- Location
- PR
Totally plot armor going on. George cant go around killing all of the Starks willynilly or have wildlings south of the wall yet or the conflicts south will get pushed aside to deal with them and the Others will be found out. Plot armor.
SI By The Shadow (ASoIaF SI/OC)
- Thread starter Ganurath
- Start date
Totally plot armor going on. George cant go around killing all of the Starks willynilly or have wildlings south of the wall yet or the conflicts south will get pushed aside to deal with them and the Others will be found out. Plot armor.
- Location
- United Kingdom
What do you mean he can't kill the Starks? Loads of them are dead. It's not plot armour at all.
There was loads of talk in the books about how discipline was more important than numbers, or how fortifications were a force modifier, what do you think would have happened if the Wildlings had defeated Jon and gotten over the Wall?
Let's assume Stannis got a flat tire or something.
In rough strength order, the Karstarks, Boltons, Cerwyns, Tallharts, the mountain tribes like the Wulls, Reeds, and Dustins still have armies left.
Consider also that Robb took twenty thousand cavalry of varying quality south with him. The greatest single formation Mance had were his hundred quasi-rangers.
Yes he's got giants and wargs and a few other heavies but that doesn't make up the difference.
Let's say the Others didn't attack the Fist of the First Men, in that case Mance might die in the raid on his camp, maybe he doesn't, but the morale of the wildlings is shattered, and they scatter, at least a few of their leaders die, so it would take a while for the infighting to go down and some new leader to draw the army (and all their followers) together again.
Meanwhile the Wall gets messages to the rest of the North and everyone knows the Wildlings are trying to attack. So if (not when) they get over the Wall, they either take losses comparable to the books at a single point, or they spread out over several places to breach the wall, losing their concentration.
And then after all this they have to fight a hardened force of Northerners, levy troops and nobles, who are probably 20,000 strong.
- Location
- Sweden
And let's not forget that it's quite literally the tallest and thickest wall in the world:
The wildlings don't have any siege weapons capable of causing any serious damage to the wall, even a well supplied proper army with catapults would likely take months, if not years to knock away enough ice to create a breach. So yeah, no wonder a really small number of people can hold it against desperate barbarians whose options rely mostly on climbing seven hundred feet of ice.
A wiki of ice and fire said:
The wildlings don't have any siege weapons capable of causing any serious damage to the wall, even a well supplied proper army with catapults would likely take months, if not years to knock away enough ice to create a breach. So yeah, no wonder a really small number of people can hold it against desperate barbarians whose options rely mostly on climbing seven hundred feet of ice.
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Chapter 6
Ganurath
Literal Enthusiast
- Location
- A Valid Location
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 6
The next couple of days formed a steady routine for all of us. We'd all break fast, then I'd work on refining my capacity for shadow manipulation with Master Hu until lunch. Even though I wasn't outright shadow walking, the practice was still exhausting, so the afternoons were spent coordinating with Qoi La on working out how to make the obsidian ink. Morghaerys would use the morning lessons to coordinate with Qoi La on the development of his own tattoo, but beyond that I didn't know what he was doing in the afternoons. Helping Master Hu with errands maintaining the estate, most likely.
Roughly two weeks have passed since things got set into motion, and at lunch today Qoi La had announced the successful completion of her first tests of the shade of the evening tattoo and the ghost grass extract tattoo. Not terribly exciting for me by itself, but it meant both Master Hu and Morghaerys were too busy for the former's errands, and that Qoi La wasn't available to keep me from getting involved in said errands.
Granted, I had all the diplomatic talent of an airborne brick, and lacked the context for most of the diplomatic stuff, so the errand for the afternoon was a bit simpler than what Morghaerys likely would have been assigned to. Unfortunately, that lent itself to a different set of complications. Specifically, violence.
In Asshai'i, the rule of the city is done by the Masters. Unlike in the cities of Slavers' Bay, the title was an indication of magical prowess rather than ownership of people. Those skilled enough to develop such magical ability tended to be violently protective of the secrets behind their power, and similarly curious about the unfamiliar abilities demonstrated by their neighbors. As a result, there was no law enforcement. No law either, really. It was more like a series of polite understandings.
Not everyone was polite, though.
Before the Tyroshi had taken me, I'd been taught how to hunt with a bow. The process was fairly simple, the trick was in getting your body to be able to follow through on proper technique. Additionally, I was... eight or nine years out of practice? Yeah, this was going to be all sorts of fun. Hopefully the aeromancy techniques I used to synergize with my pyromancy could be applied to archery in some manner. Well, hopefully I'd be able to figure out how.
The task was simple enough, in abstract. Someone had hired a street gang to try to shake down the facilities that made the backbone of Master Hu's vertical monopoly in textiles. My job was to find out who had hired them, and to make it stop. It would be dangerous, tedious, aggravating, and I wasn't going to receive any sort of reward beyond the gratitude and good favor of those I helped. The only real positive was that I got to dope slap Morghaerys when he tried to make a pun in the Common Tongue, and even that involved having to explain the joke with consideration for language barriers.
On the bright side, the stakeout from a nearby rooftop had thus far proven tedious.
...
The weaving hall had probably been intended as a beer hall at the time of the city's construction, but ultimately one could only speculate so much about the intentions of what may or may not have been the minds behind the Seastone Chair. Point was, the building had a high roof, and most foot traffic of any sort went through a big open space of a room. While it made people easy to keep track of, it also made the people vulnerable to violent hostility, if the battle ever came to that.
There were only a half dozen or so people to actually keep track of, though, specifically the staff in charge of the slaves. Naturally, I wasn't fond of watching out for the welfare of such individuals, and their usage of the red masks so popular with the locals didn't help. There wasn't anything wrong with the mask, but it did wonders for dehumanizing the people.
There were six in all, all wearing the same vest and long sleeve shirt combination. Their clothes were dyed in shades of purple, likely out of recognition of Master Hu, and when I had one of the men in my field of vision he didn't show any sign of being hindered. Hindered, or armed. Even odds they only wore the masks to blend in with the actual locals.
The slaves were all inside, diligently turning the fibers of ghost grass into thread, and then in turn into articles of clothing. Mostly women and children, but then the men among Master Hu's slaves generally only worked out in the fields where the ghost grass was actually harvested, or something with a similar level of physical demand.
The stakeout was made easy by one simple, yet substantial fact: I had yet to see any foot traffic approach the building whatsoever. It came with the sparse population compared to the size of the city, or at least I assumed it was the reason. The river of poison flowing under the streets in a mocking echo of Venice wasn't to be lightly dismissed, after all.
In any event, the lack of foot traffic would make it easy for me to spot trouble coming when the time came.
...
Yep, that one did it. I saw a group of about a dozen young men, ages ranging from early twenties to mid teens, slowly dribble up from the inside of a tunnel that lead somewhere belong the building behind it. I couldn't see any obvious weapons, but between the greater distance over which to spot them and my efforts to avoid being spotted, I couldn't dismiss the possibility either.
It didn't help that their boss was wearing the ornamented black fur regalia normally reserved for devotees of the lion god that the Yi Tish had blamed for the Long Night.
The next couple of days formed a steady routine for all of us. We'd all break fast, then I'd work on refining my capacity for shadow manipulation with Master Hu until lunch. Even though I wasn't outright shadow walking, the practice was still exhausting, so the afternoons were spent coordinating with Qoi La on working out how to make the obsidian ink. Morghaerys would use the morning lessons to coordinate with Qoi La on the development of his own tattoo, but beyond that I didn't know what he was doing in the afternoons. Helping Master Hu with errands maintaining the estate, most likely.
Roughly two weeks have passed since things got set into motion, and at lunch today Qoi La had announced the successful completion of her first tests of the shade of the evening tattoo and the ghost grass extract tattoo. Not terribly exciting for me by itself, but it meant both Master Hu and Morghaerys were too busy for the former's errands, and that Qoi La wasn't available to keep me from getting involved in said errands.
Granted, I had all the diplomatic talent of an airborne brick, and lacked the context for most of the diplomatic stuff, so the errand for the afternoon was a bit simpler than what Morghaerys likely would have been assigned to. Unfortunately, that lent itself to a different set of complications. Specifically, violence.
In Asshai'i, the rule of the city is done by the Masters. Unlike in the cities of Slavers' Bay, the title was an indication of magical prowess rather than ownership of people. Those skilled enough to develop such magical ability tended to be violently protective of the secrets behind their power, and similarly curious about the unfamiliar abilities demonstrated by their neighbors. As a result, there was no law enforcement. No law either, really. It was more like a series of polite understandings.
Not everyone was polite, though.
Before the Tyroshi had taken me, I'd been taught how to hunt with a bow. The process was fairly simple, the trick was in getting your body to be able to follow through on proper technique. Additionally, I was... eight or nine years out of practice? Yeah, this was going to be all sorts of fun. Hopefully the aeromancy techniques I used to synergize with my pyromancy could be applied to archery in some manner. Well, hopefully I'd be able to figure out how.
The task was simple enough, in abstract. Someone had hired a street gang to try to shake down the facilities that made the backbone of Master Hu's vertical monopoly in textiles. My job was to find out who had hired them, and to make it stop. It would be dangerous, tedious, aggravating, and I wasn't going to receive any sort of reward beyond the gratitude and good favor of those I helped. The only real positive was that I got to dope slap Morghaerys when he tried to make a pun in the Common Tongue, and even that involved having to explain the joke with consideration for language barriers.
On the bright side, the stakeout from a nearby rooftop had thus far proven tedious.
...
The weaving hall had probably been intended as a beer hall at the time of the city's construction, but ultimately one could only speculate so much about the intentions of what may or may not have been the minds behind the Seastone Chair. Point was, the building had a high roof, and most foot traffic of any sort went through a big open space of a room. While it made people easy to keep track of, it also made the people vulnerable to violent hostility, if the battle ever came to that.
There were only a half dozen or so people to actually keep track of, though, specifically the staff in charge of the slaves. Naturally, I wasn't fond of watching out for the welfare of such individuals, and their usage of the red masks so popular with the locals didn't help. There wasn't anything wrong with the mask, but it did wonders for dehumanizing the people.
There were six in all, all wearing the same vest and long sleeve shirt combination. Their clothes were dyed in shades of purple, likely out of recognition of Master Hu, and when I had one of the men in my field of vision he didn't show any sign of being hindered. Hindered, or armed. Even odds they only wore the masks to blend in with the actual locals.
The slaves were all inside, diligently turning the fibers of ghost grass into thread, and then in turn into articles of clothing. Mostly women and children, but then the men among Master Hu's slaves generally only worked out in the fields where the ghost grass was actually harvested, or something with a similar level of physical demand.
The stakeout was made easy by one simple, yet substantial fact: I had yet to see any foot traffic approach the building whatsoever. It came with the sparse population compared to the size of the city, or at least I assumed it was the reason. The river of poison flowing under the streets in a mocking echo of Venice wasn't to be lightly dismissed, after all.
In any event, the lack of foot traffic would make it easy for me to spot trouble coming when the time came.
...
Yep, that one did it. I saw a group of about a dozen young men, ages ranging from early twenties to mid teens, slowly dribble up from the inside of a tunnel that lead somewhere belong the building behind it. I couldn't see any obvious weapons, but between the greater distance over which to spot them and my efforts to avoid being spotted, I couldn't dismiss the possibility either.
It didn't help that their boss was wearing the ornamented black fur regalia normally reserved for devotees of the lion god that the Yi Tish had blamed for the Long Night.
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Isnt that guy connected to the Seven somehow?
Ganurath
Literal Enthusiast
- Location
- A Valid Location
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Lion By Night and the Stranger are both considered to be identities of the Faceless God by those who revere... the last god mentioned in this sentence. Stupid ambiguous pronouns.
Thank you, corrected.
- Location
- Telmar
I do like how contradictory the religious traditions are. Also, I like this story. You may quote that.
I lol'd at this. While I understand someone might deliberately taunt Murphy to end a boring stakeout, beware for Murphy has a mean streak and a wicked sense of humor
