[OPEN] Oh, in dreams I have watched it spin

[northerndragon]

WHO? Jon Snow (northerndragon) & maybe you!
WHAT? Open log including dream event prompts.
WHEN? December 2017! Backdated and forward dated are very welcome.
ANYTHING ELSE? Opening summary below cut, detailed prompts in the comments.

The surface of BASE may be unfamiliar, but it doesn't take long -- a few days at most -- for Jon to begin to realize that in its bones, it's a lot like Castle Black. Everything around them speaks of a military organization with stretched resources. The little machines are like builders and stewards and maesters, and he suspects they eat much less than sworn brothers do. And he can see evidence everywhere of attempts to keep everything in good working order and to reuse anything that can be reused.

As such, in spite of those surface differences, he begins to feel more at home.

Comments

[northerndragon]

"Yes -- no. Lord Stark was my father, but I'm a bastard."

A few statues further in, the swords haven't yet crumbled to rust. And although they're getting a little closer to where the feast should be, the sounds of it aren't any louder: it remains distant, untouchable.

"When I die again, there won't be a place for me here -- not among the trueborn Starks. Maybe among the Kings in the North, but there was never one who wasn't a Stark before me."

The again seems to have passed his notice completely. It's not something he'd say to anyone while he was awake.

[horsepowered]

"In all the ways that count then, the answer is yes."

It could be a correction. It could be an observation. The ambiguity is very much on purpose, and Chiron falls silent after it. The sounds haven't changed. They're as distant as they ever were, and that is deeply disconcerting.

Holding the torch level, trying to shine it further into the darkness, Chiron's eyes go to the statues. The ages of them are impossible to tell. Stone shouldn't crumble so easily in these conditions.

"Are your bones more important than your deeds, and what stories will be told when you pass?"

The again is something Chiron notes, and it is why he adds: "Did their placement matter the first time?"

[northerndragon]

He senses the ambiguity in Chiron's statement. Hasn't that seemed more and more true as time went on? The stigma of Jon's birth has ceased to matter very much, in the Night's Watch and out of it. As king, he's even used a Stark seal, though it's the white wolf rather than the grey that's his sigil.

His family could choose to bury him here, and they might, but it would still be a mistake and a lie. It wouldn't change the certainty in his gut that this isn't his place, no matter how much he wants it to be. The hard cold faces of the statues of the past kings seem to be eyeing him as he passes, knowing he's an interloper. Yet he knows he still has to explore this place, try to find the feast, eventually go deeper into the earth.

"I didn't die here, and I wasn't buried. I wasn't dead for very long. If they had disposed of my body, they would have burned it, to keep me from returning as a wight."

He knows he's not a wight now, knows that the Night King doesn't control him, so why is he here?

"As to your question -- no. What says more of a man than his deeds? Even the stories aren't very important." The time when he thought they would be, when he wanted stories to be told of his bravery and worthiness, seems very distant.

[horsepowered]

"If the answer is no, then ask yourself why their resting place is of such great personal importance."

It is evident that it is only a personal matter. At least, that's Chiron's best guess based on the conversation. Perhaps he's guessing very wrong, given he's never spoken to this man before waltzing into his dream.

Chiron's own death had been a nasty affair, full of poison and days of agony. Where he was buried hadn't been important. He was given coins for passage into the realms of Hades, and that had been the truly important part.

"But I would contest one thing you've said. Stories, in the end, are what matters most."

[northerndragon]

He sighs.

"When I was a boy, I wanted to be a Stark very much. It was all I had ever wanted... that, and this place, Winterfell, but I didn't want to take it away from my trueborn brother. I suppose I also wanted to know who my mother was. It wasn't Lady Stark: I never did any good in her eyes."

A few more steps. Back at the very first statue they'd passed, the stone direwolf silently rises from its belly, begins to step after Chiron and Jon.

"Maybe hearing the stories is important: that inspires people. But hoping to have them told of you is a poor goal."

[horsepowered]

"You're a good brother," he says softly. There's respect in that, and a hint of warm that perhaps ripples out into the rest of the tomb. It seems like the only conclusion that Chiron can draw from the matter is that being here is a personal reaffirmation of identity. But that isn't his conclusion to draw.

"A poor goal, yes. But as a byproduct of a life well lived, it leads to other roads. I've walked one of them after my own passing."

Chiron senses the movement behind him. He doesn't like it, and when he turns to see the stone direwolf, he's quite unsure what to make of it. This was Jon's world, not his. He clears his throat, hoping to bring the wolf to Jon's attention.

[northerndragon]

Jon glances over his shoulder and sees the stone direwolf. Far from being threatening, it waits in the path behind them both, seeming content to follow at a distance. Still a little unnerving (what if it doesn't remain content to follow?), but not like the times when the stone kings begin to speak to him to tell him he has no place in these crypts.

"I try to be a good brother. I'm not sure I always am... My brothers and sisters suffered and there was nothing I could do for them. Three are still living, but one is buried down here, and the other is... I don't know where his body is. His killers were dishonorable."

This may be his dream, but he's never really liked talking about himself for very long, so he seizes on Chiron's comment with interest. "After your own passing?"

[horsepowered]

They have a companion now. A lone wolf seems appropriate, here and now, and Chiron makes a note to himself to turn every so often and check that the thing is there.

"That the effort is made is something they're doubtlessly aware of, even if circumstances made action difficult." It's a vague, broad platitude, if only because the circumstances haven't been explained. The only true point is that there has been the kind of loss that the gods might give a man as punishment if this land was Chiron's home. "My sympathies regarding that dishonor. That's unfair to all of you that still live."

There's a little laugh in Chiron's throat. Warm, and like it's a private joke that he's about to explain.

"I am, technically, a spirit, rather than flesh and blood. Don't mistake me for the Sargent."

[northerndragon]

To the earlier things Chiron says, Jon only presses his lips together and nods. He'd expected to see his family again after joining the Night's Watch, even if it might have been after the passage of some time and even if it was only for brief visits: Benjen had been able to visit Winterfell every so often. He could never have anticipated the way things would fall apart just after he'd obligated himself to stay out of them. And he suspects that if he had been able to leave and try to help, it would have been the death of him, even if Lady Stark had prevented him from attending her brother's ill-fated wedding.

Roads not taken are a complicated thing. He responds more to the next subject.

"I did mistake you for the Sargent. And another man... you have the face of another man. I've seen you before.

"It sounds right enough that you're a spirit: I'm not sure anyone but a spirit could walk with me here, though they know you're not a Stark either."

The difference is that the old Kings of Winter don't seem to care, because Chiron hasn't tried to be a Stark. Maybe that's why the feast -- still not getting any louder, though they're much closer now to where Jon thinks it should be -- seems to elude him.

"But you're part of -- "

The word is COST, but for some reason, it won't come to him.

[horsepowered]

"In all fairness to your mistake, he and I are...we are versions of each other. Our broad purpose in the past the same, but with some changed details. Like when you hear different versions of the same story. Perhaps the hero did this thing and then that thing in one tale, and then in another's recollection, the matter is switched around."

It's the best metaphor Chiron can offer. "But I died of poison and gave up my immortality to escape the constant pain of it. And that is where the real differences begin."

The matter of being an actual spirit is for Jon to enquire about, rather than offer voulentarily. Chiron's not about to subject anyone to painstaking discetion if they don't wish it, and he knows few who might.
But Chiron does have to ask one thing, while they remain on the topic of spirits. "Do they frequently take offense at those who aren't blood relations entering these halls?"

The question is half asked to Jon, but also to the stone direwolf behind them. If Jon doesn't have that answer, the wolf may very well be.

"I'm a part of the enterprise of COST. And other things as well."

[northerndragon]

Something about what Jon has just said strikes him as wrong, but in his dreaming state, he can't place why. Something about spirits, feasts, ghosts, what happens after you die, how dark it would be here without a torch: it's on the tip of his tongue, and then it's gone again, something he can't verbalize, something he knows and doesn't know about being dead.

"I am a blood relation. But I still have no place here, and it's me they reject. Except for him." He casts another skeptical glance at the stone direwolf, which is pallid in the torchlight, almost as if it were made of white stone rather than grey. It's padded silently closer to them. "Or they don't want me here, they want me to see the older kings, the ones who are... well, they're stories. They're down below.

"How can you be part of COST if you've died? They've remade you?"

[horsepowered]

There was a level of certainty to Jon's expressions of exclusion that Chiron found, well, sad, in truth. It wasn't the kind of thing to say outloud, but there was no doubt to him that this was not a new thing either.

His attention turned to the stone direwolf again, the word him finally smacking Chiron upside the head. It did seem obvious, didn't it? That was likely some manifestation of Jon's father.

Rather than ask for clarification on that point, he follows another instead. "Why would the emphasis be on the older kings?"

When the matter of himself comes up, Chiron's far warmer. Happier to explain.

"It has nothing to do with them," he said. "Mages back home conduct various rituals. In one, they summon spirits of heroes from myth and from history to act as champions in their stead. I was called forth to that ritual. COST intercepted me from there."