DeltaV

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

I can't say I'll thank you for that gift. I've read novels shorter.

A Song of Ice and Fire

I summon ye, people who responded to the interest check!

@FantasyChic @Mivuli @Oak7ree @Maxwell57 @Gowi @agentmanatee

If you didn't post in the interest check, that is also fine. Note that the 'canon' characters are a first-come, first-serve basis based on who gets a character up first.

A Song of Ice and Fire -- Interest Check

http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/89100-a-song-of-ice-and-fire/ooc

OOC is up!

A Song of Ice and Fire

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

Sigil

House Vypren's sigil displays a dark green snake on pale yellow.

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

Our Map

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.

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.

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

@ravendivinity I had figured it was fine because not everyone seems to be doing the same 'pacing', so to speak, with their first posts. Some peoples' only encompass a few minutes, others a day or more. Similarly, some peoples' posts are thousands of words and take up multiple sections, larger than any two that I could put together.

I'll try to hold off in the future regardless, my goal was just to keep from lagging behind. I personally feel that's a more accomplishable goal with a few medium-sized posts instead of one huge one.

If you'd like, I can delete the second post and edit it in as a second section to the first.

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

The sun sat low on the horizon by the time that Jacaerys found his way onto a weather-beaten switchback trail that led down into the valley. He had stumbled his way down the mountain for what must have been at least an hour before that, carefully picking his way over cliffs and around great walls of soldier pines. At one point, he had tripped over a loose root and rolled a good hundred feet down the mountain. When at last the Godseer came to a stop at the mouth of an abandoned mine, he had pressed his hands against a dozen scrapes and at least one broken rib and given a silent prayer of gratitude that he still had the ability to heal.

For a time he had considered searching the mine itself for people, but the rotted logs that stood in support of the shaft every dozen steps seemed dozens of years old, at least. All the same he had trudged onward for a time, until not three hundred feet down he had found himself met with an impassable cave-in. So instead he had pulled out Lightwarden, though more for use as a torch than anything, and begun what he presumed would be a long trek to a potentially-abandoned village.

Perhaps another hour later, Jacaerys rounded a ridge and was able to spot a faint glow of chimney-smoke far off in the valley. Exuberant, he had taken the rest of the journey at a jog, even as the sun finally disappeared over the horizon. All the same, the first hazy light of dawn had broken by the time he managed to reach the end of the trail.

To describe the settlement as a "village" was perhaps being a bit too far to its occupants -- indeed, even "hamlet" was quite the stretch. Some few people were already out splitting firewood and drawing water from a well, but they turned to look with curiosity at the white-eyed man with the glowing mace. He recognized none, though his group had passed through the village... well, it must have only been a short time ago. Jacaerys stowed his weapon in the loop at his belt and approached the nearest man.

"You there!" he called genially, and was at least happy to see that they spoke the same language as he, "do you know where I might find the man Jace? A woodcutter here. My party passed through some nights past."

The man mulled on that for a few moments. "Sarah th'inkeep's wife had a grandad name of Jace, and his father before that. Might be more 'fore him. All long dead as 'f a few nights ago. And none've gone through here for months, 'n fewer come down that path." He pointed down to the trail leading into the mountains.

The Godseer took the information in stride, though he had no idea what it meant. "What of a priest named Jorehn? He came with my party, and remained here to prepare a nightfire whilst I journeyed into the mountains."

Another man chipped in from the well, stooping to place his bucket on the rough dirt road. "I know old Alandir kept a little flame going in the crypts. Said 't was ages old. Last I heard, he forgot to feed it and it went out." He pointed down to where a carved slab of a door led into the earth. "Thas a mighty fine weapon you got there, friend. Take care you keep it to yourself."

Inside the crypts, Jacaerys found himself the subject of an irritable old man, who raised a carved cane angrily and demanded to know who thought they would come marching into his chambers and if it was you again, Sarah, your boy's the same, let him rest and gain his strength. A glance at the eyes and the mace, however, and the man instead cowered on the opposite side of the small room into which the cellar door opened. "I tried t'keep that flame alive, I did, it died on its own, even ten-years-dead Olain couldn't have kept it better-fed, it just seemed to shrivel up and die! Please, Oraum, I am your humble servant, smite me not!"

Jacaerys had been blessed in many ways, but perhaps not in patience. "I am no god, old man. Do you know of the priest Jorehn? What's happened to this town in the last few days?"

At that, something seemed finally to click in the old man's head. "Perhaps, perhaps . . . Oh, indeed, as Olain himself saw in the withering flames. He waited for you, milord, but I can't say I've had the same patience." With no other explanation the man who must be Alandir led Jacaerys through a door and down a long, sloping passage. To each side lay stone coffins, recessed into the walls. And at the end of it was another chamber -- inside of this one, a few beds of wood and straw, a hearth of naught but ashes and an engraving set into the wall above it.

"The annals say that Jorehn built it in the town center, but my forebears had the good sense to move it down near to th'sick. Only it's been shriveling this last decade or two, and nothing old Olain nor I could do to stop it. Went out only a few nights past, I fear, and I thought you were Oraum himself come to smite me down for my impertinence." The man gave the Godseer a look that said that he was still not entirely sure that he wasn't.

"Before you do anything, milord, please take a look at young Josep here, Sarah's boy. A snake had a few bites in him these last few days, and I fear he'll die before he fights that venom off. It's enough to kill a grown man, I should know, my uncle died from one of those damned adders when I was but a boy." And indeed, a small child lay drawn and shivering on one of the cots.

Jacaerys crossed the length of the room in a few quick steps, and lay his hand on the boy's forehead. He felt a feverish warmth there, but kept his palms pressed firmly against the child's visage. In a few moments, he felt the heat replaced with a warmth of another kind entirely, and the boy sighed contentedly in his sleep.

"Aye, milord, there are some of us, living in the shadow of that Tower as we do, who still remember the tales of the old days. We've a lichyard where the first plague victims are buried for the last fifteen centuries, and your friend Jorehn was given to the fire as he dictated." At that moment, Jacaerys determined that he need not look at the engraving upon the hearth to know what -- or who -- it depicted.

"So if you've come back, Godseer, a mortal man again among us, tell me this -- why are the fires going out?"

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

Chronological is probably the best way to go.

Is there going to be some sort of general event gathering people together, or are we just going to let groups form as they will?

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

Here's a pretty terrible thing I made, mostly for myself.

Hider

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

Here's an utterly beautiful online-paint-tool rendition of my character's travels so far:

Hider

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

It was cold.

Jacaerys the Godseer could still distinctly remember the warmth of the flames as he stepped into them. He had been comforted by the familiar heat, had taken it as a sign that he was doing the right thing. Through the fire, the God of Purity would welcome Jacaerys into his unending halls. Or perhaps his spirit would remain bound to the mortal plane, and he would continue to guard this place from evils. But it had been warm, and now it was cold.

As he stood gingerly and acquired his bearings, the Godseer did not feel particularly like some sort of guardian spirit. He reasoned, then, that he must still be alive. But that, of course, could not be the end of it. Something felt deeply wrong somewhere within him, but Jacaerys could not exactly say what.

He walked a slow circle around the top of the tower, taking in the small discrepancies between his current setting and the memory that seemed moments ago. The tower's parapets, for instance, once all jagged edges of oily stone, were now worn and crusted with snow. And to think of snow, had the skies not been utterly clear? Now they were dark and overcast, and a harsh wind blew flurries across Jacaerys' back.

But neither of these observations lifted the feeling that he was not noticing something vitally and utterly important. Aha! he thought, finally noticing the lack of the accustomed weight of Lightwarden, his gift from the gods, in hand. Jacaerys turned and retraced the half-circle he had carved in the crusting of snow, until he stood back where he had first... reappeared? There, half-buried in a mound of white, the mace glowed faintly. As the Godseer took it back into his hand he was pleased to watch it flare truly into life, and he was no longer cold.

But wait. He was closer to the realization that was eluding him, Jacaerys knew that, but it still weighed heavily on his mind. Something was wrong. Tossing his weapon deftly to his off-hand, the Godseer plucked off one glove and reached down to touch the snow he had pulled Lightwarden from. It was warm, and as Jacaerys drew his hand back in confusion, it came to him that the drifts did not look very much like snow at all.

Ashes. But that could only mean one thing, one utterly unthinkable thing. Half-frenzied, Jacaerys ran about the top of the tower, occasionally shoving his hand deep into the snow-drifts. Falling from the sky was certainly regular snow, and he soon came to realize that a thin layer of it sat atop the rest of the ash -- but whenever he reached down, there was heat once more, and the handfuls he pulled out had the smell of flame to them.

Impossible. The Godseer had performed the rituals himself, with the aid of the dozen remaining acolytes he had had on hand, and fed the corpses of the slain necromancers to the white-hot fire. Such a blaze should rightfully have burned for hundreds, thousands of centuries. At least. And if this flame was out . . .

Such things were not even to be thought of. Jacaerys entertained, for a moment, the thought of prostrating himself on the ashes and praying fervently for guidance in such things. But instead he wiped the ash from his hands, and told himself that he did not fear that no answer would come. He had not been truly bothered by the cold, but now the Godseer shivered.

His stomach growled, suddenly, an abrupt reminder that he had perhaps spent far too long on this cold mountaintop. If the maps still held true, there was a small village northwest down one of the mountain valleys, into one of the very rare forests on this side of the Great Deserts. With any luck it had not also shriveled out of existence. He held his weapon forward as though it were a torch, and began to descend from the tower.