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The Heir of the Dragon: A Rhaenyra Targaryen Quest

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[X] Plan Without An Exciting Name

I support finishing up unfinished business before starting fresh. I'm also on that Redfort hobbyhorse since what very little we've heard about him he seems kind of Bro-y, in a good way.

Though I hate saying it...we will eventually need someone to replace Raylon since he's not a young man, Steffon could be a good candidate for that. Might be planning too long term but once the thought came I couldn't shake it.
 
[X] Plan Without An Exciting Name
[X] Plan With Exciting Dreams and a Duel
[X] Plan: Dragon Dreams

While I would very much like to have a conversation with Rhaenys to sound her out without Corlys being around, I do have to agree with closing out our previous business first before moving on to new ones. That's what being Diligent is about after all.
 
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Thought I had on Steffon: if he's markedly deficient in some way that we can catch with one action, it actually seem reasonably likely it'd be as a fighter.

Jeyne suggested this guy to us as someone to put on the Goldcloaks. This to me at least means Jeyne should have vetted him(or at least had someone else vet him), so that someone who is clearly her man isn't an embarrassment at court. I've been arguing that this probably means we don't have to seriously vet him ourselves.

However, if there's some way that he's not up to the task, let's say that could be in loyalty, mental competence, or martial competence, and also assume there's some way to catch that in 1 action. Of these it seems least likely that it's loyalty: he's Jessamyn Redfort's cousin IIRC, if Jessamyn couldn't catch a loyalty issue, we're not doing it in 1 action.

Of these remaining, him being say an incompetent duelist seems more likely than him being mentally unfit in some other way - Jeyne would not be in a position to evaluate this herself, and might devalue this as less important. Her having asked someone else, been told that he was "alright" or something, and considering that box checked seems a more likely failure to guard against.
 
[X] Plan With Exciting Dreams and a Duel
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Viserys
--[X] Bring up Harrenhal and Aelora
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Alicent Hightower
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Gwayne Hightower
-[X] [Action] Train
--[X] Challenge to a Duel: Raylon has suggested dueling others as a way of sharpening yourself against new blades. Have others find flaws in you that he has missed (Pick One)
---[X] [Duel] Steffon Redfort
-[X] [Action] Look into Marriage Options
-[X] [Action] Investigate Your Harrenhal Dream

The above plan inspired by "Plan Without An Exciting Name"
Converting the conversation with Steffon to a Duel, while its not as fully informing as a conversation, combat prowess is an important part of the job we're trying to get him into, and as the conversation write-up states and his reason to want to go to the north with Syrax, I don't think he is going to be a problem personality wise. This also works towards our mandatory training action for prowess training.
And I moved Music study into the Harrenhal Dream action as it just has high synergy with the Viserys conversation, which historically is very important to do.

Now my personally ideal plan would actually involve interacting with Queen Johanna, because honestly unless we super fuck up I think supporting her a bit is a great relief for her and would be great for continuing to keep things cordial with our Mother-in-law. However, I can respect the wish to maybe be a bit less freaked out before trying to continue tending that relationship.

Also I'm excited by the Squire option, though narratively I'd want to wait until the return of the progress at the very minimum before trying to acquire a Squire.
Approval Voting Section
[] Plan Without An Exciting Name
[X] Foundations For the Future to Come
 
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hailcapital said:
Of these remaining, him being say an incompetent duelist seems more likely than him being mentally unfit in some other way - Jeyne would not be in a position to evaluate this herself, and might devalue this as less important. Her having asked someone else, been told that he was "alright" or something, and considering that box checked seems a more likely failure to guard against.
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Jessamyn probably didn't even go so far as asking around after Steffon's martial competence. Someone knighted him, and that "Ser" counts for a lot when evaluating prowess at a glance, especially when one is not a warrior oneself.

But the time to swap from talking to sparring with the man was probably here, before the big swell of support for Without an Exciting Name that saw a bunch of people copy in the planks as they were. At this point I'm happy trusting that Azel had his reasons for preferring talking to sparring (and also approval-voting ComiTurtle's plan).
 
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Zimmerwald1915 said:
Jessamyn probably didn't even go so far as asking around after Steffon's martial competence. Someone knighted him, and that "Ser" counts for a lot when evaluating prowess at a glance, especially when one is not a warrior oneself.

But the time to swap from talking to sparring with the man was probably here, before the big swell of support for Without an Exciting Name that saw a bunch of people copy in the planks as they were. At this point I'm happy trusting that Azel had his reasons for preferring talking to sparring (and also approval-voting ComiTurtle's plan).
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That's fair. I guess there's a legitimate counterpoint that even if it is more likely the he's unsuitable for reasons-discoverable-by-sparrong over reasons-discoverable-by-talking, the latter would be worse.
 
Zimmerwald1915 said:
I don't suppose anyone wanted to admit to themselves that our progress could be cut short. I certainly didn't. But per the text of his option, Steffon hasn't been presented to the Small Council yet so we still have a last sliver of time.
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Yes, but Westerlings and the lannisters have people everywhere in Kingslamding after a year from the marriage. The lack of familiarity is going to be obvious, which invites the question for why we have let him accompany us.
ComiTurtle said:
[X] Plan With Exciting Dreams and a Duel
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I'm approval voting this, and would encourage others to do the same. We need to train the sword every other turn now, and since we need to speak with lord strong and begin being mentored for the small council position next turn if we aren't doing it this one, it would be wise to get it out of the way now so it's not something we must take next turn.

In addition, it's somewhat more sensible to take speaking with Viserys about our vision and the harrenhall investigation action together than just speaking to Viserys. Just the organization of what we know already about the situation ahead of speaking him will likely lead to a much better outcome for the conversation.
 
[X] Foundations For the Future to Come
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Viserys
--[X] Bring up Harrenhal and Aelora
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Steffon Redfort
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Alicent Hightower
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Gwayne Hightower
-[X] [Action] Look into Marriage Options
-[X] [Action] Investigate Your Harrenhal Dream

A mix of some of the plans out there, since my old one has accumulated interest of less than one in ten voters.

The idea is to actually have a productive discussion of the dream with Viserys, since we will have at least used the action to put our thoughts in order ahead of approaching him about it, and figured out what we know for sure in the process.

Since next turn is likely to be self improvement heavy between begining our apprenticeship to lord strong and needing to train because of the tarly vote, I'd rather just let that be a turn for heavy self improvement and use this to lay a foundation when it comes to more long-term projects, such as the marriage and the Harrenhall dream.

[X] Plan Many Issues and Much discussion
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Rhaenys Targaryen
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Alicent Hightower
-[X] [Conversation] Speak with Viserys
--[X] Bring up Harrenhal and Aelora
-[X] [Action] Study
-[X] [Action] Investigate Your Harrenhal Dream
-[X] [Action] Study Valyrian History with your Father.

[X] Plan Without An Exciting Name

[X] Plan With Exciting Dreams and a Duel

[X] Plan: Dragon Dreams
However I will keep my old vote up and support for these plans, even the one with a somewhat lacking name. :V
 
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[X] Plan Scout Out The Inlaws
[X] Plan: Family Matters
[X] Plan Many Issues and Much discussion

I just really want to talk to Rhaenys.
 
Versharl said:
I don't follow your logic. If there exists prophesies that can be averted and your actions can affect some prophesies, then surely it'd make sense for Rhaenyra to act in order to try to prevent a "death prophesy". Even if it winds up being the kind of prophesy that will happen no matter what, the outcome is no worse than if she had done nothing (still death).
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I think that, being somewhat fuzzy-brained at the time, i missed a step. As a favor, I'd like to ask the chance to rephrase my argument.

There are "evitable" prophecies where you can avert them by being forewarned of potential disaster and taking sensible steps.

There are "running only means you die tired" prophecies where the specific act of trying to avert them doesn't alter the outcome (either to prevent it or to bring it about), but does end up making your life worse than if you'd just accepted it. Even if the prophecy is "you will be struck by a meteor at the age of X," well, trying to avert it may end up wasting some of the time and resources you do have on this world to no benefit, if it really is inevitable.

And there are "self-fulfilling" prophecies where it's fairly clear that if you just hadn't gotten that prophecy you'd almost certainly have never done whatever it was that got you into the situation described by the prophecy, such that theoretically you could avert the prophecy by ignoring it.

...

Now, the biggest difference between #2 and the other two types is whether or not people actually have the free-will ability to avoid the contents of a prophecy at all. Either #1 or #3 means that you can avert prophecies by taking the correct action, though #3 means that the cosmos is being very passive-aggressive and disagreeable about how it enables you to do so.

It is difficult to say, off the top of my head, whether that ability exists in Westeros/Essos. The whole "Stallion Who Mounts The World" thing suggests that if you know what you're doing (Mirri Maz Duur did), it's possible to avert a prophecy through sabotage or at least force the prophecy to be fulfilled on different terms.

The real challenge is figuring out what kind of universe you live in ahead of time. Personally, I suspect we live in a universe that comes closer to #1 than to #2 or #3, but where a prophecy can become self-fulfilling per #3 if you fall prey to biases or bad information while trying to avert it.

In our case, the prophecy seems to in some way involve Aelora and us dying over God's Eye in a Dance of the Dragons. We could almost certainly avoid it, if only by getting killed prematurely somewhere else, not that I favor this solution. I think it may be more like a dream or vision than a prophecy anyway, in the sense that it's not an engraved fact about reality itself but rather a mystically confusing perception of realities that could kill us.

...

But I think Rhaenyra needs to get some wisdom and lore to help her put all this stuff into context. Alys Rivers might very well be the woman to help us do it.
 
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I kind of think that talking with Viserys about the dream makes more sense first - Viserys in show canon thinks about Dragon Dreams and prophecy a lot: in particular he is very motivated by Aegon's Dream (which he considers real) but also a dream of his that he believed to be prophetic (having a son) which he no longer believes in. While not directly dragon-dream related, he also thinks about Valyria and Targaryen history a lot - the city he's built a scale model of is Valyria, not KL. It seems fairly likely that he'll have sources he can refer us to on the subject, as well as his own perspective and lore.

There might be synergy to doing both on the same turn, though.

Oh, other prophecy-related thing I thought of, though: In ASOIAF, greenseers can see back in time, and possibly communicate back in time. If we assume that dream wasn't our own prophetic power, but rather a deliberate attempt by future!Aelora to communicate with past!Rhaenyra, how does that change things?

I don't think I have a good answer to that. Going around saying stuff like "You named me after all. Named me and rejected me" and telling us where we will die doesn't sound very friendly, but why would an enemy want to appear as an enemy?
 
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Diligent Clarification
  • Informational
    • I was doing the numbers in my head and I realized I had put you guys in a situation where you would either massively favor sword fighting or have no time for literally any divergents.

    So here's how Diligent is gonna work from now on, if Rhaenyra is working at a task or developing a skill, general assumption is she's working on it to some extent every turn when possible but if she doesn't take an action on it every 4 turns (Basically at least once a year) She'll feel she's neglecting it and gain stress. Basically imagine she's working on writing something, she's probably adding a few sentences a week, but if she doesn't get an update out every so often she'll worry she'll lose viewers and the project will spiral and never get finished. Note you can take actions more often to increase your skill with them.

    So here's a List of things Rhaenyra needs to do once at least every 4 turns (not counting Progresses of course) or she'll start gaining Stress, I'll add it as we go along.

    -Prowess Training
    -Dragon Riding
    -Harp Practice
     
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  • Informational
    • So thinking about the dream as a deliberate communication by someone else (rather than our own prophetic power) let's say enemy wants to feeds us bad information or ally wants to feed us good information. Enemy could be either Aelora, who needs to appear as our enemy to make sure that we don't like, treat her well and win her over, (and then the rest of the info is fake) or someone unrelated who wants to ensure we are alienated from siblings. Ally could be either Aelora who is being too edgy for her own good, or someone who wants to give us an early warning about our siblings.

    I want it to be future Aelora just being an edgelord because it would be funny, but reading the dream I think the most sensible is enemy. Future Aelora being an edgelord seems like it's assuming too much incompetence on her part, and someone trying to give us good information wouldn't be telling us that we cannot avert this fate & would hopefully have given us something more actionable. I kind of think it makes more sense as not actually being Aelora as well. If it's Aelora... what is she trying to get us to do, not go to God's Eye? That's plausible, but what if we react to the dream by just like, killing her in the cradle. And why send us this dream now instead of shortly before us going to God's Eye becomes relevant?

    If it's non!Aelora enemy on the other hand, the rationale is likely straightforward: get two of your enemies to fight each other instead of you.

    OTOH, I worry that may be reading too much into it, past intent. I think overall it's probably not deliberate communication, and probably is a dragon dream with no sender.
     
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    Teen Spirit said:
    So here's a List of things Rhaenyra needs to do once at least every 4 turns (not counting Progresses of course) or she'll start gaining Stress, I'll add it as we go along.

    -Prowess Training
    -Dragon Riding
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    Should studying law count for this too, since she's made a verbal commitment to it, and it'll be in direct service to one of her Dreams? Or does it not count until she actually does the first Study action for this?

    Edit: dumb question, sorry, didn't read the information before that properly
     
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    hailcapital said:
    OTOH, I worry that may be reading too much into it, past intent. I think overall it's probably not deliberate communication, and probably is a dragon dream with no sender.
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    It's more likely a warped weirwood dream do to weirwood furniture and woods witch potion interacting with Targarian magical blood. Aelora is plausibly the three eyed raven possessing her within that vision, like Bran possessed hodor.

    Regardless, this isn't some small trifling situation that we can just get to later, especially if autumn ends before we can get back to Harrenhall and try to track down rivers. If we are talking to Viserys about it, we should be doing so with the groundwork on what we experienced and how it came to happen organized.
     
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