[X] Wherein Viserys Targaryen Terrifies A Man Having A Mid-Life Crisis
-[X] While staring at your cup of tea to use a bit of casual mastery over flame to reheat it, softly wonder aloud: "Do you desire a comforting lie, like so many others, or do you want to be burdened with the truth as I have been?" Cut him off initially with a look. You have been fighting for three years against fear and horror. You have conquered both. You have sacrificed so much upon the altar of necessity, and gain as much or more, if you count the good friends who stood beside you all the while and held back the madness you know deep in your bones could have claimed you in full, in another time or place. Baelor has had none of that. He has not faced foes wielding blades of fear or dread. He has not stood against Gods and stared Hell in the face and spat defiance. He may have held fast against the storm, but he has not cut a wake through it as you have, nor could he do more than grip as tightly as he can not to be swept away in it. So if he thinks to tell you that he is insulted by the implication that he couldn't handle the truth, or that it's his responsibility to do something about it, he can stop right there and take a different tack, because no Lord in Westeros has shown themselves to be prepared for the truth, and fewer still can handle it without going mad.
-[X] If he swallows pride, or just truly knows he's in way over his head, the Comforting Lie wearing silken Truth: "I care only for the absolute destruction of enemies of mankind and their allies. I will destroy slavers until they are as dust. I will eradicate monsters like vermin. And I will cleanse corruption so that the people might finally know peace. What more does any man need to know?"
-[X] If he insists on the truth, bare a smile that does not reach your eyes: "Very well." Baelor Hightower has a host of advantages over any other Lord you could let the veil behind your acts and motivations fall before, the best mixture of competence and sanity as much as comprehension of the changes to the world that truly matter with the ability to keep in mind the limitations of the Lords of Westeros as much as their highest virtues. Let him be the test case.
-[X] Full disclosure. He asked for it. "House Tyrell had sought to bargain for the safeguarding of what they have gained from three centuries of prosperity not wholly their own, the abeyance of legitimate claims of their loyal vassals in exchange for the support of those who had originally guaranteed it, and for all of the rampant scheming and politicking I have seen here in the Reach as much as anywhere else in Westeros, before I took an open hand in matters at the least, most would have followed them to war or the peace table if they had simply paid heed to their needs and obligations. They did not. They did not in the Usurper's War, and refused to see bitter fruit be plucked from the outcome, the loss of influence or further decline. They did not when the Fair Folk came and threw their Kingdom into chaos. When the stakes rose with the awakening of magic, their caution was not raised to match the potential threat. They did not make the sacrifices required to ensure peace for those bound unto them in turn. Instead their ambition was merely fed like master to faithful hunting hound by hand, bloated like a fat tick, until it can only and inevitably burst. They sold out the Reach to deathless Fey, and I do not mean they merely jumped deeply into bed with them, but surrendered all agency or control of their lives and banner men in full."
--[X] Leave nothing out. The seeking of the Crown of Flowers, to raise an even more powerful Fey Lord above himself for retaining even the merest scrap of influence over the Reach, even as the Court of Stars as a whole hopes to shape the Kingdom into a woven tapestry of narrative and figment, turning men into barely thinking puppets and they into the architects of Fate itself. No choices matter. Virtues are as worthwhile as sins, for there to be a story there must always be a virtuous man to oppose the dastard and the villain. There is no light of reason. There is no hope of peace. Only cyclical beginnings and endings. Neither time, nor armies or even dragons would have a hope of changing any of that before all who now live in the Reach would have long since faded away into the tales they so love, hollow fragments of Fey glory.
---[X] House Tyrell had only managed to be better than some men of influence in Westeros by virtue of damning millions to a type of purgatory instead of Hell. For all their wealth and power, when left to their games unsupervised, that is the best that can be said. All supporting details necessary are provided, the involvement of the Florents, of Devils who were left to do as they pleased by uncaring Fey masters, and the temerity of House Tyrell to dither over marriage prospects under the very roof that held host to agents of the Master of Minauros, who had cleaned out their coffers for all intents and purposes and who now at this very moment owe you a million and more Marks, and a Raven with interest to boot.
-[X] You don't even give him much time to digest any of this, not really, forging onward: "Even while this occurs, the servants of the Seven such as Lucan have proven to either be enormously ignorant, or extremely malicious, neither detail of which is flattering its own right. But outright damning when it would lead to the torch and the sword raised against their fellow man, for all the myriad threats and however much they counter and maneuver against each other and circle like sharks, that when fear and blood reigns, they have already won."
--[X] You tell him of Mammon, who you have already mentioned, and the threats you have eliminated in short order because there was no one else who could. Full stop. No one saw it. All who could have raised their hands act as Lucan do, and spread strife and fear which serves the Lord of the Third well.
---[X] You speak of the Deep Ones, who he knows well, but more than he could possibly know, the dozens of fortresses and strongholds beyond the reach of the Lords of Westeros, two of which you have shattered and not without cost, and a war you have stopped from pursuing because you were then a Prince of a Thousand Enemies and one more could bide their time. Time which is indeed running out. Lost ruins where fleshcraft that would make ancient Valyrians run screaming in terror. Of making mages prisoners in their own body while hallowing it out and letting something else in.
----[X] You speak on, of the march of Winter, how all this and more that Lucan would incite as he howls for bloody crusade and pogrom against those with which the stability and security of the realm is contingent, of how even if these many foes did not triumph before the fall of Dusk, inevitably Night would come, and he would have doomed them all. This isn't possibility. This isn't chance. This isn't misfortune. This is inevitable. Winter is Coming.
-[X] Enjoy another, stiffer drink pulled from your cloak, and amiably talk about pedestrian things, of how House Lannister and the High Septon sharing around gold and favors like venereal diseases to Most Devout and Septons 'fairly' bought, of how a man can be so damnably prideful to grasp for more than he already holds while screaming at the mages he makes literal slaves of to fight harder and ward away the horrors who hound him, or else waste time girding his host with weapons to use against not these things howling in the night, but against Dragons who care more for scouring the world of them. Then smile pleasantly and say: "Was that sufficient, my Lord?"
