Wednesday, April 27, 2011

PSN'ing Me Off - Sony's Failure to Secure The PlayStation Network

Let us establish first and foremost the basic position in which Sony now finds itself with the gaming public: they are fucked.

Some of you will doubtlessly protest my very strong language and crude imagery regarding the current situation with Sony's PlayStation Network.  Some of you probably expect nothing less.  Either way, I stand by my assertion.  The scenario that has played out couldn't possibly be conceived, even with assistance from LSD, salvia, shrooms, and mescaline all mixed together.  DDOSing the PSN, that sort of thing should be something that any network engineer, security oriented or not, ought to be factoring into their designs when they build something like this.  But this has gone way beyond a mere botnet or script kiddie attack.  Somebody, or a group of somebodies, didn't just shut down the PSN the way that Anonymous "accidentally" did a few weeks ago.  They broke in and made off with user data.  How much user data?

Try all of it.

There are, best estimate, some 70 million PSN accounts.  Those accounts contain names, addresses, and most importantly, credit card info.  And every last bit of that data was taken.  This is light-years above owning a box on Sony's network.  It's like the Great Train Robbery, only considerably worse.  What could you do with essentially unfettered access to 70 million credit and debit cards?  Depends on how smart you were about it.  The best part, from the perspective of the hackers, is that Sony has actually helped them get away with this.  How so?  By not owning up to the fact that they got hacked, and not owning up to the fact that personal data was lost.  Because Sony sat around with their thumbs up their asses, putting out milquetoast "updates" which informed without actually enlightening anybody, and ignored the rising degree of protests far longer than they should have, they essentially covered for the hackers.  Their prevarications have given those guys at least a week's head start to play around with other people's money.

One thing that should be kept in mind at moments like this is that it really is smart to avoid ascribing malicious motives to certain actions which can be better explained by basic stupidity.  Consider Patrick Seybold, the Senior Director of Corporate Communications and Social Media for Sony.  It's tempting to paint him as an outright villain, a corporate mouthpiece stooge who propagated a farrago of lies by repeating over and over, "we don't know how bad it really is" for six whole days.  But it's perhaps more accurate to look at him as being stupid.  The less flattering view would be the typical suit, a guy who is in the habit of talking a lot but not really saying much of anything, which might go over well in the boardroom but tends to make your customers start hauling out their pitchforks and torches.  The more forgiving perspective would be a man who was given the mushroom treatment by another segment of his company and used as a human shield for a week.  Continuing up the food chain, we have the engineers whose balliwick the PSN falls under.  Again, real tempting to paint them as evil bastards.  Again, much better to look at them as exercising gross stupidity rather than genuine evil.  In a corporate environment the size and breadth of Sony, the size of a problem is proportionate to the speed with which one's CYA reflex kicks in.  A tiny little problem, nobody will give it a second thought, just fix it and forget it.  A bigger problem, say an authentication issue for the East Coast for example, and you can be sure there's some CYA going on before the problem actually gets fixed.  When you've got a problem like the current one, everybody will be on the verge of panic trying to figure out how their posteriors can be sufficiently shielded, even as the small vestiges of their brains still capable of coherent thought inform them that there isn't a snowflake's chance in Hell they can make anything relating to the disaster look good.  Fiascoes like this one tend to lead upper management to demand people's heads, and heads will be served up one way or the other.  If the engineers weren't feeding Seybold any genuinely useful information, then it's certainly understandable why Seybold's blog posts weren't assuaging the public's discontent.

I would like to take a moment to address another example of stupidity, and one that has far more potentially damaging consequences.  It is the stupidity of complacency.  The stupidity of "don't worry, it's not a big deal."  To some extent, Sony gave us this brand of stupidity over the course of the last week, and it's turned out that we shouldn't just be worried, we should be all sorts of pissed off and justifiably scared.  An article on Ars Technica had some choice words from Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan who has seemingly made the current stage of his career focused on "analyzing" the video game industry.  And by "analyzing," I mean "spouting mindless bullshit and getting paid six figures for it."  In the past, I've done my best to avoid giving much thought to Pachter and his inanities, but his pronouncements in regard to Sony and the PSN breach just cannot go unchallenged.  The first mistake is playing the "shit happens" card, stating that security breaches do happen and it sucks for customers.  Sony wasn't even stupid enough to try and use that gambit, which doesn't start Pachter off on solid footing.  Yes, security breaches happen, but in regards to the PSN, security breaches DIDN'T happen.  Outages, yes.  Authentication problems, more than Sony would probably like to admit.  I know that no system is 100% secure and no system can avoid being breached forever.  The PSN was probably the closest thing to an impenetrable system that Man has devised in the last decade.  When it finally was breached, it was ripped wide open and the really valuable data, the personal user data, not the games, was sucked out like marrow from a cracked bone.  The "hassle of tracking down whether somebody is fraudulently using credit info" which Pachter breezily dismisses isn't the sort of annoyance that can be dispensed with by clicking a mouse and re-entering some data.  Assuming for a moment that the spread of credit cards stored on the PSN is evenly split up between the 4 major credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover), then each of those companies is looking at dealing with seventeen and a half million cards that need to be cancelled and re-issued.  It's likely not such an even split, but the company who's only handling four or five million card cancellations probably won't be feeling suitably grateful for the distinction.  That's going to tie up massive amounts of resources which would otherwise be pointed towards day-to-day operations.  The ripple effect on the economy just from having to process all those cancellations beggars the imagination.  Even if it's handled at a lower level through local banks and credit unions, it's still eventually going to impact the operations of the credit card companies.

Pachter continues to show his absolute lack of anything resembling intelligent thought when he made the following pronouncement: "In my view, a serious hacker with evil intent would be better off hacking into a financial institution rather than a gaming network."  He continues to diminish the scale of the disaster by concluding that the breach is "not a serious security threat."  If I were a serious hacker with evil intent, directly hacking into a financial institution would be the last thing in the universe I'd want to do.  It wouldn't matter to me if it was the Last National Bank of Zimbabwe.  Shooting for a direct breach of bank data would be unbelievably stupid and ultimately profitless.  Banks have been directly robbed so many times in physical form over the centuries that they tend to design their computer systems much like they would their branches.  Lots of security fences, lots of redundancies, lots of alarms.  Banks expect people to try and straight out rob them, so they harden themselves accordingly.  True, they can still be breached, and user data can be obtained, but banks will go berserk the minute a breach happens and they will be locking down everything related to the breach very quickly.  If you're lucky, you'll have about 24 hours worth of use out of that data, then it's pretty much wasted hard drive space.  Rather than hit the banks directly, hacking a game network would allow somebody to come at them sideways.  Remember how I asked what you would do if you had 70 million credit card accounts, all the personal data associated with those accounts, and a week's head start?  If I were the smarter version of Pachter's hypothetical "serious hacker," I'd be making relatively small money transfers.  A cash advance here, a direct withdrawl there.  Keep the limit down to a C-note at a time.  Even if I could only pull it off one time each for 10% of the accounts that I snagged, that's still 7 million accounts, and a Benjamin from each one of those accounts would add up to some serious money.  Banks look for big money transfers into and out of individual accounts.  Somebody shows up with a hundred million dollars and says, "I'd like to make a deposit," you can bet there's a manager on the phone to the Feds before the ink's even dry on the deposit slip.  Small money transfers, on the other hand, it's background noise to a bank.  A modicum of caution while pulling money out and putting in, nobody would have any reason to suspect anything, certainly nothing that would justify filling out a Suspicious Activity Report.  And if I were being extra smart about it, there would be a mix of ATM withdrawals and electronic fund transfers.  Shift a C-note to the bank of my choice, pull it out a few hours later, and the cash is mine.  I could go on about how ATM cameras would be recording me, but if I'm smart enough to have planned and executed a plunder on this scale, dealing with ATM cameras would have been factored into my thinking and a suitable countermeasure developed.  Bottom line: a gaming network is the perfect vehicle to rob a bank, because nobody will see it coming.

As my high school forensics coach told me oh so many years ago, it's considered good form to concede at least one of your opponent's points during a debate.  And while I firmly believe that describing Michael Pachter as a halfwit is overly generous praise, his little chat with Ars Technica did produce one point which I can agree with.  "Over the long run, we'll all forget about this, unless it happens again."  Perhaps not entirely accurate, but close enough.  The brouhaha will eventually die down, people will be fired, and life will return to something resembling normal.  How quickly things return to almost-normal, and how close they come to the established benchmark of normal prior to the breach, depends very heavily upon what Sony does next.  The smart thing to do would be complete disclosure.  Let the world see how thoroughly they fucked up and how badly they got taken.  Make sure that the conditions and the environment which allowed the breach to happen do not recur.  Sony needs to be crawling on their hands and knees over broken glass coated in lemon juice and salt to win their customers' confidence back.  Even then, it may never quite reach the level of confidence that they once enjoyed.  The question is how to prevent a new breach from happening.  If the hackers got in through a hacked PS3, what would Sony do?  Update the firmware to further cut off functionality?  Brick every PS3 currently out in the world and make their customers buy all new ones just to rebuild the integrity of the PSN?  Both of those options would almost certainly exacerbate an already infuriated customer base, as well as give hacker groups like Anonymous more grist for their mills.  Until Sony discloses how the hack was pulled off, it's exceedingly difficult to say how best to proceed.  Continuing to do what they've been doing for the last week is guaranteed to make the situation worse.  "Proactive" measures which somehow result in a further diminished user experience for the PSN when it finally does come back up will have the same effect.  For the immediate future, Sony is fucked as far as their customers are concerned, because there is nothing they can do that won't piss people off even more.  Even SCEA's board committing seppuku on YouTube wouldn't make people happy.  Sony will just have to take their lumps and contemplate the scale of repairs needed not only to the PSN, but to their reputation and their customer base.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Game of Thrones Recap - Episode 2 - The Kingsroad

The second episode of the series might carry the innocuous sounding title "The Kingsroad," but it might well have been called "Crime & Punishment," since that seemed to be a recurring theme throughout.

Danerys Targaryen could certainly make a strong claim for being punished for her brother Viserys' ambition, since it's clear at the start of the episode that getting railed like a porn star nightly by Khal Drogo is less than enjoyable to her.  Of course, Viserys' crime isn't ambition, but his willingness to pimp his sister out for power and the complete lack of anything regarding a principle.  To him, his sister is merely doing her job, and when Khal Drogo ceases to be a useful ally, she can do her job with some other sucker.  For Jorah Mormont, the knight who's decided to serve the Targaryens, his crime is a little more obvious.  Rather than execute some poachers, or give them the option to "take the black" and join the Night's Watch, Mormont instead sold them off as slaves.  In Pentos, such a thing wouldn't even rate a mild cluck of disapproval.  But in Westeros, it's the sort of thing that gets the King's Justice after you, and makes you abandon your position as the head of your family.  Naturally, Viserys thinks Mormont's a great guy.

Prince Joffrey runs into the nature of crime and punishment twice in the episode.  The first time is when he rousts his uncle Tyrion from the kennels where "The Imp" has passed out after another night of drinking (and doubtlessly wenching).  Some time has passed between Bran's fall from the tower and the present, and Joffrey hasn't exactly been a perfect guest.  Tyrion instructs his nephew to offer his sympathies and his services to the Starks.  Joffrey refuses, leading to Tyrion slapping him.  Every refusal, every protest, Tyrion slaps the kid, and keeps at it until Joffrey goes off to talk to the Starks.  This is a pretty important character reveal for both Tyrion and Joffrey.  For Tyrion, it reveals his knowledge of politics, as well as showing how very unlike his family he really is.  For Joffrey, it demonstrates that he's a very slow learner, and the archetypal spoiled prince.  When your lecherous drunk dwarf of an uncle slaps you around and tells you to stop being an asshole, it should be pretty obvious that "prince" only applies to your social standing and not your social skills.

At this moment, we're properly introduced to Sandor Clegane (played by Rory McCann), a mercenary, thug, and general no-goodnik who goes by the nickname "The Hound."  His current job is bodyguard for Joffrey.  When he remarks that Tyrion will likely have to explain himself later about why he slapped Joffrey, the dwarf is unconcerned.  If anything, Tyrion realizes that being the Queen's brother lets him get away with a lot of behavior that would get other people maimed if not killed, and he's prepared to take almost ruthless advantage of that fact.

Jaime and Cersei Lannister are also thinking about crime and punishment, though not necessarily in the same fashion.  For all his political and family connections, Jaime knows that he's done some pretty ugly things in his life.  It's one thing to be a regicide, carrying the epithet "Kingslayer" even if the king in question was mad as a hatter.  Screwing your sister, who also happens to be the Queen, that's something else entirely.  And attempted murder, particularly the attempted murder of a child, is probably something that at one time he thought would be beyond the pale even for him.  Now, he knows better, and there's definitely a little bit of self-disgust going on behind those pretty eyes of his.  When Tyrion remarks that he's "most interested to hear what the boy has to say when he wakes up," you can see the wheels turning in Jaime's head.  Will he have to add fratricide, or even just attempted fratricide, to the list of crimes he's committed?  Cersei doesn't seem as concerned about Tyrion finding out, though we've seen that she can be a really good actress when the situation calls for it.  After breakfast, she talks with Catelyn Stark, offering her sympathies and her prayers for Bran's recovery.  She even goes as far as talking to Cat about her first child, one born before Joffrey, who died of a disease while still very young.  Cat, who hasn't left Bran's side since he was brought in, thanks Cersei for her concern and her prayers.

Of course, Cat's motherly side disappears completely once Jon comes into the room.  While Robb and Arya treat him like he's their full brother, which Jon fully reciprocates, Cat simply cannot bring herself to love him even a little bit.  Jon's love and concern for Bran offends her greatly and she continues to punish him with scorn and loathing for the crime of being Ned's bastard son.  Of course, she also punishes Ned a little bit for having a bastard son in the first place.  She reminds him that the last time he rode south to King's Landing, he came back a year later with Jon, and she's clearly afraid the same thing is going to happen again, or worse.

We already know Bran's "crime" was only to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some would say that being tossed off a tower and laying comatose in bed with only medieval-level medical science available to him would be punishment enough.  But no, somebody has decided that Bran needs to be permanently and thoroughly silenced.  Of course, some punishments are a little more swift than others, as Bran's would-be assassin discovers to his surprise when Summer (Bran's direwolf) comes to his boy's rescue and rips the assassin's throat out.  Once the threat is dealt with, Summer simply lays down next to Bran on the bed and looks at Cat, as if telling her, "Go take care of business around the castle, I've got this."

Sansa and Arya both learn a great deal about crime and punishment while traveling with Ned to King's Landing.  For Arya, her crime basically is that she's not much of a girl.  Sure, she has to wear the dresses and takes the sewing classes and do all the girly stuff she's expected to do.  But it's clear that she doesn't want to do any of that, and worse, her natural talents predispose her to pursuits considered more manly like archery and swordplay.  And while she might say "ouch" when getting hit with a stick while fencing with a butcher's boy along a river, she's not going to go crying or pouting because of it.  On the other hand, Sansa's great crime is being an empty headed little simp.  She so thoroughly believes the hype of princes, princesses, and "happily ever after" that she literally can't see how much of a toad Joffrey is to everybody.  For the second time in the episode, Joffrey learns about crime and punishment, though it's doubtful this lesson will stick any better than the last one.  His crime is more or less the same as before, terminal assholery, though he adds assault with a deadly weapon to the mix when he takes his sword and cuts the cheek of the butcher's boy Arya was playing with, supposedly as punishment for hitting Arya with a stick.  Arya responds by whacking Joffrey once with her stick, drawing his attention away from the butcher's boy.  Joffrey chases Arya and ends up with his sword pointed at her chest, threatening to cut her badly (and my, what lovely vocabulary he has, Mom should be so proud of him).  At this point, Arya's direwolf Nymeria provides us with another demonstration of why threatening a direwolf's two-legged packmates is a very bad idea.  Nymeria doesn't kill Joffrey, but he won't be playing tennis or threatening violent assault anytime soon.  When Arya picks up Joffrey's sword and has him in the same position she was in moments earlier, we realize that Joffrey is not only a bully, but he's a stupid bully.  It's viscerally satisfying to hear him blubber for his life, but you can't help but think the world would be a better place with him no longer in it.  Showing far more mercy than Joffrey deserves, Arya throws his sword into the river rather than run the little toad through.  And Sansa?  She yells at Arya for "ruining everything" and pleads with Joffrey to not hurt her.

Arya knows she's in trouble, and worse, Nymeria is in trouble.  Chewing on a prince's arm might be satisfying, but it's not going to be looked upon favorably by the powers that be.  Nymeria's only hope for survival is to get as far away as possible from Arya, and Arya knows it.  It takes throwing a rock at her furry friend to convince Nymeria to run, but Arya believes it's for the best.  The scene where Nymeria is looking at Arya while the girl tries to get her to run away brings to mind the old saw about "no good deed goes unpunished."   The truth of that saw is brought home rather brutally when Robert  holds court in the local inn about the incident.  Joffrey, being not only a bully but a lying weasel, makes it sound like Arya deliberately orchestrated an attack with a commoner, her direwolf, and a pair of large clubs.  Arya refutes the charge, but Sansa plays dumb.  Caught between her sister, her would-be husband (the betrothal mentioned in Episode 1 is a done deal at this point), and her King, she wimps out and claims not to have a clear recollection.  Robert's willing to let the matter drop, with both fathers disciplining their respective children, but Cersei demands blood.  Since Nymeria is gone, Cersei sees absolutely no problem with Sansa's direwolf Lady standing in.  Ned asks Robert if this is really what he wants to do, indirectly reminding him that he's the King, and should have the final say in the matter.  Robert's silence is telling.  Never one to shirk responsibility, Ned informs Cersei he'll do it himself.  Cersei suspects a trick, but Ned assures her there will be no tricks from him.  The amount of pain and regret on Ned's face as he cuts Lady's throat is palpable.  However little he might have wanted the direwolves around in the first place, they're as much a part of the family now as his daughters and sons.  Even Jon Snow.  Yet, as Ned is executing one of his furry children, Bran finally awakens.  A shame Tyrion's not there to hear what he has to say.

If there was any sort of secondary theme to the episode, it would be that of enlightenment, of learning unpleasant truths and making decisions based upon those truths.  Jon learns the truth that the Night's Watch isn't all comprised of selfless heroes, but just as easily rapists and murderers can fill their ranks.  Cat learns that what happened to Bran really wasn't an accident and that the Lannisters are very likely involved right up to their pretty blonde heads.  The telling evidence was the weapon used by Bran's would-be assassin, a dagger made of Valyrian steel with a dragonbone hilt.  More background on this below.  Ned learns that Robert's actual power is very sharply circumscribed when it comes to the whims of his wife, and her whims seem entirely too focused on her family and herself rather than the Seven Kingdoms.  Daenerys learns, with the help of a slave/lady-in-waiting, that she doesn't have to just take it like a Boy Scout when it comes to sex with Khal Drogo.  If anything, she can probably do what Dothraki hordes and Free Cities merchant princes couldn't: she can make the Lord of the Dothraki her slave, subject to her desires and wishes, if only she's willing to take him as roughly as he's been taking her up to this point.  As for Sansa, well, much like her betrothed, she's a very slow learner.  She can't quite shake her illusions, the fairy tale crap still mucking up her thought processes in the face of harsh reality.  And where she's going, slow learners tend to get eaten alive.

I'm hoping you're hating the wait for these episodes as much as I am.  Only two episodes in, HBO's greenlighted the next season, where things get even more intense, and I'm almost dying for the next one to come in.

Winter is coming.



*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
BACKGROUND NOTE: VALYRIAN STEEL
Just as the forging of Damascus steel was considered a lost art for many years in the real world, Valyrian steel is a lost art for the peoples of Westeros and the Free Cities.  The only difference is that rediscovering Damascus steel didn't require magic be present in the world.

Valyrian steel is the closest that any character in Game of Thrones will ever come to owning the stereotypical "magic weapon" beloved of fantasy settings.  In a world where "castle forged steel" is the gold standard which virtually every soldier and general recognizes, Valyrian steel represents history, a link to a much different and romanticized past.  Stronger, slightly lighter, and able to hold an edge far better than regular ferrous alloys, Valyrian steel is vanishingly rare in the world.  Ownership of a weapon made of this material marks the individual as either very rich or unspeakably lucky, almost always the former.  Eddard Stark's greatsword Ice is one such weapon.  The fact that the assassin carried a dagger whose blade was Valyrian steel and whose hilt was made of dragonbone is a dead giveaway that there's an individual with a lot of money and a lot of power at their disposal.  To give some modern context in terms of scarcity and cost rather than relative force, the assassin carrying that dagger would be roughly the same as a gangbanger trying to rob a 7-11 with a Hellfire-armed Predator drone.  Dragonbone is not a metaphorical name, but a literal one.  In the books, dragonbone is a semi-ferrous material that comprised the skeletons of the dragons that the Valyrians used in their ancient conquests and which House Targaryen used to seize and cement their hold on Westeros.  Despite it's iron content, dragonbone is remarkably light.  It too is increasingly rare in the world, since there are no more living dragons that anybody knows about.

Valyrian steel can be reforged easily enough, but the process for creating new Valyrian steel is lost, hence the great value placed upon such weapons.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Game of Thrones Recap - Episode 1 - Winter Is Coming

(Note: The following article would have appeared on Suite101.com if not for their idiotic policy demanding one "high quality" image be attached to every single article, a recent change which is particularly troublesome for those of us who are writing recaps like this one.  You, my readers, get to enjoy this here because of somebody else's stupidity.)


Last night, HBO launched their new series, Game of Thrones, based off the novel of the same name written by George R.R. Martin. It manages to pack in a great deal of action and a rather formidable cast of characters into just one hour, with ten more left to go. Rather than the high heroic fantasy of Tolkien, Martin gives us a very low fantasy setting. Yes, there's magic, but it's vanishingly rare. Yes, there are creatures that are arguably supernatural to one degree or another, but they too are not common. The world that the characters inhabit is driven by motives anybody can understand: love, honor, greed, lust, power, hatred. And yet, for all the turmoil that will eventually engulf two continents and countless lives, it all starts so quietly

The continent of Westeros holds The Seven Kingdoms, once ruled by Mad King Aerys Targaryen and now by the man who deposed him, Robert Baratheon (played by Mark Addy). The northernmost border of the Seven Kingdoms is delineated by The Wall, a massive fortification of ice stretching from one coast to the other, manned by a sworn brotherhood known as the Night's Watch. Three members of the Watch make their way through the Wall to perform what should be a normal patrol against wildlings, the people indigenous to the area. One member of the patrol finds a camp of dead and dismembered wildlings and brings his comrades over to show them the find, only to see nothing but fresh snow in the campsite. Moments later, the patrol is attacked by one of the few supernatural beings of the series, an undead creature known as a white walker. Far from the stereotypical zombie, they are swift and merciless, killing two members of the patrol while leaving the third alive to tell the tale.

The survivor deserts the Night's Watch, an act which will earn him a death sentence. Somehow, he makes it far enough south to come into the domain of Winterfell, where he's captured by soldiers of House Stark, the ruling noble family in the area. Word of the deserter reaches Eddard Stark (played by Sean Bean), Lord of The North, as he watches over three of his sons while they work on archery practice. His wife Catelyn (played by Michelle Fairly) is with him when the news is delivered. Duty demands that Eddard, or "Ned" as he's called by friends and family, be the one to pass judgment and carry out the sentence. When Catelyn objects to Ned taking their younger son Bran (played by Isaac Hempstead-Wright) to watch an execution, Ned reminds his wife of the family motto, "Winter is coming." The motto not only provides the episode title, but also the grim mindset of House Stark, a more pessimistic take on "be prepared."

The deserter accepts that he will be executed but insists that he really did encounter a white walker, beings who have theoretically been gone for thousands of years. A single swift stroke of a large greatsword is all that is required to behead the deserter for his crime. When Bran asks his father if the deserter really saw a white walker, Ned is clearly reluctant to believe him. While making their way home, Ned, Bran, Ned's oldest son Robb (played by Richard Madden), Ned's illegitimate son Jon Snow (played by Kit Harrington), and Ned's ward Theon Greyjoy (played by Alfie Allen) come across a strange sight. A stag lies in the middle of the road, disemboweled, one of it's antlers broken off. Just off the road is a direwolf, dead with the missing antler chunk through it's throat, and with a litter of five pups trying to suckle. As Jon points out, the direwolf is the animal which forms House Stark's crest, and five pups is the exact number of Ned's legitimate children. Taking it as a sign, the pups are gathered up to be returned to Winterfell. As they're leaving, Jon finds a sixth pup, an albino, and the runt of the litter. Despite some light mockery by Theon, Jon brings the pup home with him.

Shortly after their return to the castle, Ned gets more news, none of it good. The first piece is the death of Jon Aryn, the King's Hand, and a foster father of sorts to both Ned and Robert. The second piece is that Robert is making his way to Winterfell with his wife and a full entourage. Ned and Catelyn both know what will inevitably happen: Robert will ask Ned to become the King's Hand, the most powerful person in Westeros after the King himself. To do this will mean Ned having to relocate the family to the capitol of King's Landing. It's a big decision, and it's putting the duty owed to family squarely against duty owed to the kingdom, as well as to Ned's best friend.

Robert's arrival is well received by the Stark family. Robert himself is a jovial man, though his jest that Ned has gotten fat reflects more upon him than his friend. Robert's wife, Cersei (played by Lena Headey), is clearly making the best of a bad situation as she greets the Starks. Ned's younger daughter Arya (played by Maisie Williams) quickly identifies Jaime Lannister (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), but asks her older sister Sansa (played by Sophie Turner) where "The Imp" is. "The Imp" is the rather unflattering nickname given to Tyrion Lannister (played by Peter Dinklage), a dwarf who is Cersei and Jaime's younger brother. Tyrion seems to be enjoying his first visit to Winterfell far more than his sister, as evidenced by the ale he drinks and the prostitute whose company he's enjoying. His brother Jaime makes it clear that Tyrion's presence is practically required at the evening's banquet, and the four fresh prostitutes Jaime ushers in make it clear that business will be attended to after pleasure.

Within the Stark family crypt, Robert offers the position of the Hand to Ned. Even after all the time he's had to think about it before Robert's arrival, Ned is clearly reluctant. Robert reminds Ned of all that they have between them: the childhood shared under the tutelage of Jon Aryn, the betrothal of Ned's deceased sister Lyanna to Robert, and the war that they fought together which ultimately put Robert on the Iron Throne of Westeros. It's a long history, and Ned knows it. Adding to the difficulty of the decision is Robert's offer to arrange a marriage between his oldest son Joffrey (played by Jack Gleeson) and Sansa. Ned defers making a decision until later and Robert is happy to let him work it out, confident that his friend will accept the position eventually.

The banquet welcoming Robert and the court to Winterfell is uncomfortable for several of the Starks. Catelyn is bound as hostess to entertain Cersei, whose mask of polite gentility is slowly slipping. When Sansa introduces herself to Cersei, the Queen swings between polite and fictitious praise for Sansa's sewing skills to gracelessly asking whether or not she's menstruating yet. Ned's brother Benjen (played by Joseph Mawle) has come down from the Wall as an emissary of the Night's Watch, hoping to get some time with Robert to discuss shortages of supplies and manpower at the Wall. Jon Snow expresses his desire to join the Night's Watch to his uncle, but Benjen rebuffs him, telling Jon to wait till he's experienced a little more of the world first. Tyrion also has some choice words for Jon, telling him to claim the word "bastard" for his own so that nobody can make it a slur against him. When Jon asks Tyrion what he knows about being a bastard, Tyrion replies quite bluntly, "All dwarves are bastards in the eyes of their fathers."

Far to the east, in the Free City of Pentos, the last two scions of House Targaryen begin their bid to reclaim the Iron Throne from "The Usurper" Robert, though only one of them has any great enthusiasm for the plan. Viserys Targaryen (played by Harry Lloyd) has been wandering the Free Cities looking for an army big enough and strong enough to reclaim the throne from Robert, and he believes that he has finally found it. The price, as far as he's concerned, is a mere trifle. Only his sister, Daenerys (played by Emilia Clarke), getting married off to the leader of the Dothraki Horde, Khal Drogo (played by Jason Momoa). The marriage has been brokered by one of the merchant-princes of Pentos, Illyrio Mopatis, who has given the Targaryens shelter for the last year or so in his home. Daenerys is clearly uncomfortable with the idea of being married off to a man she's never met before, but Viserys makes it clear what's expected of her. "I would let every man in Khal Drogo's horde, all forty thousand of them, fuck you if it means getting my throne back," he tells her.
The wedding ceremony and feast, since it's a little hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, is quite literally an orgy of sex and violence. If slave women aren't being used sexually, it's only because Dothraki warriors are currently fighting each other to death for the momentary privilege. As Illyrio explains to Viserys, "Any Dothraki wedding where less than three people are killed is considered a dull affair." Among the various wedding gifts Daenerys receives are a set of petrified dragon's eggs from Illyrio and some books from an exiled Westeros knight named Jorah Mormont (played by Iain Glen). Daenerys' final wedding gift is the horse that she will ride alongside Drogo, given to her by her new husband. When she asks Mormont how to say thank you in Dothraki, he tells her, "There is no word for 'thank you' in Dothraki." At sunset, on a beach far removed from the party, the marriage is consummated as Daenerys begins to cry.

The morning after the feast at Winterfell, Robert and Ned decide to go boar hunting. While they ride off, Bran decides it's a perfectly good opportunity for some free climbing along the castle walls. Earlier in the episode, Catelyn had chastised Bran for climbing along the walls and tried to extract a promise that he would stop. The temptation this time proves to be Bran's undoing. Despite his mother's warnings about slipping and falling, Bran clearly knows how to climb and hold his grip against any surface the castle can offer. It's only when he climbs to the top of an abandoned tower that he eventually falls through no fault of his own. Within the tower's top chamber, part of it ruined and exposed, Bran finds Cersei and Jaime having sex with each other. Jaime gets hold of Bran, briefly consults with Cersei, then sighs, "The things I do for love," as he pushes Bran off the top of the tower, ending the episode.

For an opening episode, this one packed in a lot of action in what seemed like a very short amount of time. One hour just shot by so quickly, and there was no hint that the episode was wrapping up until that final blackout with Bran falling from the tower. The players have been established and the opening moves in the game of thrones have been made. HBO deserves high praise for bringing the book to life so thoroughly and with a high degree of fidelity. It's going to be hell waiting for the next episode.

Remember, "Winter is coming."