[VIDEO] backdated, shortly after NPC post

[dorzalta]

» WHO: All
» WHEN: The morning following Tyr and Laufey's announcement on 7/17
» TYPE: Live broadcast

[ It takes some tinkering and awkwardness at first, along with a series of huffs and grumbles you thankfully miss... but when the feed does appear, enjoy a perplexed Daenerys looking at the screen (as well as a reflection of herself, Jon, and Robb). They are wearing modern clothes: button-down shirts for the men, a blazer for Robb, and a royal blue halter-like dress for Dany. ]

Well met, Wanderers. [ … she is speaking to you all, she hopes. ] My name is Daenerys Targaryen. This is Jon Snow and Robb Stark.

[ The feed will jerk as she attempts to angle the screen to both men, respectively. It's not at all elegant, and is, in fact, an eyesore to watch. Which is why seconds later she gives up on it and leaves the strange screen in place in front of her. (Robb gets up as if to try and help her, but his attempts are just as bad as hers. Eventually, he gives it up as a bad job too. Jon, who had inclined his head when Daenerys attempted to introduce him, merely watches now with a skeptical expression: it's going to take a while for them all to get the hang of this.) ]

In our world, war is commonplace. We have armies and generals, as well as a means to communicate when there is an attack on a city or castle. Here, that doesn't seem to be the case. [ Which is strange to her. For all her wariness of these self-proclaimed gods, the smallfolk of Asgard appear to be happy. ] It's why we've approached the gods about a means of gathering. The chaos which followed the dragon's appearance makes us believe that a type of war council is necessary for this realm.

[As Jon begins to speak, he seems a little bit uneasy, slightly awkward, but as his words spin out and gather momentum, he becomes visibly more comfortable with the idea of addressing everyone. It doesn't come as naturally to him as it seems to come to Daenerys.]

When the people of a realm don't work together to face a threat, the end is calamity -- death and hunger and suffering, for those who fought and for those who could not fight. When we know what our strengths are, we know how best to defend against what may come. And when we know what to do, we can be ready to do it, even when we face something that seems impossible to overcome. This is our realm now, all of us. Today, we can put our strengths together. We can begin to make those plans. Maybe we won't ever need them, it's true, but if we do, we won't be caught unawares again.

I know that you may not know us. Each of us has been a king or a queen; not one of us was born with that title. None of us means to try to rule anyone else here, none of us expects to be the loudest voice on any council, but we all have experience with planning for war, and with several kinds of threat.

Daenerys rides a dragon at home, and has taken cities in the East and freed thousands upon thousands of slaves there. I have been Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and King in the North: I've spent long years scouting and defending and preparing for great attacks on my homeland, fighting Wildlings first, and then making an alliance with them to fight the Army of the Dead. My brother Robb was King in the North before me; he was a successful general several times over in campaigns in the southron lands. He knows tactics, battle strategy, better than almost anyone you'll ever meet.

We have all fought for the lives and safety and freedom of our fellow men. We want to continue to do that here and now. We want you to join us, if you will.

[ Jon looks over at Robb, and Robb picks the thread up: ] Understand, we are not asking to go to war. This council is only meant to make certain that we are not caught so off our guard as we were when the dragon attacked. In order to do that, we’re going to organize the council into different groups: preparations, battle and response. We Wanderers come from different worlds, and in times of crisis our different strengths come out. We need to combine our strengths and work together if we are to effectively respond to whatever threats may come next.



( OOC #1: if you want to address a specific cast member, please indicate that in the subject of your comment--otherwise we’ll read it as fair game for any of us to attack C:

OOC #2: We made a spiffy ooc post detailing the war council, as well as sign ups for it. Check it out HERE. )

Comments

[dorzalta]

Will it make a difference when the dead walk the land here?

[ Not that she's condoning this particular death. ]

It's far from kindness, knowing whatever awaits him will break him to the point of meekness.

[ Seems something kinder to kill him off. She shakes her head and dismisses the device, pushing up to her feet. Whether he's standing or not by the time she steps closer won't stop her from skimming her hand along him: either his shoulders if he's still sitting, or the small of the back if he's standing. ]

[northerndragon]

I don’t know. But it doesn’t seem like I should risk it.

[He feels her hand on the small of his back then, and turns to her. He knows he isn’t being kind to Theon, but even if death would be a mercy right now, Jon isn’t going to give it to him. He wants to deal out neither of those things.]

Time for some porridge.

Some days here I’d hunt the boar myself for a rasher of bacon.

[He’s even wondered what Honir’s horses taste like.]

[dorzalta]

Don't sound so glum, there's sweet things, as well.

[ She's happy about it, perhaps for the both of them. Might explain how she's eager enough to leave upon the mention of food. ]

A boar killed the Usurper. Fruit never murdered anyone.

[northerndragon]

[He doesn’t mourn Robert. But he is unable to do anything but regret what came after — the way Robert seems to have tugged Eddard Stark into the grave with him.]

No, it never did. Though my father used to tell a story of them throwing lemons at each other in the Vale. No, it was oranges. A barrel of oranges sent as a gift, but gone to rot on the journey to the Eyrie.

[dorzalta]

[ She doesn't mourn either. They both should rot for the roles they played in her family's demise. ]

Such a waste. What did you throw each other as children, snow?

[ Not that she can imagine snow being very easy to throw with how powdery it is. ]

[northerndragon]

[That makes him brighten a bit.]

Aye, snow and snowballs. And sometimes mud, I suppose.

We would battle, we’d pile snow high above the gates and trick people into walking under it, and we’d make snowmen.

I thought the snow should be on my side, at least. It’s in me.

[Jon Snow raises his eyebrows at her, to show her that this is more than half a jest — with a little kernel of truth in it.]

still almost made a joke

[dorzalta]

What are snowmen?

[ There's so much to everything he says that makes it almost impossible to imagine. No, that's not true. She can imagine children tossing mud at one another and vexing their lady mother for it. If she'd ever tried throwing mud, Viserys likely would have slapped her... or pulled her hair until she cried.

Her smile for him is fond, gaze lingering on him for a beat before she looks ahead. It slips a little, then. ]

The three of you seem like you'd cause that sort of trouble.

[ She means him, Robb, and Arya, of course. ]

[northerndragon]

[He frowns, curious. She’s never seen one?]

You make a ball of snow, and a few more, then you build on them, then when they’re big enough, you make a stack of them and give the top one a face.

We caused enough trouble, I suppose. Greyjoy came eventually, and he and Robb were friends, and Arya and I played when she was old enough... but a little sister isn’t the same as a brother close in age.

[He knows that there’s much there that he isn’t saying: that he and Theon were never like brothers, that Sansa was no real playmate for Arya, and so on and on.]

[dorzalta]

And then what do you do with them?

[ He's always so grave that it's difficult to imagine a younger version of him playing in the snow with his siblings. It serves as a reminder that there's still so little she knows of him. ]

Nor is an older brother the same as having a true parent to raise you.

[northerndragon]

Nothing. They sit until the thaw. Well, I suppose you can dress them as a man of your House, or as your old maester, and you can try to knock them down with snowballs, but they don’t do anything after you’ve made them. They’re like statues in snow.

[The second thing she says gets a sympathetic look.]

No, I expect not. My father, he had a firm hand, but he was kind.

When I went to the Wall, sometimes I wished he had been firmer. Not often, but now and again. I still knew I was a lord’s son.

[dorzalta]

Too bad we can't make an army of snowmen to stop the Night King.

[ She doesn't make her comment for sympathy. None of this is for pity, but because he's told her he wants to know. Still... his look is met with a lingering, stubborn one. Can't be helped. ]

Mine wasn't. Better to have the brother. [ A pause. ] What would you rather he'd been firmer about?

[ She'd ask him what he would do as a father instead, but it would be a cruel, hurtful question for them both. ]

[northerndragon]

[The remark about the snowmen is met with only a soft snort of grim amusement: it’s too bad indeed. Fight cold with cold. Turn the Night King’s ways against him.

And what would they do with the snowmen after, expect them to melt away? The White Walkers already shatter into ice.

He addresses the second part instead, and he does so carefully.]

When I went to the Wall, I was... I thought as a bastard, growing up with a brother who was going to be Lord Stark and a sister who was going to be queen and made it clear that I was no real brother of hers, I had been hard done by. I tried to show my skill with swords at training, and the other boys hated me, thought I was a bully.

I didn’t mean to be, but they had the right of it. They saw a little lordling. Some of them had grown up not knowing where their next meal was coming from. Some were only there because of a nobleman’s lies.

And some were the thieves and rapers you’d expect. But no one had taught most of them to fight, any of them, even the ones with good hearts. I had so much more than they did. I didn’t understand that until then.

[dorzalta]

No real brother of hers? [ She stops walking, looking at him sharply. Only one of the sisters lived in King's Landing with Cersei (that she knows of, thanks to Tyrion), and it wasn't the girl she just spoke with who was so happy to ignore manners. ] Why?

[ Eerily, she can too easily relate with the ones sent to the Wall with nothing — not the little lordling who was taught how to fight. He came from a home. A home which didn't sound as welcoming as it should have been to a son of Eddard Stark.

That makes her think the man a coward to avoid his wife's ire, though she's sure Jon would say it's the way of things for a bastard. A stupid way of things, just like slavery is. ]

We all think and do stupid things when we're younger.

[northerndragon]

[Her sharp look stops him short for a moment, before he frowns, shakes his head, dismissing it.]

When we were children, Sansa made it clear that I was her half-brother. As her mother told her. And Robb knew in our games, after a certain point, that I couldn’t ever be Lord of Winterfell.

But they were children, and it was before she learned what King’s Landing is like. No one has done more to make me feel like a real Stark than Sansa.

[dorzalta]

[ She watches him as he speaks, then looks ahead in thought. Considering. But soon, she'll step closer to him and lightly bump his side, coaxing him to walk with her again. ]

Was she terrible to you? Did any of the others chide her?

[northerndragon]

Not terrible, only... the last thing I wanted was a reminder, and she reminded me more than I liked. I joined the Night’s Watch as soon as I could partly to get away from that, and from her mother.

[His sister had not been the root of his troubles. It had been his birth, and his father’s proud wife. He knows that there are men who would have considered Catelyn Stark beautiful, but all he can remember of her is red hair, hard eyes, the cold line of her mouth, a harshness in her voice.]

Arya didn’t like it, and she was just a little thing. Robb was kind about it.

[dorzalta]

[ This is what he meant earlier, when he said he wanted to know. But there's a danger with knowing. Even hearing a simplified version of what his life was like and how he was treated by two Stark women — one older and who should have known better — makes her feel fiercely defensive of him.

This is what he meant when he said he wished to protect her from Viserys. Except, now it's her wanting to protect him... not only from the cruelties of a childhood, but the cold stings of one betrayal after the next when he'd been betrayed by his brothers at the Wall.

She catches his hand, tugging him to a stop. They're far enough away now from most of the crowds to avoid making a spectacle of themselves. Far enough away to feel as if everything around them's been muted. ]

You're more than a name.

[northerndragon]

[He looks down at her, almost apologetically, as she holds his hand.]

Aye. But names mean something.

You’re more than Targaryen. Even so....

[An awkward little shrug. Even so, her name means something to her... more than one thing. And not all of those things are good.]

[dorzalta]

Not here, they don't. Do you want to know what I think?

[ She steps closer, into his space. Close enough that their fronts lightly bump. It forces her to lift her chin to meet his eyes, to hold his gaze. And it should be clear to him he'll hear her thoughts on whatever it is she's on her mind (which is a lot), because of the way she invades his space. ]

I prefer the name 'Snow' on you. It makes me think of your snowmen, and how you were a little devil with your siblings as you piled snow atop the doorways. It's not your shackles, like some would treat it. There's nothing wrong with Snow, or Sand, or any of the other silly names silly men thought were clever to try and demean a child who deserved love, not scorn.

[northerndragon]

[His gaze is direct, neither blank nor burning, and he’s silent for a long moment before he answers her, with the fronts of their bodies all lined up against each other.

He’s not sure that anyone raised with a bastard name would prefer it. Still—]

When they made me King in the North... I know part of it was because of who my father was. But still, it meant something that the king was named Snow. It would mean something to any other child named Snow. So that they don’t have to feel it like shackles: maybe they can feel it like honor, instead.

[dorzalta]

[ Because a name doesn't make a good or fair king... or queen. So much as she leans upon the Targaryen name, there are things she's accomplished — not because of her ancestors, but because of who she is. And as a result, she's a great many names and titles beyond 'Targaryen.'

But Targaryen would be what makes her claim to the Iron Throne legitimate. ]

You've already made the name 'Snow' a good one. [ A tilt of the head. ] Perhaps people should consider how any other boy or girl named Snow could be an extension of family. If not by blood, by circumstance.

[northerndragon]

Perhaps.

But most men don’t want their bastards growing up with their trueborn children, no more than their wives do.

[A beat, and then,]

All that just makes me want to kiss you.

[dorzalta]

That's because they're fools — but I meant a family amongst all the Snows. Not the father, his wife, or the trueborn children.

[ Her look turns sly. ]

I thought you always wanted to kiss me.

[northerndragon]

[He makes a soft hum of agreement, not really indicating which part he’s agreeing to.]

I do always want to kiss you. Imagine how much we’d get done if it’s all we did.

[dorzalta]

[ It's not the idea of it that makes her quietly chuckle, but that he's the one to suggest it. ]

I doubt I'd be up for much imagining if that's all we did. You have a distressingly distracting mouth, my lord.