Votes for this Turn:
A1 - Combat - 6
A2 - Leisure - 2
A3 - Scholarly - 0
A4 - Diplomacy - 27
A5 - Language - 1
A6 - Communications - 0
S1 - Wikipedia - 6
S2 - Steam - 8
S3 - Paradox - 0
S4 - World - 22
Purchase Ideas:
Save the Money x 11
A Sweetroll for ???
Good Quality Maps
A Weirwood Bow for Us
Ribbon for Sansa’s Hair
Seashell Necklace for Yara
A Winter Rose Bush for Ned
A Book of Old Tales for Rob
A Sled for Us or Arya
Food from the Veil for Ned
Wooden Sword for Arya
Hunting Falcon for Sansa
Import Dragon Glass
A Sworn Sword
A Whole Cow
Unicorn from Skagos
Rolls for this Turn:
Personal: Witcher Wiki
Thanks to Racirz, the order of the Springlords in Heart of the Gods town has sent an envoy to you to act on your behalf in the future.
They are both a pacifist and a healer, so they will excel the most in related activities, but are also capable of being ordered to do things like investigate places or people for you.
However, they will need a budget the further away they go from you in order to do your bidding…
(Our First Minion!)
World: Bulbapedia
Thanks to Volcarona (TCG), a large number of Larvesta and Volcarona will begin appearing in the most humid parts of Westeros, such as Dorne near the Greenblood, Vaith, Scourge, Brimstone, and Torrentine rivers.
Like the Mightyena and Poochyena of the North, their powers will be downscaled to fit the setting.
However, they will retain some of their power (equivalent to the Mightyena and Poochyena) and will be trainable given sufficient time, experience, and companionship.
Story:
Serving as page to Uncle Ned sounded grand enough when spoken aloud, but the work itself turned out to be less glory and more being sent where you were needed before someone else made a mess of it.
He did not keep the boys together.
That was the first thing that mattered.
Instead, he split the work, gave each of you a different part of Winterfell to watch and learn, and let the lesson come from doing it rather than from standing behind him like decorative furniture.
Your own part of the work sat mostly on the side of Winterfell facing Winter Town, so a good deal of your day became running messages, checking who had done what, and watching how Uncle Ned handled the castle’s outward face toward the people nearest it.
That suited you better than some of the other lordly lessons had.
Not because it was easy, because it wasn’t.
Only because once you could see the people, the timing, and the order of things, the shape of it sat properly in your head.
That was the part beginning to define itself.
You were good at managing people.
Not perfectly, and not in any magical way either, but naturally enough that you often understood the problem before you’d finished thinking it through.
You could tell who needed telling first.
You could tell who’d cover for a mistake quietly.
You could tell who was likely to turn one small delay into three worse ones just by being proud, lazy, or stupid at the wrong moment.
That part came to you so cleanly it was almost suspicious.
The things side came slower.
Stores, tallies, rents, quantities, and all the stiff dry spine of stewardship still took active effort.
You weren’t bad at them.
That was half the irritation.
If you’d been bad, you could’ve hated them honestly and left it there.
Instead you could do the sums, follow the line of the work, and understand the answer once you got there, but none of it settled into place with the same easy shape as people did.
Law was much the same.
Not impossible.
Not beyond you.
Just slower, drier, and much less willing to stay put unless you pushed it there yourself.
Uncle Ned noticed the difference quickly enough.
He did not sit you down for some solemn little speech about it.
He just started asking sharper questions.
If the trouble was timing, judgment, or the way people rubbed against each other, you answered faster.
Who’d been late.
Who’d covered for them.
Whether that had actually helped or only hidden a worse problem for later.
When the trouble was stores, shortages, or some rule that ought to have been followed better, you needed longer.
That was not failure.
It was simply the shape of what came easily and what did not.
Robb’s part of the work took him farther out than yours.
He was spending more time in Winter Town itself, learning how to deal with its people as their future lord instead of only watching how the castle faced them from within.
That suited him well enough.
He was still more solemn than before the war.
Still quieter too.
But the colder distance that had first come back with him had started easing some, and every now and then you caught the older shape of him under the newer one, like seeing a familiar road again after the snow had begun to melt away.
Theon’s share kept him more inside the castle than either of you, moving through stores, kitchens, servants’ passages, and all the work that actually kept a place standing upright from one day to the next.
He admitted once, in that loose half amused way of his, that his own father had never troubled himself to teach him much of it because as a younger son he had not been meant for that sort of rule.
That explained some things.
It explained why he took to it with such sharp interest.
It also explained the bitterness under the joke when he said it.
Sansa was about the castle too, though not for Uncle Ned.
She was doing much the same sort of work under Aunt Catelyn, carrying messages, keeping track of rooms and people, and learning the quieter side of rule from the lady’s end rather than the lord’s.
That meant you crossed paths often enough in halls and stairwells, each of you hurrying somewhere useful and each of you privately convinced your own part of the business was at least a little more important than the other’s.
Janus was still there too, because Janus was always there now.
No one had given him any task, but that had not stopped him deciding your business was his business and that he ought to observe it all from whichever beam, ledge, or windowsill gave him the best view and the most insulting angle.
He followed often enough that you had stopped asking why.
The answer, as far as you could tell, was spite.
He looked at you like a tiny black feathered magistrate.
You remained convinced he was mocking you.
Still, the work itself went well.
Better than some of the other lordly training had.
You could keep the shape of your part of Winterfell in your head.
You could see where one task leaned on another.
You could tell more and more often when someone was delayed out of necessity and when someone was delaying because no one had yet made them stop.
That felt satisfying in a way the drier lessons often didn’t, because when management went right you could actually see the result before the day was over.
By the end of those days serving under Uncle Ned, with Robb learning the people of Winter Town, Theon learning the hidden labor of the castle, Sansa learning her own side of the household under Aunt Catelyn, and Janus still following along like some bird shaped curse, you had at least learned this much.
A lord didn’t manage a place by standing in the middle of it looking important.
He managed it by knowing where things stuck, who kept them moving, and which small failures would turn ugly if left alone too long.
The people side of that was already coming to you.
The things side and the rules side were slower.
That didn’t mean you were bad at them.
It only meant you now knew which parts would come by instinct and which parts would only come by work.
Skills:
Combat:
(3) Westerosi CQC - 5/100 (+10) ←
(2) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 100/100 (+10)
(4) Northern Archery - 16/100 (+12) (Knack)
(2) Northern Equestrianism - 82/100 (+3) (Knack)
(2) Heavy Armour - 43/100 (+15) (Skilled)
Diplomacy:
(3) Interpersonal Communication - 65/100 (+15) (Skilled)
(1) Public Speaking - 60/100 (+5) (Skilled)
(4) Management - 25/100 (+50) (Prodigious) ←
(2) Stewardship - 17/100 (+25) (Knack) ←
(2) Northern Law - 8/100 (+25) (Knack) ←
(1) Westerosi Law - 98/100 (+25) (Knack)
Language:
(3) Common Speaking - 70/100 (+15) (Knack)
(3) Old Tongue Speaking - 75/100 (+10) (Knack)
(2) Valyrian Speaking - 47/100 (+10) (Knack)
(2) Common Reading - 99/100 (+7)
(1) Westerosi Runes - 43/100 (+0)
(2) Valyrian Reading - 77/100 (+7)
Scholarly: (+1)
(2) Math(s) - 85/100 (+10)
(2) Accounts - 87/100 (+10)
(4) Northern History - 5/100 (+15) (Knack) ←
(2) Westerosi History - 75/100 (+15)
(3) Northern Peoples - 50/100 (+15)
(2) Westerosi Peoples - 60/100 (+15)
Leisure:
(2) Northern Hunting - 83/100 (+10)
(1) Fishing - 90/100 (+5)
(1) Swimming - 80/100 (+5)
(1) Sailing - 10/100 (+0)
(1) Acting - 10/100 (+0)
Earning: 3
Spending: 0
Bank: 6
Rolls for Next Turn:
T6 = Personal Power/Skill
L3 = Mildly inconvenient
Voting:
Main Actions: (+ = Low, ++ = Mid, +++ = High)
A1 - Train with Jon, and sometimes Rob and Theon, in the Yard. (Combat Focus)
(Reputation: ++ Jon + Theon, + Rob)
A2 - Go on Hunts With Jon and Sansa. (Equestrianism + Leisure Focus)
(Reputation: ++ Jon, + Sansa, - Cat)
A3 - Keep up your studies with your cousin, Sansa, and Maester Lewin. (Scholarly Focus)
(Reputation: ++ Sansa, + Cat, + Ned)
A4 - Act as your Uncle Ned’s page with Rob and Theon. (Diplomacy Focus)
(Reputation: ++ Ned, + Theon)
A5 - Spend your time teaching/watching little Arya and your Wolves with Yara. (Language Focus)
(Reputation: ++ Arya, + Yara, + Ned)
A6 - Follow Rob until he shares his Friends and Activities with you. (Communications Focus)
(Reputation: + Cat, + Ned, - Rob)
Personal Rolls Sources:
S1 - Wikipedia
S2 - Steam Games
S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30)
S4 - World Rolls List (D12) (On Cooldown 1/1)
Information:
1 - On income and what we can spend it on.
Thanks to the discussion after the previous chapter, I’ve decided to keep the large purchases locked off from us for a while.
However, I will occasionally offer for us to go purchase something in the winter town, or to have it ordered, so that we can get a reputation boost on top of whatever action we take that turn.
So, if Sansa is voted for the most, then we’d buy her a fancy ribbon in the Winter Town for 1 resource and get a boost to our reputation with her.
However, thanks to RandyTrevelyan’s suggestion, I’m adding in an incident from when Rob first got his allowance and spent it all on castle forged steel knives for all his friends.
As a result of the ruckus this caused, we are expressly forbidden from making larger purchases or buying things like swords until we’re older.
So for now, it’s just little things, or as budgets for our Minions.
Write-In/Questions:
1 - What should our New Minion be named? And what should they do for us first?
Keeping in mind that the further away they go, the more resources we’ll need to build up before they can go do it.
A cheap example would be something like:
Go investigate Castle Black to see if the Lord Commander has anything he wants to tell the Lord Stark, and while you're there, do what healing you can in the name of Wulfric Stark, so that the Night's Watch will remember you more fondly should you ever meet.
While Something expensive would be:
Go investigate Kings Landing to see how the Court of Robert Barathion is doing, and if there's anything that should concern the North or your Lord Uncle, and while there, do what healing you can (out of sight of the seven’s priests) to boost the North’s reputation in the capital.