Votes for this Turn:A1 - Jon - 26A2 - Sansa - 3A3 - Cat - 0A4 - Arya - 1
S1 - Wikipedia - 9S2 - Steam - 15S3 - Paradox - 6S4 - World - 0
Names:Lady Vivian (Vi) - 8Lady Violet (Vi) - 7Lady Icelyn - 3Lady - 3Lady Pochita - 1Lady Snow White - 1Snow White Lady - 1Lady Aurora - 1Lady Cersei - 1
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Rolls for this Turn:Personal: Steam GamesThanks to Squirrel Stapler, everybody in or north of the New Gift is now Talented at Northern Hunting.(Remember that skills go: Knack → Skilled → Talented → Gifted → Prodigious.)
This means that fewer of them will starve over the next few years, and the White Walkers will have a slightly harder time pushing them out of the nds beyond the Wall.
(Just so you all know, I’m counting the Nights Watch as part of the “North of the North” region for the sake of this Quest.)
World: Coppermind WikiThanks to Gavil's Carriages, you now own a transport company that sends loads of cargo and people across the North and occasionally the rivernds in carriages.Thanks to this, your resources per turn are increased from 2 to 3 per turn once you're old enough to be given spending money.
This will also slowly improve your reputation with the Northern Lords, as the carriage service is considered one of the most reliable and consistent methods of transporting goods across the North’s vast distances.
This company will need a properly grandiose (or silly) name…
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Story:Over the next few weeks, the days settled into a pattern.Not a calm one, exactly, but one you could live inside without tripping over it every five minutes.There was practice in the yard with Jon.There was Arya getting underfoot whenever she could manage it.There were little hunts into the Wolfswood when the light allowed it, where you caught what you could and got back before sunset whether you had anything to show for it or not.
The yard work changed by degrees.Sword practice still happened, and so did all the usual bruises, sore arms, and reminders from Ser Rodrik that your feet were somehow wrong again.But the clearest progress came with archery.That was where you had the edge on Jon, which was satisfying in theory and much less satisfying in practice.
The trouble with being better than Jon at something was that Jon refused to be annoying about it in any useful way.If he had sulked, or snapped, or made excuses, then the whole business would’ve been much easier to enjoy.Instead he took correction calmly, listened when you pointed something out, adjusted his grip or stance without argument, and then did his level best to improve.He was not even fake gracious about it.He was just genuinely decent, which in some ways was far more aggravating.
So you got better, and Jon got better, and the whole thing became a running offense.You’d loose first and hit true often enough that Ser Rodrik started noticing, and Jon would take the same shot after you and either miss by less than before or hit close enough that you had to admit the correction had worked.Then he’d nod as though this were all perfectly normal and not, in fact, a personal attack on your ability to feel smug in peace.It would’ve been simpler if he were petty.Instead he was maddeningly calm about being better than you with a sword and worse than you with a bow, as though these things simply were and there was no reason to be strange about them.
Sansa joined you a few times.Not often, and not for very long, but enough that the pattern shifted a little when she did.She was not bad with a bow.She was too careful and too stubborn to be truly bad at much she cared enough to try.But she did not care for archery the way either you or Jon did, and after a few rounds she usually had better things to do.Or rather, your aunt had better things for her to do.More and more often Sansa was busy helping her mother, carrying messages, finding people, and doing all the small useful things that kept Winterfell running without anyone singing about it afterward.So she came when she could, shot well enough to avoid embarrassment, and then vanished back into the castle with the sort of purposeful look that said she had already remembered something the rest of you had forgotten.
Arya, naturally, noticed all of this.She noticed the bows.She noticed the practice.Most of all, she noticed that when the yard work was done, you and Jon sometimes went off into the Wolfswood without her.
At first this did not matter because Arya was distracted by whatever had most recently caught her eye.Then it began to matter very much indeed.She asked where you were going.She was told hunting.She asked why she could not come.She was told because she was four, loud, distractible, and attached to a wolf pup too young and untrained to be brought along on anything requiring quiet.This was all perfectly reasonable.Arya did not care about reason in the least.
The resulting tantrum was not one for the songs, but it was solid work all the same.There was shouting.There was stamping.There was a furious defense of Silco’s obvious excellence as a hunter despite the fact that Silco was at that very moment chewing on something he had no business putting in his mouth.There were decrations of unfairness, accusations of treachery, and at one point a cim that she was being treated worse than a prisoner, which was an unusually sophisticated compint from a child who still needed help washing her hair.It did not help that you ughed.It helped even less that Jon did not ugh, but also did not look especially moved by the argument.
In the end she wore everyone down by sheer persistence.Or perhaps the fit itself burned through enough of her anger that letting her come once began to seem safer than refusing forever.Either way, she was allowed on one small hunt under strict conditions.She was to stay close.She was to listen.She was to be quiet.Silco was not coming.That st point produced a second smaller outrage, but by then she was too pleased at being included to sustain it properly.
So one afternoon the three of you went into the Wolfswood together.Not deep.Not far.Just far enough that the castle sounds thinned out behind you and the ground underfoot stopped feeling like something swept by servants that morning.Arya was delighted from the first step and terrible at it from the second.She crouched when no one else did.She whispered at full speaking volume.She pointed at things that had not moved in years and asked if they were prey.Jon told her quiet so many times that by the end of the first stretch the word had started sounding like part of her name.
Still, she tried.That was the thing.Badly, noisily, and with frequent pses into complete nonsense, but she tried.When Jon stopped, she stopped.When you crouched, she crouched too, though not with much grace.When you pointed out sign in the dirt, she looked where you showed her instead of talking over it.Not every time.Not even most times.But enough.
You did not catch much that day.That was hardly shocking.Between Arya’s excitement and the fact that this was never meant to be a serious outing in the first pce, it would’ve been stranger if the wood had simply surrendered a rabbit out of politeness.What you did get was a bird, and that mostly because Arya, after a long miserable stretch of trying to be quiet, finally pointed without speaking when something shifted in the brush.Jon saw it a breath ter.You took the shot.The bird dropped.Arya looked at all of this as though she had personally brought down an aurochs.
After that there was no living with her.She whispered triumph at you both for the next quarter hour.She informed you that she had helped.She informed Jon that she had been very quiet, which was true only by comparison to her usual self.She informed the trees, the sky, and probably the old gods besides that she was a hunter now.By the time the three of you turned back toward Winterfell with the light starting to go gold through the branches, she had already begun asking when she was allowed to come again.
That was how the weeks went after that.Archery in the yard, where your best progress showed and Jon remained infuriatingly reasonable about it.Sword drills besides, where he still had the better of you and saw no reason to make much of that either.Sansa appearing now and then, then vanishing back into her mother’s work.Arya orbiting all of it like some loud small moon until, finally, she got drawn into the pattern too.
It was not an especially grand season of your life.No one would’ve mistaken it for one.But it had a shape to it all the same.You practiced.You hunted.You got back before sunset.And for a little while, while the war stayed somewhere else and Winterfell held together around the spaces people had left behind, that was enough.
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Skills:Combat:(1) Westerosi CQC - 94/100 (+20)(1) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 91/100 (+20)(2) Northern Archery - 69/100 (+25) (Knack)(1) Northern Equestrianism - 81/100 (+7) (Knack)
Diplomacy:(2) Interpersonal Communication - 30/100 (+10)(1) Public Speaking - 30/100 (+0)(1) Management - 55/100 (+3) (Knack)(1) Stewardship - 47/100 (+3) (Knack)(1) Northern Law - 46/100 (+7) (Knack)(1) Westerosi Law - 36/100 (+3) (Knack)
Language:(2) Common Speaking - 10/100 (+5)(2) Old Tongue Speaking - 40/100 (+15)(1) Valyrian Speaking - 49/100 (+7)(2) Common Reading - 8/100 (+7) (1) Westerosi Runes - 21/100 (+7)(1) Valyrian Reading - 86/100 (+7)
Schorly: (+1)(1) Math(s) - 72/100 (+10)(1) Accounts - 77/100 (+10)(2) Northern History - 78/100 (+12) (Knack)(1) Westerosi History - 58/100 (+7)(2) Northern Peoples - 15/100 (+10) (1) Westerosi Peoples - 58/100 (+7)
Leisure:(1) Northern Hunting - 78/100 (+25)(1) Fishing - 15/100 (+5)(1) Swimming - 30/100 (+5)(1) Sailing - 10/100 (+0)(1) Acting - 10/100 (+0)
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Rolls for Next Turn:T6 = Personal Power/SkillL1 = Inconvenient
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Voting:Main Actions: (+ = Low, ++ = Mid, +++ = High)A1 - Hang out with Jon and little Arya in the yard and on small hunts. (Combat Focus)(Reputation: ++ Jon, - Cat)
A2 - Keep up your studies with your cousin, Sansa, and Maester Lewin. (Knowledge Focus)(Reputation: ++ Sansa, + Cat)
A3 - Act as your Aunt Cat’s page with Sansa. (Diplomacy Focus)(Reputation: +++ Cat, + Sansa, - Jon)
A4 - Spend your time teaching/watching little Arya and your Wolves. (Language Focus)(Reputation: + Jon, + Sansa, + Cat)
Personal Rolls Sources:S1 - Wikipedia
S2 - Steam Games (On Cooldown 1/2)
S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30)
S4 - World Rolls List (D12)
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Information:
1 - Reminder that “L1 = Inconvenient” doesn't mean the power itself will be bad, just that the interpretation of the power won’t favor us.In this case, with it being “T6 = Personal Power/Skill,” most likely that means we suddenly gain a lot of skill in something that's useless or not directly helpful.So if the role is for an actor, then we’ll get Prodigious at acting, rather than the far more useful Public speaking.But even a Prodigious Acting skill isn’t a Bad skill, just an inconvenient one, since it forces us to work pns around the roll rather than the roll helping our pns like with “L7 = Most convenient.”
2 - On getting extra votes and where this is posted.So, I just want to give a reminder to those who are new to my quests that I allow people to vote multiple times, so long as it’s on different websites.So if you‘d like, then feel free to vote on: ScribbleHub, SB, SV, QQ, or AO3.(AO3 is open to comments/votes even if you don't have an account, by the way.)(As an additional bonus, voting on at least 4 of the 5 grants a free additional vote.)
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Write-In/Questions:1 - What should our new Transport Company be named?Examples:“Truck Around and Find Out,”“Freight Expectations,”“Sir Hauls A Lot,”“Cart Bnche.”
