agoge | >>FROM:@AEGONNER

She says my brother has been dead for a while. But she also thinks I should never have been Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. She said that Robb made me his heir.

[He huffs out a sigh, then rests his face against the front of her shoulder. What would have happened if he had come down from Castle Black after Robb's death? Likely, he would have been asked to bend the knee to Stannis.

What then? Would things have been different?]

There may be a choice, but I've no desire to be cruel to the girl. And I think we must needs fight the Regency, not each other.

I wonder what might've happened if her beliefs came to pass. You still eventually became King in the North.

[ With a tilt of the head, she presses her cheek against his hair. It's not with mockery that she uses his title, and perhaps, maybe, there's even a note of affection with it. ]

We're in agreement about that. She's a sweet thing and reminds me of Missandei, in some ways. [ After a brief pause: ] I was only reminding you. We have a choice. It may not be the one we prefer, but it's still there. Even now, we choose to fight with COST.

What good would that have done anyone, with the Boltons holding Winterfell for the Lannisters? Might have been that I wouldn't have had the troops. No one else would have let the Free Folk past the wall; no one else would have gone to Hardhome. The Lord Commander that would have been wouldn't have paid enough heed to the White Walkers.

[When he thinks of causality and the sequence of events, what seems like it might have been personally gratifying to him for a few passing days begins to look more as if it would eventually have spelled the doom of everything and everyone he knows and has a care for.

Still, he brightens -- not much, but enough for it to be noticeable -- at what she says next.]

Aye, we have a choice.

[He's chosen this; he's chosen her.]

[Robb is not sure if the mention of his dead shocks him. Every lackwit could figure out that he would not make it out of the Twins alive, yet something turns cold inside of him. He thinks of all the things he wanted, the plans he had made, the promises he made.]

What did lord Bolton got from my death? [Robb asks it with a voice that lacks any sort of emotion.] The North? [Then he snorts.] As if the North would obey a bloody traitor.

[Finally he frowns, gazing at Jon when he speaks about times where things might not have happened.]

What does that have to do with the name of my wife?

[He sees her consider the pipe and elect not to bring it, and that alleviates some of his own tension, though he's still on his guard. As they move towards the library, his strides are long and relatively quick, an attempt to cut through the pervasive presence of the crows.]

There are heroes, my lady, or people who try to be. But many of them may not be knights, and many of them will die forgotten. I met more than one at the Wall, and beyond it.

[He listens, then, to the rest of her answer. Riverrun was once under seige by Jaime Lannister, all right, but not at any time soon after Robb's death; it had been years later, not long before Jon himself had fought Bolton for Winterfell, and Lannister had taken the place. A deep frown settles in as he hears this, and though they're already not far from the library, the next thing she says stops him completely in his tracks, and the face he turns to her is surprised, perturbed. He feels his heart rushing in his chest.]

His heir? Robb left no heir.

Edited 2018-01-22 08:43 (UTC)

No.

[His expression shifts back inward.]

A burnt offering of an unbeliever, or a living girl. The Lord of Light isn't a god much worshipped in my land. I can't say I know whether or not he's real, only that I knew a priestess who insisted upon it, and who did -- wonderful and terrible things, but for the terrible things, I banished her.

Your Apollo sounds better. It's hard to imagine any of the gods I've heard of, named or not, raising the child of another -- or any child. It's hard to imagine them putting such a hand into the affairs of -- mortals.

[He nearly uses the word "men" there, but that wouldn't be strictly accurate, would it?]

He's a fool to make enemies of his people that way. Your old religion was magic? Was anyone hurt by it -- did the gods demand sacrifices?

No, it doesn't. My war is the same: if we lose, everyone in the world dies, and there have been some days when hope was small. What did you fight against? Would it be better not to speak of it on the BCE?

The North. Winterfell. They obeyed him well enough when his bastard was flaying anyone who didn't. Karstark and Umber fought for the Boltons; Glover and Cerwyn and Manderly wouldn't fight at all.

[Now they're both frowning, and Jon searches his mind for a way to explain the answer to Robb's next question.]

I had heard that you'd married a foreign girl named Talisa, and that she'd died, but there's another girl who says she's your wife. Jeyne.

The Queen of France tried to marry Daenerys to me, and her children wanted nothing but piggyback rides and stories. It was hard to tell them stories when I wasn't from their world, but knowing that there were things like constellations and wolves in their world made it easier. As for the three of us... we learned things, but we didn't learn enough fast enough.

[He takes a seat himself.]

I've had worse missions, but not with COST. Not the first time I found myself respecting a man I was supposed to be spying on.

[It's possible that he's a rubbish spy.]

[In different times, Chiron would have agreed with that evaluation of Apollo. But from the words of other Chiron, well, it seems that there have been changes there that Chiron can only label as a deep disappointment.

It's sad when human sacrifice is the more enjoyable thing to contemplate.]

Don't mistake me. It has been done before, but there is always a due paid out to whoever has taken that action. Or done something even more foolish, but those are deeply unpleasant tales.

[No one wants to hear about Lycaon.]

I'm not sure what they gain by being so remote, but I suppose it must work for them. They're still worshiped, correct?

No, it’s fine. It was robots. Automatons.

Like the little stewards here?

[Does he need to worry about a small bot mutiny now?]

It's a good place to start. Given a choice, what sort of weapon do you favor?

Aye, they're still worshipped, though it's said they have little power in places where their worshippers are few. The weirwoods of the Old Gods were chopped down in the south to make way for the Seven after the Andals came to Westeros from Essos, and the Seven don't have much sway in the North. No sway at all north of the Wall, actually -- though you must understand, the Wall doesn't divide the North from the southern kingdoms. It protects the North from the White Walkers that come from the Land of Always Winter.

There was a man who sacrificed to them, too, though I don't think many others would worship them as gods. They fear them as monsters.

I can't imagine it going to your head, [ she says, tone dry. ] We all face unideal circumstances in our rise to power, which allows for hope to grow in those who were oppressed. Were you not struggling with numbers as well, when you fought for Winterfell?

[ She can't say she would prefer it another way. What's occurred in their time has for a reason, and has brought both he and she together. To wish for something different for either of them would wish away the experiences which shaped them into the people they are, today.

The way he seems to perk up just the slightest is felt, more than seen. She loosely toys with the very ends of his hairs, dragging them against her fingertips. ]

Always. Never forget that.

I'd agree about success in battle. It might be out of admiration, or it might be out of a desire to appease a conqueror, so that the conqueror might be merciful. But dragons aren't evil where I come from, nor are they necessarily good, and I only know of two in the world now. @STORMBORN can tell you more of them — she's their mother. The old races were the Children of the Forest and maybe the Giants, in the Dawn Age. The Children were small and had magic, and the Old Gods were their gods, and while the Old Gods didn't have names or faces of their own, they were thought to be in every tree and rock and river. The Children carved faces in the weirwood trees so that their gods could watch them. The First Men were men who came up through the south from another part of the world, and it's said that they fought the Children for territory, until there was something else they had to fight and defeat together. I can't speak to whether or not the Children were real. I've never seen them. But I've found cave drawings they must have made, and I've seen a giant. He spoke the Old Tongue, and he died fighting by my side to help me retake my home. Lately, nearly everything I've always been told was only a legend has turned out to be all too real.

[Chiron nods to show that he is following along. There is migration, which was nothing he experienced in life, but the idea of competeing gods is something familiar in all of this.]

There has been no true conflict between the Old Gods and the Seven though, unless I am mistaken? Or their respective believers? I'm happy to leave the matter of the Wall and the practical purposes it has aside from the question.

[Layering too many things into a discussion of new and unfamiliar gods is hardly a wise decision.]

No. Southrons have never ventured far into the North -- it's not hospitable territory to them, and our bonds of loyalty run deep -- and most Westerosi call the gods "The Old Gods and the New." They coexist, as far as it goes. There's not much to keep anyone from worshipping all of them. There's also not much to keep someone who worships the Seven from thinking that someone who worships the Old Gods is a savage, or to keep a Northerner from thinking that someone who holds to the Seven is a southron fool.

But there was the Faith Militant, long ago. The North is one of seven kingdoms, but it wasn't always; it used to stand alone. About three hundred years ago, a Valyrian man, a dragonlord named Aegon Targaryen, came from his home on Dragonstone and conquered five of them with his dragon Balerion the Black Dread and his sisters' dragons, Meraxes and Vhagar. My ancestor, Torrhen Stark, bent the knee to him, so the North was never attacked, and we were allowed some of our ancestral rights.

The Targaryens adopted the Faith of the Seven, but they practiced... well, they often married brother to sister. The Faith didn't like that. The Faith Militant were those who fought against the crown for a while because of it.

[The fairly low level of conflict is something that Chiron finds impressive. It shows not just in his raised eyebrows, but at the faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. There's a luxury to gods not behaving badly, and he'd like to luxuriate in it for a moment before things take a turn for the serious.]

I presume that the use of the past tense and the crown having dragons meant that their fight was completely and utterly unsuccessful.

[He...is leaving the incest alone, mostly because the gods of his own time have made it so funky that he gets to pass zero moral judgement on the matter.]

[ AUNT FUCKER, BOW CHICKA UNFF UNFF ]

[THIS CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE. HE'S NED STARK'S BASTARD, OKAY? IF HE WERE RHAEGAR TARGARYEN'S SON HE WOULD BE KING OF ALL SEVEN KINGDOMS AND HE IS DEFINITELY NOT THAT, DANY!

but also who cares what the Faith of the Seven thinks. sounds fake. probably Cersei trying to break our alliance again.]

You'd think the dragons would have deterred them, but that isn't why, though Aegon's son Maegor the Cruel did attack them with Balerion more than once -- something about the succession, and about him having more than one wife. They all fought ordinary battles too, with men on the ground.

Maegor's successor Jaehaerys made peace with the Faith Militant by pardoning the ones who would lay down their swords. The Faith only had to acknowledge the Targaryen marriages, they didn't have to approve of them.

[He shakes his head, blinks, and half-chuckles.]

My old Maester would be pleased that I can remember all that. I had other heroes as a boy, not Maegor or Jaehaerys.

Bigger. Smarter. With guns.

Your people armed them as soldiers — why? So there would be fewer human casualties? How were they able to rebel? They're not the same as slaves. They don't even seem to be the same as beasts.

>>FROM:@AEGONNER

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

in which Aegon Targaryen talks about Aegon Targaryen without knowing that he too is Aegon Targaryen.

This is definitely the New and Improved version of Who's on First

not here not ever here

[EVEN MORE ABSENT]

Aegon Toast

no subject

no subject