DeltaV

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

@ravenDivinity Here's an updated version of the map from a few pages back. Black lines are the events of a thousand years ago, red is the travel that's already happening and gray is the general movement plan for the near future.

Hider

A Song of Ice and Fire

@agentmanatee Oh, sorry, I didn't notice your post on account of the new guy. I agree with Gowi, "We Bring the Storm" is the best of those.

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

The evening found Jacaerys mounted on an ornery two-humped camel, picking his way slowly across cooling sand dunes. Behind him trailed half a dozen men, some on similar creatures and others riding plow horses or donkeys. Among them were the old priest's nephew, who claimed to know the location of every oasis in the Great Desert; the man he had first spoken to, a competent if sullen man; and a few other farmhands and woodcutters who thirsted with piety or for a taste of adventure. The Godseer had gotten his mount from the caravan of a merchant who had had the bad luck to be in the town at the time -- though the man initially refused, the townsfolk had quickly persuaded him of what an honor it was to give up some small portion of his supplies to the Right Hand of Oraum. That was also how the small party had acquired a reasonable stock of water and provisions, carried by a mule that one of the townsfolk led along.

Jacaerys had been advised to travel by nightfall, so as to avoid most of the terrible heat of the deserts. Though it was a roundabout path, the nephew assured him that it was possible to ride swiftly from one oasis to the next each night, and shelter at them during the day. The lack of light did little to alleviate the great desert winds, however, and so as the Godseer rode in quiet contemplation he held one hand in front of him to shield his eyes from the sand that kicked up sporadically around him.

Shortly after his conversation with the priest had concluded, Jacaerys had politely shooed the man away, leaving himself alone with the quickly-recovering boy he had healed. For several hours the Godseer had attempted to rekindle the flame that must have once burned in the hearth, but he could not manage to achieve the white flames of Oraum despite his best efforts and incantations. When Jacaerys emerged from the chamber drenched with sweat, he had told the priest that he intended to travel back to the Great Temple. "It may be that they do not know that the fires are going out," he had said, "and I must warn them. Or perhaps they have already devised a way to keep their own alive." And almost that quickly, he found himself preparing to depart from the village.

Presently the nephew pulled ahead, turning off slightly as he gestured at some sort of sandstone obelisk half-buried in the sand. "We're too far north, we need to turn left a bit." Jacaerys complied with a yawn, and fought with his mount to get it to turn its head in the direction that the young man indicated. He rubbed his temples; for all the wondrous healing that the Godseer had found he could perform, he still could not truly fight off sleep. With any luck, the first oasis would soon be upon them, and plentiful time to rest and wait for the moon to rise once more.

A Song of Ice and Fire

Hmm...I may be interested in joining. Love me some SOIAF. I'll look over things and have something up in a bit?

@Ogobrogo

Sounds good. Always nice to have more people joining! Like I said above, we're looking currently for a few non-fighting-oriented characters.

Starless - Unique Fantasy RP

Edit: Post nearly complete (I'd say like, 80%, so there's not much left). Will post after my ACT tomorrow. After this, I doubt I'll post a response-bomb this large ever again because it takes too much time and effort. Instead, they'll come in smaller packages every 2 to 5 posts. Gute Nacht!

@ravenDivinity

Hey, I also just finished an ACT! Looking forward to the post.

A Song of Ice and Fire

Yep, there's absolutely space for more people. In particular, we could use more non-knight types: Maesters, septons, that kind of thing.

A Song of Ice and Fire

Hey so exactly how long after Ned Starks imprisonement/ the battle of mummers ford are we starting? Like, has Stannis spread the bastard thing yet or is that not until after Ned loses his ead? @DeltaV

@agentmanatee

I intend to have news of the battles reach our characters shortly after RP start. Ned's still in the black cells, and Stannis hasn't started spreading his allegations.

A Song of Ice and Fire

Lady Elyana Wylde

Lady Elyana Wylde (née Vypren) / Female / 25

"Just because I carry no sword or shoot no arrow does not mean I am not dangerous. It just means I have more clever ways to dispatch those who oppose me."

Appearance

Elyana has long, dark brown hair that falls to her hips, much like her mother's. She has blue eyes from her father and a fair complexion. She stands at 5'10, just shy of her twin brother. She weighs 120 lbs and has a petite, ladylike frame. Elyana is not scarred or blemished as she has not had formal combat training. Having been raised and brought up to respect appearance, Elyana looks and dresses like a lady at all times, wearing dresses and gowns whenever in public, and house dresses when in her own home. She has been known to dress more comfortably when not in the presence of others. She wears make-up in basic shades of red and pink and fine powders. Her favorite color is pink and has been known to wear that color often.

Personality

Elyana enjoys her lifestyle and portrays the values placed upon her by her parents. Through training, schooling, and lessons, Elyana has been taught a wide variety of subjects from social graces to history to mathematics. Elyana is very bright and shows her lessons off proudly.

Unlike her brother, Elyana doesn't display a heated temperament, preferring to remain cool under pressure. She believes a clear mind is more useful than brawn to overcoming hard situations. Due to this, Elyana is very persuasive and has a conniving side to her, as evident to her convincing her father, along with John's efforts, to her marrying him instead of being married off to a higher standing family. Elyana, also due to her upbringing, can be snobbish, but she makes an effort to not appear so and to respect the fact her family has what they have. She is proud to be part of the Vypren family.

Elyana is headstrong and determined in whatever she has her heart set on. She is a little jealous of her brother and his taking over the household despite her being older (even by a few minutes). She has had the idea of learning how to sword fight, but her father squashed her hopes of learning to do so at a younger age.

Pros and cons

The Good
Educated (in royal manners, etiquette, riding, history, mathematics, etc.)
Poised and Elegant
Beautiful
Diplomatic

The bad
Non-Combative
Stubborn
Jealousy (Of her brother)
Conniving

Biography

Elyana is the daughter of Lord Lucias Vypren and Lady Lythene Frey, birthed around 273 AC

Elyana's parents, having sent her brother off to be trained by Lord John Mallister, they took it upon themselves to train Elyana to be a lady and eventual wife to someone of higher power to cross ties and cement alliances. Through training, Elyana learned a variety of subjects. Her tutors enjoyed working with Elyana as she put up minimal fuss while learning, except the occasional act of rebellion when she wanted to do something fun. Elyana took her social classes to heart as it made her mother happy.

As she got older, she began to realize how political standings worked and how important it was to act and behave a certain way. She didn't want for much, but whatever she did want she would ask her father and, in an attempt to keep her happy in her studies, her father would give it to her. She enjoyed this small source of power over her father and used it to get further into her studies, studying different subjects that weren't normal for ladies of her station.

It was during this time she met John Wylde, who was serving under Lord Frey. As he was visiting, Elyana began talking with the young man and found herself enjoying his company greatly. Partially due to boredom from having no one to talk to her own age (as her brother was off doing his own thing), but mainly due to her fondness for the man, they struck a quick friendship, but was cut away as John was relieved of his situation with Lord Frey.

Her father continued to try and find a suitable man for his daughter to marry. With a few notable prospects in the horizon, Elyana found herself
worried about what she would be getting into. While she wanted to make her parents happy, she didn't want to marry some man just so she could keep alliances and have children. She thought of John again, and wished for a change. She was presented to the various families that her father wanted to align himself with and she found each of the men presented to her to be unbearable, rude, and just plain boring. She used whatever ounce of power she had to get her father to change his mind about these men and to wait, just a bit longer, for her marriage to the right person. Her father, hesitantly, accepted.

A tournament was to be held by house Tully and her family was invited to attend. Elyana enjoyed seeing tournaments as she has wanted to learn sword combat, but was shot down by her father (the one instance she couldn't get him to budge on). She was enjoying herself when she ran into none other than John Wylde again. Excited to see him again, she hatched a plan to relieve herself of this situation of marrying someone she couldn't stand, and proposed to John to ask for her hand in marriage. Knowing full well that John was not part of a family her father would have chosen, she decided to use whatever pull she could to get him to accept.

As the tournament went on, Elyana continuously praised John's efforts in the tournament, telling her father he was a loyal man, strong, determined, and would make a good husband and father and one that would carry whatever title he earned with pride. Though her father was hesitant, John ended up winning the tournament. Elyana then told her father that she felt John was an ideal partner for her. Her father, both amazed by John's talent and by his daughter's persuasion, agreed to the marriage. A year later, they held a wedding and the two were married. Elyana was happy she was with a man she cared about and, with time, realized she loved. Shortly after, Elyana gave birth to a son, named Rickard. She stands with her family in their values as war was on the horizon.

Equipment

-Horse
-Travelling clothes
-Winter attire
-Various dresses, gowns, and home attire.
-Jewelry
-Various books on a few subjects

@FantasyChic

Looks good overall, just a couple of nitpicky things:
- As far as that quote at the top goes, i can't imagine that a highborn lady's focus would very often be on "dispatching those who oppose her." "To solve my problems" might make more sense.
- It's J-O-N Jon Wylde, not J-O-H-N. Blame it on GRRM.

Other than that, it looks great. Accepted.

A Song of Ice and Fire

Lucias Vypren

N A M E / G E N D E R / A G E
Lord Lucias Vypren / Male / 49

A P P E A R A N C E

Image

Lord Lucias stands at a height of just below six feet, a few hairs' breadths shorter than his son. His dark hair is close-cropped and beginning to gray, and over a square jaw he maintains only a thin layer of stubble. His eyes, a deep cloudy blue-gray, are deep-set into his face. Once a man with a girth to match his height, he would appear something of a gaunt shadow in comparison to those who once saw him -- the lingering effect of a sickness that has not quite finished taking its toll on him.

Oftentimes Lucias does not share his son's affinity for porting mail in court, and dresses in a more traditional yellow-and-green surcoat and fur cloak. His armor itself, when he chooses to wear it, is a rather expensive and well-made suit of steel, all sharp angles and edges and with two coiled vipers clasping his cloak onto the shoulders.

P E R S O N A L I T Y
Lucias was once a boy of fiery temper, not unlike his son, quick to anger but just as quick to calm. However, he came back from the War of the Ninepenny Kings particularly shaken, and with every passing year grew more solemn. He attributes this off-handedly to the wisdom of age, though no doubt there are other factors.

Lucias has always been more pragmatic than zealous, viewing his worldly oaths more important than those of the gods. Regardless, he tries to do what is right, first for his family and then in general. Immediately below the desire to honor his oaths and protect his family is a somewhat prickly sense of honor -- Lucias views his House as deserving more than the status it currently holds, frequently lamenting his Andal ancestors' positions as petty kings of the Blue Fork. He views it as a matter of irritation that his dynasty does not receive the same amount of attention as even, say, the Blackwoods or the Mallisters. Perhaps it makes perfect sense, then, that he is quite fond of his Frey relatives by marriage.

Lucias likes to consider himself kind to the common man, but in spite of it he finds it hard to shake the idea of the smallfolk as numbers to be expended. He is perhaps overly cautious even as it relates to the mild rivers of the central riverlands, keeping his granaries perpetually filled with food in case of harvest failure or some similar occurrence.

P R O S A N D C O N S

Pros:
- Practical: In the end, Lucias harbors few illusions when it comes to such ideals as honor and dignity. He tries to maintain them for himself, but is not so naive as to expect others to, or to keep it at all costs.
- Calm: Lucias is not a man quick to be stirred in anger. He knows when to listen before speaking, and when silence is a better answer than fury.
- Capable: Skilled all-around in governance and command by experience, Lucias is also reasonably well-trained with a sword, though perhaps not to the same level as his son or indeed many of the household knights.

Cons:
- Frail: Lucias has not quite managed to shake off a persistent cold for the last several years, a condition that may be attributed to his age. He does not have the same endurance that he did a decade ago.
- Proud: In his mind, the Vyprens should hold a respect due to them for their loyalty and history, and this status is not given. While he holds a more personal respect for his current liege lord, others may not find the same amount of deference.

B I O G R A P H Y
Lucias Vypren was born the second and final son of his small family, his father a hard man of little renown and his mother a Blackwood from some distant branch of the dying tree. Lucias' older brother was a good eight years older than him, already a fine page by the time of the boy's birth. Lucias enjoyed a somewhat affluent childhood, for his family maintained (and still does) a reasonably impressive proportion of wealth to their size, and expected to rule some smaller keep or holdfast in service to his brother when he came of age.

When Lucias held about eleven years to his name, however, the War of the Ninepenny Kings broke out. Lucias, enthusiastic and fiery-tempered as only new-made squires might be, served his older brother as he fought at the Stepstones. In the same great battle where the final Blackfyre pretender was slain and a dozen great faces first distinguished themselves, however, Lucias' brother took a wounding. While it did not at first seem fatal, the young man's shoulder turned necrotic on the ship back towards the mainland, and he died miles from the shore.

It fell upon the young Lucias, then, to secure a means of travel back to his home and bring the news and the corpse to his grieving lord father and lady mother. Humbled by his experiences on the Stepstones, Lucias reacted to his new position as his father's heir with a loss of much of the fiery temper for which he had before been known.

A short time after Lucias reached his twentieth year of age, his father passed away from a sudden chill, and Lucias became the Lord of Fairmarket. He set his sights to managing the surrounding lands, improving tax flow and tariffs from the city proper and encouraging its development. This could not last, however -- little more than about five years later, Robert's Rebellion broke out in earnest. Lucias joined the fighting for his liege lord, where he faced off under Lord Hoster Tully at the Battle of the Bells and slew a half-dozen freeriders and one knight of little renown. Though much in the realm found itself fundamentally changed following the toppling of the Targaryens, Lucias still had the same keep and the same town to rule, and so he returned to his home with his young children and his Frey wife and lived happily there for a number more of years. Eventually he sent his only son, Damon, to serve as a squire at Seagard. This was a choice that Lucias would later come to regard as bittersweet -- it is said that when the Greyjoy Rebellion began and the ironborn swept down onto the Mallisters, Lucias had refused to commit his levies to the storming of the Isles until he learned that the ironmen had been swept back into the sea, for fear that he might not receive word if his son had died.

When it became apparent that Damon was not, in fact, dead, Lucias commanded his troops and fought at the siege of Pyke, storming the walls with a number of other notables, including the king himself. Though he took no wound in the battle, Lucias caught a fever at sea that he would not quite manage to be rid of in the coming years, in the end losing a not-insignificant amount of mass and becoming quite a bit more frail. Following the war's end Lucias recalled his newly-knighted son homewards, ostensibly to find him a wife but primarily to keep his family close, and maintained a fruitful and careful rule -- but for a single irritation, in which some stormlander tourney knight managed to catch the favor of his only daughter. After the Wylde boy had won the tournament, however, what could Lucias do but allow it? He kept the two at his own court as the price.

It could be considered a bit of a boon, then, that no further wars broke out until the present. Now the land stands once more on edge, and Lucias must lament seeing a fourth major war in his lifetime. The better question, of course: With whom shall he stand?

E Q U I P M E N T
On his person at most times is a fur cloak, a surcoat bearing his coat of arms, a reasonably fat coin purse and a sword. In actual battle, of course, he owns a valuable and well-made suit of plate, a destrier, and lance and shield. At his disposal is the moderate wealth of Fairmarket.

I might spruce him up a bit more in the future.

A Song of Ice and Fire

Seems fine.