One of the Stark Shardplates was won in Robert's Rebellion anyway, so it's not that.
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Stark Quest 2.0: The Protector of Pentos
- Thread starter Mazrick
- Start date
One of the Stark Shardplates was won in Robert's Rebellion anyway, so it's not that.
Presumably it was won by direct intervention of a Stark Shardbearer (Robert's allies not yet his vassals) rather than given away in the pace deal.
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We actually can't be sure of this. It's entirely possible that in this setting Rickard Stark knew the Three Magics, and the Stark tradition was to only teach the heir, so Brandon was taught. Both were killed by Aerys, so Ned may have never been taught, or some similar situation in the past saw the elimination of magical knowledge from the Stark line. Tither that or Ned has been holding out on us.
The Forty Families doesn't seem to be quite done by bloodline, at least, given Illyrio was a Magister but was first generation. At the very least anyways we've got one seat that needs filling, if not three.
Yeah, like I said, it could go either way.
Obviously the changeover would happen in the Palace of the Prince so Observation isn't a problem. But Observation isn't the ONLY problem. Spies can still possibly gateway out to get a message out that now is the time to strike, as for eight hours minimum a set of Shardplate will be unusable.
First, I'm not sure that Balon holds Theon in contempt yet. Did he always hold him in contempt, or did he just do so after meeting him and confirming his suspicions that the Starks had "tainted" him? I know he was considering Asha as his heir anyways, giving up on Theon, but since he hadn't actually seen Theon for a while he couldn't necessarily be sure about what kind of man he became.
Second, this is not about rewarding Balon. I would also prefer to tell Balon to go fuck himself as well, but that's not in the cards apparently. It's about Ned feeling honor bound to compensate him for the loss of a hostage that he was responsible for. It doesn't matter if Theon went willingly, as Ned's duty was to keep control of the hostage. He failed in that and it ended up with Theon dying, and his honor will demand he act on that somehow. I would prefer a method of satisfying Ned's honor that also means we give Balon very little he can use against us and that can be taken back with no effort if he decides to reave the North regardless of compensation, hence why I proposed this idea.
As to Theon having "just died", we can lie about that if we decide to go this route. (though it's entirely possible he did fight back - we never did ask for details. @Mazrick - Did Theon just have his throat slit or did he try to fight?) The only witnesses to the battle in question are Robb and our four remaining personal guards. Robb probably wouldn't mind giving Theon a bit of glory in the history books so as to honor his friend, and the guards aren't going to say a thing if we tell them to keep silent about it.
The concept of restitution of some sort is confirmed to exist in this setting by Mazrick, as by the whole discussion about how to compensate the Hightowers for Leyton and Malora's death. He also seems to expy at least some stuff from Droman's quest, in which weregild exists.
As far as the Shards, I doubt they'd be Greyjoy property. They were gained in war, which is pretty much the only time they normally change hands. It's entirely possible that Ned intended to return them to Theon though, once he took over as Lord of the Iron Islands.
Maybe, but there's a lot of other stuff we're still going to be busy with stuff. I also stand by the notion that their fleet is superior and more experienced to the ones that Ned is having built, which gives them a distinct advantage since they're based on islands. Still, maybe Ned can lead the effort while we handle the more administrative stuff. I just hope things are delayed long enough that
I'm fairly certain that they continued raiding and piracy even after the rebellion was crushed, they just went further out and didn't raid the North.
I'm not sure 'stupid' is how I'd describe him. Stubborn, prideful, and more than a bit crazy, yes. Stupid? I dunno. It doesn't do to underestimate our enemies.
I think you meant to quote DragonParadox here, but not wearing your Shardplate in your home isn't the same problem. In an emergency you can still potentially get your Shardplate equipped. In your system you'd regularly have multi-hour intervals where nobody could equip the Shardplate at all.
PKRudeboy
Gentleman Snarker
Ned also went to the Vale at age 8, which serves as a very plausible reason for him not to know any magic that Starks otherwise may have been taught.
Then you wouldn't get the things like the Stark civil wars fought in the past, and the knowledge wouldn't survive the times when the Lord/King has died leaving an infant heir and a regent.
Illyrio married into a existing Magisterial Family, and we're going to need his slot for the Starks, as the Prince needs to be from one of them.
He'd always given up on him. It's a massive breach of Ironborn gender roles for Asha to have the position she does, and Balon did it anyway. He'd clearly written him off from pretty much the moment he left.
I don't believe it's anything about compensation, which is something that is not part of Westerosi culture as far as I can tell. I think it's because Eddard considers that the Greyjoys are the rightful owners of those Shards so he's obliged to give them back.
We can lie, about from the fact that Weirwoods exists so we'd be caught by Eddards, who wouldn't support the lie.
The situation with the Hightowers was totally different. We're not giving them restitution, because we have done nothing at all to harm the Hightowers. We're giving them their share of the spoils that the Hightowers helped win, just as the Starks took some of the loot from the Targaryens and Greyjoys.
Weregild is also never mentioned in the series, and it existing would make quite big differences. It would certainly have been mentioned with regards to the Freys after Robb married Jeyne Westerling, for example.
The rules about when Shards are allowed to change hands is rather obscure to me, given when we killed Jorah Mormont in combat we couldn't keep his shards.
We have enough money to hire experienced sellsails. Draining the supply of them is a good thing anyway.
The previous Lords Greyjoy banned the practiceand enforced the law
Balon is a special case.
I did. It takes a long time put on Shardplate. If decapiatation attacks via Travelling are the problem, half an hour is equally too slow as eight. You can't equip it either way.
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Putting everything else aside... why? Underestimating your foes is always a bad idea. For all we know he's got magic or artifacts or some advisor that he didn't in canon due to butterflies.
Your point about hiring sellsails alleviates my worries about the war somewhat, but who do we hire? Hiring Lysene pirates would be supporting slavers. Tyroshi we might be able to get away with, if it weakens the Archon and helps our anti-slavery efforts there, but we might want to ask about that during negotiations. Braavosi might work, though they may be hired in the efforts against the Archon. Ibbenese, maybe, if we're going with that for bolstering the Wall. Probably best to ask the opinion of the Braavosi, as they'd be more knowledgeable on the available sellsails.
And when do we hire them and how long for, and how many do we hire? Sellsails aren't cheap. A Lysene pirate with two dozen ships costs about 30,000 dragons a month, so I'd presume other companies would be comparable. We'd probably want to hire at least double to triple that much if we'd want to make a difference to the war. A year long contract would be 720,000 to 1,080,000 dragons. Affordable, yes, but timing matters. We also don't know IC about the navies Ned is building. So maybe six dozen ships to bolster our western shores, with a two year contract, and base them out of Flint's Finger so they can patrol the likely areas to be attacked? We're likely to need them even after the ironborn are beaten.
Speaking of butterflies, we may have butterflied Mellisandre into going somewhere other than Stannis - we've declared war against R'hllor, and Jon isn't going to the Wall where Stannis would have gone and she'd meet up with Jon, like in canon. Her visions aimed at finding Azor Ahai would likely change greatly as a result. I have to wonder what her visions would show her now, with Jon being in Harlon's service.
I don´t know if it was ever talked about. We will be in some war here in Essos (Revolution and all), Bobby B. will want to continue conquering the continent and I would not want to be left out. But we don´t want to lose northern men over this, because they will be important once shit hits the fan.
Why don´t we hire the Golden Company? 10.000 men, likely with some Shards, that never break their contract. The Gold we would invest, would come back ten times as much once we have conquered a new city. And the best is, that we will be able to be there personally and in the North with our new ability. Bobby B. will love us even more, we will have a bigger area, the Old Gods will likely make us their Champion rather fast if we continue like this and a goddamn load of shinies. So freaking many Shinies and Shardplates.
The other Citys (I only talk of those, that use slaves) will likely hire sellswords, but they are not the Golden Company.
OOC we even know that they would work for free under Daenerys.
Why don´t we hire the Golden Company? 10.000 men, likely with some Shards, that never break their contract. The Gold we would invest, would come back ten times as much once we have conquered a new city. And the best is, that we will be able to be there personally and in the North with our new ability. Bobby B. will love us even more, we will have a bigger area, the Old Gods will likely make us their Champion rather fast if we continue like this and a goddamn load of shinies. So freaking many Shinies and Shardplates.
The other Citys (I only talk of those, that use slaves) will likely hire sellswords, but they are not the Golden Company.
OOC we even know that they would work for free under Daenerys.
PKRudeboy
Gentleman Snarker
IIRC Dorne got them already.
Ah yes, I forgot. Thanks
He might, but it would have to be something he's gained since the last time he stuck his dick on the chopping block and had it cut off.
Hiring Lyseni sellsails in a war that gets them killed fighting Ironborn Reavers is what I consider a win-win with the Old Gods' perspective. Hiring away the Lyseni now would also deny them to the current Archon of Tyrosh.
Flint's Finger in the long run, but we might also want to station some at Seaguard as well.
If we can push the Greyjoys into war, there might be an opportunity to muddy the alliance structure a bit in our favour. They say that the Lannisters always pay their debts, and Tywin certainly believes that, but the sack of Lannisport and the burning of the fleet there remains unavenged. I suspect the Lord of the Westerlands might be glad of the opportunity to settle accounts with Balon Greyjoy. If we're allied with the Lannisters in a war against the Ironborn, then it's much less likely that even Cersei will make trouble for us.
If we possibly can we should row back from the war with R'hllor, and turn it into a war purely with this particular High Priest's branch of the cult.
Dorne has hired the Golden Company already.
Why would they? She isn't a Blackfyre.
They wanted to help her first, before they went for Aegon, who might not be a Blackfyre himself.
Very much not. Daenerys remembers when she and Viserys met the Golden Company, and they ate his food and drank his wine and then laughed at him. They're not interested in backing a Targaryen restoration.
It's one of the reasons Aegon's blatantly a Blackfyre. The Golden Company wouldn't have broken their contract for the first time ever for anything else. The phrase 'Some contracts are writ in ink, and some in blood. I say no more.' is pretty damning, and his comment about red and black dragons clearly avoids the question. The blood that matters for the Golden Company is the Blackfyres.
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I suppose as long as they aren't slaving while under our employ it might be alright with the OG, since they wouldn't be doing it when they'd normally be doing it. However, the war wouldn't be as normally profitable for them since the ironborn don't have much of value couldn't be taken as slaves, so they may raise their asking price.
Maybe, but that would drag the Riverlands into our war and Hoster Tully may not be down for that if the ironborn aren't raiding him.
I don't think it'd be likely. Tywin would probably do what he did in Robert's Rebellion, more likely - stay out of it until the end and come in to help only once our victory is evident, possibly seizing Shards for himself. I doubt he'd want to fight an expensive war when he's likely got his own concerns. Minimize costs, maximize gain.
Unlikely to work, but the war there isn't something proactive anyways. We're not currently planning on marching on Volantis and burning down his temple there, or anything. Our actions would be more to keep them out of Westeros and Pentos, and if we make it clear to them means that being our enemy merely means "stay out of my yard or there will be trouble" we should hopefully be ok for a while. It'd take a while for them to rally an army against us anyways.
Here is a quote from the books:
Tristan Rivers said:
They don´t care if Black or not. They want to go home. We can bring them home.
That doesn't mean anything in this context. By that point they would already know that Aegon was a Blackfyre, so what they would lose patience with was Illyrio's attempts to get Daenerys with them to support their claim. They're not saying they're impatient and want to go home to somewhere that was never there home, they're saying they're running out of patience with waiting around and not starting the campaign to put Aegon on the throne, and don't want to hang around for a real Targaryen. It doesn't mention a desire to go home. It mentions a desire to conquer.
They would have had to have known he was a Blackfyre otherwise they'd never have agreed to go along with this in the first place, as that's what the purpose of the Golden Company, written in blood, is.
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PKRudeboy
Gentleman Snarker
The 30,000 a month was how much Stannis was paying them. I doubt he would let them slave either.
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They can still loot and pillage. The Ironborn should have plenty of plunder (although we want the Seastone Throne).
If Balon decides to launch another Greyjoy rebellion, which is what we're talking about, he's going to have to attack the Riverlands anyway. Attacking the North means rebelling.
I don't think he would. Doing so would make him look weak, which is something he can't abide.
I think it's essential. We can't afford the southern Free Cities to launch a Crusade against us. We'd lose. It also screws over attempts to support taking over Tyrosh, where R'hllor is the majority religion. It's also probably a pointless conflict. We could work with Benerro.
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I understand your point, but their biggest desire is to go home. To conquer is just the consequence of the plan they have for doing it.
The last Blackfyre died 50 years ago, it doesn´t make sense for that to be the primary reason why they supported Aegon.
But both sides are just interpretation, so I won´t discuss this further. You could easily be right here and the Golden Company was already contracted.
Why don´t we play this smart? Hire all Lyseni Sellsails let them go to war, win, conquer and then conquer the now weak Lys.
Like Alratan said: Win-Win.
Hiring sellsails from a city state that you might soon be locked in religious war with strikes me as a poor choice, actually. It's another reason to try to settle this mess peacefully, blaming Drogo and the local High Priest. I doubt his fellows have any time for him anyway.
But that was the plan, hire their sellsails and get them killed, then conquer the city. It is not like we want to really have them as our friends. And their is enough hate between the free cities, that they would want to attack each other.
Mercenaries tend to be very unwilling to engage in risky tactics that would get most or all of them killed.
Ruling a city when you're caught up in a religious war with the dominant faith does not seem like a great plan. In any case, we don't want to overextend ourself. Lys can wait.
Isn't the dominant faith in Lys the Weeping Lady?
R'hllor is the dominant faith in all the southern free cities. That doesn't mean other gods aren't popular, including the national patrons. From what I understand, R'hllor is the faith of the slaves, which is why Benerro, the High Priest of R'hllor supporting Deanerys is so worrying for the Volanatine nobility, as she's an abolitionist. By implication, the Weeping lady, and the other patrons of the various cities would be worshiped by the free citizens, which makes sense, as they're the ones with a real sense of ownership in the city.
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