Sansa Stark | Alayne Stone (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dohaeris) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-04-07 11:20 pm
dohaeris) wrote in deercountry2022-04-07 11:20 pm
Entry tags:
you're not my homeland anymore
Who: sansa and her crs
What: catchall for non-event logs. mostly she wants to tell some friends her name. also for some prompts that are simply too long for the event post
When: early april, broadly. late april for sibling-based event prompts
Where: her house (or wherever windows into the world of ice and fire can be found)
Content Warnings: canon-typical violence. character warnings in her app. uhhhh spoilers for asoiaf as if her canonpoint wasn't enough
[starters in the comments I just really wanted to use the taylor swift lyrics for this]
What: catchall for non-event logs. mostly she wants to tell some friends her name. also for some prompts that are simply too long for the event post
When: early april, broadly. late april for sibling-based event prompts
Where: her house (or wherever windows into the world of ice and fire can be found)
Content Warnings: canon-typical violence. character warnings in her app. uhhhh spoilers for asoiaf as if her canonpoint wasn't enough
[starters in the comments I just really wanted to use the taylor swift lyrics for this]
no subject
lady escorts adaine from the front room to the back. sansa glances up from her sewing with a wry smile.]
It made a nice change from padded leather jackets.
[sansa loves her work for the night walker performers and various grandes dames of cellar door, but there's something comforting about making clothes for friends. and quite a lot of her friends have requested sturdy leather jackets (or were in dire need of light armor). it's nice that adaine gives her more freedom to style her, as the night walkers can be quite particular about what they want as well.]
Can I get you any biscuits, or something to drink?
[adaine is probably used to her baked-in hospitality by now, but she doesn't actually get up or stop sewing at any point.]
Oh, you can move anything if it's in the way. I think everything out here is yours.
[she glances around and nods. the pieces she's cut for allen walker's uniform are stashed on one of many ornate wooden shelves, wrapped neatly and tightly against little batcat claws.]
no subject
She puts it down, shaking her head slightly.] No, I'm fine. I already ate. Thank you though. [And because it's better for her nerves if she gets it out of the way...]
What was it you wanted to talk about? [She picks up the jacket and holds it in her hands so she can take a seat.]
no subject
Oh, it's--I wanted to tell you in person. My name is Sansa Stark, not Alayne Stone. I've been hiding from the people that killed my family. The Queen Regent thinks I helped to kill her horrible son, which I would've done when my mother and brothers were still alive, if it were true.
[she had in fact tried to push him off the ramparts, even if it took her with him. though in hindsight, she'd still had so much to live for, then.]
I had to make sure none of them were here, and there was nobody here working for them. [truth be told, she was more worried about littlefinger, but she has no idea how to explain that.] It's not that I ever thought you were you would sell me for a bounty, it's--you were the first person I meant to tell.
[paul had been there, and then lance had been half out of his mind on the beach, and renfri had to be pulled back from the dream world, and then allen surprised her with the sewing kit so that she felt she had to tell him--but it was adaine she meant to talk to, first (truthfully it had been adaine and renfri she thought of first, but renfri no longer counted). she looks up from her sewing with a small, self-deprecating smile.]
I never wanted to deceive you, truly. I've been Alayne Stone so long that when Renfri asked me my name on the beach, it was the first thing I thought of. Then I had to say it, or people would have found out and called me a liar without giving me a chance to explain. But I'm sorry that I lied, anyway.
no subject
Oh, it's... fine. Smart, even. Truthfully, I hadn't actually thought of that. There's people who would want to hunt me down and um... modify my mind. Make me obedient to their will.
[And she killed one of them. But he could still show up. Adaine's not one for political machinations, she's always been honest, but in retrospect announcing her title to the entire network could have easily backfired for the exact same reasons Sansa stated. She bought into the idea that she was safe from the past here and she's only just now realizing how stupid that is.
It's a lot of information for her to process, but she's reached the point in her understanding that she realizes how fucking awful this must have been for Sansa.]
I don't at all blame you for not choosing to entrust your safety to someone you just met. I'm just happy you trusted me with this, and sorry that you had to go through everything preluding it.
[She reaches forward intending to take Sansa's hands into her own.]
If... if any of them do show themselves here. I won't let any of them lay a hand on you, I've already made that mistake with someone else I care about. Just say the word. [She has enough trust in her friend to know that they would deserve whatever hell she would have Adaine rain down on them.]
no subject
but she smiles again, when adaine says she doesn't blame her, and it turns a bit watery when adaine says she's sorry for what she had to go through. and she clasps adaine's hands right back.]
Thank you. Truly. And I'm sorry, too, that people are hunting you. It would be worse than death, to lose your mind.
[her smile twists up at one corner.]
We must have the most sought-after heads in the city.
[more seriously:]
I won't let anyone do that to you. I know I'm not very strong, but I have sworn swords, and I have Lady, and she grows bigger everyday.
[lady yips cheerfully in assent!]
no subject
She's lucky in a lot of ways. Her friends being chief among them.]
Between the three of us, they'll be too terrified to leave the ocean.
Thank you, Sansa. I'm glad to have you as a friend.
[She smiles, at both Sansa and Lady. She wonders, inyernally, if there's a way she could place an alarm to check for these people that hunt Sansa, and for Adaine's parents.
She means it, she'll kill them as soon as they wash up.]
Will you still be going by Alayne to everyone else? I don't think there's any shame in continuing if you feel more safe that way.
no subject
Oh, I did mean to ask you what you thought of the necromancers. On my world only the worst sort of creatures can puppet the dead.
[and another wry smile.]
Creatures my great ancestor Bran the Builder helped beat back to the Land of Always Winter, where they slumber now. He raised a great wall of ice a mile high against them, in the Age of Heroes, and the only brother that remains to me guards it today. I don't want them to know who I am, if they're dangerous. But I mean to tell my friends regardless.
no subject
I don't believe I've met any necromancers here, so I can't really speak on them in general. It's a practice I'm familiar with in general though. I don't really know any of it myself though.
One of my friends is a Necromancer. He's not a bad person, and even when he was stuck doing wrong, he used his power to try to help us in what little ways he could.
But... there's definitely really bad ones too. They far outweigh the good, honestly.
Maybe you can tell me about the Necromancers here?
no subject
The girl was quiet, and she looked--uncomfortable. The man, their 'teacher,' he was...friendly.
[he didn't remind her of littlefinger, exactly, except for the one time at the tourney of the hand. which he hadn't even being doing anything wrong, then, so it wasn't like he was doing any of the things petyr did that were wrong, but he had already given lysa the poison, then, so perhaps--]
Later we played a silly game and he admitted to eating human flesh. He said it was common in some of the magic he practiced, and that there was a necromancer on their world who enjoyed it.
[she sighs and stabs at a patch of fur on her direwolf tapestry.]
I didn't want to bother Paul about it at his nameday party. It's just very strange that he's living with them. And--the bones they were using, at least the ones that the 'teacher' used, were human, and I don't think all of them came from their world with them. The people here could get very angry, if they thought that Sleepers were stealing their dead.
[she would raze the twins, if it meant she could inter robb and her mother's bodies in the crypt at winterfell.]
no subject
Roll an arcana check.
(ARCANA CHECK: 18+8=26. Pass.)
There's lots of concerning things to pick over in Sansa's sentence, but there's one thing in particular that catches Adaine's attention and guides her on the way from concern to outright alarm.]
...I'm not sure. We have to understand that the people here have very different cultural values than the ones we're accustomed to. For one, blood magic in and of itself is generally extremely rare where I come from, and seen as something inherently unclean and demonic. They have problems with the dead rising all on their own here and attacking and killing people. If you've been by the graveyard you've probably seen the barriers constructed.
The entire city's built to facilitate survival in an extremely hostile world, and they have a very... distant relationship to death. There's a very low survival rate here, considering how easy it is to die here, especially for Wakers. So I think it's probably something that could be negotiated if it's actually being done with good intentions, but... well, that's a big if, honestly...
But there's, um, one thing that really concerns me? You keep calling him 'the teacher'... did he offer an actual name?
no subject
He said the girl's name, Harrowhark. I didn't want to ask him, in case he didn't want to tell me, but everyone called him Teacher, that I heard. There is someone else I could ask, and of course I mean to discuss it with Paul.
[she begins sewing another patch of fur in earnest.]
Truth be told, he...reminds me a little of the people that make my world dangerous. It's true, we were told to be wary of blood magic, and I am, though I pursue it, and that it may have been behind the Doom of Valyria, or the great Shadow, but--it is war that makes my world unsafe, in the Seven Kingdoms especially. War, and winter, and sometimes disease. And--it is the people that play with other people's lives like it's a game, in pursuit of the Iron Throne or its favor, or even to line their pockets--they are the ones responsible. [except for the tyrells, who seem to genuinely want to help people. of course they were partly responsible for the siege of king's landing, but it's honestly hard to blame anyone for fighting for a king to replace joffrey, and lord renly seemed a good enough choice.] I don't know what this teacher intends, or what he thinks he can do, here, but it worries me that he gathers capable young fighters to his side.
[she pauses to draw a deep breath, and resumes stabbing the fabric with great intensity.]
My people, too, have known death in great numbers. It's true, we have more cities, and farmland, and there are more people living in those cities and farms. I suspect many soldier's wives and children content themselves without seeking out the remains of their lost. But my lord father traveled clear across the realm to retrieve his sister's bones, and I--I only wish I could do the same. We can ill afford war here, when any blood spilled will only add to the madness.
[she hopes the proscription against spilling forbidden blood here runs deeper than her own realm's laws against killing, but she can't count on it.]
no subject
There is nothing that a Lich guards closer than their name, short of their phylactory. And if he's a necromancer with a cult following... If Adaine were as afraid to die as she really should be, she would be terrified. She would advise Sansa to walk away as fast as possible and she would vow to never seek this man out.
But Adaine's fears manifest in different ways, fears surrounding her worth. And the only thing she knows she's good for is unravelling puzzles and putting that which is horrible and dark and deadly into the ground where it belongs. So she adjusts her glasses with an intrigued hum.]
...Magic isn't the cause of suffering in my world either. It's... as you said, powerful people toying with people's lives as if it's a game. I think... [She taps her fingers rythmically against the sofa, contemplating her phrasing.] I think that's probably true everywhere. It certainly is in every corner of the many worlds I've dreamt of.
Magic, like status or authority, is power. It's not something that's inherently evil but people who master it get a taste of control and then they're consumed by their greed. My own home country, and my parents, are a good example of that, given the things they did to me and the things they did in the past. [Her mother, so stark raving mad about avenging the slight done against their family, so unable to see the abuses she'd inflicted herself. Her father, vicious and cruel in the face of being circumvented by his own daughters.
...Aelwyn.
But they're not the enemies that Adaine really thinks of in relation to this necromancer.]
It seems like this... [She decides she's petty enough to refuse to call him 'Teacher.'] ...necromancer is already very formidable in his magical ability, and if he's accumulating people by his side, then that sounds like he's trying to accumulate influence and authority as well.
If he is what I think he is... [She takes a moment to breathe as she says that.] I would need to do some digging.
But it'd probably be useless if he's just a stranger to me. I don't suppose it'd be possible to introduce me to... uh, 'Paul'? Or anyone else in that circle?
no subject
or perhaps she had, once, and she regrets it. sansa can't fault her, she chased littlefinger's approval long enough.
but her mouth curves when adaine speaks of paul. there's a trace of skepticism in her voice that is more amusing than it should be.]
Of course I'll introduce you to Paul, if I can find him. He disappears for weeks; I don't know if it has to do with the necromancers or if he leaves his omni crystal by his bedside when he goes out. But--you'll have to be careful. He's very clever, and good at reading people, and he's very sure he's in control of the situation. [she rolls her eyes at this...boys!!! and yet, these are all things she likes about paul, except for the last part. this time.] If he suspects you of trying to interrogate him, and he's quite suspicious, he'll...well, he won't say anything of use. And I doubt he'll let you into that house. That stupid in the flesh post--that was about the necromancer's things.
[she hesitates, looks away.]
What I'm most afraid of is that Paul might see this necromancer as a form of protection. And he'll protect him, in turn, to keep that protection. I mean to talk to him about it, but I'm afraid he'll think I'm only being suspicious because I'm angry at the man who helped to hide me when I was Alayne.
[she looks down into her lap, picking up the needle end of her necklace with one hand and pressing her thumb into its point.]
The situation was very much the same.
no subject
Adaine nods along with what Sansa says about Paul. She knows very little about this boy, but she thinks she can handle that particular series of traits. She is, after all, an Abernant.]
I'll do my best. [She is only mostly unaware that she is also very guilty of this. At least she knows that she's clever and always right.]
Honestly, if he's really clever he'd be able to understand why someone might have some reservations with someone raising the bones of the fallen and using them as foot soldiers. [Adaine, personally, isn't necessarily as opposed to the concept as a normal person probably would be. But it's a very understandable misgiving to have.] But... yes. Honestly, it sounds like a cult to me. It's not unheard of for... well, very powerful necromancers to gather cults.
[She raises her eyebrows and cocks her head.]
Is he one of the people you're worried about showing up?
no subject
Yes. He's more dangerous than any of them. Lord Baelish.
[she drops it and returns to sewing furiously at her tapestry.]
I mean to talk with Paul about the skeletons, at least. They only work in the house, for now, and he said they were mostly from his own world--the necromancy teacher did. It's a stupid risk, anyway.
[she pauses her sewing, recalling something kaworu said before the party.]
There is one thing. Paul's friend Kaworu said they weren't supposed to talk about the people in the house with people from outside the house. That did concern me, but Paul has kept more of my secrets than anyone I know, so I can't begrudge him his.
[she furrows her brow. kaworu did tell her quite a bit, despite that.]
I suppose Kaworu's more likely than anyone to tell you things, but he has no understanding of discretion. He may well tell the teacher he's spoken with you, and think nothing of it.
[she resumes sewing.]
You should speak with Lazarus. He's been gathering information, and I don't think he likes the necromancy or the teacher. But I don't ever know where he is, either. I could send Winter after him, though. He'd probably think it was funny.
no subject
[She nods along with Sansa's explanation. It's not like she can't understand why someone might want to keep the identities of those who live with them a secret. Modred Manor had a number of people now, among which were wanted criminals. Like... herself. And Aelwyn, since she'll be moving there.
But at the same time. It is still eerily reminiscent of a cult. Or a conspiracy. Are they his children? His servants? His soldiers? His... pets?
...All of the above?]
I think I saw him on the rumor post. And... oh! This is that party post that went up, right? I didn't go to that, I uh... didn't know him, so I was too nervous.
[Despite the anxious tone in her voice, there is something sharper in her expression as she nods. She's shifting into focus. Put her in front of a mystery and she'll solve it or die trying.]
I'll see what I can do. [A small smile ghosts her lips.] I'm the Oracle. Seeing things and finding people is sort of my specialty.
no subject
Between the three of us, we should be able to work out what's going on.
[she sighs and stabs at her tapestry again.]
Petyr Baelish of the Fingers, Lord Paramount of the Riverlands and Lord Protector of the Vale. I could write it down for you, if you like. But he has catspaws everywhere, and half the Seven Kingdoms is after the bounty on my head. Most of them are too stupid to realize they'll never be able to collect it.
[and all the lannisters and their bannermen, and all the ironmen, even just house frey--and, if people can be reborn here, than so could joffrey. so could the mad king, or--the boltons who made cloaks from the skins of starks. on the other hand, some perfectly innocent lannister from two hundred years ago could show up, too. she cannot rely on spells, she must make this place a safe one to be a stark.]
no subject
I'll remember it. The minute he arrives at the beach, I'll be there to kill him without spilling a drop of blood. [Something she very much can do! She's very determined to do so!
She inclines her head slightly.]
...Because you were under his control and he's too powerful to be trifled with?
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That is why I stayed with him in the Vale.
[one of the reasons. she doesn't know how to explain or even want to tell adaine how powerless she was. what else could she have done? convinced mya stone to ride off with her on stolen mules? and where could they possibly have gone? by the time she knew what lysa arryn was, she was alone on a mountain in the snow.]
But what I mean to say is any idiot from the Seven Kingdoms might turn up on that beach thinking he could bring my head back to the Queen Regent, somehow. [she pauses.] Cersei Lannister of Casterly Rock. Her horrible son was called Joffrey Baratheon, the first of his name, though he had no right to it and might be called Joffrey Waters, otherwise.
I could tell you all the names I know of the people who want me dead, and some stupid cutpurse from King's Landing who knows the name Sansa Stark and the color of my hair might think he can claim a bounty on a world he has no way of returning to and kill me anyway.
[at least she'd just go back to the sea. she sighs.]
I don't suppose you have any pictures of the people hunting you? I've been learning to be ravens, and I could at least watch for them.