[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

[private]

[northerndragon]

You never told me that.

[private] cw: rape

[dorzalta]

I imagined it was enough to know I'd been sold and raped.

permaprivate, content warnings still apply

[northerndragon]

[That kind of cruelty isn’t unusual, though. It had happened to Sansa; it happens to women all over the world. Maybe a little less among the Free Folk, but they had been known to steal brides from south of the Wall... still, a man who took a free woman truly against her will was like as not to find himself without his balls one day, and sooner rather than later.

But what Viserys had threatened: that’s a breed apart, more on the lines of what he’d heard Ramsay Bolton had done to his stepmother and her newborn son.]

Whether or not I know of it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Your brother should have been protecting you.

[And if she was really determined that he not hear of it, she wouldn’t be telling Jaime Lannister while Jon stands three feet away.]

[dorzalta]

He did, once, but being known as the Beggar King changes a person.

You're not supposed to draw blood in Vaes Dothrak, but he didn't care. He pointed the sword at my belly and would have done it if it meant getting what he wanted. He said, once, he'd have given me to the entire khalasar if it got him his army.

I didn't stop Drogo as his bloodriders dragged Viserys off. He screamed for me to help him. And then he screamed as Drogo poured molten gold over his head. And then he didn't scream anymore.

[ She spares him a look, then, more curious to see how he'll react to reading that. ]

[northerndragon]

[He looks troubled and sad, his brows drawn together. He stares at the words on the screen, then glances at her, helpless and unhappy, then goes back to the screen.]

I’d have wanted to kill him myself. I’d have had him in chains.

Do the gods of the Dothraki hate kinslaying? The Old Gods do, and the new.

[Then it comes to him in a flash: Viserion. He casts another troubled look at her, but this one is very sympathetic.]

You loved him nonetheless, your brother.

[dorzalta]

[ She doesn't tell him she thinks he and Jorah would be in agreement of that. But it would have been in direct opposition to what she wanted. ]

The Great Stallion is their god. The strongest god in our world, if you ask my people. They value strength, so if Viserys was weak enough to die, then he was not fit to be their khal.

[ It's a more delicate way of saying no, they wouldn't care much of kinslaying in this regard. Why would they care of something Westeros seemed fixated on? ]

He was my brother. He raised me and protected me when the world would rather see us dead. I tried to convince him to learn the culture. To make alliances and friends, but he believed himself above it all.

[northerndragon]

If men had followed him, he might not have died. Or a great many more men might have died when it came to a fight between his followers and the Dothraki.

[What he doesn’t say is that if Viserys had given up the idea of trying to take his throne back, it might have gone better for him. Daenerys has carried that ambition forward, and Jon supports her in it, and... well, he can’t think of what else Viserys might have done with his life, a life where he might as well have been a bastard, for all the good his name did him. There is no Wall in Essos, and even if there were, what could have been done with Daenerys? All Jon can think of is that she would have been given to the Faith.

With no choice in the matter, that’s another form of slavery.]

Pride doesn’t always serve a man. I learned that when I joined the Watch. I was too proud.

It’s better to learn.

[He isn’t sure whether her brother had had the chance to learn, or if it was that he hadn’t wanted to.]

But it’s hard for me to understand why he would have treated you that way, to really understand it, when I would have done anything for my brothers and sisters.

[dorzalta]

He wanted the Dothraki. He wanted to be king.

[ Speaking with the Kingslayer only reminds her of everything she's lost. He constantly speaks of family — but that isn't exclusive to the Lannisters. The Starks are loyal to their own, as well.

She hates both those houses right now, if only because they are still houses. House Targaryen is all but dust, and it would see its true end with her death. It doesn't leave her feeling happy. Not mad, either. Anger was for long ago, when betrayals were fresh.

Now, she's just lonely. ]

There's no use in trying to understand madness, Jon. Ser Barristan said Viserys had echoes of our father to him.

[northerndragon]

No, there isn’t. Not if it’s really madness. I’m not sure that I’ve ever met anyone who was mad. Maester Aemon, he was the furthest thing from it that you could imagine.

But I want to understand you. I want to know you — know the things that have happened to you.

[dorzalta]

[ When she looks at him again, meets his gaze, her eyes are softer. Not lonely. How could she ever feel lonely with him nearby? ]

In the beginning days, I cried each night because of how painful the saddle sores were. I hated horses, and that's all there was to eat.

Who is Maester Aemon?

[northerndragon]

The maester of the Night’s Watch, who chose me as Lord Commander. He died not long after. The oldest man anyone has ever met, and twice as wise as his years.

He was your uncle. No, your great uncle. His brother was Aegon V. They offered Aemon the throne first, but he refused it.

I don’t like to think of you crying every night.

[Those first days in the Watch: hadn’t he cried himself to sleep near every night?]

[dorzalta]

[ That is exactly like a punch to the stomach. Her exhale is sharp as she rereads what he says once. Twice. A third time, and her look turns incredulous. ]

My great uncle was alive while we lived in exile.

[northerndragon]

He was. He hated that his vows meant there was nothing he could do to help you. He told me it was a great test.

He was blind. He was already blind during the Rebellion. If he had tried to desert the Watch, he would have been executed.

[dorzalta]

So he was just as alone.

[ God Jon, could you not be reasonable about this. ]

Did many know of him? Of who he was?

[northerndragon]

[Is he being as reasonable as that? He shoots her a complicated look: sad, apologetic.]

No. They had forgotten him, the way men of the Watch are forgotten, or they thought he was no threat, old and blind as he was. I overheard him say once that he wished he could go to you, to help you and counsel you.

I owe him my life. I’ll never forget it.

[dorzalta]

He wouldn't have survived the Dothraki.

[ That makes her sad to admit it, despite it being the truth. ]

Perhaps it was better you had him. I had ser Barristan and ser Jorah, eventually.

[northerndragon]

I was glad to know him. Privileged to know him. But there were times when he would have chosen to be with his family, if he could have been. From what little I overheard, he didn’t like the idea of you on your own in Essos.

After I was ordered to pretend to desert, I returned to the Watch, and there was no one to tell the officers there that I hadn’t deserted in truth. Lord Commander Mormont had been killed, Qhorin Halfhand had died at my hand on his own orders. Maester Aemon spoke for me, kept them from hanging me. Just before that, he treated my arrow wounds. I would have died of the fever if he hadn’t.

[dorzalta]

I wish I knew my family. He might not've been able to keep Viserys from becoming so hateful, but he's blood. It might've been enough.

[ Her look isn't a very happy one. She'd rather be speaking about all this out loud, and far from the network. ]

But you needed him more than I did, if he managed all that while you were there. We'd all be far worse off if you died while you were at the Wall. Squabbling like children, was it?

[northerndragon]

The other officers were the men I had to hang, in the end.

I wish you had known Aemon too.

[dorzalta]

[ Now she looks doubly unhappy. ]

I wish you'd never gone there. I wish you both were in Essos while I was there.

[northerndragon]

What would I have been doing in Essos?

But I wish that sometimes, too. I wish I could have helped you and protected you. But if I had, I suppose I would only have had to watch you be sold off into marriage.

[What would have happened if he had tried to kill her brother for hurting her, long befor Khal Drogo had gotten to it? What if that child she had carried had been his own, instead of another man’s?

It’s easy to lose themselves in what ifs.]

[dorzalta]

Not then. When I was a girl with ser Willem. Or when I was queen.

[ Mostly because she wouldn't want him seeing her when Viserys was cruel... or in those earlier days with Drogo. It was difficult enough speaking with ser Jorah in those days. ]

Perhaps you came to Essos because Westeros failed to appreciate what you could do.

[northerndragon]

What would have happened if I had presented myself at the court of Daenerys Stormborn, queen of Meereen?

When I left the Watch, Maester Aemon had been gone for a few months. But it wasn’t until my sister turned up at Castle Black seeking aid on the day I meant to ride south that I had any idea of taking Winterfell. I might as well have gone to Essos. I don’t know what would have sent me to you, though, or how you would have taken Ned Stark’s bastard turning up at your court.

[dorzalta]

I think you'd have sent Daario into a jealous fit. I'd have accepted you. I took in ser Barristan and lord Tyrion.

[ Granted, both were regarded with a level of wariness at first... but why would she reject Ned Stark's bastard? How could she hate a boy who had nothing to do with his father's war, when she took in men who chose the wrong side in that very war? ]

Sansa?

[ Of course Sansa. He'd traveled south to answer her summons and left Winterfell in his sister's hands. He hadn't known Arya was alive at that point. ]

[northerndragon]

Sansa. When she escaped from Bolton, she and her lady knight came straight up to Castle Black. It’s two weeks’ journey on the Kingsroad in fair weather. The weather wasn’t fair, and they didn’t use the Kingsroad.

I can’t say the idea of making your Daario jealous troubles me.