Votes for this Turn:
A1 - Combat - 31
A2 - Leisure - 2
A3 - Scholarly - 4
A4 - Diplomacy - 0
A5 - Language - 7
A6 - Communications - 3
S1 - Wikipedia - 15
S2 - Steam - 19
S3 - Paradox - 13
S4 - World - 0
Names:
Berenice Renatus - 9
Lyanna Snow - 3
Richard Snow (Hornwood bastard) - 2
Karl Strongarm - 1
Auley - 1
Adaira Mormont - 1
Tasks:
Stay in Winterfell/Winter Town as a Healer - 12
Meet with the order of Green Men, on the Isle of Faces - 6
Go try to cure Shireen Baratheon’s Grey Scale - 5
Go to Castle Black as a Healer - 4
Investigate and Heal in the Kneck - 4
Meet with the Royces of Runestone to study Runes - 4
Dorne to meet with any First Men and Old Gods followers - 4
Go to KL to find out the Gossip - 3
Travel the North, helping the Last Rite Order as a Healer - 3
Go to White Harbor to ask merchants how much damage the calamities caused - 2
Investigate Long Lake people's contentment/problems - 2
Send our minion to Dorne for a Larvesta - 2
Send to White Harbor to discover information on Summer Isles - 1
Ask Ned. Do what he says. - 1
Rolls for this Turn:
Personal: Steam Games
Thanks to Wildmender, we are now Prodigious at plant magic.
This means that things grow better and faster when were around, and that we could grow anything in any place given enough effort and time in the project.
Unfortunately, this roll was L3 = Mildly inconvenient, so we’re not getting any strange dreams or extra attention from the green men or anything like that.
Like Jon’s fire magic, it’ll need to come up on its own for us to discover this talent.
However, just like Jon is now fireproof, we have a passive effect of being a booster to any plants grown within the same general area as us.
Meaning so long as we’re in Winterfell, then the Glass gardens receive a boost to their growing.
Plus, any farms we visit in the future will receive a minor boost afterwards, which should help boost our reputation, even if we never discover (or are told about) our Plant Magic.
Also, a note, this Plant magic is a different thing than Warging, Green Dreams, or other Old God’s Magic.
However, any capacity for magic will increase our capacity for using other magics, including the Old God’s Magic.
(Just to clarify that we’re not going to loophole this into Green Dreams, because “Both are Green” or anything like that.
But magical capacity is magical capacity regardless of what kind of magic you get it from.
So even if we never start a personal garden, we’ll still have better than average magical reserves thanks to this roll.)
World: Fallout Wiki
Thanks to Casual Underarmor Linings, Tywin Lannister has now gained an understanding of how to manufacture bulletproof armor that is subtle enough that it can go under regular clothing without any visible sign.
In case it’s not obvious, this armor would also be slash-proof and highly resistant to stabs as well.
He basically just got the techniques behind modern body armor shoved in his head.
Also worth noting is that he will know that this is the kind of armor used to protect against those guns he had his men loot from those corpses on Pyke.
Though to put you at a bit at ease, I will note that he didn't get any bullets as the two remaining raiders who didn't fall into the sea during the earthquake had used all theirs in the battle.
However, even if he didn't get any bullets, he does know that they fire with explosives, and so has started research into proto-gunpowder on his own with the aid of members of the Alchemist’s Guild.
So, don't go expecting an army of gunmen out of the West, but don't imagine that roll was completely averted.
Especially since Tywin wasn't the only one to leave the Iron Islands with a Gun, and the other person DID get some bullets in theirs…
Story:
Turning ten changed the yard in one important way, which was that people finally stopped pretending every spar had to be a footwork lesson wearing a different hat.
Up until then, most of what counted as sparring had really been practice in: distance, timing, balance, and not falling over in public badly enough to make Ser Rodrik say your name in that voice.
Now, though, things had shifted enough that proper spars were finally allowed, with real exchanges, real mistakes, and very real bruises for anyone foolish enough to earn them.
Jon was there, of course, because Jon was always there for anything in the yard that involved being struck on purpose and learning from it afterward.
Rob was there too, standing a little apart in the way he often did now, not cold exactly, but more solemn than he used to be and less likely to grin before somebody else did something stupid.
Theon was there as well, and looked far too interested in the whole business for your comfort, which generally meant he expected it to be educational for everyone except, perhaps, you.
Ser Rodrik stood over all of it with the patient expression of a man who’d watched boys overestimate themselves for longer than any of you’d been alive.
You knew Jon was better than you.
That part wasn’t news.
He was better at most things in the yard and had the deeply irritating decency to be calm about it, which made the whole arrangement harder to resent properly.
Still, some stupid part of you kept trying to argue that this might go differently, that perhaps you’d surprise him, or at least embarrass yourself less thoroughly than Theon plainly expected.
Hope was a foolish thing.
It showed up anyway.
When Ser Rodrik finally told you to begin, the whole thing went badly with such speed and certainty that it almost circled back around to being impressive, though very much not on your part.
Jon moved first, you reacted late, he pressed, you gave ground, and then you tried to answer with too much force and not enough thought.
You overcommitted on the strike, failed to recover cleanly, and handed him exactly the opening he’d clearly been waiting for.
A moment later you were off balance, opened up, and done.
The whole exchange hadn’t lasted long enough to become complicated.
That was the worst part of it, really.
Had Jon battered you all over the yard for some drawn out humiliation, at least the thing would’ve felt like a struggle worth naming afterward.
Instead he’d simply beaten you, with: clean timing, better balance, and the sort of plain certainty that left no room at all for excuses.
Theon made a pleased little sound at your expression, which was about as much comfort as a kick to the shin.
Rob didn’t say anything at first.
Jon only stepped back and waited, looking almost apologetic in the way people did when they weren’t sorry at all but knew you might’ve preferred them to be.
Ser Rodrik, naturally, hadn’t any interest whatsoever in wounded pride as a topic.
He asked what had gone wrong.
Not in some vague grand sense either.
He meant specifically, and when you first tried the obvious answer, which was Jon, he informed you at once that this wasn’t useful and you could do better.
So you tried again.
Too slow, too eager, too long in the strike, and too ugly in the recovery.
That got you closer.
Then the real corrections came, with: you watched Jon’s weapon instead of Jon himself, you chased the first opening as though the whole spar had to be won at once, you let your feet carry farther than your balance could hold, and once Jon had you reacting to him instead of choosing for yourself, the rest may as well’ve already been done.
Jon explained his part with the same steady maddening calm he brought to everything else.
He said he’d known he had you almost from the start, not because your first move was hopeless, though it hadn’t been good, but because once it failed you tried to force the next one too quickly.
That was what he’d waited for.
You hadn’t reset.
You hadn’t made him work for the next opening.
You’d simply rushed to fill the silence before he could.
He said, in the same tone one might use for weather or soup, that if you’d stepped back cleanly, recovered your guard properly, and made him come to you again, you still wouldn’t have won, but you would’ve lasted longer.
This wasn’t kind.
It was useful.
Rob’s correction came after that, and it was shorter.
He said you’d fought like the spar could be decided in one good moment, which was the sort of mistake boys made when they wanted the clean satisfying exchange more than they wanted the whole fight.
That landed harder than you would’ve liked, because it sounded true in exactly the wrong places.
Theon followed it with less mercy and more enjoyment, pointing out that once Jon saw you wanted that one good hit, he may as well’ve had a map of where your thoughts were headed.
You’d all but announced yourself.
Not with words.
With your body, your hurry, and the way you committed before the choice had actually ripened into something worth taking.
That was the point where the lesson finally stopped feeling like public embarrassment and started feeling like something you might actually be able to use.
You hadn’t lost because Jon was some impossible creature beyond mortal striking, though the thought had merit.
You’d lost because you’d made a series of very plain mistakes, and plain mistakes, hateful as they were to be caught making, had the one useful quality of being fixable.
You couldn’t become Jon by next week.
You could stop handing him the whole spar by the second exchange.
That was something.
Not much, perhaps, but still something.
Ser Rodrik had you and Jon reset the opening after that, not for a full second spar but to walk the exchange properly and then do it again at speed.
This time when the first strike failed, you stepped back sooner.
This time your feet stayed under you better.
This time Jon still got the better of you, because of course he did, but he had to work longer for it and hit you later in the exchange than before.
That wasn’t victory.
It also wasn’t nothing.
Theon said you’d at least managed not to die immediately, which from him counted as warmth.
Rob gave the smallest nod.
Jon said that was better, which somehow felt more satisfying than if he’d smiled.
By the time the lesson ended, your shoulder ached, your pride ached more, and the yard looked exactly the same as it had before, which was one of the ruder facts of the world.
Places didn’t change shape merely because you’d been educated in them.
Still, something had shifted.
The first proper spar hadn’t taught you how to beat Jon, because that would’ve been far too generous by half.
What it’d taught you was simpler and nastier, which was that losing fast had reasons, reasons could be named, and named mistakes could be worked on until they stopped belonging to you.
Now, at last, the real work could begin.
Since you had no particular quest for Berenice yet, leaving her idle felt like wasting both her skill and the trouble it had taken to bring a healer of the Springlords this far south.
So you gave her a simple one.
Winter Town was large enough, poor enough, and close enough that there was always somebody there who needed a healer before the castle thought to send one.
The Winterfell healer only rode down on certain days, which meant there were stretches where the people there had to wait longer than sickness, fever, or bad luck much cared for.
Berenice took the order well enough, and you told her to spend those gaps working among the people of Winter Town unless and until you had some more pressing task that truly needed her hands.
It seemed good sense on every side, because helping the town could only improve how its people looked on you, and because keeping goodwill fed before you needed it was usually wiser than trying to buy it in a panic later.
More than that, it solved the castle side of things too, because whenever the Winterfell healer did go down into town, Berenice could stay behind in the castle and make certain there was always a healer close if somebody fell, bled, burned, or did something else regrettable.
It was not a glorious command, but it was the sort of quiet useful order that made both a town and a household run a little better than they had the day before.
Skills:
Combat:
(3) Westerosi CQC - 30/100 (+25)
(3) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 25/100 (+25) ←
(4) Northern Archery - 43/100 (+27) (Knack)
(2) Northern Equestrianism - 94/100 (+12) (Knack)
(2) Heavy Armour - 73/100 (+30) (Skilled)
Diplomacy:
(3) Interpersonal Communication - 80/100 (+15) (Skilled)
(1) Public Speaking - 65/100 (+5) (Skilled)
(4) Management - 50/100 (+25) (Prodigious)
(2) Stewardship - 24/100 (+7) (Knack)
(2) Northern Law - 15/100 (+7) (Knack)
2) Westerosi Law - 5/100 (+7) (Knack) ←
Language:
(3) Common Speaking - 85/100 (+15) (Knack)
(3) Old Tongue Speaking - 85/100 (+10) (Knack)
(2) Valyrian Speaking - 57/100 (+10) (Knack)
(3) Common Reading - 6/100 (+7) ←
(1) Westerosi Runes - 43/100 (+0)
(2) Valyrian Reading - 84/100 (+7)
Scholarly: (+Minor Boost)
(2) Math(s) - 95/100 (+10)
(2) Accounts - 97/100 (+10)
(4) Northern History - 15/100 (+10) (Knack)
(2) Westerosi History - 85/100 (+10)
(3) Northern Peoples - 60/100 (+10)
(2) Westerosi Peoples - 70/100 (+10)
Leisure:
(2) Northern Hunting - 93/100 (+10)
(1) Fishing - 95/100 (+5)
(1) Swimming - 85/100 (+5)
(1) Sailing - 10/100 (+0)
(1) Acting - 10/100 (+0)
(1) Gardening - 25/100 (+25) (Prodigious)
Earning: 3
Spending: 0
Bank: 9
Rolls for Next Turn:
T3 = Objects/Effect on Another Place
L6 = Mildly convenient
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 (On Cooldown 1/2)
S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30)
S4 - World Rolls List (D12)
Information:
1 - What Our Minion will be up to.
We’ll be having the now-named “Berenice Renatus” work on boosting our reputation in Winterfell and Wintertown.
But since that request doesn't have much of an end date, I’ll just treat it as a “do this for a year” kind of job for her, with us to revisit it around turn 2-4 of age 11 (depending on if we have other stuff to vote on around then.)
2 - Reputations Update
Jon - Friends
Sansa - Friends (-)
Arya - Friendly (+)
Cat - Good (+)
Ned - Good (+)
Rob - Fine
Theon - Ok (+)
Yara - Ok
(Neutral → Fine → Ok → Good → Friendly → Friends → Close Friends → BFF’s)
(+) Means we’re one “+” with that person from it going up a rank.
(-) Means we’re one “-” with that person from it going down a rank.
Write-In/Questions:
1 - Were halfway through the Preparation Turns!
So to celebrate, I’m having us vote on something I've been holding back since Chapter 1:
What should Long Lake Castle Be Named?
Obviously, we could just leave it as Long Lake Castle, but given things like:
“Heart of the Gods” town, “The Last Rite,” and “Unhalig”, I would assume that we’d want something memorable and tied into the History of the Old Gods.
To that end, my best suggestions are:
Weirwatch,
Godsgrave,
Heartsgrove.