#treachery most foul rp

[lastxdragon]

RP: Treachery Most Foul

There would always be those who questioned. In absolute truth, Jaime did not care. He had never cared what others thought of him. If he had, then he would have looked Ned Stark in the eyes and told him the truth to why he’d killed the Mad King, instead, he had kept his lips sealed and allowed the rest of the world to title him the Kingslayer.

The only person he had ever cared about when it came to their opinion had been his sister, and she had turned against him in the end for the Iron Throne, for Lancel Lannister and Osmund Kettleblack. Disgusting. The mere thought made a fire burn in the pits of his belly even now, years after, and even after the death of his twin. But now, he was beginning to realise, that there were only few people who he cared what they thought of him, and one of those was the woman that stood before him. The others, his little brother, and Brienne of Tarth, but Brienne had always stayed loyal to the Starks, and now? They may very well be pitted against one another if worse came to worst.

When Daenerys’ hand went to the collar of his tunic, he felt his breath hitch, caught in his throat for a moment. How long had it been since he’d had a woman’s hands upon him? Too long, he thought, and yet, it was so out of line to think anything but innocence from it. But Dany was not a girl, she was a woman, she was a hardened, battle-worn woman now, who had watched people lie and betray her just like everyone else who was in power. Gods, who would want for such a thing?

Jaime flinched harder than he wanted to when the knock was heard, and he took a step back, a hand at his sword in fear. How silly, no one that was going to murder the Queen would give a polite knock on the door. He settled when it was just the serving girl, the tension in his arms loosening. All he did was nod in confirmation when Missandei left to gather the blankets.

“I doubt I will do much sleeping,” he replied once they were back in the privy of one another. “But to answer your question, I do not fear what simple minds have to think of me.” He didn’t fear much at all, if he were honest, just the loss of Tyrion, and losing his honour again.

“The Kingdom’s have been at war for a long time, too long if you ask me. I have done many regrettable things, but some of them I would do again if it meant saving the people I care about. That includes you, Your Grace.” He had no problem admitting that, he was part of her guard now. It was his duty.

“I didn’t come here to serve in your guard like my Lord Father would have.” Simply because she was winning the war. “We have all lost because of this war. I do not regret slaying your father, despite how it may sound. He wished to kill the common folk of King’s Landing, and anyone else in his path. But I knew your brother. He was a good man, and you have earned your crown, and the respect of your men.” Jaime included. “I know I serve in good faith.”

PRIVATE ROLEPLAY: DO NOT REBLOG IF YOU ARE NOT MY PARTNER.

@call-2-arms​ ╣❦╠ ƈօռզʊɛʀɨռɢ ֆȶօʀʍ ❧

Dany noted the faint hitch when she touched his collar. It was a surprise, though not an unpleasant one. Of course, she was aware that Ser Jaime was still a handsome man despite his age. The difference in their ages meant nothing to Dany, who had been married to Drogo with a much larger difference so long ago. She feigned not to see his flinch as Missandei brought the extra bedding into the room and tended the fires. The door closed again a few minutes later and Ser Jaime spoke first. She sighed. “One of the things I appreciate the most about you is your honesty, Ser Jaime. It’s a rare quality.”

Her smile softened at his declaration. Jhogo, Aggo and Rahkaro had been loyal to her due to Drogo. Ser Jorah for his own desires. There was an irony that the one man who was honorably loyal to her was a Lannister. “This is not my first war, though I pray it shall be my last. The ones who suffer the most are the ones who want it the least,” Daenerys mused, pausing to take a sip of wine. “When this charade is over, I will no longer remain here while my people fight my battles.” She lifted a hand, anticipating a protest. “The quicker this war is over, the fewer who will suffer of it.”

“Come. I do not think I’ll have much use of sleep either, but we should try,” Dany chuckled, taking her glass as she crossed into her spacious bed chamber. The larger settee was midway across the floor between the door and the bed itself and she could see that it was prepared. Tonight Dany only removed her tunic dress and boots, keeping on her undertunic and pants. Slipping under the thick fur quilt, she began unbraiding her hair. “You are not the first to compare me to my brother. I know they called him the last dragon, but they were wrong. I am. I am the last.”

If she meant dragon or Targaryen, Daenerys did not elaborate. There was a small pause before she spoke again, her tone softer. “I have seen him, you know. Rhaegar. From a young age, I dreamed of him. I saw and heard him playing his silver harp. I even saw my nephew, Aegon, once. Would it surprise you to know that my dreams come true? At least, the ones of the present. The first time I dreamed, I told Viserys. He beat me and said I was lying so I never spoke of it again. Until now. In one dream, Rhaegar was atop a stallion on the Trident, ribbons flowing from his helm, fighting beings of ice, but when I lifted his visor, it was my face within.”

#lastxdragon #daenerys stormborn #call-2-arms​ #ser jaime lannister #treachery most foul rp #got au #private roleplay

[anderwhohn]

Anonymous asked: What’s your canon Thedas like?

Ah, right, that’s... buried somewhere in the original blog that didn’t even keep the url when I split the multimuse into two blogs, I think? So, yeah, I’ll answer this again here, since it’s a pretty common thing, and I don’t think I ever gave any actual worldstate information the last time I answered it.

First off: I don’t actually have a ‘canon’ worldstate. I enjoy the variety too much to lock in any one hero into the roles. Now, what I do have is my primary fanfic worldstate, which started out a “fuck this whole ‘if Duncan wasn’t there, the other origins die’” thing and ended up being a chaotic delight of headcanons and such, so... I’ll try to explain the basics, but it’s far more complex than I’m going going to feel up to going into in a single post right now (but absolutely feel free to ask for more details! I love talking about Dragon Age - I just don’t tend to randomly posts things unprompted). 

Dragon Age: Origins

Hero of Ferelden / Warden-Commander: Selena Amell - focused primarily on primal and spirit magics; learned some blood magic during course of the Blight after becoming a Warden (Power of Blood); Arcane Warrior and Battlemage as specializations; didn’t take shit from anyone, and was dragging Ferelden to victory kicking and screaming if she bloody well had to; often came off as cold to most people, but was privately warm with those close to her (namely her companions during the Blight, and her Wardens in Amaranthine).

Queen of Ferelden: Aileas Coulsand - having survived the attack on Highever Castle, barely escaping with Ser Gilmore with their lives, the second heir to the Cousland name vowed vengeance against Howe’s treachery; stumbled across the Warden’s party on the road and volunteered to aid them; specialized in archery, but could also handle a pair of daggers, or a sword and dagger if necessary; far more cunning and resourceful than most people ever gave her credit for (ie she’s a rogue); became closest to Alistair, Leliana, and Zevran during the course of the Blight; when the Warden made Alistair the King of Ferelden, Aileas offered to be his queen, mostly as a political arrangement, though unconfirmed rumours have suggested there might be something more between them (ie I’m a sucker for a bit of politicial machination where this arrangement is involved, and it gets complex behind the scenes).

Dark Wolf of Denerim: Kiran Brosca - without Duncan’s intervention, Kiran was exiled into the Deep Roads (as per her rp backstory), and eventually found her own way to the surface. From there, she eventually made her way to Denerim, where she took up Slim Couldry’s leads on a crime wave through the city.

Ruler of Orzammar: Orabela Aeducan - exiled into the Deep Roads, Orabela was certain she was going to die there, either at the hands of the darkspawn or by joining the Legion of the Dead, but instead was found by the Warden during their quest for the Anvil; joining them for their quest, she learned that the Warden had found evidence of Bhelen’s dealings with the Carta to have Trian murdered; returned to Orzammar with the Warden’s party, keeping a hood firmly in place and wearing the proving armour of a Silent Sister; when the Warden announced who the next King of Orzammar would be, it was Orabela who was put on the throne; her first action as king was to have Bhelen arrested to be put on trial for the murder of their brother, with pending charges for suspected foul play involving the death of their father as well.

Ashina Tabris - after being released from the dungeons by the Wardens, Ashina learned of just how many elves were missing from the Alienage; once the Blight was over, she left Denerim for Tevinter to personally bring each and every one of them back; while not everyone survived in Tevinter, she did end up returning with many of her friends and neighbours, as well as any other elves and even other slaves that she could free in the process, though the experience severely changed her by the time she returned to the Alienage.

Satu Surana - a survivor of Kinloch Hold during the Blight, who escaped the tower along with Jowan though they didn’t stay together once they’d escaped; proficient in ice and entropy spells, Satu eventually starts experimenting with spirit healing and blood magic, though she uses the latter only as a last resort; she doesn’t remember where she was from originally, though she eventually found her way to a Dalish clan who accept her into their numbers.

Isenril Mahariel - a once proud young hunter from Clan Sabrae, Isenril contracted the blight sickness while exploring the elven ruins with his clanmate and childhood friend Tamlen; eventually he managed to make his way back to the clan, only to be obviously poor health; when he awoke again after Marethari’s done what she could to heal him, he set off in search of Tamlen, refusing to give up even when Merrill and Fenarel try to insist they go back; he escorts them back to the camp, but disappears in the night; no one can say with certainty what came of him, though rumours are that he found one of the Witches of the Wilds to aid him.

Dragon Age II - Double Trouble Edition

Rowan Hawke - the known troublemaker among the Hawke siblings, Rowan isn’t a particularly subtle rogue on the surface, though she often plays off the fact that in Ferelden, warriors with bows was a common sight, and so she often tries to pass herself off as a warrior more often than not to confuse any would-be attackers, of which there’s a surplus of in Kirkwall; absolutely will beat the life of someone with her bow if need demands it; was hit particularly bad by the loss at Ostagar, and doesn’t react well at all to being questioned about it; the supposed “leader” of the ragtag gang of miscreants in Kirkwall, she’s also the one who is most likely to fret over each one of their friends and dote on them constantly; clever, witty, and sarcastic to a fault, Rowan uses humour to deflect more often than not when things get too personal directed at her, as there’s very few people, even among her firends, who she lets get truly close for fear of losing them.

Quincy Hawke - the more diplomatic of the elder Hawke twins, Quincy is the one usually getting the siblings out of whatever trouble his own twin got them all into; has a tendency to be more charming than sarcastic, but can absolutely go head-to-head with his sister with the snark; enjoys bad puns, good ale, and other guys (ie he’s gay as gay can be); secretly responsible for nearly as much trouble as Rowan causes, but is better at playing innocent than she is; is also better at hiding his pain, often deflecting to other, “more important” matters if it’s ever brought up, as he rarely opens up to anyone, much like his twin.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Herald of Andraste / The Inquisitor: Rubi Cadash - after hearing Varric introduce himself, she retorted with "Rubi Cadash. Rogue. Scoundrel. Unlucky asshole who literally fell into this mess”; daughter and heir of the Cadash Matriarch, head of their clan and their particular branch of the Carta; really not happy about the whole “Herald” thing, whether or not she holds any belief in Andraste (if asked, she might reveal having heard tales told by one of her ancestors from the Warden’s discoveries during the Blight - tales that didn’t make it to the into the bards’ stories that no one in the Inquisition but Leliana should even know, before revealing she learned of the tales from Shayle of House Cadash - formerly Shale, companion to the Hero of Ferelden); highly manipulative at first with most of those she’s forced to work with, telling them exactly what they want to hear to keep them happy when she doesn’t trust them in the slightest, only being her true self with a select few among the inner circle, though she warms up to most of them by the end; takes Varric with her nearly everywhere, but especially anywhere underground because “if I have to go into all the creepy caves and tunnels and the bloody Deep Roads, I sure as hell am not doing it without some I actually trust”; ends up discovering way more about dwarven history than she would have thought possible thanks to the finds in the Western Approach and throughout Ferelden; eventually specializes as an assassin, which makes it really hard for her not to use those skills when she’s forced to play the diplomat instead.

Katherine Trevelyan - resentful of her family’s insistence that she attend the conclave to aid the family in the proceedings, Katherine had volunteered to help with keeping the peace between some of the templar recruits and apprentice mages further away from the conclave itself, as tensions were quickly rising between the two groups and it was this action alone that likely saved her life when the Breach was formed; like Varric, she can’t just ignore what happened and offers to help the newly formed Inquisition however she can, joining them in Haven.

Vieran Ithalanas, First of Clan Lavellan - a mage isn’t always the best choice for a spy, even at a conclave involving mages and templars, and it’s this reason that Vieran found himself not in the temple itself, but further away with the young apprentice mages; when the Breach was formed, Vieran was torn between fleeing to return to his clan, or staying where he might gain more information that he failed to get from the conclave itself; in the end, he will stay so long as no one objects to his presence as a representative of Clan Lavellan.

Tamik Adaar - a mage of the Valo-kas mercenary company, Tamik was more wary to have survived the conclave than she was working as security for the whole thing; when tensions started rising between the mage apprentices and templar recruits, she leads a small team of the Valo-kas to help deal with the situation, a decision that no doubt saved their lives; while the other members return to the company, Tamik stays behind to help the Inquisition, thinking it’s likely safer as a mage to stay where she is than to risk the roads with the conflict in full force between the mages and templars.

#anonymous #just perfectly normal paranoia ( anonymous ) #love the whooshing noise they make as they go by ( random asks ) #long dark teatime of the soul ( ooc replies ) #long post #//there are times i kinda want to write some of the others here too #//particularly the hawke twins #//as well as cadash and adaar #//maybe if there's interest in them at any rate

[sotcpod]

Director’s Commentary: Episode 2

This will be a whenever-I-feel-like-it series of blog posts where I go back and re-listen to episodes of my show, Shadow of the Cabal, and talk about some of the decisions and things that I made at certain points, and hopefully we can all learn from it. Enjoy! 

Needless to say, these posts WILL contain spoilers for the episodes, so listen to them first!

00:54 - I like that early on we get this other facet of shugenja life through Isawa. Not only are shugenja serving their lords via their gifts with the kami, but they also serve as priests and officials for religious functionaries (such as cleansing a corpse). Not a side of shugenja we see very often on the show (mainly because it’s not very exciting most of the time).

01:59 - Ryan was way onto the eta as the killer from quite early on. I love this scene of him grilling Doru.

02:35 - Being a samurai always means being within a few feet of death, but I really attempt to portray death and violence as brutal, nasty, and undignified to drive home that honor in death isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

03:38 - If Isawa made that Perception roll, he would have noticed Doru wiping the telltale foam from Shotetsu’s mouth after he died of his poisoning.

05:07 - If you’re gonna run mystery games, have core clues. AKA clues that need no roll to obtain. These are clues that you need to move the story forward. Call for a roll to get more info out of the clue, but if it’s an observation that needs to be made to keep the narrative moving forward, give it to them without a roll and move on. In this case, the core clue was here to get Isawa onto the fact that some foul play was involved, probably poison.

06:19 - Doru, as someone who doesn’t really support the idea of the Celestial Wheel, gives a very noncommittal answer.

07:40 - Ryan built his character with a lot of ammo for me to screw him over with. Don’t be afraid to make vulnerable characters in RPGs, it will only make the story better.

09:30 - This scene (the interrogation of Fujiyo) contains another core clue (her account of being absent during Shotetsu’s death). In retrospect, I shouldn’t have had Dakota roll Interrogation for this scene to happen.

10:05 - Asahina Sango’s treachery begins!

11:18 - As the group was eating (and Shotetsu was poisoned), Doru nicked one of Fujiyo’s arrows to frame her with. Samurai don’t pay any attention to eta, especially when they are eating, so there really wasn’t a chance he could have been spotted in the commotion surrounding lunch time.

12:46 - Kitsuki inadvertently shuts down Fujiyo from implicating Asahina in the whole affair. Oops!

13:07 - I kind of love that the players never got an answer as to what Fujiyo’s blackmail material was. Sometimes you just never get the whole story! As a GM, don’t be afraid to not give your players the answers or explanations to every single mystery that comes up during play. Keeping a few things here and there a mystery makes the world feel bigger and more real, as all of these NPCs are supposedly their own people with lives and interests and secrets that are none of the player’s concern.

13:50 - Fujiyo got her eyes on an Oni’s Tear.

15:08 - Ryan decides to have Isawa chat with the kami of the area. He could have done this in a variety of places. Asking the kami at the crime scene would have also been a stellar idea, and I think that was Ryan’s first idea before he witnessed the scene at the river.

15:12 - I was surprised that Kitsuki wasn’t more concerned at finding the culprit alone, and Isawa nowhere to be seen.

15:44 - This was an awkward way to try to get Dakota to question the wound on Shotetsu. Because Shotetsu was already dead when he was shot with the arrow, he didn’t bleed out as much as he might have. I should have given that clue a bit more clearly.

17:15 - Ryan instinctively does what I consider to be a good play habit. When making a roll for a task, it’s often better to roll first and then describe it or RP it based on the roll you got, rather than go all-out RPing something and then rolling crap on it and being disappointed.

18:28 - I know that Water kami aren’t supposed to communicate verbally, but I wanted to do a cool voice and the opportunity was too good to pass up.

22:25 - Isawa’s matter-of-fact statement and the silence that followed is maybe one of my favorite moments of this first session.

23:09 - Dakota helping with the good world exposition (Rokugan’s criminal justice system sucks).

23:44 - Ryan blows the case right open. I was pretty proud to see them get to the truth.

24:52 - I don’t like this call that I made. One of the GM principles I am a fan of is “don’t call for more than one roll for something if one roll could suffice”. I should have just assumed that Isawa could have described what he saw fine, and it was up to Kitsuki to ID it.

27:19 - Bayushi hadn’t got much action in these episodes yet, so I decided to shift over to give her some spotlight time with Shinjo. I totally forgot to use my Shinjo voice, though. :( 30:04 - A good guess from Justin, but he didn’t take into account that this was a Kolat game!!! Stupid Justin!

34:33 - Sometimes it’s good to put a solid deadline on adventures. By me informing the group that they had around an hour to wrap things up, I am thereby informing them that “you have found all the relevant clues in this area, if you wanna ask questions before everyone disperses now is the time”. Deadlines put pressure on the story to reach a conclusion one way or another and prevent mysteries from spinning in circles if they go wrong.

38:28 - Oops I lied here.

46:18 - I sensed that the party was sort of less than satisfied at the conclusion they arrived at. They were correct in assuming that there was more going on than they could tell or get their hands on, but sometimes L5R is a tragedy and it ends on a sour note. In this case, they knew the eta had to take the fall for the crime, and they had to trust me as the GM to resolve the details of the bigger picture later. This is Shinjo acting as my mouthpiece here.

That will do it for this episode’s retrospective. As always, if you have any questions or comments about anything, hit us up on Twitter.