Turn 2 / Year 2 – Locked In(Night Watch)

Winterfell was a storm of grief and accusation, the wind carrying the bitter scent of iron and fear. Jon sat in the prisons, the weight of chains biting into his wrists, his knees scraped raw, and his face a mask of ice that no one dared read. 

He could hear even from her Catelyn’s fury, relentless and unyielding, each word a lash that threatened to unravel the fragile armor he had built around his heart. “Kill him!” she screamed, her voice echoing in the castle. “He is the cause of Robb’s death! The usurper! The murderer!”

He could hear Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik Cassel trying to calm her down. They had sent word to his Lord Father of the unfortunate accident. 

Jon said nothing. Words were useless here. Truth was meaningless. He had tried to prevent this. He had tried to bend fate to save Robb, to save the North, to save everything. And yet, here he was dirt on his knees, shackled, blamed for a death that had never been meant to happen in this life.

The clatter of hooves and the rush of wind drew Jon’s attention to the gate. A rider approached, banners snapping violently in the wind. His stomach tightened as the rider dismounted and handed a sealed letter to the steward. The parchment bore the unmistakable mark of the Stark sigil, pressed deep into the wax.

“From the King’s Hand?” someone whispered nearby.

Jon’s pulse stuttered. He did not move, did not speak, merely stared as the steward broke the seal and read aloud.

“By order of Lord Eddard Stark, Hand of the King, Jon Snow is not to be harmed. He is to be delivered safely to the Night’s Watch. Let no man disobey. Failure will be met with dire consequences.”

Jon felt the cold press of steel and iron melt slightly inside him. Ned had intervened. He would not die here in the castle, in the hands of those who believed him guilty. Yet the relief was hollow, the frost in his chest deeper than any Winterfell winter.

Catelyn’s face twisted with disbelief and fury as the steward repeated the words. “He is to be sent to the Wall? My son is dead, and you send this boy away?” she spat, trembling with rage. “Do you hear me, Ned? You let him escape! He should be executed!”

He watched her scream and wail, and said nothing more.

The ride north was silent. Jon Snow was not paraded through Winterfell’s gates as a son of the house, nor escorted with honor as a boy going to take the black. He was taken out like a stain being scrubbed away. Chains on his wrists. Eyes on his back. No farewells. No last look at the towers where he had grown up.

By the time Castle Black rose out of the snow, Jon felt older than his years, hollowed out by grief and accusation. The Wall loomed above him, vast and merciless, its ice face catching the pale light of the northern sky. In his first life, it had been intimidating. In this one, it felt like judgment.

The gates opened. “Jon Snow,” the escort announced, voice tight. “Ordered here by Lord Eddard Stark, Hand of the King.”

The black brothers gathered as they always did when new meat arrived. Jon felt their eyes rake over him; his chains, his Stark features, the wolfish set of his jaw. Murmurs rippled through the yard, quick and sharp as knives.

That was when he heard it.

“…that’s him.”

“…the one from Winterfell.”

“…killed his own brother, they say.”

Jon’s steps faltered for half a heartbeat.

Kinslayer.

The word was not spoken aloud at first. It didn’t need to be. It hung in the air, heavy and poisonous, passed from mouth to ear, growing teeth as it went.

Ser Alliser Thorne’s smile was thin and satisfied when he saw Jon. “Well,” Thorne drawled, circling him like a crow eyeing carrion, “if it isn’t the Lordling bastard. So I hear that you have done the darkest deed.”

Laughter followed—uneasy, cruel. Jon felt it like a blade sliding between his ribs. In his first life, he had arrived angry, proud, naive. This time, he arrived already broken in ways the Watch did not care to understand.

The chains were struck off. No ceremony. No quiet word of welcome.

The year that followed was the hardest Jon Snow had ever endured. He was given no favors. If anything, he was watched more closely than the rest. Every mistake was seized upon. Every success questioned. When he struck down a man in the yard, the whispers followed.

“Too eager, that one.”

“Of course he’s good with a blade. Remember who he’s killed already.”

Even Grenn and Pyp, who might have been friends in another life, kept their distance. No one wanted to be close to a kinslayer. In the North, it was a curse worse than treason. Here, at the edge of the world, it was a bad omen. Poor Samwell Tarly meanwhile kicked the bucket without him here.

He knew the brother just saw him as a burden and most likely let him freeze.

Jon trained harder than anyone. Not out of pride. Out of necessity. He rose before the horn, ran the Wall until his lungs burned, practiced until his hands bled. He swallowed insults without reply, knowing any protest would only confirm what they already believed. He let the rage coil inside him, cold and patient.

At night, when the fires burned low, he dreamed of Robb. Not the boy laughing in the yard, sword slung careless over his shoulder but Robb lying broken beneath a fallen horse, eyes staring at a sky that did not care.

Jon woke from those dreams with his jaw clenched so tightly it ached.

Maester Aemon watched him. The old man said little at first, but his blind eyes seemed to see far more than others’. One night, as Jon lingered near the ravens, Aemon spoke quietly “Men fear what they do not understand,” he said. “And they fear guilt they do not wish to face.” 

Jon said nothing. “Tell me,” Aemon went on, “do you believe yourself guilty, Jon Snow?”

Jon’s hands curled into fists. “No.”

Aemon nodded slowly. “Good. Then endure. The Wall strips lies away, in time. All that remains is truth.” If only that were so, Jon thought.

Ser Alliser never let up. Jon was given the worst watches, the coldest posts, sent ranging drills meant to break weaker men. When supplies ran thin, Jon’s name was always first on the list to go without. And yet he survived.

By midyear in his second year back, even his enemies could not deny his skill. His sword work was sharp, precise, ruthless. He fought like a man who had already died once and was not afraid to do so again.

Still, the whispers never fully stopped.

When news reached the Wall of unrest in the south of tensions, of lords arguing, of banners being quietly called…Jon listened with a tightness in his chest. He knew what came next. He knew how fast it would all spiral.

But here, chained by oath and reputation, he could do nothing.

+2 Prowess

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Turn 3 / Year 3 – Jon Snow’s Actions

Search for Missing Uncle Benjen

Roll 1d100+3=40(average).

The Wall did not care that Jon Snow had once died. It loomed above him all the same vast, pale, merciless its frozen face catching the dull light of a sun that never quite warmed the world. Jon stood beneath it in the pre-dawn gloom, his breath fogging the air, Ghost’s red eyes glowing softly at his side.

The direwolf was restless. Jon could feel it through the bond not words, not images, but a tautness, a low animal awareness stretched thin like a drawn bowstring. Ghost paced the snow, nose lifted, ears flicking toward the black line of the forest beyond the Wall.

Something was wrong out there. It always was. He knew what prowled beyond the walls. 

Behind Jon, the gates of Castle Black groaned open just wide enough to admit him. The iron chains rattled like bones. No ceremony. No brothers gathered to see him off. No well-wishes. Only duty and suspicion.

Lord Commander Jeor Mormont waited just inside the gate, cloaked in black, his lined face carved from stone. He did not offer Jon a seat. Did not offer wine. He barely offered a glance. “You want to go ranging,” Mormont said flatly.

Jon met his eyes. “Yes, my lord.”

“To search for your uncle.”

“Yes.”

A long pause followed. The wind moaned through the gate, carrying with it the distant crack of ice shifting far above. Mormont studied Jon as one might study a blade judging balance, edge, and whether it might turn in the hand.

“You’ll go alone,” the Lord Commander said at last.

Jon did not blink. “I expected as much.”

“You are not trusted,” Mormont continued. No heat. No anger. Just fact. “Some here believe you cursed. Others believe you are dangerous. Many believe you are guilty.”

Jon’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

Mormont’s gaze flicked briefly to Ghost, then back to Jon. “Your uncle Benjen vanished on his ranging a couple days before you have arrived. Others have searched. Others have died. You think you’ll fare better?”

Jon hesitated just long enough to choose his words. “I know things now,” he said carefully. “Things I didn’t before.”

Mormont snorted. “So you claim. Here,” the old bear said as he presented him with the valyrian blade once more, Longclaw. “You remind me of another who erred greatly.”

Jon knew who he was talking about and took the sword since he was sure he was going to need it out there beyond the wall. “Thank you, my lord,” he bowed deeply and this time meant it. At least someone in this cold world thought something good of him. 

“Don’t thank me,” Mormont turned away. “You have a month. No more. You take no men, no horses, no supplies beyond what you can carry. If you do not return, we will not come after you.”

Jon bowed his head. “Understood.”

“And Snow,” Mormont added, his voice hard as iron. “This is not redemption. Do not imagine it is.”

Jon met his gaze again, something cold and ancient flickering behind his eyes. “I don’t.”

The gate creaked open further and the Wall released him into the wider world beyond.

Gained Longclaw: +5 to Prowess! 

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The forest swallowed sound.

Beyond the Wall, the world felt… thinner. Not quieter…no, the wind still whispered through the branches, snow still crunched beneath boot and paw but strained, like a skin stretched too tight over something vast and patient.

Jon moved carefully, every sense alive. He wore black, but had wrapped his cloak in a gray wool covering to break his outline against the snow. His sword hung easy at his side. Ghost ranged ahead, a pale shadow slipping between the trees without a sound.

No birds. Jon noted it almost at once. The forest was too still. He remembered this feeling. The way the world held its breath before the dead rose.

They followed old tracks first, half-buried lines in the snow, long since scoured by wind. Benjen’s ranging party had passed this way once. Jon remembered the reports from his first life: broken signs, scattered remains, nothing conclusive.

This time, he looked deeper. He knelt, brushing aside snow with careful fingers. “Here,” he murmured. Ghost returned at once, sniffing the ground. The wolf’s hackles lifted. The tracks were wrong.

Men walking, not fleeing but with spacing too even, too deliberate. And beneath them, faintly impressed deeper into the ice… Boots that did not quite lift.

Jon swallowed. “They were followed,” he whispered. “Or… escorted.”

Ghost growled low in his chest. They moved on.

Hours passed and then days. The light never quite brightened. The trees grew thicker, their branches twisted and claw-like, heavy with snow that fell in sudden soft avalanches at the slightest disturbance.

Then Jon smelled it. Rot.

He froze, hand on his sword. Ghost stopped dead, nose lifted, body rigid.

They advanced slowly, breath held, until the trees opened into a shallow clearing. Bodies lay scattered across the snow. Not fresh. Not ancient. Preserved by cold, skin drawn tight, eyes glassy and pale. Black cloaks marked them as brothers of the Watch.

Jon recognized one of them. “Othor,” he breathed. The man’s throat was torn open, the flesh around it blackened with frostbite. His hands were clawed, fingers broken. Nearby lay another, Jafer Flowers his jaw frozen open in a silent scream.

In Jon’s first life, these men had risen again. This time, they were still. For now.

Jon forced himself to kneel, ignoring the scream of instinct that told him to run. He examined the ground. There drag marks leading north. “They didn’t die here,” Jon said. “They were brought.”

Ghost whined softly, pawing at the snow. Then his head snapped up, ears flattening. Jon felt it too. A presence. Not close. But aware. He rose slowly. “We don’t linger.”

They followed the drag marks until the forest thinned again—until the ground sloped downward into a shallow ravine choked with ice and dead brush. And there, half-buried beneath snow and leaves, Jon found it.

A broken sword. Blackened steel. Wolf pommel. Benjen Stark’s blade.

He knelt, lifting the sword with reverent care. The edge was nicked, the hilt wrapped in cracked leather darkened with old blood. This was no casual loss. This was a last stand.

Ghost pressed close, his warmth solid against Jon’s side. “He fought,” Jon said hoarsely. “He lived long enough to fight.”

Jon searched the ravine carefully. No body. That was… something. His uncle was out there somewhere… who knows where. He could head deep beyond the wall to look for him but who knew what dangers awaited.

Or he could turn back. 

A sound echoed through the trees then. A crack. Not ice. Bone. Jon spun, sword half-drawn.

The forest shifted. Figures moved between the trunks too smooth, too silent. Pale shapes, half-glimpsed. Watching. Ghost snarled, baring his teeth. Jon backed away slowly, heart hammering.

He had to decide now. Should he continue pursuing for his uncle or turn back?

…

Turn 4 / Year 4!

We learnt that our uncle is still alive out there. 

Should we purse 

Or 

Turn back!

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