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The Heir of the Dragon: A Rhaenyra Targaryen Quest

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Annatar said:
That's not even that weird in real life. There's loads of people with half-siblings that don't consider them actual siblings, and that's not even accounting for the trauma attached to her relationship with her father and why exactly she has half-siblings to begin with.
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Especially when the half-siblings are like... 17 years younger than you are. Really, even if the family relationship is totally wholesome and positive between Rhaenyra, Johanna, and all Johanna's kids, the kids are more likely to emotionally think of Rhaenyra as being like an aunt or a 'big cousin.'
 
Simon_Jester said:
Trouble is, Dad's stressed out that Rhaenyra is in danger, and her killing some kind of mutant arctic man-eating tiger at night, while on foot and with only Rhea Royce and a wounded guy for backup is probably going to push his blood pressure in the wrong direction...
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To be fair, Shadowcats aren't actually known for being man-eaters
Like most predators, they generally only attack humans if they're starving and desperate or threatened

They also don't appear to be supernatural, to my knowledge
They're basically just if a tiger was black with white stripes and lived in areas where you'd expect mountain lions
There's an odd difference here or there, like the fact that Shadowcats will crack open even bones for the marrow inside, which is something tigers don't do
But they're basically just tigers

They're not even unnaturally large for a tiger, though that's more because tigers are massive
Rhaenyra killing something like this with not even a boar spear, but just a torch and a sword is incredibly impressive
As well as her being able to drag this thing back to camp where they presumably put it on a sled


Not that this would do anything to reassure Viserys
A parent wouldn't feel safer knowing that their child fought a perfectly normal tiger/bear after all, it's still a flipping tiger/bear

But I just wanted to clarify that Shadowcats aren't some kind of mutant snow beast
They're a normal apex predator for Westeros
 
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[X] [Rhea] The Ryswell
[X] [Rhea] [Romantic] Tell her she should follow her heart.
[X] [Shadowcat] Keep for yourself.

Doesn't Bennard try to usurp Cregan and lose? Poor choice. Ryswell is a better ally if he's on Cregans side.

And Cregan rocks, he's one of the coolest Starks, we want him more than Bennard.

Also, obviously we keep the bitchin' cool shadowcat cloak for ourselves, why would we ever not!?!
 
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Randino Treviani said:
Also, just to get ahead of things, a reminder that we need to get on with doing something, anything to establish Redfort as a confidant we want on the city watch rather than a favor to Jeyne, or the entire point of bringing him along is entirely moot.
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Eh, to be honest, we don't need to actually "test" or speak with the Redfort. Taking him on the progress was just a good compromise between doing a favour to an ally and not jumping at their behest immediately. Way I see it, if we sponsor him for the City Watch after the Progress even without having spoken to him, that's fine, too. Then we still do a favour to an ally, but also kept up appearances.

Toaster cult said:
I still dont know why people asked to bring him along because it just stretched the action economy more, He genuinely does not matter, we are going to plop him on the watch and forget abt him! who cares if it lookslike we're rewarding political allies! its feudalism thats the entire point of the system, I doubt people didnt see the writing on the wall of i being a political favor when we put Gwayne on the watch!
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There is a difference between rewarding allies and just doing whatever the favour the last person you talked to asked you for. We need to avoid getting the appearance of the latter. We are doing favours to allies, but we aren't at their beck and call. That is the point. Of course, in practice that means you are right: We don't need to do anything with the Redfort. We just dragged him along the progress "to have him evaluated" (wink wink) and then plop him into the city watch.

In any case, yeah, we absolutely do not need to waste action economy on him.
 
[X] [Rhea] The Ryswell
[X] [Rhea] [Romantic] Tell her she should follow her heart.
[X] [Shadowcat] Keep for yourself.
[X] [Shadowcat] Give to Alicent as a Gift.

While I think Cregan is a bit overrated personally & kind of like the power play of replacing a LP, I'm pretty sure we as questers would not be willing to go against Cregan in favor of Bennard. And the people who are voting Stark are doing so because the Starks are the LP and a family which is generally viewed positively, rather than having considered Bennard's likely future coup. I think if Rhea marries Benjen and backs Bennard as a result, we will vote to torpedo our alliance with her because of OOC reasons, so I'd prefer to not risk getting into that situation so we don't have that temptation to act OOC.

Ryswell is somewhat appealing in that it gives us a reason to get involved in this conflict on Cregan's side, and I'd like to participate in lead-up conflicts to the Dance if we can. It's also appealing in that saying Ryswell mitigates the risk of a Romantic Rhea choosing Benjen. By her description I don't think Rhea is terribly romantically interested in him, but he might make sense to her on paper.

I like giving Alicent nice things, but I think there's also an argument not to be too obvious, and that on us it's a trophy in a way it wouldn't be if anyone else was wearing it.
 
Zimmerwald1915 said:
we need to talk to Forrest to evaluate him as a marriage option
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...do we really?

Though I do agree we need to talk to Gwayne.

Simon_Jester said:
It actually is.
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I recognize all your examples, but that is why I made the distinction between heat of battle and at a distance. You are quite right that during all times of history, people have pimped up their wargear to achieve intimidation effects. However, if that guy is then going to stab you, your attention will be on that, rather than his bling. You will get intimidated seeing that bling in the enemy battle line... but at that distance, is a shadowcat cloak even visible as such?
 
Susano said:
Eh, to be honest, we don't need to actually "test" or speak with the Redfort. Taking him on the progress was just a good compromise between doing a favour to an ally and not jumping at their behest immediately. Way I see it, if we sponsor him for the City Watch after the Progress even without having spoken to him, that's fine, too. Then we still do a favour to an ally, but also kept up appearances.
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The point of bringing him along was to spend time with him to iron out a justification for putting him into his position that isn't "It's a favor for my ally and cousin Jeyne" so we don't face quite so much interference. Just having him along is pretty flimsy if we get to the end of the progress and any scrutiny of note puts our words to shame.

Is it really keeping up appearances to invite him along, spend no time with or on him during the progress, and show back up in kings landing suggesting he deserves a position based on merit and risk the possibility he's remarkably under qualified and we're just humiliating ourselves by pretending to be doing anything other than cronyism?
 
Lord of Sturgia said:
My friend, Dorne and the Martells are calling your name!
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We will have need of dragonslayers after all :p

Randino Treviani said:
Is it really keeping up appearances to invite him along, spend no time with or on him during the progress, and show back up in kings landing suggesting he deserves a position based on merit and risk the possibility he's remarkably under qualified and we're just humiliating ourselves by pretending to be doing anything other than cronyism?
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No single position of the Progress, with perhaps the exception of our closest coterie who are all pretty loyal to us, will have been able to see us so consistently to say confidently that we never spoke with the guy.

And, IIRC, we told Jeyne we bring him along to evaluate him. In King's Landing we can in fact simply do lobbying on the base of "The Redforts are an important house, the Lady Paramount of the Vale would be happy about it, and it has the backing of the second strongest house in the Vale as well".
 
Wearing the shadowcat pelt will indeed be fly as fuck, we simply must.

Also you should avoid double posting like that, it's better to edit/merge with your old post until someone else posts. It's good thread etiquette.
 
Randino Treviani said:
Is it really keeping up appearances to invite him along, spend no time with or on him during the progress, and show back up in kings landing suggesting he deserves a position based on merit and risk the possibility he's remarkably under qualified and we're just humiliating ourselves by pretending to be doing anything other than cronyism?
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Jeyne recommended this guy and wanted him on the goldcloaks, so I'd hope she at least evaluated the guy herself.

And it is just cronyism, but that's how feudalism works. Or at least ASOIAF feudalism. Everyone is going to know it's cronyism, I think the distinction is if people think we're being blatant about it in a way that's crass and thuggish or if we're doing it in the socially-normalized respectable way where we all pretend that's not what we're doing.

We should talk to the guy or train with him at some point, but it doesn't have to be a lot or urgent.
 
hailcapital said:
I think the distinction is if people think we're being blatant about it in a way that's crass and thuggish or if we're doing it in the socially-normalized respectable way where we all pretend that's not what we're doing.
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It's not even that. It's not fulfilling our allies/vassals wishes immediately, to make a point that we are not at their beck and call. Also, as questers, we have a tendency to making nice towards whoever is the last person we met. This would not be a good reputation to have as in-setting character. So we don't immediately fulfill Jeyne's wish.

At least that was my reason for voting back t hen.
 
Susano said:
At least that was my reason for voting back t hen.
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Wasn't mine. I wanted to take this seriously from the start, and several others expressed interest in doing so when the vote to take him along happened, but each vote we get a bunch of shiny new option, or just one of our favorite ladies, and it gets put to the wayside. It's annoyingly typical.
 
Susano said:
...do we really?

Though I do agree we need to talk to Gwayne.
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Yes.

Honestly, Forrest Frey may well come to us as a marriage candidate. He did in canon, right? Granted that his interest level in the alternate Rhaenyra may be different, but still.

I recognize all your examples, but that is why I made the distinction between heat of battle and at a distance. You are quite right that during all times of history, people have pimped up their wargear to achieve intimidation effects. However, if that guy is then going to stab you, your attention will be on that, rather than his bling. You will get intimidated seeing that bling in the enemy battle line... but at that distance, is a shadowcat cloak even visible as such?
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I think there is considerable supporting evidence for the idea that the intimidating effect of martial bling can be relevant even in the approach to contact between melee combatants. It's not something that's going to cause something like an RTS fear effect in Total War where most soldiers just scream and run away instantly from the sight of your scary bling or anything like that, of course. But making someone hesitate a quarter-second longer, or decide NOT to be the first one to cross blades with you and hang back until they're sure someone else has your attention, can be the difference between life and death in that kind of situation.
 
hailcapital said:
To expand a bit on the above - having a Warden of the North that we personally put there with marriage ties to the our allies seems like good realpolitik to me. And a fun divergence from canon.

Just want to make sure everyone voting for Benjen Stark is thinking that through and we're okay with committing to ousting Cregan and installing Bennard (or making Bennard and his line perpetual regents-for-life or however they want to play it) and we're not going to get cold feet and go "oh but Cregan's the Real Heir (tm) and maybe ousting him would be bad precedent or whatever" and like trying to convince Bennard to back off or backstab him.

Because if we're not okay with backing Bennard's play, we should be voting somewhere else IMO.
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I do not want to support a usurper's claim to the throne, Rickon would want his son to take his seat when he is of age, just like our father's will is for us to be heir. The Starks are a nobly loyal lot and I'd rather support the ones that most stand for that loyalty, than an ambitious brother that would likely have concerns about his first son being wed matrilineally to Rhea, especially when he is already known to not quite follow through with his duty to his late brother and his nephew.
[X] [Rhea] The Ryswell
[X] [Rhea] [Romantic] Tell her she should follow her heart.
[] [Shadowcat] Keep for yourself.
[X] [Shadowcat] Write-in : Cregan Stark (Subject To QM's Approval)
[X] [Shadowcat] Write-in Johanna Targaryen née Westerling

Of those 3 I think Ryswell at least has some level of connection that can be developed, he was interested in going on a hunt with her and even if he has some traits similar to Daemon, many do to some degree, he at least seems interested in you know actually interacting with her on a hobby she actually enjoys. But mostly its anti-Stark selection and hoping that Romantic is more likely a 4th unknown option that is just not strategically useful.

For the cloak I'm good with keeping it for ourselves but the two write ins about are interesting and I'll support the interesting write-ins when Keeping it for ourselves is quite significantly ahead.
 
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