipulating it.

Additionally, anyone with “Kings Blood” is automatically Force-sensitive at a minimum.

(Theoretically this should mean just about everyone is Force-sensitive, but in practice, “Kings Blood” seems to only last a few generations, elsewise it wouldn’t be as rare as it seems to be in canon.

Basically all the Kings and would-be Kings are force sensitive now, though whether Griff is getting it from Targaryen or Blackfyre is anyone's guess.)

Because the roll was “L6 = Moderately Convenient,” I will add the additional caveat that Joffrey and his siblings, despite lacking any recent kingsblood (Kings of the Rock were 300 years ago, and that's probably too long), are not just force sensitive but full-blown force users.

Note: There aren’t any chosen one type shenanigans going on here, so all the straight-up force users are roughly on par.

So people should be a bit faster and a bit precognitive from time to time, but don’t expect Wulfric (or anyone else) to start pulling Jedi mind tricks out with no training, like Rey did in the Disney-Canon.

World: Coppermind Wiki

Thanks to the Aviar, a number of new Bird Species will begin to inhabit different parts of Planetos.

These Birds will possess magical abilities and the ability to bond with a human that raises them from the egg and to grant them these magical abilities.

This should be low-key for a while as nobody has any reason to try domesticating these birds, so knowledge of their actually pretty subtle magic should take at least a few years to start spreading.

Still, it’s just more proof that magic is here to stay.

(Also, minor retraction: I mentioned at some point that the Nightmaws from Ch66 are likely already hunted to extinction on the more populated islands.

I take that back, I have a feeling people on islands like Pike are having a really hard time with them.

I say this because the Wiki page for Aviar’s has made me aware that Nightmaw are, on top of being basically dinosaurs, actually Psychic.

To the extent that one of the main powers of an Aviar is “to conceal themselves from mind-sensing predators such as nightmaws.”)

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Story:

You actually got an important part in a battle this time.

And this time it was not because you happened to be standing near the right breach when luck finally smiled on you.

Unfortunately, the battle for Haystack Hall was likely to be forgotten later, because it happened at almost the exact same time most of the army was over at Fellwood finishing off what was left of Renly’s side of the war.

That part annoyed you more than you liked admitting.

Not because Haystack Hall was unimportant, because it plainly was not.

It had to be taken.

Stannis’s men could not be left free to swing back around and retake Bronzegate while the main loyalist host was busy elsewhere.

That would have undone too much work for too little gain.

So when Joffrey needed a force to deal with the problem, the men gathered for it were what came down to his least impressive troops and the lords who had lost the latest round of social jockeying.

The main body went off to collect glory.

Your lot went off to do the work that had to be done whether anyone found it exciting or not.

Even Barristan Selmy, Stormlander that he was, could not really pretend Haystack Hall was the more honored task.

Still, that smaller pool worked in your favor.

The lords still did not think much of you, that had not changed.

But with fewer men to choose from, they had to admit what the soldiers already knew, which was that you could keep infantry moving, keep them steady, and keep them working together once things turned ugly.

With the King’s trust behind you and not many better options to hand, you were given command of the main body of infantry for the battle.

Haystack Hall was, as the name suggested, a hall rather than a true castle.

That did not make it easy to take.

It was still a fortified place.

Its defenders still knew the local ground better than your own men did.

And men behind walls do not stop being dangerous simply because the walls are smaller.

So the work was what it always is when soldiers have to go at stone and timber from the wrong side.

Full of the sort of small ugly deaths no one ever bothers describing when they tell the story later.

The one mercy was that Stannis plainly did not have the numbers to leave strong garrisons.

The men holding Haystack Hall turned out to be thin on numbers and thinner on spirit.

Some had clearly seen where the war was going and did not much fancy dying for a cause that looked shakier by the week.

Others seemed deeply uncomfortable with Stannis’s new religion and the fanatical priests now hanging from his cause like burrs.

You suspected that second thing mattered most.

Men will fight for many causes, but few are eager to die for someone else’s foreign fire god.

So while there were still casualties, because there are always casualties when men attack a fortified place, the siege ended faster than you would have guessed beforehand.

It lasted only a couple of weeks.

Then, the moment your side forced a proper breach before any real siege works had even been finished, Lord Errol surrendered.

He and a number of his own men made very sure to block off the small knot of fire priests so they could not interfere with that decision.

That told you most of what you needed to know about the spirit of the defenders by the end.

The loyalist cause was doing well, and your own name among the common soldiers only grew stronger.

That was helped in no small part by what you chose to do during the siege when there was no immediate fighting to be done.

Instead of spending all your spare time drilling men and newer officers as you usually did, you started checking in more often with Berenice and the small but slowly growing group of medics she had gathered around herself.

None of them had your strange gift for healing.

None of them had anything close to her full skill either.

Still, months of instruction from a real healer, mixed with the rough lessons of tending men on campaign, had made a solid little core of them.

They were still overwhelmed any time the army fought anything more serious than a tavern brawl.

Truth be told, they were kept busy even when the army did not fight at all, because soldiers on campaign managed to cut, bruise, infect, lame, burn, and generally ruin themselves at a rate no sane outsider would ever guess.

So Berenice came to you with a new idea.

She wanted to expand the work again, but this time in layers.

The first group had been trained enough that they could now handle the simpler cases and pass on the bare basics to others, which meant that if you could help her find a second wave of willing trainees, she could spend her own time on the hardest cases and the most promising students.

Barristan agreed with the plan quickly enough once it was explained to him, and Berenice asked you to use the reputation you had built among the common soldiery to pull men in.

So you did.

You went among the men and sold it not as some holy labor, though some took it that way, but as useful work that might keep the man beside you alive long enough to see home again.

That argument landed better than you might have guessed.

In the medium term, the goal was simple enough.

Spread enough medical knowledge through the army that almost every knot of men had at least one or two who knew the basics of wound care.

Berenice, though, had a longer view than that.

She admitted it to you one night when the two of you had a little quiet to yourselves, and by then you knew her well enough to hear when she was thinking past the next battle.

If enough Long Lake men spent a few weeks each learning the fundamentals over the course of the war, then by the time they all went home some level of basic medicine would simply get forced into common habit.

People would know what to do because enough men had learned it the hard way and carried it back with them.

You were not entirely sure whether that was too ambitious or not ambitious enough.

Either way, you could see the value in trying.

So you made certain to recruit especially heavily from your own Long Lake men and from whatever Northmen were attached to your smaller army.

It was Jon who brought up the other matter.

The dangerous one.

One night, while the army was making ready to leave Haystack Hall and return toward the King’s Road to rejoin Joffrey, he raised the subject of your Warg powers again.

He had still been experimenting with his own and had by then managed to ride with Ghost a handful of times while the Wolf hunted through the Kingswood.

In his view, the two of you had delayed long enough.

Magic might be a sword without a hilt, dangerous to the hand that held it, but it was still something given by the old gods.

Ignoring it outright, Jon argued, seemed a fine way to insult them.

He was not wrong.

You disliked that he was not wrong, but he was not.

So, dangerous as it was to be doing any kind of magic while surrounded by an army freshly stirred up against sorcery by what had been found at Bronzegate, you tried.

As usual, Jon took to the thing more easily than you did.

Still, just as the army was making its final preparations to leave Haystack Hall, you managed it for the first time on purpose and rode along with Jinx instead of merely brushing against her mind by accident.

Soon after that, you managed the same thing with Janus.

That immediately suggested all sorts of uses if you were subtle about it, because seeing through the eyes of your raven from above an enemy camp or road was the sort of advantage only a fool would turn away from.

Of course it was dangerous.

Of course, if the wrong men realized what you were doing, they would likely take it badly.

But Jon was right about one thing at least.

A tool was a tool.

And if the gods had put one in your hand, it would be a stupid kind of piety to refuse to learn how to use it.

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Skills:

Combat:

(11) Westerosi CQC - 180/300 (+15)

(10) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 40/200 (+15)

(11) Northern Archery - 160/300 (+10) (Skilled)

(11) Northern Equestrianism - 45/300 (+30) (Talented)

(12) Heavy Armour - 185/400 (+20) (Prodigious)

Diplomacy:

(11) Interpersonal Communication - 115/300 (+30) (Skilled)

(7) Public Speaking - 75/100 (+20) (Skilled)

(13) Management - 150/500 (+50) (Prodigious)

(7) Stewardship - 55/100 (+15) (Knack)

(7) Northern Law - 25/100 (+5) (Knack)

(7) Westerosi Law - 15/100 (+5) (Knack)

Language:

(10) Common Speaking - 90/200 (+25) (Knack)

(11) Old Tongue Speaking - 130/300 (+10) (Knack)

(7) Valyrian Speaking - 70/100 (+5) (Knack)

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

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

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

Scholarly:

(9) Math(s) - 30/100 (+5)

(12) Accounts - 35/400 (+25) (Prodigious)

(10) Northern History - 145/200 (+5) (Knack)

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

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

(6) Westerosi Peoples - 80/100 (+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) - 90/100 (+10)

War:

(11) Strategy - 50/200 (+50) (Prodigious +)

(5) Castrametation - 80/100 (+30) (Knack)

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

(3) Fleetcraft - 80/100 (+5) (Knack)

(2) Battlewise (coup d’œil) - 25/100 (+25)

Magic:

(12) The Green - 200/400 (+25) (Prodigious)

(5) Warging - 30/100 (+45) (Gifted)

(1) The Force - 15/100 (+15) (Knack)

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Earning: 6

Spending: 0

Banked: 66

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Rolls for Next Turn:

L1 = Inconvenient

T4 = Objects/Effect at Home

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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 Wikis (D30)

S4 - World Rolls List (D12)

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Information/Maps:

1 - Stormlands Zones War-Map:

Imgur - More accessible, but likely to get deleted at some point.

Catbox - Only works most of the time, but won't get deleted.

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Write-In/Questions: (IMPORTANT)

1 - Star-Wars Crossover (Crossover - Yes/No)?

So, this latest roll COULD solve a major issue that I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Currently, the Night King is… kind of pathetic.

As is, I’d do my best to make him and his army into a real threat.

But the moment he gets into a fight with someone like Jon or Wulfric… the Quest just kind of… ends.

Even if I get rid of the thing where killing him kills the whole undead army, this just makes the Long Night into a slog rather than a real threat.

BUT!

This roll presents a real opportunity!

Specifically, if this latest roll retcons Planetos to be a particularly out-of-the-way planet somewhere in the Unknown Regions of the Star Wars Galaxy, then that would let the Night King be turned into an ancient Sith Lord and the Others into his Acolytes.

That would make the Night King and his army into a genuine threat, and would provide a real problem for us to work up towards beating (or making an opening for Jon, since he might be the PTWP and would be right by our side).

But, this is too big of a change to just make unilaterally, so I present the question to you lot:

Should this become a Game of Thrones/Star Wars Crossover (Crossover - Yes), or should The Force be the end of that and we stick to the regular Nights King (Crossover - No)?

2 - Also a fun extra, since the source of this change was LEGO Star Wars:

Should the rest of the Galaxy be LEGO? (Lego - Yes/No)

If “Lego - Yes” wins, then at some future point when either the people leave Planetos, or the rest of the Galaxy finds them, it will be to discovered that Planetos is the single exception, and that the rest of the Galaxy is full of Lego people and their Lego structures.

(This won’t effect this story either way, it’s just a fun extra for the far future.)