A Winter of Dead
A horn sounds out in the night, and quickly the rumblings spread throughout Castle Black.
Harmund Snow, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, has been murdered in his sleep, deep within the Commander's Keep.
Ser Renfrey Drumburn, First Ranger, Alpon Whent, First Builder, Wegon Sand, First Steward, and Maester Poddom have convened in the courtyard of Castle Black. Winter is coming and command of the Night's Watch must be maintained, but the murderer needs be found.
Sentries on the Wall have found evidence that someone climbed over in the dark, and a trail has been found heading west in the early winter snows.
You have been gathered - new recruits and veterans, but Black Brothers all - to hunt the culprit down, and bring him to the justice of the Night's Watch.
What This Is
This game will be a Night's Watch game using the Green Ronin's A Song of Ice and Fire System, using the Game of Thrones Edition rules where applicable, supplemented by the Night's Watch book. It will decidedly not focus on the managing of the noble houses of Westeros, although I'm sure they will feature.
What Has Happened So Far?
Someone killed the Lord Commander. You need to find him.
The first adventure had the players track the suspect - a former ranger thought dead beyond the Wall - west across the North towards Deep Lake, where after some shenanigans, they found him all but catatonic with one foot chewed off. After taking the man back to Deep Lake, the PCs discovered him up and about again - recovering an old map from a room in the castle. A brief struggle ended with the ranger again catatonic. Concerned that no word of the Lord Commander's death has yet reached the other castles along the Wall, the PCs and their allies race back to Castle Black.
The year? Oh, around 150 AL - during the reign of Aegon Dragonbane, only a short time after the Dance of Dragons.
The Night's Watch is in decline, but nowhere near as bad as it is during the books. Most castles along the Wall are still inhabited, although none are full. Many castles maintain intense rivalries - "brotherly" ones, to be sure - but the passions and pasts of men from the South are not always as fully erased as the stories say when a man takes the black. There is still respect for the Night's Watch by those south of it, and men of honour still take the oath, but they are slowly becoming fewer and further between.
Castles Along the Wall
Men of the Night's Watch
What To Apply With?
I'm looking for players to all be men of the Night's Watch - no wildlings and Northmen or visitors to the Wall or some such. For your application, I'm hoping for 1-2 paragraphs explaining who your character is - personality, background, goals, etc... and a completed Myth-Weavers' Song of Ice and Fire character sheet. Leave your applications in this thread, and if you have questions about concepts, keep them here too (although I do have a Gameplay Q&A thread in the forums if you've got more specific questions about how I run my game).
Pay attention to the short ad period - I find A Song of Ice and Fire games get a lot of initial interest that quickly peters off, so I don't plan on dragging on the applications. Get in, and get going.
Character generation is as per the core rules, with no attribute reductions. You do not need to take the Brother of the Night's Watch Benefit, nor do you get it for free, however, those without it will only be considered as new recruits at the start of the game - men who've not yet taken their oaths (which may provide interesting story hooks on its own - positive and negative).
Note, that there is a House Rule that slightly modifies the Brother of the Night's Watch Benefit.
What should characters focus on? Everything. It's a murder mystery, so investigation and talking to people will be important. And it's in the North, during the onset of winter, so survival (nature and combat) skills will be used. Warfare, when it happens, will mostly be skirmishes of small battles, but who knows what you might get drawn into. Anything that specifically deals with the running of Houses can likely be ignored.
Note that I didn't say it'll be a simple murder mystery...
