A Song of Ice and Fire
Tales of Decadence and Destruction
The year is 298AC, and the continent of Westeros sits balanced on the edge of a knife. Three hundred years ago, Aegon the Conqueror -- along with his two sister-wives and three dragons -- brought fire and blood to the Seven Kingdoms, and forged his great Iron Throne from the surrendered swords of his enemies.
But it is said, and rightfully so, that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Fifteen years hence, an unbroken chain of dragonlords were finally toppled from the throne when the crown prince Rhaegar Targaryen eloped -- or, some say, kidnapped -- the She-Wolf Lyanna Stark. On hearing this news her brother Brandon rushed to the capital of King's Landing, demanding to face Rhaegar in combat, but was instead imprisoned and executed alongside his father, lord of the North, and several companions.
Within days, four of the Seven Kingdoms rose in open revolt as Robert Baratheon, Lord Paramount of the Stormlands and Lyanna's betrothed, laid claim to the Iron Throne. At the River Trident he and the dragon prince fought with their amassed armies, and the ford ran red with blood and rubies as Robert's host -- and his hammer -- proved victorious. Soon enough the Westerlands rose in rebellion as well, and Jaime Lannister, a knight of Aerys' Kingguard, opened his throat with a golden sword.
Since then the realm has languished in relative peace for fifteen years, but now the crows grow restless as they circle the bloated corpse of a dying kingdom. King Robert is dead -- killed by his wife, killed by his brother, killed by a boar, killed by his closest friend, no two tales agree. Lord Eddard Stark, Hand of the King, has tried to seize the kingdom and been thrown into the black cells for treason. The Riverlands are awash with blood as western armies sweep across the fords, killing smallfolk and soldier alike. In the North and the east and the south, levies mass and banners rise. And from across the seas come disturbing tales, of three-headed dragons and great horselord armies.
In the midst of it all sits lowly house Vypren, in their struggles to remain afloat as the world goes to seven hells around them.
A House Divided
A noble house rich in honor but little else, the Vyprens of Fairmarket date their ancestry back to the Andal Invasion, tracing their lineage to the great warlord Vorian Vypren. In the old days Vorian and his knights conquered their way up the central Blue Fork of the Trident, where they established a modest keep at what would become the site of the moderately-successful town of Fairmarket -- one of few locations in the Riverlands that could truly be considered a city.
In the modern day, the Vyprens still maintain control of the town and its surrounding areas, holding the fealty of a half-dozen households of landed knights and themselves swearing loyalty to the Tullys of Riverrun. Middle-aged Lord Lucias rules from his small castle alongside his wife Lythene Frey, his young-adult children Elyana and Damon, and a small hosts of servants, freeriders and sworn shields.
As a reasonably-sized Riverlander house with control over a large portion of the fertile central fork of the Trident, the Vyprens vie for their liege lord's attention and favor alongside such houses as the Freys and Blackwoods. Tolls from the river and town have made them reasonably wealthy, with the ability to raise perhaps fifteen hundred footmen and a third as many horse.
Now, however, the cold winds are rising, and the Vyprens are faced with a difficult choice? Do they rise up with their liege lord in defense of the realm? Do they rally with the crown to support the rightful, if yet untested, king? Do they join the so-called Young Wolf to free the Hand of the King? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain:
Winter is coming.
Westeros
This map will be regularly updated as plot developments occur, detailing the locations of our various characters. Open it in a new tab to zoom in.
Characters Needed
As House Vypern has a place (if very small) in the canon of the books, there are a few "historical" positions that are available to be filled with characters, in addition to a host of more generic ones:
House Vypren
- Lucias Vypren - Lord of Fairmarket. Middle-aged.
- Lythene Frey, daughter of the Late Lord Walder Frey and wife of Lord Lucias. Middle-aged.
- Damon Vypren, knight and heir to Lord Lucias. Young adult.
- Elyana Vypren, daughter of Lord Lucias. Young adult.
- Jon Wylde, landless knight and husband of Elyana Vypren. Young adult.
- Any distant relatives (I'd prefer that the people above get filled in before we start seeing any of these)
Other
- A maester
- A septon
- Landless knights, sworn shields, guard captains, etc.
- Smallfolk of various sorts
Anyone who doesn't end up being played by the time that we get going will be played by yours truly until and unless someone comes in later.
N A M E / G E N D E R / A G E
With title, if applicable. e.g: "Ser Twenty Goodmen / Male / 20"
A P P E A R A N C E
Include an image if you like, but you must have a paragraph or two of solid description. Be realistic! Your character does not have bright pink hair, they're probably not seven feet tall, and they're not twig-thin and five feet tall despite being able to carry around a greatsword longer than they are tall.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
What makes your character tick? This is, quite frankly, the most important part of the sheet. Discuss, in a few paragraphs, how they act. What do they think of honor? What is their opinion of the smallfolk? Of other noble houses? Do they get angry easily? Put it all here.
P R O S A N D C O N S
Now condense it all into a simple list: What is your character good at, and what are they bad at? Not being able to do something that would never be expected of them is not a weakness, so a maester not knowing how to fight or a knight not having a clue how to blacksmith do not count. Also, if I read "sometimes he can be just too loyal to his friends!" then I might vomit.
B I O G R A P H Y
Describe how your character came to be what they are today. I want at least a few paragraphs in here, but as the old adage goes: size doesn't matter, it's what you do with it that counts. If you write a fifteen thousand word doctoral thesis on your character's upbringing as a perfect Gary-Stu and his vanquishing of the great Dragon of Cliches, all you do is cause the both of us pain. Make sure that the biography is both feasible and makes sense with the established lore. Remember that odds are you're not the greatest man who ever lived -- you're a part of, or serving, a very minor noble house.
E Q U I P M E N T
I expect you to keep a general track of what your character owns and has on them at any given moment. Put what you want to start yourself off with, and be reasonable. You don't own a Valyrian steel sword or a magical artifact unless you manage to make a really good case for it.
O T H E R
Anything else? Feel free to leave this out if nothing comes to mind.
This thread is for general out-of-character discussion and the like, as well as to post your characters in for them to be accepted. You can also PM me those, or any questions you have.
As far as miscellaneous thing goes, my general plan is to run two concurrent and intertwined storylines: One, for the more military-focused characters, based primarily around their involvement in the War of the Five Kings and its aftermath; and the other stationed primarily in and around Fairmarket and the keep, for the non-combative types. Don't be afraid to make your character either, or a bit of both.
One last thing to note: I do expect everyone to have a firm grasp on the actual lore and plot of the main ASOIAF series. If you have a question in that regard, feel free to ask it -- but I'm going into this assuming that everyone involved has either read all of the released books or is willing to learn and unafraid of spoilers. We'll be functioning on book-canon, not show-canon, though if you've only watched the show it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt to the differences.
I'm not going to bother to lay out a numbered list of 1) Don't powergame, 2) Don't godmod, etc etc etc. If you're in the Advanced section, it's fair to assume that you don't need a hand-holding in that regards. But I do have a few specific things that I want to point out:
Firstly, don't be a special snowflake. Your characters should be normal, believable people in a normal, believable high-Middle-ages style environment. You're certainly not some supernatural creature that's completely unheard of in the lore. You most definitely do not possess some sort of sixth-sense that allows you to know that, say, Joffrey is a bastard or Edmure Tully is a terrible military commander. You're probably not a warg, or skinchanger, or follower of the old gods, or fishman from the Thousand Isles. Odds are that your parents weren't slaughtered by super-evil bandits when you were but a young lad or lass.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, quality over quantity. Sometimes you're in a conversation with someone, and your goal is just to respond to what they said and wait for them to do the same with yours. Do that in a few lines, then. I don't want or need to see you pad out the length with three paragraphs detailing your character's unrelated thoughts because, hey, this is an advanced roleplay and it's what is expected of me.
Thirdly! In the character creation process, please feel free to give constructive criticism to each other when it comes to the building of your characters, and expect others to do the same. It's of the utmost importance that we all agree on a set of characters that mesh well together, because with any luck they're going to be interacting with one another for a long time. If you and John Example are going to play the lord and his lady, I fully expect you two to talk with one another and make sure your biographies and whatnot intertwine. On a related note, I would very much like OC and OC only here. You can't play Robb Stark and you shouldn't take the character you made for your Naruto roleplay and transplant him into this setting. The one exception to this is in the few lore-friendly characters that are available for the taking, in which you have full reign to create everything about that character barring maybe their name, general age and familial relationships.
Lastly, ASOIAF is pretty well known as an environment in which main characters are not plot-armored to avoid death. I am not going to pull a Telltale and contrive some sort of situation to kill off the character you worked so hard on just for the sake of shock value. What you should be expecting is consequences of your actions. Let's use Robb again as an example: Walder Frey didn't just decide to break guest right and stab him on a whim, it was a carefully plotted consequence of his poor diplomatic and personal choices.
With all that said, the main goal is still to have fun. So let's do that.
Character Sheets
N A M E / G E N D E R / A G E
With title, if applicable. e.g: "Ser Twenty Goodmen / Male / 20"
A P P E A R A N C E
Include an image if you like, but you must have a paragraph or two of solid description. Be realistic! Your character does not have bright pink hair, they're probably not seven feet tall, and they're not twig-thin and five feet tall despite being able to carry around a greatsword longer than they are tall.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
What makes your character tick? This is, quite frankly, the most important part of the sheet. Discuss, in a few paragraphs, how they act. What do they think of honor? What is their opinion of the smallfolk? Of other noble houses? Do they get angry easily? Put it all here.
P R O S A N D C O N S
Now condense it all into a simple list: What is your character good at, and what are they bad at? Not being able to do something that would never be expected of them is not a weakness, so a maester not knowing how to fight or a knight not having a clue how to blacksmith do not count. Also, if I read "sometimes he can be just too loyal to his friends!" then I might vomit.
B I O G R A P H Y
Describe how your character came to be what they are today. I want at least a few paragraphs in here, but as the old adage goes: size doesn't matter, it's what you do with it that counts. If you write a fifteen thousand word doctoral thesis on your character's upbringing as a perfect Gary-Stu and his vanquishing of the great Dragon of Cliches, all you do is cause the both of us pain. Make sure that the biography is both feasible and makes sense with the established lore. Remember that odds are you're not the greatest man who ever lived -- you're a part of, or serving, a very minor noble house.
E Q U I P M E N T
I expect you to keep a general track of what your character owns and has on them at any given moment. Put what you want to start yourself off with, and be reasonable. You don't own a Valyrian steel sword or a magical artifact unless you manage to make a really good case for it.
O T H E R
Anything else? Feel free to leave this out if nothing comes to mind.
OOC
This thread is for general out-of-character discussion and the like, as well as to post your characters in for them to be accepted. You can also PM me those, or any questions you have.
As far as miscellaneous thing goes, my general plan is to run two concurrent and intertwined storylines: One, for the more military-focused characters, based primarily around their involvement in the War of the Five Kings and its aftermath; and the other stationed primarily in and around Fairmarket and the keep, for the non-combative types. Don't be afraid to make your character either, or a bit of both.
One last thing to note: I do expect everyone to have a firm grasp on the actual lore and plot of the main ASOIAF series. If you have a question in that regard, feel free to ask it -- but I'm going into this assuming that everyone involved has either read all of the released books or is willing to learn and unafraid of spoilers. We'll be functioning on book-canon, not show-canon, though if you've only watched the show it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt to the differences.
Rules
I'm not going to bother to lay out a numbered list of 1) Don't powergame, 2) Don't godmod, etc etc etc. If you're in the Advanced section, it's fair to assume that you don't need a hand-holding in that regards. But I do have a few specific things that I want to point out:
Firstly, don't be a special snowflake. Your characters should be normal, believable people in a normal, believable high-Middle-ages style environment. You're certainly not some supernatural creature that's completely unheard of in the lore. You most definitely do not possess some sort of sixth-sense that allows you to know that, say, Joffrey is a bastard or Edmure Tully is a terrible military commander. You're probably not a warg, or skinchanger, or follower of the old gods, or fishman from the Thousand Isles. Odds are that your parents weren't slaughtered by super-evil bandits when you were but a young lad or lass.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, quality over quantity. Sometimes you're in a conversation with someone, and your goal is just to respond to what they said and wait for them to do the same with yours. Do that in a few lines, then. I don't want or need to see you pad out the length with three paragraphs detailing your character's unrelated thoughts because, hey, this is an advanced roleplay and it's what is expected of me.
Thirdly! In the character creation process, please feel free to give constructive criticism to each other when it comes to the building of your characters, and expect others to do the same. It's of the utmost importance that we all agree on a set of characters that mesh well together, because with any luck they're going to be interacting with one another for a long time. If you and John Example are going to play the lord and his lady, I fully expect you two to talk with one another and make sure your biographies and whatnot intertwine. On a related note, I would very much like OC and OC only here. You can't play Robb Stark and you shouldn't take the character you made for your Naruto roleplay and transplant him into this setting. The one exception to this is in the few lore-friendly characters that are available for the taking, in which you have full reign to create everything about that character barring maybe their name, general age and familial relationships.
Lastly, ASOIAF is pretty well known as an environment in which main characters are not plot-armored to avoid death. I am not going to pull a Telltale and contrive some sort of situation to kill off the character you worked so hard on just for the sake of shock value. What you should be expecting is consequences of your actions. Let's use Robb again as an example: Walder Frey didn't just decide to break guest right and stab him on a whim, it was a carefully plotted consequence of his poor diplomatic and personal choices.
With all that said, the main goal is still to have fun. So let's do that.
