Votes for this Turn:A1 - Jon - 0A2 - Rob - 0A3 - Sansa - 14A4 - Ned - 16
S1 - Wikipedia - 26S2 - Steam - 0S3 - Paradox - 4S4 - World - 0
Names: (So Far)Heart of the Gods - 14Frosthold - 11Zugefroren Tor (Frozen Gate) - 3Stonehenge - 1God's Gate - 1God's Rest - 1Lakeshore - 1
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Rolls for this Turn:Personal: WikipediaThanks to Viktor Krovopuskov, Joffrey “Baratheon” is now Prodigious with the use of a Sword and will pick up sword-reted skills SIGNIFICANTLY faster than anyone else would.He doesn't have any of the reted skills like talent for CQC or Horsemanship, but with swords specifically, he might as well be the next Arthur Dayne.
(For the curious, skills go: Knack → Skilled → Talented → Gifted → Prodigious)(Literally doing nothing will gain him more in Swordsmanship than we gain from training it.)(But he gained nothing for CQC, so in a fight, he’ll win or lose based on his footwork, most likely.)
World: Warhammer FantasyThanks to the Ironbreakers, the main unit Long Lake is known for in the Northern Army is its small but excellently armored contingent of Heavy Cavalry called the…?
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Story:News of the Greyjoy rebellion reached Winterfell long before your uncle did anything so dramatic as say the word rebellion aloud in front of you.First, there were simply more riders than usual, then more messages, then more men speaking in lower voices and not stopping quite quickly enough when children came near.After that came the sound of the yard changing, with more drilling, more counting, more checking of straps, stores, harness, and wagons.It turned out that war, before it was banners streaming in the wind and men dying picturesquely on some distant shore, was mostly people getting organized in a hurry and trying not to look worried while they did it.
Eventually, your uncle did confirm it.House Greyjoy had risen in rebellion, his banners had been called, and soon enough, he’d ride to meet them at Moat Catelyn before going on to join the war proper.You’d known, of course, that the North had banners and that your uncle could call them.That part had never been vague to you.You already knew the names of the houses, their nds, their words, and more than a few of the old stories attached to them.What was new was seeing what that actually looked like.You were seeing men arrive from holds and halls whose names you already knew, and for the first time, you had to match those names to real banners, real faces, and real voices.You were seeing wagons loaded, and Winterfell began, in its quiet northern way, to lean toward war.
The thing became rather less abstract when some of the men arriving were your own.Or would be, in time, which for present purposes seemed near enough the same thing.The men of Long Lake came in under your banner, or at least under the banner that would someday be yours, and with them came Ser Wylis, casteln of Long Lake Castle and the man doing the actual work of keeping your future seat standing until you were old enough to sit in it properly.That st part was not how anyone phrased it, naturally, but it was how things were.Child lords, you were beginning to understand, were important in title and mostly useless in practice.
Still, Ser Wylis bowed to you properly when he arrived, and addressed you as his young lord, which was both gratifying and faintly embarrassing.It became more embarrassing when he then turned at once to speak with your uncle about the matters that actually needed settling, with men, roads, wagons, provisions, and how quickly they could make Moat Catelyn if pressed.That was, unfortunately, the difficulty with being a child lord.A man could be perfectly sincere in showing you respect while also very obviously needing to discuss all the important things with some other adult in the room.To his credit, Ser Wylis did not leave it there.Before he went, he told you he’d do his duty, and that so long as the gods were good and the roads remained open, he’d send word back on the progress of the war so that you’d know how your men had fared.This struck you as exactly the sort of thing a loyal casteln ought to say.It also made the whole business feel a good deal more real.
It was around then as well that it was decided Rob would be going with your uncle.Not as a fighter, obviously, because he was one and ten and no one involved was that mad.But he would go with your uncle in service, because he was old enough now that he was expected to see war with his own eyes, to be present while his father’s bannermen gathered, and to begin learning how such things were actually done.He was not expected to fight, and he was not expected to become a knight either, because Northerners did not generally bother much with that unless the man in question happened to be a master at arms, a casteln, or some other such practical sort.But he was expected to serve.That much, apparently, was no longer optional.
Your aunt Catelyn did not want this.That much was pin even before you understood the details.She was not loud about it, because your aunt was rarely loud, but there was a tightness about her mouth whenever the matter came up and a kind of stillness that made the air around her feel thinner.In the end, though, she was talked around, or perhaps talked past, until refusing became harder than yielding.Rob was the heir to Winterfell.He was already old enough that staying behind entirely, while his father rode to war and the banners gathered without him, would be noticed.And in a pce where bannermen were meant to someday trust him, heed him, and follow him into danger, that was the sort of thing it was dangerous to let them notice.It was all very sensible.You were beginning to learn that many of the worst things in lordship were very sensible.
Your uncle’s lessons did not stop during all this.If anything, they grew more pointed.There was less time now for broad expnations, and more time for the sort of thing he thought you ought to understand before he left.On one such day, after a morning spent watching men prepare wagons and count stores for the third time as though numbers might improve under pressure, you asked him what seemed to you at the time a fairly reasonable question.If war needed brave men, why was everyone always so concerned with orders.Surely if a man saw a chance to win and took it, that was a good thing.
Your uncle looked at you for a moment in the way he had when deciding whether you were asking a child’s question or merely a foolish one.Apparently, he decided in your favor.He said that brave men were useful, and men who could see an opportunity and seize it were useful too.The trouble, he said, was that useful was not always the same thing as right.
Then he gave you an example.Suppose, he said, that a sworn man was told to hold a mill by a river and wait for reinforcements.That was his order, and it was neither glorious nor clever, just hold the pce and wait.But instead of waiting, the man decides he sees a better chance.He gathers his men, crosses the river at night, burns the boats the enemy meant to use, and kills a good number of them in the dark.It works.The enemy is deyed, men on your side are spared, and by morning, everyone is calling him bold with good reason.w
At first, this seemed an easy sort of problem.You said the man had done well.Your uncle said perhaps, and then asked what would’ve happened if the man had failed.You said that then he’d have lost the mill, his men, and the boats would still have remained.Your uncle nodded and asked whether the man had known he’d succeed when he chose to disobey.You admitted that he had not, and that he had only thought he might.
That, your uncle said, was where the trouble began.A lord could not mistake a good result for a good choice.The man might’ve been brave, and he might even have been useful, but he had still disobeyed.He had been given one task and instead chosen another because he believed he knew better.If a lord praised that too freely, then every captain with more courage than sense would begin deciding for himself which orders mattered and which did not.Sooner or ter, one of them would be wrong at exactly the wrong time, and men would die not because they cked bravery but because they’d had too much of the wrong kind.
You asked whether that meant the man should be punished even if what he’d done helped.Your uncle said that was exactly the sort of ugly question a lord sometimes had to answer.Perhaps the man should be thanked for the lives saved, and perhaps he should even be rewarded, but he might also still need punishment for disobeying.Because the lord was not judging only that one night by the river.He was judging all the men who’d hear the story after.If the lesson they learned was that victory excused disobedience, then the next mistake would not remain small for long.
That sat with you rather unpleasantly.Not because it was hard to understand, but because it was simple enough once said aloud.That was what made it unpleasant.The man in the story had still done something useful, and men had still lived because of him, and yet the answer was not simply well done.The answer was that a lord had to think about what came after, with what sort of habits he rewarded, what sort of men he encouraged, and whether today’s success might become tomorrow’s disaster if everyone decided they’d only obey when obedience felt clever.
It was, you supposed, another version of the same thing your uncle kept teaching in different words.A lord’s duty was not only to the moment in front of him.It was to what that moment turned into after everyone else took their lesson from it.
Not long after that, your uncle rode south.Rob went with him, trying very hard to look as though being sent off to war, or near enough to it, was the most natural thing in the world.Ser Wylis rode too, with the men of Long Lake among the others answering the Stark call, and that more than anything else drove home that this was no longer some distant matter belonging only to rger houses and older men.Your aunt Catelyn kissed Rob goodbye.The yard was full, the gates were busy, and men and horses and banners all moved with that same sense of purpose that made even standing still feel temporary.And as you watched them go, it occurred to you that war had already begun long before the first battle.It had begun in choosing who must leave, in deciding what risks could be allowed, in teaching boys to serve because men would need to respect them ter, and in teaching little lords that sometimes the hardest part of command was not knowing what had worked, but deciding what others must not be allowed to learn from it.
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Skills:Combat:(1) Westerosi CQC - 59/100 (+5)(1) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 56/100 (+5)(2) Northern Archery - 9/100 (+12) (Knack) ←(1) Northern Equestrianism - 65/100 (+3) (Knack)
Diplomacy:(1) Interpersonal Communication - 80/100 (+10)(1) Public Speaking - 25/100 (+1)(1) Management - 34/100 (+20) (Knack)(1) Stewardship - 26/100 (+12) (Knack)(1) Northern Law - 26/100 (+12) (Knack)(1) Westerosi Law - 20/100 (+12) (Knack)
Language:(1) Common Speaking - 70/100 (+10)(1) Old Tongue Speaking - 70/100 (+10)(1) Valyrian Speaking - 21/100 (+3)(1) Common Reading - 69/100 (+7)(1) Westerosi Runes - 8/100 (+1)(1) Valyrian Reading - 45/100 (+3)
Schorly: (+1)(1) Math(s) - 42/100 (+12)(1) Accounts - 47/100 (+12)(2) Northern History - 42/100 (+12) (Knack)(1) Westerosi History - 37/100 (+7)(1) Northern Peoples - 85/100 (+20)(1) Westerosi Peoples - 37/100 (+7)
Leisure:(1) Northern Hunting - 38/100 (+3)(1) Fishing - 10/100 (+0)(1) Swimming - 25/100 (+0)(1) Sailing - 10/100 (+0)(1) Acting - 10/100 (+0)
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Rolls for Next Turn: (This could get interesting!)L6 = Mildly convenientT2 = Person/Event at Home
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Voting:Main Actions:A1 - Spend your time with your cousin Jon. (Combat Focus) (Rep: - Cat, + Jon)
A2 - Keep up your studies with your cousin, Sansa. (Knowledge Focus) (Rep: + Sansa, +Cat)
A3 - Spend your time following your Aunt around. (Diplomacy Focus) (Rep: + Cat, - Jon)
A4 - Spend your time teaching/watching little Arya (Language Focus) (Rep: + All)
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:
1 - Why “Mildly Inconvenient” buffed Joffrey “Baratheon” so hard?The reason this is only mildly so is because what he got is FANTASTIC… in the specific case that he actually trains it up, along with the footwork he has no special skill for.Though even then, it would require him to fight someone, but he’s still a little coward at his core, so that's pretty unlikely.Plus, it does nothing for his main problem, his obvious ck of Baratheon features.So basically, this is “Mildly Inconvenient” because there's a genuine chance it’ll never come up in the Quest, outside of that one scene where he fights Rob in the training yard.But it’s still a 2/7, so it COULD make a huge difference, if things go just the wrong way for us.
2 - Why did Jon not go with Ned and Rob?Two reasons, first, Catelyn argued against it, if the reason for rob is to let the banners see him, then Jon being there would obscure that.And two, because ned realised Robert Barathion would be there, so he let himself get talked out of bringing Jon also, in trade for a promise not to isote him too much while they were gone.Long story short, Ned is happy with the outcome and doesn't need to leave his entire family behind as he goes to war.Meanwhile, Catelyn feels like she still won a concession when she just got what Ned wanted.(Catelyn’s not dumb or bashed here, I’m just making it so Ned has the occasional moment of cunning, when nobody expects that from him, and this is one of those times.)
3 - What's up with that "Rep:" thing in the voting?
The TLDR is that it’s there to remind people that while a lot of goals are achievable, we’re not going to get everything we want.
The rep note is there to remind people that actions have consequences.I’m not going to let us grind every retionship until the show plot starts and then roll in with 10/10 rep with everybody like this is a Sims game.
It’s also worth noting that I gave us a minor but ongoing boost with whoever we voted for in the first 2 turns.That’s why we’re practicing archery with Jon and nguages with Sansa.It just as easily could’ve been hunting with Uncle Ned or getting involved in the local theater group with Rob instead.
That also ended up being the deciding factor in whether Rob or Jon went with Ned to the war.That’s not the in-universe reason, obviously.But in terms of quest mechanics, there’ll occasionally be choices that quietly change things a few turns down the line, and I’m not always going to point at them ahead of time.I think it adds more fvor when some of that shows up as a surprise.
Right now, the 2 characters we’ve got the best shot at building strong retionships with are Jon and Sansa.But focusing on those 2 necessarily means Rob and Cat get less attention.
And I also want to be clear that trying to take the neutral path every single time won’t work either.If we spread our attention around evenly so nobody ever gets too upset with us, what that mostly means is that nobody’s going to feel especially strongly about us either.
And when the show plot starts, that matters.If we want people to bend, back us, cover for us, or seriously reconsider the path they’d normally take, then we need real pull with them.Not just generally positive feelings and no hard grudges.
So part of this isn’t just deciding who we want to be close with.It’s deciding who we want enough pull with that we’re willing to accept somebody else being colder, less helpful, or even working against us ter.
Like, for example, Cat matters a lot more if she’s the one in Rob’s ear during the war.That kind of thing will matter.
So, could we get Jon to go over to Long Lake Castle to become its casteln when Sir Wylis goes off to fight with Rob in the south, instead of joining the Night’s Watch?Yes, absolutely, that’s something we could pull off.But if we invest heavily in Jon, then our reputation with our aunt is probably going to be lukewarm at best.
Now, she’s still our aunt, and she’ll have had a major hand in raising us, so there’s a floor on how bad things can get with her unless we start doing truly insane shit like breaking guest rights.But within the range of "Lukewarm to Our Greatest Supporter," she’d nd a lot closer to lukewarm if we went all in on Jon.
On the other hand, if we decide to push Cat right now, we absolutely can.But doing that will pretty much kill the progress we’ve made with Jon so far.
This is less about finding the perfect route where everybody likes us.And more about deciding who we want in our corner when things start going wrong.
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Write-In:1 - What should our Heavy Cavalry be called?Easy Answer is the Long-Lake-Ironbreakers for a history of fighting Pirates and wildlings, but we could go for some really cool names here, like the Frostriders, or the Dawnguard, for them supposedly dating back to the st Long Night.Basically, what's the coolest name you can think of for our troops to be known as?And if you’d like, why did they end up with that name (historically)?
