Votes for this Turn:
A1 - Jon - 19
A2 - Sansa - 4
A3 - Cat - 1
A4 - Arya - 15
S1 - Wikipedia - 12
S2 - Steam - 0
S3 - Paradox - 0
S4 - World - 27
Names:
(F) Luperca - 12
(M) Greywind - 10
(F) Atalanta - 7
(M) Warwick - 3
(M) Pochita - 2
(M) Brandon - 2
Rolls for this Turn:
Personal: Witcher Wiki
Thanks to the Ancient Elven Sword, House Stark of Long Lake now has a Valyrian Steel sword.
However, due to this roll being only a “L5 = Mildly convenient,” your Father took the sword when he joined the Night's Watch, since it was the only part of Ruling Long Lake that he truly loved.
However, he will be honor-bound to return it to you on your 16th nameday when you officially take up your seat as Lord of Long Lake.
(It would be stealing if he kept it after that, and even your father's faulty honor won't allow him to steal from his own son.)
World: Warhammer Fantasy
Thanks to the Master Vigilant, the religion of R'hllor, the “Lord of Light,” has a sect specifically designated towards fighting those magic users who serve “The Great Other.”
This sect is technically made up of priests of R'hllor who have all the same powers and knowledge, but in practice, their job is to roam the world seeking users of magics that even Planetos considers vile, such as Necromancy.
One such individual has recently entered White Harbor, following visions indicating that the North will be a place of great… and terrible… magics in the coming years.
(Depending on the RNG, this person and their sect very well might become important to the quest sooner than later.
But even if not, they will certainly be an important part of the fight against the White Walkers.)
(We already have a Name-Vote this turn, but feel free to start thinking up names both for this order and the Priest currently in the North, since that vote should be soon.)
Story:
Training in full plate was miserable work, which was likely why Long Lake was known for producing so many heavily armored men, because no one would willingly do it unless the place had been doing it long enough to make the misery feel like tradition.
The armor was heavy, hot, loud, and determined to punish every stupid little mistake you made, with every bad step, slow turn, or clumsy shift of weight suddenly becoming much more obvious once you had a shell of steel wrapped around you.
Jon did not need that extra work, which meant his edge over you in most other things kept growing in exactly the way you would have preferred it not to.
He kept training regularly, kept getting better at swords, and kept moving with that same infuriating calm of his, while you were stuck learning how not to fall over while wearing enough metal to outfit a small sept.
Still, for all that it was miserable, the full plate came more naturally to you than almost anything else in combat had so far.
Not because it was easy, because it was not, but because after a while your body began to understand it faster than it had ever understood swords, and in some ways faster even than archery, where you still remained the best of the Winterfell children.
Jon was still better than you at most practical things in the yard.
Inside the armor, though, the gap felt different.
Archery remained the one clean place where you could enjoy yourself without steel trying to drag you into the earth.
Jon practiced with you there often, and the most aggravating thing about the whole arrangement remained the fact that he was so perfectly normal about being worse.
If he had sulked, or made excuses, or acted strange about it, then life would have been easier.
Instead he listened when corrected, improved steadily, and somehow made your own success feel less satisfying by refusing to resent it.
Sansa joined you more and more often as the weeks went on, having discovered to her own surprise and everyone else’s annoyance that she had a real talent for archery.
Not enough to threaten your place at the top, which was only proper and just, but enough that she took to it with real interest once she understood she was good.
That changed the whole business.
What had started as something she joined now and then became one of the few parts of yard practice she seemed to genuinely want, and if she still spent much of the rest of her time helping her mother with messages, errands, and all the quiet work that kept Winterfell in order, she was no longer only appearing at the range out of politeness.
She came because she meant to.
The first men back from the war were not the ones people most wanted.
They came in clumps, scraps, and wounded little batches, with one house sending home a few men, another house sending back twice that number and looking worse for it, and some of Long Lake’s own soldiers among them, tired enough that even standing straight on the way through the gate looked like work.
They brought the sort of stories that sounded half mad when first repeated, which meant everyone listened harder, not less.
At first the pieces made little sense together.
The Iron Fleet wrecked.
Seagard’s harbor was damaged.
Pyke broken.
The royal fleet mostly spared.
One man would say half the islands had split against each other.
Another would swear some local captain had crowned himself king over three fishing villages and a damp hill.
The shape of it was wrong long before it became clear.
What finally emerged from all those broken reports was uglier than any neat victory.
The quakes had not just smashed a large part of the Greyjoy fleet.
They had also wrecked Pyke badly enough that the castle was effectively destroyed as a proper seat of rule, and with it went any clean chance of the Iron Islands holding together by habit alone.
The royal fleet had reached Seagard mostly unblocked, and the army had begun boarding ships as planned, but by the time they landed they were not invading one united enemy.
They were landing in the middle of something shattered.
That was why proper word had taken so long to reach the mainland.
Everywhere they went, the armies found not one rebellion but a dozen smaller ones, with petty kings, little lords, captains, and self important fools all trying to carve out a piece of whatever the islands had become.
Attempts to send neat reports back were sabotaged constantly by locals, wrecked by bad waters, or delayed because there was always some fresh bit of madness on another island that had to be stamped on before anyone could claim the war was actually ending.
The two largest factions only became clear after most of the smaller nonsense had been beaten down.
One side gathered around Rodrik Harlaw, called Rodrik the Reader, who favored peace with the Iron Throne and enough order to keep the islands from tearing themselves to pieces.
The other gathered around Euron Greyjoy, who drew in the hardliners, the old way men, and every vicious fool still dreaming of salt wives and reaving songs.
In the end Rodrik was named the new lord regent.
Euron fled east with his faction toward Essos, but not before vowing he would return.
The cost of that victory came in names.
For the North, the dead included Lord Jorah Mormont, Lord Wyman Manderly, and Lord Rodrik Ryswell, which was enough by itself to make clear that the war had not been won cheaply, however much the Ironborn had suffered worse.
Those were not losses that a region simply shrugged off.
Those were houses altered, lords changed, and futures shifted.
The southern losses were worse in a different way, because by then it was hard not to notice how often the dead seemed to be lords and men whose deaths would hurt the royal side most.
Lord Tully was dead.
So were Dayne, Tarly, Swann, Connington, Florent, Costayne, Hewett, and Serry.
Worst of all on the royal side was Estermont, because he was the king’s cousin.
Florent also bit close, because Lord Florent was the uncle of Stannis Baratheon’s wife, which meant that death landed inside the royal family’s shadow too.
That was the point where the victory stopped sounding like victory and started sounding like survival with better banners.
At Winterfell, the casualty lists spread through the castle in that quiet ugly way bad news often did, with one person hearing it first, another repeating it lower, and then everyone somehow knowing before they had formally been told.
Your aunt Catelyn took all of it badly enough.
The news of Lord Tully’s death, though, broke her up more than the rest, because the others were dead lords to her and he was her father.
Training continued through all of this because Winterfell did not stop merely because grief and worry had moved in.
You still sweated in plate.
You still shot with Jon.
Sansa still appeared more and more often at the range now that she had discovered she was good.
But by then even the yard felt different.
A breastplate was no longer just weight.
It was the sort of thing men had worn while drowning in surf or bleeding out on stones no one at Winterfell had ever seen.
Then the larger northern banners began appearing.
Not one or two stragglers now, but proper signs that the main host was finally on the move back toward home, and with them came the change in the castle that only hope could make, with everyone listening harder, walking faster, and pretending very badly not to watch the road whenever there was any excuse to do so.
Even Arya seemed to feel it.
She simply felt it loudly.
When your uncle and Rob finally did return, the first shock was not that they were there but how much older the whole thing looked than when they had left.
Your uncle looked worn in small settled ways, with more tiredness in him and less spare softness anywhere.
Rob looked changed too, not grown exactly, but carrying himself with the stiff deliberate effort of a boy who had spent too much time among men trying to look like he belonged there.
And beside him was Luperca.
Luperca had grown absurdly fast.
There was no kinder word for it.
While the other wolves had all grown well enough, Rob’s had surged ahead until she was already nearly full sized, broad enough and long enough that people simply stared when they saw her, because there was no pretending that sort of thing was normal, not even by the standards Winterfell had been forced to develop of late.
She made Rob look changed all by herself.
Not older.
Just harder to think of as the same boy who had ridden out.
The rest of the homecoming came after that first sight.
Your aunt Catelyn saw your uncle and Rob alive and held together through it as only she could, which was to say not without feeling but without falling apart in front of everyone either.
Sansa looked relieved.
Arya was loud enough for three children.
Jon was quiet in the way he often was when too much actually mattered.
And all around them the castle seemed to fill back up around shapes it had been missing too long.
Only after they were home did the full settlement begin to make sense.
Rodrik the Reader had been left as lord regent to steady the islands, and he was meant to hold that place for several years while the worst of the fractures were forced back together.
Theon Greyjoy and Yara Greyjoy came north as the new wards of House Stark, which meant the settlement had not been built on trust so much as held together by hostages with good names.
Theon, at twelve, was already being spoken of as the next Lord of the Iron Islands.
Yara, at thirteen, was meant one day to marry the last surviving son of Rodrik the Reader, so that after the Harlaw regency had done its work the islands could be drawn back together behind Greyjoy rule rather than split apart all over again.
That was what victory looked like in the end.
The Iron Fleet shattered.
Pyke broken.
Rodrik the Reader ruling in peace for now.
Euron gone east with the old way men and swearing he would return.
Theon and Yara at Winterfell as pieces of the settlement.
Too many dead lords in the ground.
Too many houses made thinner by the winning of it.
So the rebellion ended.
That was true enough.
It had simply ended in the sort of way wars often did, with: the wrong people dead, the survivors carrying too much, children handed around as guarantees, and everyone expected to call the whole ugly business peace because no better word was available.
Skills:
Combat:
(2) Westerosi CQC - 19/100 (+20) ←
(2) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 16/100 (+20) ←
(3) Northern Archery - 6/100 (+25) (Knack) ←
(1) Northern Equestrianism - 93/100 (+12) (Knack)
(1) Heavy Armor - 30/100 (+30) (Skilled)
Diplomacy:
(2) Interpersonal Communication - 50/100 (+10)
(1) Public Speaking - 35/100 (+0)
(2) Management - 25/100 (+25) (Prodigious) ←
(1) Stewardship - 70/100 (+3) (Knack)
(1) Northern Law - 61/100 (+3) (Knack)
(1) Westerosi Law - 51/100 (+3) (Knack)
Language:
(2) Common Speaking - 30/100 (+10)
(2) Old Tongue Speaking - 60/100 (+5)
(1) Valyrian Speaking - 63/100 (+7)
(2) Common Reading - 22/100 (+7)
(1) Westerosi Runes - 23/100 (+2)
(1) Valyrian Reading - 100/100 (+7)
Scholarly: (+1)
(1) Math(s) - 99/100 (+10)
(2) Accounts - 2/100 (+10) ←
(3) Northern History - 2/100 (+12) (Knack) ←
(1) Westerosi History - 72/100 (+7)
(2) Northern Peoples - 35/100 (+10)
(1) Westerosi Peoples - 72/100 (+7)
Leisure:
(2) Northern Hunting - 8/100 (+20) ←
(1) Fishing - 15/100 (+0)
(1) Swimming - 30/100 (+0)
(1) Sailing - 10/100 (+0)
(1) Acting - 10/100 (+0)
Rolls for Next Turn:
T5 = Power/Skill for a Prominent Figure
L2 = Mildly inconvenient
Voting:
Main Actions: (+ = Low, ++ = Mid, +++ = High)
A1 - Train with Jon and sometimes Sansa in the yard and on small hunts. (Combat Focus)
(Reputation: ++ Jon, + Sansa - Cat)
A2 - Keep up your studies with your cousin, Sansa, and Maester Lewin. (Knowledge Focus)
(Reputation: ++ Sansa, + Cat)
A3 - Act as your Uncle Ned’s page with Rob. (Diplomacy Focus)
(Reputation: + Ned, + Rob)
A4 - Follow Rob until he shares his Friends and Activities with you. (Communications Focus)
(Reputation: - Rob, + Cat, + Ned)
A5 - Spend your time teaching/watching little Arya and your Wolves. (Language Focus)
(Reputation: + Jon, + Sansa, + Cat)
A6 - Invite the New Siblings, Yara and Theon, to go fishing and swimming. (Unknown Focus)
(Reputation: +++ Yara, +++ Theon, + Rob, + Ned, - - Jon, - Cat.) (Open For 1 Turn.)
Personal Rolls Sources:
S1 - Wikipedia
S2 - Steam Games
S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30)
S4 - World Rolls List (D12) (On Cooldown 1/1)
Information:
1 - Yara and Theon
They will be settling in to Winterfell in the next turn, so whether we go for the action with them or not will have a fairly major effect on what actions are available with them in the future.
That's not to say that we necessarily should, just that this is one of those times where us doing/not doing something will change what options we have in the future.
Write-In/Questions:
1 - What should Our New Sword be named, and what is its history?
So, how did the now extinct house that built Long Lake Castle acquire a Valyrian Steel sword?
Did they buy it, or was it won in battle off one of the old petty kings in the North, in the days before the North was united by the Starks?
Or perhaps it was won off a house in the Veil during one of the wars over the Sisters Islands?
Or perhaps one of their members was an adventurer who won it in some sort of Quest or grand contest?
If all you have is a name, that's ok, but so far the creators of Long Lake Castle are a blank slate as a house that I intend for RNGesus and the Voters to fill in, like happened with Heart of the Gods town.
So the history of their family sword should be something important to them, and thus important to their successors, the Long Lake Starks.