A GAME OF THORNES
A written account of the misadventures of House Redthorne​

Hey folks, I've decided to do some write ups of the ASoIaF RPG I'm running with some of the trolls from DLP. I'm hoping the players, particularly Lamora, will chime in from time to time with their own amusing anecdotes from the game, to counterpoint my more factual reporting. I'll be including things like player handouts, maps, etc to supplement the story and hopefully bring it a little to life.

For those who aren't aware Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying (SIFRP) is a game system that pits the characters as the scion and retainers of a minor noble house during the "lull" between the War of the Usurper and the events of the books. Our (dubiously named) heroes represent the minor Dornish House Redthorne and will attempt to negotiate a number of tricky battlefields (real and metaphorical) with the hopeful aim of steering their house to prominence.

​

Introduction​

The year is 289AC and King Balon Greyjoy of the Iron Islands has thrown up his banners in rebellion against the Iron Throne. Already he has seen success, launching a daring raid on Lannisport and sinking much of the Lannister fleet at anchor. In response, King Robert Baratheon, aided by his old friend Lord Paramount Eddard Stark, musters the houses of the west to retaliate.

But that is a long, long way north of Dorne. Life in the south continues much as it always has. The hardy Dornish people, used to long years of isolation and still licking their wounds from the War of the Usurper, want little to do with the affairs, and particularly the wars, of the northern kingdoms. Instead, recent years have seen an increase in trade with the Free Cities and, as a result, Dorne has begun to prosper and flourish.

But this is not to say that Dorne is without strife. The Game of Thrones is endless and the players and their pieces present at every level of society. The eternal struggle making battlefields of grand castle keeps, prestigious noble courts and lowly taverns and brothels alike.

Dramatis Personæ​

Edwin Redthorne - Aekiel​

Edwin was born as the second child of Corwyn Redthorne, the Lord of a minor noble house in Dorne. An educated man and a skilled negotiator, Edwin has become the favoured tool in his father's arsenal when it comes to political negotiation. Despite a minor scandal involving a representative of the Iron Bank, Edwin's skill and perseverance has always repaid his father's trust.

Calavan Redthorne - Martin​

Calavan was born as the third child of House Redthorne and the second son, third in line to inherit. Where Edwin's talents lie in persuasion, Calavan is the family warrior, displaying prodigious skill with a spear. Despite his hot-headedness and a slight temper, Calavan has always kept a good relationship with his family. He does his duty and as his father tells him most of the time and willing to protect his family at any cost.

Asym Redthorne - Basilisk ​

Asym is the fourth born Redthorne child. As soon as he could, he picked up the spear and never let go. Easily one of the most talented of his age, some would deem his training to be borderline excessive. He is currently serving as squire for his brother, Calavan, in hope of becoming a knight himself. As he grew older, Asym developed an unusual interest in the Faith. While his household has always respected the religion and its institutions, none have ever taken the time to explore its depths.

Korzelitsa 'Elisa' Cruxhind - Lamora​

Elisa's father was a sworn knight of House Redthorne. As a raised bastard of House Velaryon, he held a great obsession with the mystery behind the Doom of Valyria. He passed his insatiable desire to understand down to his daughter, along with a collection of rare books on the subject. Her father disappeared during a voyage to Valyria, of which Elisa was the only known survivor, though she has no recollection of the events that transpired. In honour of her father's service to the house, Lord Redthorne welcomed her back to The Thorne.

Ser Artos of House Dayne - Cteatus​

Born a second son of a fourth daughter, Artos was born with pale silver hair and eyes on the border of blue and purple. He was never destined to rise high in House Dayne. An event in his teens led him to travel Dorne for a spell, spending time with the orphans of the Greenblood and travelling with a bard. One day, travelling alone, Heavily outnumbered, but unwilling to tolerate the criminals, he threw himself at the group. He slew a number of them, but outnumbered, the outlook was bleak for Artos. Until Lord Redthorne himself rode out and shattered the bandit group. As gratitude for saving his life, Artos pledged his life, loyalty, and his sword to House Redthorne. Which he hopes to serve with honor.

 

Oh God please no.

 

The Darkmare Affair
Session 1​

In the waning of the year's third moon, Lord Corwyn Redthorne received a missive from his old friend, Lord Emmory Allyrion, notifying him of his failing health and requesting aid with an important task. However, intent on attending his friend's side Lord Redthorne instead dispatched the scions and retainers of House Redthorne, in the hope that they would be able to resolve the issue at hand.

The letter received by the Lord speaks of Houses Darkmare and Flynne and an attempt to broker a resolution to their long and bloody dispute. Already the wheels are in motion, with Arlen Darkmare due to be wed to Manura Flynne and the matter at its conclusion. However Lord Emmory Allyrion fears that this is a match not wished by either party and has sent orders that on no account should the wedding be delayed. Leaving orders that, if necessary, the pair should be forcibly positioned between the altars of the Father and the Mother and coerced to give their vows.

Location of The Thorn.​

A week after setting out from The Thorn, the members of House Redthorne rode their steeds to the top of a rise, upon which they met Ser Bennet Alvey, a sworn knight of the House Flynne. He informed them that the members of House Flynne were also travelling along this same road, and that they had halted their journey in a river valley a little further along the road.

When the Redthorne retinue arrived in the camp, they were introduced to Lady Allanah Flynne and her three children, Manura, the bride to be and her twin brothers, Tarqynn and Trystan. A few minutes after their arrival, the caravan was attacked by a group of bandits. Clad in rags and armed with little more than pitchforks they proved little resistance for the combined might of the Redthorne brothers, Elisa's bow or Artos' greatsword.

As such, the fight was fast and brutal, beginning with Calavan mopping up a couple of bandits by himself, while Artos bisected another. Even Asym, despite being twelve years old, managed to put paid to one of the brigands. In an exciting climax, Edwin and Elisa collaborated to stop the bandits riding off with the Flynne wagons.

Aftermath of the battle.​

Having protected the Flynnes and saved the caravan, Artos discovered a note on the body of a slain bandit, identifying Lord Darkmare as the orchestrator of the attack. However, they immediately dismissed it as a poor forgery and an attempt to frame House Darkmare for this attack. Also in the aftermath of the fight, Elisa discovered the body of Septon Roland, the personal Septon of the Flynne's and the only person whom Manura would permit to be married by. Revealing this to Allanah Flynne also revealed the fact that the dowry, which had been entrusted to the Septon, was missing.

Unable to reveal any more leads, or to beat the information out of the few bandits still living, the combined caravan of Redthorne and Flynne completed their journey to Keep Darkmare, the ancestral home of the Darkmare Keep, seated on a hill overlooking the village of Rhoynesfor. Also located nearby were the Darkmare stables, which had a well-founded reputation for breeding some of the finest sandsteeds in Dorne.

Upon their arrival, they met Lord Randal Darkmare and his two children, Arlen and Carolyn. They also learned that a banquet had been arranged for the first night of the festivities and the keep was crammed with the rich and influential from all across the lands of House Darkmare. However, relations were already strained between the Darkmares and the Flynnes, the latter of which had decided that the attack was surely a Darkmare plot.

In the entrance hall of Darkmare Keep, the group encountered Khaliq, the hulking Ghiscarian bodyguard employed by Lord Darkmare. Additionally Artos Dayne made the mistake of showing an interest in a Braavosi merchant by the name of Chiovio Pala and was dragged into a long conversation regarding his current state of affairs.

Descending from their rooms, having washed away the dirt of their long journey, the Redthornes encountered Trystan and Tarqynn Flynne. Both men had left impressions on the group already, Trystan as a rude, haughty fop and Tarqynn as a more sober, bookish young man. Trystan brandished a bottle of wine that he had brought all the way from the Flynne estate, informing the group that he didn't dare drink any of the 'slop' that he was sure to be served in this castle.

At the head table of the dining room, the Redthornes found themselves seated amid the Flynnes, side from Asym, who was seated beside Carolyn and who invited him to ride one of their sand steeds the following morning. Artos and Calavan were introduced to Salena, the beautiful and elegant paramour of Tarqynn Flynne. Also present at the table were Tyene and Sarella Sand, elevated to this position by Randal Darkmare out of respect for their father.

During the meal, Trystan became increasingly inebriated and rude regarding the Darkmares, the state of their castle and the quality of the food. This ultimately led to a confrontation between he and Calavan. In the midst of this confrontation, he rose from his seat, began choking and promptly collapsed, dead from poisoning.

His body was rushed from the hall and up to the Maester's chambers. The Maester, old and incompetent, announced that he would have to spend several hours examining the body before he could confirm the source of the poison. Lady Alannah Flynne, overcome with grief, was escorted back to her rooms by Artos, while the other members of the party returned to the hall to question Lord Darkmare.

In the course of their investigations, the group discovered that twenty years earlier the Darkmares and Flynnes had been very close, and that their feud had began when Randal Darkmare (then heir of Darkmare) and Allanah Flynne (then second child) had been due to marry. On the eve of their wedding, the brother of Allanah had been poisoned in similar circumstances to the death of Trystan. At the time, this had been seen as a poorly planned attempt by the Darkmares to take control of House Flynne.

Finding themselves alone, Lady Alannah pleaded with Artos to champion her cause in an attempt to discover the culprit responsible for her son's murder. A man of chivalry and valor, Artos accepted and gave his word to bring her justice.

Following this, the group decided to investigate and question various members of the household. During this time, three key events occurred:

1. The missing dowry was discovered amongst the personal effects of Trystan Flynne. The recovered item was then tossed down the corridor by one of the group, where it landed at the feet of the Flynne guards.
2. The group essentially questioned the honour of Ser Bennet Alvey by accusing an annointed Knight of the Seven of being a traitor and a poisoner. Luckily, this was not to his face, so satisfaction was not demanded.
3. Artos Dayne managed to upset Alannah Flynne by telling the grieving mother that her mortal enemies had lost more from the events of the night than she had.

The session ended on a positive note (pardon the pun) when one of the party discovered the following scrap of paper, written in High Valyerian, laying in the middle of one of the castle corridors.

The note in question.​

I think I got all the pertinent information here. But if anyone from the session thinks I've missed something important, please speak up. I'm pretty sure Lamora intends to provide his own writeup, which is no doubt going to be way better than mine.

 

And nothing else ever happened, everyone went home, and they all got puppies.

...Right?

 

Yes. YES. EVERYONE MUST KNOW OUR SHAME.

Without further adieu, I begin the recap of the utter tragedy of our first adventure - OUR BIG FAT DORNISH WEDDING, ELECTRIC RHOYNE BOOGALOO.

The opening hook was a letter from our liege lord, Lord Allyrion.



Apparently, House Not-Capulet (Flynne) and Not-Montague (Darkmare), after a twenty year fued, had finally decided to make up and arrange a marriage like big-boy Houses and stop tearing up shit in their liege-lord's backyard. In the hopes of spectators adding some sort of stable element, he enlisted us to ensure it went off without a hitch.

Personally, I mark that as sure evidence of Allyrion's - if not incompetence - then utter genre obliviousness, if he actually thought bringing in PCs would introduce less chaos to the situation.

Anyway, we set out on the road armed to the gills like good little murderhobos, and almost immediately run into the Flynnes. There's Bammin Slammin Flynne Sr. (Alanna, the lady of the house), Bammin Slammin Jr. (Menura, the daughter and bride to be), Beavis and Butthead^2 (The sons, Tarquin and his brother Tristain, the crowned and anointed douche-king of the desert), and their knight, Ser Bennet Alveys, who, for the sake of whim and definitely not foreshadowing, we'll dub the Honorable Fucklord McScrew-This-Guy.

Anyway, we meet big and little Bammin Slammin, who as their name suggests, could halt traffic at a gay pride parade. My character is female and even I'm considering curating the inside of their tanline portrait.

(on a side note, some rando kid hit Basilisk with like 10d6 worth of water bucket, with like 7 crits. As a reference, a rock thrown with that force at a mammoth would kill the mammoth, and then force the giant riding it to make a Will check not to shit his loincloth and run. I've decided that kid is the chosen one and will probably kill the Great Other with a bucket of dragonglass dust. Vote Bucketboy 2016.)

Anyway, a bunch of red shirt bandits attack at this point. We murdered them so hard that halfway across Westeros, Gregor Clegane probably got a semi.

But in the confusion, some septon got murdered who was totally carrying the dowry and Bammin Slammin Jr's implicit trust. (Well, Fuck Count: 1)

On the plus side, we found this stupid bullshit.



I mean jeez, we're not the brightest crayons in the box, NMB, but it was hella obvious it couldn't be from Lord Darkmare. For one, I'm pretty sure the bandits couldn't read. Later, it would become obvious that his approximation of our intelligence couldn't be more right.

Anywho, I, being the laser-focused go-getter I am, immediately asked BS Jr. if she was still willing to go through with the wedding despite her prized papal pal being out of the picture. Apparently, according to SOME people (specifically and immediately Manura, in a very angry tone), asking this before the septon's body was even cold could be considered insensitive.

Highborn wankers. See if I saved their lives again. Especially Tristain. If general jerkassery could be called 'being a card', then Tristain was a whole fucking deck. Immediately after pulling his meat off the coals he went back to calling us peasant lords and storming off like a much less amusing Jersey Shore character (Dornish Shore?).

Fuck that guy, so glad he died later.

Anyway, we get to Rhoynfor, the town of the Darkmares. Immediately we're confronted with a ginormous Ghiscari bodyguard. His name was Calic, but there is no one alive that can convince me that doesn't translate to Swolesaurus Flex. Any, Flex and Carolyn Darkmare, who was kind of a horse lesbian, took our shit and we headed inside.

We immediately met a guy who was worse than Hitler. I mean, we didn't know it at the time. He was just a Braavosi named Chiovio Pala, a friend of the Darkmares, who did something or other with horses. But we'll be calling him Worse-Than-Hitler from now on. It can be his Native American name.

He had his cameo and wandered off. There was a feast and I visited the Darkmare maester to poke around. Tyene and Sarella Sand were there for some reason. Tarquin introduced his mistress, Faceless Manerina - I mean, Salena (bitch).

Then Tristain totally got poisoned and died in front of both families. It was doubly awkward when one considered that the feud had started from an exactly identical poisoning of another Flynne, Alanna's brother. So the wedding was called off to deal with it.

We decided to investigate! Which turned out to be the worst idea we actually ever had!

To clarify, only me and Aekiel were even remotely specced for non-combat roles. The rest of our party was specced for paladin-ing and murderhobo-ry, not Scooby Doo. And it showed. Boy did it show.

We ran around offending everyone with our shit Persuasion and Awareness roles for about two hours. That's the best way I can describe the next three hours.

What we learned was that Ser Alveys was definitely acting sketchy, no one we knew had a reason to stop the wedding, and only a few people had actually been around for both the first poisoning and this one. Feeling defeated, we started trudging back to our rooms, when we found-

-THIS!



A mysterious note written in moon language (literally, it's rellanic - LOTR elven script)! This note was also colloquially known as T.N.T.P.G.L.C.C. - The Note That Probably Gave Lamora Colon Cancer.

See, I had a talent called Polyglot, which combined with my high Cunning score and specialty in Decipher meant I could roll to translate the foreign language (which was High Valyrian in-universe, which I knew how to read besides), AND decode the cipher.

And I rolled hard. Adele wrote a song about how I rolled. Like, I crawled so far up inside this note's business that it could probably taste what shampoo I used at the back of its throat. In game, it only took me half an hour to translate and decode.

But the problem was that the first session ended here. And NMB left us hanging all week on what it actually said, until the next session.

Fuck you still for that, NMB. Then, now and forever.

The second session may be titled A Game of Thornes: The NPCs Strike Back. You know, like the Star Wars film. Because much like ESB, it ended with our dreams crushed, getting betrayed and everything fucking ruined.

Anyway, it said this.



Promising, right!?

Fucking wrong! We had no idea what to do with this bullshit. We hypothesized Alveys meeting with some mysterious benefactor for a long time, and eventually ended up finding a bloody dagger in his saddlebag after performing a night raid on the stables, but lost the trail again.

The Sands, in a rare mark of likely DM-inspired mercy, suggested mysteriously we survey the town inn that night. An excellent opportunity, as it turned out!

That we absolutely ruined, of course. Like everything.

During the day, we chased the meaning of different colored waxes, and I rooted . The bottle that had poisoned Tristain had been a favorite vintage of his, that we'd found a crate of in his room, but the wax on the seals in the room had been different than the one on his bottle that poisoned him.

Looking back, I'm not sure what would be worse - the thought that it was a complete red herring, or that it was just another legitimate lead we cocked up.

My oncoming cancer becoming more and more likely, I searched the maester's library, finding a alphabet table of High Valyrian, suggesting a Darkmare had been one to write the note, throwing the meaning of T.N.T.P.G.L.C.C. back into mystery.

Meanwhile I labored, Martin and Basilisk were off doing - fuck it, I can't be bothered to make a new acronym. Let's just say that if that fucking note didn't give me cancer, what they did definitely did.

See, in a stroke of clownshittery that no one caught, the two characters possibly least suited to subtlety or stealth were sent to survey our most promising lead - the town inn.

Following a mysterious hooded figure, they discovered Salena making a mysterious rendezvous with a fat, balding man that none of them could recognize in-character.

They discovered this by failing several stealth rolls outside the room the connivers sequestered themselves, before Martin solved the problem by breaking down the door by dwarf-tossing Asym through it.

laughingtumors.jpg

The entire inn, headed by the captain and lieutenant of the guard, showed up and kicked them out. Gathering up my evidence, I quickly met with the Lord Darkmare - who we'd determined least likely to be guilty, having the least possible motive to ruin the wedding - and laid what evidence we had on the table. We found out the note was simply a love note between Manura and the groom, and might have actually won some points back with at least someone in the castle.

Then, the party convened together, and resolved that the town inn lead wasn't gone, as we could still follow Salena out and see where she was headed. We also identified the fat, balding man - it was our old friend, Chiovio Vala. You know, Braavosi, liked horses, killed six million Jews in the Holocaust?

So we headed down to the inn. This may be known as the Beginning of the End.

It was deceptive how well things were initially going. We left Basilisk and Martin outside due to the ruckus before. A figure from Cteatus' backstory showed up, a very friendly bard and spy, turned out to be the musician. He seemed poised to help us, even!

There was one problem. We'd left Basilisk and Martin outside. Alone. Unsupervised.

The captain and lieutenant from before showed up, inevitably, drunk and boasting of chasing off the two ruffians who'd broken down the door.

Martin's character, understanding that we were treading on already cracking ice with almost every person in the town, decided to avenge his slighted honor by challenging the captain and lieutenant, which led to the captain dying from an acute case of Spearhead-Dick-Impalement.

The captain later turned out to be a minor noble himself, which was even more awesome, of course. But not as awesome as Martin's next decision, which was to wake the Lord Darkmare up in the middle of the night and tell him he'd murdered his drunk guard captain, offering to fight the duel he had against Ser Alveys the next morning as reparations.

I stress now that everything done so far was done in character, and that none of our actions went far from how things would have gone down in the Westerosi world. That said, in-character, most of the party including myself were hella pissed at Martin's.

We rallied on the only lead we had - Chiovio Vala. Riding hard through the night to the estate he'd retreated to, we cornered him in his study and forced him to turn out his pockets, revealing THIS!



chemotherapy.exe

It all made sense! We'd been getting duped by a fucking Faceless Man, who it immediately became apparent was probably Salena. Vala seemed completely shocked as far as our Awareness rolls could tell, and instantly agreed to plead our case and ride back with us.

We should have known. We found Lord Darkmare, having apparently woken up on the pissed-off side of the bed, pointing out that we'd completely bungled everything we'd tried and demanding we vacate his lands at once. Claims of a Faceless Man were immediately dismissed as ridiculous.

We pushed Vala forward to corrobate our story-

-where he immediately fingered us for invading his estate, waking him up in the middle of the night and threatening him to come here, thus advancing my cancer instantly to stage four - terminal goatse. We were summarily kicked out.

And that is how our story ends. We got 25 xp, lost 2 Influence points for our entire house, and the Sand sisters made fun of how shit we were at the game of thrones on the way out.

We all roleplayed pretty well, though, I have to say. And everyone gave props to NMB for bringing the hammer down on the party when it was time for it to fall.

Looking forward to next session, where we hunt slave traders in Starfall and I pump every last point I have into improving my shit Intrigue skills. I'm sure I won't be the only one.

 

I was on the verge of posting my account of session 2... but literally nothing is going to top that.

 

Adding a few more details to that awesome post, our resident 12 year old managed to come out of this debacle relatively unscathed. He rode horses with Carolyn Darkmare, chatted up Sarella Sand and bisected a bandit with a frankly awesome roll. That last one kinda set the tone for the rest of the game, where Asym was the only character actually capable of doing anything (stealth excluded).

Where the rest of us were basically blind to everything going on around us, Asym was like a one boy rolling machine; he managed to find the dowry while searching Tristain's room, somewhat keep up with a professional horse breeder in an equestrian competition and notice That Faceless Douche playing with his medallion in his pocket.

Edwin, meanwhile, managed to avoid all the parts where being able to talk to people would be useful until the very end... when he flubbed pretty much every roll. Way to go Edwin. Good job.

I'm definitely looking forward to fighting some slavers. If we even find a hint of a murder mystery our party is just walking the fuck away. No mystery machine for us; we're the people that bug out the moment that shit happens. So some straight forward murderhoboing is looking quite fun.

You just know it's not going to be that simple.

---------- Post automerged at 01:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:03 AM ----------

Dude, remember what happened to the Starks after they got their pups? You really want to do that to us?

 

Full write up incoming, but highlights of today's session included the party getting an earful from their father after the events of the previous adventure (boo!), managing not to insult anyone for an entire session (woo!) and Asym getting beaten up by a little girl (wtf?!).

 

Little girl...she's one year older than me!

 

And now the news...

Seven foot knight, Artos Dayne, nearly kills a slave in Dawnport by mistaking him for a trampoline. He then followed up this heinous act by throwing a large piece of metal into a little girl's face.

The town left stunned as a man high on basilisk blood slays upstanding member of Dawnport society in his own home. Eye-witnesses report that the intruder stabbed a spear through his face and that a small, wounded girl was extricated from the premises.

Entire city watch and numerous civilians brutally murdered by criminal gang. Experts say the coup was aided and sanctioned by a shadowy group from southern Dorne.

And finally, daughter of reputed merchant family reappears in polite society after a prolonged incarceration in a hole. We'll be hosting her on the programme later when she recounts her terrible ordeal.