Votes for this Turn:A1 - Jon - 3A2 - Sansa - 9 A3 - Cat - 21A4 - Arya - 2
S1 - Wikipedia - 3S2 - Steam - 0S3 - Paradox - 21S4 - World - 11
Names: (The)Overworked Mare - 12GroundBound Solutions - 2Iron Howl - 2Cart Bnche - 1Warg Way - 1EIC: Extremely Incompetent Couriers - 1Dire-Run Transport - 1Blue Porcupine - 1Old Way - 1Wolfswain - 2
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Rolls for this Turn:Personal: Prison Architect WikiThanks to Personnel, we are now Prodigious at Management.(Talk about a bullet dodged for an “L1 = Inconvenient”, but there’s only really one way to interpret a page about all the employees of an organization.)
World: BulbapediaI hope you're ready for some genuine Wiki Warrior style chaos, because thanks to Arceus VSTAR (Brilliant Stars 123), Pnetos has just gotten its very first, Non-Eldrich abomination God!
Unfortunately, thanks to the roll being “L2 = Mildly inconvenient,” Arceus will appear in the Summer Isles with no particur urge to start exploring outside of them for a while…
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Story:For the next two months, you and Sansa kept serving as your aunt’s pages, and after a while the work stopped feeling new and started feeling like weather, always there, always waiting, and never especially impressed by whether you were tired of it.Each day seemed to produce its own list of needs, with: messages to carry, answers to fetch, rooms to warm, cloth to move, broth to send, servants to find, and some fresh little problem on one side of Winterfell that had to be dealt with before it became more annoying somewhere else.
That was the strange thing about it after a while.At first every errand had felt important because it was new, and because being useful still had enough novelty to feel satisfying all by itself.Then the days began to run together.You woke, ate, got sent somewhere, came back, got sent somewhere else, and by midday some entirely different corner of the castle needed something done with urgency that no one had mentioned an hour before.The work did not stop.It only changed direction.
The babe became part of that rhythm too, though not at first.At first he seemed to bring with him an endless line of disruptions, with: bnkets needing changing, fires needing adjusting, wet nurses needing finding, and every woman within reach having some firm opinion on what ought to be done and how quickly.Then even that settled into a pattern.The babe slept when he slept, cried when he cried, fed when he pleased, and the castle bent itself around those habits the same way it bent itself around everything else.He did not become less of a trouble.He simply became a familiar sort of trouble.
Your aunt changed more slowly than that.At the start she still looked worn by the effort of it all, and there were hours when she seemed to pale by degrees as the day went on, as though tiredness crept over her instead of striking all at once.She was still pinly Lady Stark, and no one in Winterfell was fool enough to forget it, but more of the castle came to her than she went to it.People entered her rooms, gave their answers, took their instructions, and left again.For a while that was simply how things were.
Then, little by little, it stopped being that way.One week she was checking on one room herself.The next she was checking on several.Then she was moving through parts of Winterfell again with the babe left behind for a while, and there was more life in her face and less of that dull drained look that had clung to her after the birth.By the end of those two months, she had not become some new version of Lady Stark.She had simply become more fully herself again, and the whole castle seemed to straighten a little around that fact.
That was when the work finally clicked in your head, or rather when you finally grokked it properly.Your aunt was not running Winterfell by personally doing each little task herself.She was running it by knowing what needed doing, who needed telling, who needed reminding, who needed watching, and which small dey was about to become three rger ones if no one stepped on it quickly.That was the part you finally grokked.All those little errands were not beneath rule.They were rules, or one rge ugly practical part of it.
A hall stayed warm because someone had remembered wood before the brazier went low.The nursery stayed quieter because someone had thought to send the wrong sort of servant elsewhere before they could become an irritation.The stores stayed full because someone checked before they were empty instead of after.Nothing in it was grand.That, you finally understood, was part of the point, because if the work was being done properly then most people never noticed it at all.
And all the while, the silence from the war kept getting worse.At first there had been reasons for it, and all of them were sensible enough, with: roads being long, ravens not being magic, ships taking time, and armies taking even longer.No one in Winterfell was fool enough to expect a neat stream of reassuring messages simply because they wanted one.So when one week passed with no word, then another, and then more after that, people endured it.They simply liked it less each time.
You saw it most in the pauses.Whenever riders came through the gates, heads turned before people remembered themselves.Whenever a raven arrived, someone always seemed to know a moment before anyone said so aloud.Maester Luwin was asked the same question often enough that after a while no one needed to hear the answer to know what it would be.Your aunt did not speak of it much, but there were moments when a messenger was announced or hooves sounded in the yard and she would still go in that way people did when they were already bracing themselves before they knew for what.
Sansa noticed it too, though she said very little.The whole castle did.Servants kept working, meals still arrived, fires were still id, clothes were still mended, and the babe still fed and slept and cried, but underneath all of it sat that same waiting, and the longer it sted the more it felt like something with shape and weight of its own.That was the oddest part of those two months.Winterfell was not frozen by worry.It kept moving, because that was what castles did.
So the work continued.You and Sansa still ran messages where they needed to go, your aunt still gave orders, the babe still grew, and the days still passed, but the ck of news sat over all of it like a second season, one made of listening too hard and pretending not to.By the end of it, your aunt looked stronger, the babe looked sturdier, and you no longer felt like children merely pretending to be useful.But the waiting had not eased.If anything it had sharpened, because by then there had been enough time for everyone to start wondering what sort of news took this long to reach them, and whether silence was only silence or something worse wearing its face.
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Skills:Combat:(1) Westerosi CQC - 99/100 (+5)(1) Westerosi Swordsmanship - 96/100 (+5)(2) Northern Archery - 81/100 (+12) (Knack)(1) Northern Equestrianism - 81/100 (+7) (Knack)
Diplomacy:(2) Interpersonal Communication - 40/100 (+10)(1) Public Speaking - 35/100 (+5)(1) Management - 100/100 (+45) (Prodigious) (1) Stewardship - 67/100 (+20) (Knack)(1) Northern Law - 58/100 (+12) (Knack)(1) Westerosi Law - 48/100 (+12) (Knack)
Language:(2) Common Speaking - 20/100 (+10)(2) Old Tongue Speaking - 55/100 (+15)(1) Valyrian Speaking - 56/100 (+7)(2) Common Reading - 15/100 (+7) (1) Westerosi Runes - 21/100 (+0)(1) Valyrian Reading - 93/100 (+7)
Schorly: (+1)(1) Math(s) - 89/100 (+15)(1) Accounts - 92/100 (+15)(2) Northern History - 90/100 (+12) (Knack)(1) Westerosi History - 65/100 (+7)(2) Northern Peoples - 25/100 (+10) (1) Westerosi Peoples - 65/100 (+7)
Leisure:(1) Northern Hunting - 88/100 (+10)(1) Fishing - 15/100 (+0)(1) Swimming - 30/100 (+0)(1) Sailing - 10/100 (+0)(1) Acting - 10/100 (+0)
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Rolls for Next Turn:T4 = Objects/Effect at HomeL5 = Mildly convenient
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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 2/2)
S3 - Paradox Wiki's (D30) (On Cooldown 1/1)
S4 - World Rolls List (D12)
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Information:
1 - Reminder about Prodigious Skills.I just want to remind you all that, just like Joffrey with his Prodigious Swordsmanship, we still need the other Diplomacy skills to be at a high level.So even if we get a passive 25 per turn in Management now, we can still fail as a ruler if our other skills are too low.Even being a “(10) Management - 100/100” isn't a guarantee of success at lordship tasks.
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Write-In/Questions:1 - What should Rob’s “Wolf” be named?We could keep to Grey Wind.Or stick with the League of Legends thing we have going with a name like Warwick (Because he’s a werewolf) or Ashe (because she’s a northern leader simir in personality to Rob).Or we could break with the LoL theme and go for something like Swiftwind or Quicksilver.
2 - What do you think the results of the Greyjoy Rebellion would have been, with the Earthquakes and 4 Armed Gunmen added to the mix?We’ll find out in the next chapter, but I’m interested to see how you lot think it’ll have pyed out.
