agoge | @BURGERKING

@BURGERKING— @ALL

I understand some of you are reluctant to change your names or use a different moniker when we make the drop in 1916's Gallipoli. If you're not from a standardized Earth, I suggest you reconsider. If you need assistance, I'll assign you one myself. You don't have to consider them names but codenames to be discarded after we return to BASE. An example of this: Rider is now Kale. I told him I would notify you all of this alteration. Think wisely about the impact small things could have on a timeline. They add up and any amount of skepticism brought about by our foolishness is too much. Thanks.

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A little while after my father was murdered by his enemies, the castle was taken and most of the servants were killed. The new lord was a cruel man and his son was a cruel man too. My sister and I took it back, but not until several years had passed. Even then, it was a narrow thing.

It sounds like a tiresome tug of war. I hope your revenge matched and exceeded the cruel lord's and his cruel son's.

(guess who likes a good revenge story!!!)

They married my sister to the cruel son. He killed our youngest brother at my feet when I thought I was rescuing him, the day of the battle, but still... the revenge was hers to take. He'd starved his hounds. He'd told me that he would make me watch them eat my brother, make me watch his soldiers taking turns with my sister, that he would scoop out my eyes after, and that he would then feed me to his dogs. In the end, his lady wife loosed them upon him. A hard end, but better than he deserved.

She sounds resilient, your sister. I'm sorry about your brother. Try as we may to protect the ones closest to us, all it takes to lose them is one single moment.

That's one way to describe her — no one should have to go through what our family's enemies put her through. She's become capable enough now to rule in my stead while I'm away. Our brother was just twelve or so. We did it to try to save him. But even if we failed him, and I often think I did, that I allowed the cruel son to play a game with me with my brother as the stakes, we can try to protect all the people of the North — from cruel rulers and from winter famine and from the war to come.

You offer your story so freely to me. I don't know if I've warranted that, but it gives me more insight to the experiences my comrades have lived through. We won't let our enemies play games.

I offer it freely because we must all be brothers here.

[And because it isn't a series of deeds that brings shame to him or to his family or to anyone but the Boltons, and because it has nothing to do with his death in the cold snow at Castle Black, or the death of a dragon in an icy lake.]

You have stories of your own?

I have stories...but I'm hesitant to tell them. I don't know what you'd want to hear.

A time when things turned out better than you expected they might, or a time when you fought for something that mattered to you. Or a story of your family, if there is one — not everyone is so lucky.

(.........................,)

I made my best zhajiangmian a year and a half ago. It's noodles in a soybean paste. I was missing an ingredient and I substituted another and it turned out better than I, a skeptic, thought. It was a tolerable moment I remember experiencing.

[...]

Are you a cook by trade?

No, I am a mercenary. Specializing in assassination, but I do what I'm told to do for a price.

[Well, if you'd been a cook, Hei, he'd wonder why the food here is still so terrible, and why COST hasn't set you to work making better things.]

A sellsword. There was a time when I thought of becoming one myself. Not many paths were open to me when I was a boy.

[He doesn't mention now that he'd avoided that path, because there was far less honor in it than in joining the Watch -- or so he'd thought at the time.]

Because you're a bastard? It seems farfetched now, as I come from a time far flung from yours. We're sellswords now, if you consider the facts. So I guess your old plans have come true.

People in my country believe that bastards are born of lies and weakness. We can't inherit, and we're not meant to be brought up with a lord's trueborn children. We're meant to be reared as servants or, at best, educated somewhere away from the family. My father thought differently on that last score, though his lady wife would probably rather he hadn't. If they think otherwise in your time, were your people once more like mine in this?

[Hei can't see Jon's small snort of laughter at the second part.]

So we are, though it may be that some of us think we're part of a noble cause. That wouldn't matter much to most sellswords I've ever heard of.

I imagine in the past they were. Blood isn't so weighty a thing, now. It's the connections you make. If you were on Earth in my time and you were a wealthy man with a strong sense of purpose, no one would care about your heritage. You'd be socially acceptable and rather well-off in every way. My world opens its doors to people like that, no matter who your parents are. As for "noble causes", I don't consider fighting a war that's already been fought a noble cause. I accepted COST's invitation because it's just another job. I wonder why you joined up?

I suppose there's wealth now, but when I was younger, I had nothing but what I was given, and I was given more than most others like me. In some ways that's still the case. I never thought to be a king, but it was asked of me. Your world still sounds better for bastards.

[Yet if he hadn't been a bastard, if he hadn't felt that all routes were closed to him except for the Watch, what would have become of his world? Would anyone who took the threat of the White Walkers seriously have survived the Great Ranging?]

It's not just another job to me, but that doesn't mean I'd name it a noble cause myself — it might be to some, and might not be to others, and neither of those matters much to whether or not something must be done. I've been fighting so long to protect all the people of my world, to give them a chance to live. There's no point in winning that chance for them and then losing it to a new enemy.

So you're here to stop all future conflict as well, before heading back to deal with current events? I'd say just about anyone would consider that a noble cause. You'll be in good company, with the righteous COST members aboard this ship.

No. I'm told that's what the Regency is trying to do. I don't think it's possible or right. There will always be reasons for men to fight, some of them better than others. The threat to my world is an army of dead men, controlled by a general who makes no treaties. If they kill you, they raise you as one of their own, and they'll keep doing it until they've taken every living creature. You sound like you don't approve of righteousness.

Dead men. I see. That sounds like the worst way to handle army conscription. Our situation seems far better in comparison. I hate the pious. Righteousness is far different, tolerable in small doses.

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@BURGERKING— @ALL

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cw: Game of Thrones (rape, dogs, eyeballs, Ramsay Bolton, etc)

GET AT ME CWs

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