Foreword: Please don't take this story all that seriously.
Chapter 1: Medieval Life Is Not One For Me
Lemme tell y'all something, living in a medieval society sucks absolute ass, especially for one used to modern-day twenty-first-century amenities. No A/C. Very little entertainment. The food is bland and straightforward. No modern toilets. Ugh. Humans were an adaptable lot and so was I but the experience reminded me of the time I lived in a Chinese boarding school in my youth and had to make do with their squat toilets. I shouldn't complain about that too much because they at least had toilet paper.
All in all, zero out of ten, would not recommend.
If there was a silver lining to this whole situation, it seems that whatever ROBB yeeted me here had at least given me phenomenal cosmic power. Well, kinda.
Peasant Petyr of Kipress
Diplomacy - 30
Martial - 30
Stewardship - 30
Intrigue - 30
Learning - 30
You see, I have access to the Crusader Kings 3 system alongside the console commands.
The thing is, if you haven't noticed via my title, I'm a peasant.
Speaking honestly, I don't have a damn clue how my game system will reconcile with an actual living world. Right now, most of my systems had been locked away due to me being a peasant.
If I gave my lord a title claim on his neighbor, how would the world deal with that? Will reality retroactively shift to make it true? Will it do nothing? Will those systems even exist? Is this world a real-world or merely a game world where people would just shrug and go on with their lives as if it was the norm? I mean, I haven't heard of any highborn ladies being cuckolded by their court fool so I was leaning towards this world being more grounded world than game. A lot of questions and no answers.
Looking further into my Player Character Sheet, there was Valemen culture and Faith of Seven. Honestly, I think it just defaulted me to wherever I was born. I was an atheist in my past life and I sure as heck don't believe in the seven. I believe in something now because only a being of godlike power could put me into the situation I was in now.
Zero dread.
Zero gold. I tested the console command to give me gold which worked. Then before I could spend it, I realized it was impossible for me to explain how I had obtained it. A peasant like me would never see a gold coin, let alone own one. I ended up burying it in the forest. Unfortunately though, the game didn't include console commands for copper or silver denominations.
Zero prestige.
Eighty-seven piety. I worshipped the seven because it was just the thing to do, but this might have been the way others viewed me.
Zero military forces. Shame there wasn't an add_levies 500000 console command. I could have matched the White Walker's wight armies with my own summoned armies.
No titles.
No claims.
Nothing in the diplomacy box.
Domains 0/0
Parents
Yorrick and Jessa.
Grandparents deceased.
No children of my own yet.
Siblings
Artos – Oldest brother
Hugo – Middle brother
Alys – Younger twin sister
Sharra – Youngest sister
And wasn't that a doozy? My original family had no girls in it and I was the oldest sibling in my entire family so it was weird having a twin sister.
The Court and Vassals tab obviously grayed out.
I mean, at the end of the day, it could be worse. I could've been tossed into this world without any powers. The fact I had the Crusader Kings 3 system along with console command access was a blessing. At the very least, it meant that when my mother should have died giving birth to Sharra, I saved her.
The birth of Sharra had been rough for both of them. Shortly after childbirth, she fell into childbed fever and midwives agreed that there was little we could do but pray she overcomes the trials of motherhood.
Fuck the gods.
I stayed up watching my mother's Health slowly slip from Fine to Poor, before skipping Near Death and straight to Dying, which was utterly terrifying. When it became clear she would not survive the birth, I stepped in.
There were definitely more traits than there were in the base game but it was a simple enough matter to see what traits were afflicting her Health negatively and remove them.
Remove_trait bleeding
Remove_trait fever
Remove_trait infection
Remove_trait infertile
Sharra had been born sickly before I promptly removed the trait from her with a simple remove_trait command and replaced it with Herculean. Then I decided since I was doing this, I might as well go all in and tossed in Genius and Comely. I'll admit, I wasn't sure about that last one. Being a beautiful young girl was brag-worthy if you were a noble, but a peasant girl had no such protection so I settled for the lowest positive beauty trait.
Eh, if anything happened to my family, I would burn this world down and everyone in it.
"Petyr!" I opened my eyes from where I was examining my character sheet to see my twin.
"What'dya want Alys?" I groaned from my position seated position. It was a cool day and I wanted to relax under shade and tree. There was no internet to pass the time so there was little else I could do to kill time. I didn't have the Lazy trait but I sure felt like I did on some days.
"Training time." Ah, training. My father was a man-at-arms for our local lord, one of those minor-est of lordlings that would never be mentioned in the books. The strongest named House in our area was House Templeton whose direct liege-lord was House Arryn itself, but the lord of our little village was still like two liege lords away from House Templeton.
Father had noticed some of the traits I had given myself over the years and thought I should follow in his footsteps as a man-at-arms. He believed with my talents, I might be able to even distinguish myself for a possible knighthood. While pagehood and squiredom were the traditional paths for noble borns to eventually gain their Knighthood, commoners tended to have much less opportunity. Any knight could make another knight like Stannis the Mannis did for the Onion Knight so even an unheard knight could do so.
'Ughhh, fine. Help me up." I extended my hand.
"Really?" she replied, hands on her waists and an eyebrow raised.
I closed my eyes and left my arm extended. She would give in, I knew.
Feeling her hand in mine, she pulled me up with a grunt.
"Thanks," I replied, brushing off the grass from my tunics.
"Just get moving. Dad's been waiting."
Together, we made our way back into the village, I took it all in. Over the years, I had gotten accustomed to it but a part of me still felt like I was walking into some renaissance festival, except this was all real. These were people's homes where they lived and worked all their lives, most of them never leaving. These people wouldn't be leaving for a changing room at the end of the night, getting in a car, and driving home. This was a living, breathing place.
There also weren't any vendors selling turkey legs or random teens taking the opportunity to anime cosplay even though the theme was medieval.
Oddly enough, it didn't smell as bad as I thought it would. Or maybe I had just gotten used to it, hard to tell honestly.
Our village wasn't a particularly large one. I didn't know the numbers as only the lord would really know, but if I had to give a rough estimate, it had to come out to around a few hundred people. It was tiny considering I was a city boy all my life.
Something I had heard about in my previous life was how in some places, the air felt cleaner. Boy was that the truth as there was little air pollution here. I also found it pretty cool that I could lie down at night outside and see the night sky in all its glory. Some other more philosophical isekai-er might talk about how the skies were different than the ones they were familiar with but to be honest, it looked all the same to me. I couldn't tell you where Sagittarius was even in my old life. The closest I came was when I downloaded some stargazer app on my phone intent on trying it out later that night before promptly forgetting about it.
"What are you brooding about now, Petyr?" My sister asked from my side.
"Brooding? I was just thinking deep thoughts!" I said in jest. I didn't brood. Nope. No way. It wasn't on my trait list so it wasn't real.
She rolled her eyes in response.
Cheeky little fuck.
"I was just thinking about what I wanted to do. We're ten and four now." Job opportunities were few and far in a small little village like this. We weren't even considered a town. My middle brother Hugo had taken up an apprenticeship with the only blacksmith in town. It was a path that I could still theoretically follow if I so wished. I was young and Strong and blacksmithing seemed cool.
I enjoyed Forged in Fire as much as anyone else and I bet I could make Doug Marcaida proud.
It will keel.
But was that really what I wanted to do with the rest of my life? I had the Content trait for a reason. Hell, it wasn't even one I had given to myself. I was just as surprised when I got the popup that I had gained the trait. I assumed it was mostly because of my temperament from my last life.
I was content with my little life. Whatever happened to the world of Westeros, the players that be would already be working on it. As much as the show ending destroyed its own legacy, I would be thrilled if Arya killed the Night King and Bran ascended the Iron Throne. It meant that the White Walkers were gone and whoever sat on the throne really didn't affect me down here. If I stayed in my little village, the world would go the way it was meant to go. George RR Martin said the ending would be bittersweet but I doubt if the world was destroyed, I didn't think that would count as bittersweet so I was most likely safe. Maybe. Possibly.
Though I was content, was I truly satisfied? I had the ability to make a change in the world, however minor or major it could be, but did I really want to? It sounded like a lot of work and something really out of my comfort zone. I was never the most outgoing person before, a typical millennial introvert who preferred the internet versus the outside world and would most likely die alone. Even if I wanted to change, go out and join clubs, hit the gym, try to be more outdoorsy, and go hiking and stuff, the whole fake it till you make it advice that Google recommends you when searching how to improve yourself as a person. It was never that easy.
But the insidious thing is, right now, it is that easy. Instead of the painstaking work of stepping outside my comfort zone until that zone expands, I would just need a few thoughts. A single brave trait could wipe away the hesitation and fear of the unknown. Another thought could see me becoming a paragon of virtues.
Yet, if I did that, how much of that was still me? The thought of it all scared me even though it shouldn't. When I gained the Content trait, I didn't seem to change any. Perhaps it only solidified what was already there? I always considered myself a coward in my past life, but I didn't carry the Craven trait here. Did it need to reach a threshold before it was triggered? Did I have to put myself in some Event in which if I chose to wrong option, I would gain the Craven trait?
Honestly, I should just give myself Brave and be done with it. The fear of it was why I never tampered with other peoples' traits, at least ones that I thought would change a core part of who they were. These were not NPCs – they were people with their own lives, thoughts, and feelings. Who was I to start tampering with their very souls? The only give I gave in my own rules was for Health reasons and even that was only for my direct family and done without their notice.
I was no Panacea with ironbound rules, but she lived in a world where supernatural powers were commonplace. It was one thing to proclaim yourself a healer in Westeros, it was another to be a wizard, especially as I was in the heart and cradle of Andal nobility where things could get dangerous rather quickly. I've read the fanfics about how things could rapidly spiral out of control.
The thing was, I was actually a healer. Some of my traits synergized relatively well such as Herbalist and Physician to make me a decent enough healer. Though, I had never apprenticed under any such professions as our tiny village didn't have any such people. The local herbalist, some woods witch, I realized was a fraud the first time I met her. High stats in Intrigue and low in Learning, she didn't even have the Herbalist trait. The closest thing we had to a physician in our town was the local sawbones and his job consisted of lopping off infected limbs and hoping the persons didn't die.
On a whim, I also added the maester trait to see what it would do. Turned out it gave me a deeper knowledge of the world I inhabited. Unfortunately, though, I also realized a lot of what they believed true wasn't. Things like germ theory didn't exist and while I knew it existed with one hundred percent certainty, the maester part of my brain disagreed vehemently, insisting that ill-balanced humors were the cause.
Eventually, the clashing dichotomy of it all made me remove the trait.
Blacksmith, healer, farmer, or man-at-arms. I could even leave for the Citadel since my high Learning trait guaranteed I could rise high. These were all paths I could take. Paths that would most likely keep me in this tiny village. Here I would find some girl to wed, bed, and have children with. I knew it was relatively safe here. This was the Vale and we were untouched by the War of the Five Kings. Even if some of the high lords were upset with the fact that Lysa didn't declare for her nephew, I was glad because it meant my village wasn't called to arms. Well, I should be thanking Petyr Baelish more than anything.
"You can do whatever you want." My sister retorted with heat.
Ah.
Yeah.
That.
If opportunities were slim for me, they were non-existent for my sister. A life of domesticity was all she could hope to strive for. She would be tasked with raising her family and menial home work or perhaps she could take up servitude with our local Lord if he had need. If this was a town or city, she may have even been able to open her own business, perhaps a bakery or something.
Alys quite often chaffed under such societal expectations. It was probably my fault for encouraging these tendencies when we were younger. Probably should have toned down the whole "Fuck the system" thing.
Whoops.
She was no Arya or Lyanna Stark, who were more tomboys and enjoyed swinging a sharp shaft of metal at other people, but she wanted to be a strong independent woman all the same. Unlike me, she did not have the Content trait.
Honestly, her Genius trait probably didn't help much either. Made her smart enough to realize the ways of the world and to hate it.
Her feelings were also probably welling up because boys had started making advances toward her and our mother was not at all helping the situation, encouraging the whole thing. Mother often reminded her that she was only a few years older than her when she got married to our father.
Medieval ages. Yeah.
At least mother wasn't telling her to get married and immediately start having babies. Medieval people weren't stupid or anything, they long recognized the fact that forcing a woman who had yet to grow to maturity into a pregnancy often created complications.
"What, you don't like being fawned over by all the village boys?" I teased her.
Comely was only the level 1 positive beauty trait but I underestimated how much it would affect her. I thought it would give her a nice little leg up in life, the whole good-looking people have it much easier in life, combined with the Genius and Amazonian traits. The Physical trait was one thing and people definitely took notice, good birthing hips, the older ladies would say. Ick. Combine it with a clear intellect and with a comely appearance, you didn't even need hovering and gossiping mothers encouraging their sons to go for it.
It also made me thankful I did not give myself any beauty traits. It kinda felt too much like stroking my own dick so I refrained. I was utterly plain.
Bland peasant village NPC 01.
Yup, that's me.
Shoot, could I be the eminence in shadow?
Though I did give myself Herculean for the health boost and Genius, not that I felt like it really did all that much. I was a dumb as fuck dude before, now I'm a genius dumb fuck dude. Genius' were overrated anyway. This wasn't Konoha and I wasn't a child prodigy or anything.
My brain thought slightly faster and I made connections and realizations faster. My memory was much better than my previous life but other than that, I didn't feel smarter. I couldn't go out and kick start the industrial revolution like this was Greyjoy Alla Breve. Gunpowder? What the fuck is in gunpowder? Pewter or something maybe? It's been a long time. Where was that time traveler's cheat sheet that floated around the internet? That would have been nice to have.
"Ugh," Alys groaned into her hands.
I laughed loudly.
"Don't remind me, boys are stupid." I knew the truth of the matter of course.
Did you know that sexuality isn't set at birth? Oh, in our younger years, she was set to heterosexual and I don't know when it happened, but sometime over the years, it shifted to homosexuality. This was probably the main factor that was driving her mad. Mothers throwing their sons at her when she would have preferred their daughters instead.
Of course, she gave no sign of it. The Faith of the Seven was strong here and any hint of such a thing could see her banished to the sisterhood of Septas. Not that I would ever let that happen of course. If it came to such, I would simply take her with me and leave. A possible plan I had was to simply take a ship to Braavos, use console commands to spawn in a bunch of money, and set up shop there. From there, I had the greatest of superpowers – Money. I could theoretically hire myself an army.
Not a damn clue what else I would do there but I could easily include Alys in that scenario. I would probably have to tell her of my powers but well, I doubt she would care that much.
"If you want me to beat them away, let me know at any time." I joked. It was also the truth.
"This isn't a problem you can beat away with a sword."She replied in an exasperated tone.
"Of course it is. It's like they say, there isn't a problem that can't be solved by fire. If it doesn't seem to be working, well you're not using enough fire!" I laughed.
"And who exactly are they?"
"The wiser men of times past." I nodded my head sagely.
"You're stupid." She said plainly.
"No, you." Maturely, I uno-reversed her. "And stupid isn't one of my traits," I told her truthfully.
"Yuh huh," Alys matched my maturity. Truly we were twins.
Medieval children aged faster but I was still happy to see this side of Alys every now and then before adulthood claimed our innocence.
"Hey da, sorry I'm late."
My new dad was a big dude. At over six feet, he was much taller than me. He was born with the Robust and Strong trait so it made sense after all. I ended up upgrading it to Herculean the night before he left to chase down some bandits. I also added on a few more traits but he didn't need to know that.
He was in a basic tunic and trousers, clothes fit for the yard. I had forgotten he wasn't on duty today so nearly missed our session.
New dad only sighed before speaking, "At least Alys found you soon enough. What were you doing?"
How to rephrase lazing around?
"Taking time for myself and deep introspection," I replied as straight-faced as I could.
He gave me the look only parents could do when they knew their children were lying and were demanding the truth.
Hah. Jokes on you. My high Intrigue skill gives me an impeccable poker face. You're weak Intrigue can never overcome mine!
"He was sleeping under a tree," my twin interjected. Damn it, I've been betrayed. My scheme was foiled when it was supposed to have a ninety-five percent chance of success.
"Of course he was. Whatever, let's get started." He handed me a blunted training sword.
It was a solid thing. I would have called it a feder in my past life but it was just called a training sword here. A few pounds heavy and roughly four feet long, it was a familiar weight in my hands.
We separated and moved into our own positions. I opened with a more defensive-oriented stance while my father copied me. I knew it was meant to be a lesson, to force me to engage. I always like to respond than be the first to attack but the initiative was important in a battle and I'd rather not just sit here all day and stare at him. I put my sword straight in front of me, pointing it at him with both hands, and slowly stepped towards him, stance low and balanced. Footwork was paramount in sword combat.
He surprised me by attacking first from low and I matched him from high.
Our swords clashed but I retreated after, him not following up. This was not a duel to the death and neither of us was armored. It was a standard first-hit victory spar so we could take it a bit slower and methodically. This was not a choreographed Hollywood duel so we didn't need to trade a dozen even blows to make things dramatic. You wanted to win as quickly and cleanly as possible because more swings only exhausted a fighter quicker.
Fuck it.
I re-engaged him with a couple of swings and he retaliated.
There was no climatic finisher to the bout, he merely managed to tap me across my shoulder and the bout ended there.
"Not bad, but you're still too passive." It was not advice I hadn't heard before, not even in this life. My first life during the time I attended a HEMA club for nearly a year had given me the same advice before. It finally clicked after one of the instructors I had fought told me I should use my size. My instructor barely broke five feet and I was 5'10 and 210 pounds at the time and I realized she was right, I was already bigger than a lot of people in the club and I should have been utilizing that to my strength to intimidate and batter down opponents.
The advice held even firmer here, HEMA was only a sport so a girl barely five foot could claim victory but this was the real world where one day my sword might be the only thing between me and death.
The problem was anyone bigger than me, I ended up defaulting to passivity and well, my new dad was a big dude.
"I know, I know. I'll attack more." I muttered while rubbing my shoulder where he had hit me. It wouldn't bruise thanks to my toughness stats but it was uncomfortable nonetheless.
"Good, you can't win a duel if you're not attacking your opponent." He said sternly.
I didn't think that was true but I got what he was saying.
We went back to our corners and started the next bout. It was fun, I would say. If there was a positive thing I could say about medieval times, it was simpler times and that meant fewer distractions. There was little to do so it became easier to focus on the things you could do.
My HEMA club in my past life was a hobby, a fun thing to do twice a week to hang out with friends and a little bit of exercise. And the romance of swinging a sword against someone else was always fun. At least until at least the second twisted ankle in two months finally put the hobby to rest. Considering I worked a job that required me to be on my feet ten hours a day, I just couldn't afford the risk of injury so I was forced to drop it.
Here though, there was little else to do but focus on it. It was exhilarating at times I could admit with ease. I was an overweight child which led to me being an overweight man my entire life. The few times I had tried to lose weight only saw me break even at some point and not drop any further. I wasn't electric scooter needing obese or anything and I worked out but it was mainly to prevent myself from deteriorating any further, but I could never muster the willpower and lifestyle changes needed to fully dedicate myself to trying to become skinny.
I was ninety-nine percent sure I had the glutton trait in my old life.
With my new traits though, I felt amazing in ways I could not believe possible. Fit people took it for granted that they could run for more than thirty seconds without being utterly exhausted spent and that a short hill would make them short of breath. It was such an absolute difference and I marveled at it constantly. I also made sure to take better care of this body than I did in my past.
The sharp ringing of swords cried out but it wasn't until the fading of afternoon's light that my father finally called an end to the sparring.
"Not bad today. You're definitely getting better." I checked our stats. Prowess stats were often boosted by traits and modifiers but everyone had a base stat for it as well. Average men had it around the mid to low teens, but trained soldiers like my dad were often in the lower to mid-twenties.
My father's prowess stat was thirty-one. His base stat increased by one due to today while I was still sitting at twenty-nine. Well, that's all right.
I knew a simple set_prowess could make me a demigod astride the battlefield but I enjoyed this learning experience and it would probably raise some eyebrows if I went from talented to godlike in a single night. At my current prowess, I would estimate that I was already in the top percentage of fighters in Westeros. Perhaps Barrisan Selmy or Jaime Lannister were in the top thirties.
I honestly wasn't one hundred percent sure Prowess worked in this real world. I vaguely remember reading things about how a single Crusader Kings 3 knight could be worth thousands of levies but I highly doubted that if I threw my dad in against such a battle, there was any conceivable way he could actually win. This wasn't Dynasty Warriors and dad sure as shit wasn't Lu Bu.
The thing though was that it was how it worked for me. According to the tooltip, odd enough that I retained those, a single point of prowess equates to fifty damage and ten toughness. For comparison, a single levy does ten points of damage so right now, I was personally as dangerous as two hundred and ninety soldiers. It also meant I had the strength and stamina of all those men.
Additionally, Prowess also confers a secondary stat which states that each point of Prowess gives ten toughness. A single levy has ten toughness so I had the toughness of twenty-nine men right now. There was a reason dad was willing to whack me openly with the sword as he noticed that over the years of training, I stopped bruising altogether. We both clearly knew something was going on but if he didn't want to open this can of worms, I sure as hell wasn't.
Still, I was happy with my growth. It wasn't a gamer system but visibly seeing myself improving made it easy to keep me motivated. I also didn't want to just batter down my old man with super strength and stamina. I wasn't the Mountain after all.
"Nah, you're just getting slower old man." I joked. He was only in his mid-thirties but hah, this was medieval times so he was basically ancient for the times.
"Bah, looks like you need more training."
"Nah, think I'm good." This wasn't HEMA, so I didn't have any protection. Here, the pain was meant to be part of the learning process. No knight ever became such without a broken bone or two. The lack of gear sure made it easier to move but hits hurt. Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things with my stats though.
He laughed in response to my denial before he grew serious. "Tell me son, have you decided what you want to do?"
"I…" I hesitated and looked away, indecision filled me. "Don't really know yet."
"Look at me Petyr," he spoke softly and I met his eyes only to see understanding glimmering in them. "There's no rush. I get it. You're young and all you've ever known or seen is in or close to your home."
I mean, that wasn't completely true but it also wasn't false. Westeros was a large continent and I would like to travel it for a bit, not that that was a thing people did here.
"Lord Uthor is hosting a small tourney at Stoutstone, roughly three or four days from here. Why don't you go?"
A tourney? Tourneys were few and far ever since the rest of Westeros started being ravaged by war.
The more I thought about it though, the more the idea grew on me. I had never left our tiny little village, no need. The closest towns were days away and while we were not extraordinarily far from the high road, we did get some traders here and there that brought news and goods of the outside world, however since we were a village of mostly subsistence farmers so we had little to trade so they often bypassed us entirely. It could be interesting. At the very least, it was something new than the mundanity of the day-to-day work.
"A tourney huh? I'd like that. What's the prize pool?" I asked. Even the smallest tourneys dealt in gold dragons and winning one was a massive windfall for a peasant like me.
"Hah, the arrogance of youth. Think you're just going to walk in there and they'll hand you the prize money? You're going to have to train harder if you want to win." Father said.
"Well, it's gotta be worth my time yeh know? No point in spending time traveling if they don't make it worth my while." I boasted. Might be time to up my Prowess a few points if it meant winning.
"Well, a little bit of confidence might help that sword arm of yours. For the melee, it's thirty gold dragons for the winner."
Thirty gold dragons was a lot. It would take a year of combined income for a family like us to earn that amount. Hell, even if I didn't win, if I could take defeat a knight or two and take their stuff for ransom, it would be worth it. I ain't risking shit personally.
"I'll go." An idea rose up in my head. "Can I take Alys with me?" No shame in asking after all and she might enjoy the experience. Or she might enjoy watching me get beat up in the melee. Hard to tell with that girl sometimes.
"What why?" Dad seemed surprised by my sudden question.
Shrugging but answered, "She might enjoy it. That and I think she wants to get away from all the boys."
"Has Jerrod been making an ass of himself again?" Jerrod being one of her suitors.
"It's more like which of them hasn't been," I answered.
"Those boys, sniffing after my daughter like she's a mare in heat." I winced at the crudeness of the description.
"But no, the savages in the mountains have been getting restless. Best not risk her on an open road." It was a fair enough argument which I'll undoubtedly be reused later when Alys inevitably asks me to take her along.
"Alright. Well, when does the tourney begin?" I asked eagerly.
"A fortnight or so. Don't get too hasty though, there's still an entry fee that has to be fronted."
Oh shit. Forgot about that. If there wasn't an entry fee, then every lowborn with an axe or hoe could enter.
Dad must've seen my expression because he laughed. "Don't worry about it, I wouldn't have mentioned it if we couldn't afford it. It's a silver stag." He reached into his bag and tossed a coin at me. I knew it was silver as it glinted in the sunlight and caught it. A silver stag was the lowest denomination of silver, but it was still silver nonetheless.
"Dad, I can't accept this." This single coin was worth thousands of pennies. I couldn't be selfish and use it for myself. What if I lost and wasted it all?
"Take it, son. If a silver star can temper your wanderlust, then it's an easy price to pay. Just don't tell your ma." He laughed. Mother would skin him if she knew about this. "And when you lose, then maybe you'll take a job with our lord and settle down. I heard that Lyssa's been eying you up. Girl seems to always find her way around here when we're working the yard."
I did not blush. My high Intrigue didn't let me give away such tells if I didn't want it to. I knew who he was talking about of course but I paid it little mind.
FBI, OPEN UP!
Lyssa was thirteen. Even if I knew the marriage wouldn't take place until we were both of age, it still made me cringe.
"I have no idea who you're talking about," I said straightly.
Dad just chuckled at my response. "Go get cleaned up Petyr. Supper should be soon."
"Aye aye captain," I replied and left.
A tourney eh? That'll be a real adventure hopefully. A real true blue medieval tourney.
I hope they sell turkey legs.
Author's Notes:
Sorry if I offended any actual experienced HEMA fighters. Injury eventually forced me to drop the hobby so I never had a chance to get any good at it.
As stated in the foreword, please don't take this story too seriously and start meta-gaming in the comments. I have nothing plotted and I'm mostly just faffing about right now. It's the same reason why it's only barely edited and unpolished. My other story, A Song of Ice and Snow is still my primary focus but I'm pretty sick right now and couldn't get into the right mindset to write it
You know that feeling when you're super sick and dreaming of better times? This fic is a result of that.
That and I've been playing Crusader Kings 3 A Game of Thrones mod. (Utterly fantastic mod btw). I also love stories where the MCs have access to some sort of console command in the game world or the Crusader Kings 3 system.
Some similar but superior concepts of this type of story.
Shieldmaiden by Deviatesfish. Apparently only on QQ even though I can't recall anything NSFW in it. I adore this story (All her stories really)
Legends Never Die by Ideas-Guy
Uncommon Wealth by arg3nt. This one is in the NSFW QQ section for a very good reason. Takes place in Fallout 4 and SI has access to Fallout 4 Console Commands and breaks any semblance of balance with it. Complete.
If it sounds rambly, it's because it is. Its sickness-induced word vomit onto my screen.
Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Thanks for reading.