Chapter Text
261 AC :
Winterfell:
As he made his way towards his father’s solar Eddard “Ned” Stark thought about how his young life had been so far. He was barely six moons away from his seventh name day. Ned Stark was born a prodigy.
He had started talking when he was barely a year old and started walking two moons later. He could remember everything since he was barely three moons old and could remember every conversation since he was seven moons old. He remembers every word that he had ever read. He could remember every move made in the yard just by seeing the tilts.
When he reached his father’s solar he knocked twice and then entered after hearing his father say “Come in.”
In the solar were his parents Lord Rickard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Lady Lyarra Stark nee Karstark. At Five and Twenty and six feet five inches tall and Three and Twenty and six feet tall, the Lord and Lady of Winterfell made an imposing sight. Also present was Maester Walys. For the past four years Ned had spent a lot of time with the Maester, learning. Be it reading, writing, languages, numbers, history or geography, Walys always marvelled at the young lord’s ability to understand and remember new information.
“Father, Mother, Maester Walys .” Ned said in greeting.
“Ah, yes Ned come in. Sit down child. Maester Walys was just filling us in. You want to continue your education at the Citadel. Is that right?” His father asked.
“Yes father. I have finished all that I could study here in Winterfell. I want to forge my links at the Citadel. I am ready to go to Oldtown, Father.” Ned replied to his father.
“Leave us.” Lord Rickard commanded to the Maester. Once he left he continued “Ned, I know that you are a very bright child. But why do you want to go to Oldtown? If you have finished with your education why not start your training in martial combats. You are my heir. Do you really wish to join the Maesters conclave and leave your place as the heir to the North?”
“I am sorry father you misunderstood me. I am going to the Citadel only forge my links. I will not be leaving my place as your heir. As for martial combat, Ser Rodrik would go with me to the Citadel not only as my escort but also as my trainer. If everything goes as per my plan, I will forge my links in ravenry, medicine and healing, math and economics, warcraft, animal husbandry and farming, cartography, geography, smithing and finally in magic. It will take no more than three years for me to complete it.” Ned replied.
His father scoffed. “You may be bright, but even you cannot do all this in three years.”
“If you do not believe me father, then give me a moon and I will show you my project that I am working on right now. I can guarantee you, you will not repent your judgement.” Ned said.
“What project are you talking of my sweet.” Lyarra Stark asked for the first time since the conversation started.
“Father and you always ask me why I am trying to teach Mikken the blacksmith and some other servants how to read letters. Well it was a part of my plan. Right now it takes anywhere between a week to a moon to copy a book. When my project is completed I can make several copies of a book in a single day. All it would require is a skilled Blacksmith and some people who can read and write” explained Ned to his mother.
“Surely you are jesting my son. It simply cannot be done” said a baffled Lord Stark.
“It can be done father. Give me a month and I will show it to you” was the curt reply.
“But son why do you need to study all those subjects?” asked Lady Stark.
“I want to study these subjects because I want knowledge mother. Knowledge is power, mother. Right now all this power rests with the Maesters. I will go to the citadel and study these subjects and discreetly try to make as many copies of the books of the Citadel as possible with the help of my machine. There are over Forty Thousand books in the Citadel. I will try to make at least one copy of each of the books so that we can make more copies of them later. With these books we can train our smallfolk in their required areas like farming and husbandry to the farmers or warcraft to the soldiers” replied Ned.
“Is it necessary son. To teach the smallfolk of such things will take time, time which they can better use in productivity” Asked Lord Stark.
“It may take time to teach the current generation but I am talking about the future generations father. Small children who right now spend time just playing around and not doing anything productive are to be trained first. Then once they take over their parent’s job or create a new job for themselves will we start giving these educations to the older generations. For too long has the North remained stagnant. We have always looked for just survivability and nothing else. I intend to change it father” replied Ned.
“Okay son. Let us not get ahead of ourselves. After this meeting I will call Mikken and tell him to work with you for the next moon. Make your device and if it works we will send you to Oldtown but if you fail we will not have this talk again. You will remain in the North and start your martial training. Is that clear?” Said Lord Stark.
“Yes father” replied Ned.
One moon later:
“Well son it looks like you are going to Oldtown. How in the name of the Old Gods and New did you make this work?” asked Lord Stark.
“I will not bore you with the details father but let us just say that it was quiet easy. We just have to rearrange the gears which are used in portcullis but on a smaller scale” said Ned.
His father just kept watching the machine with awe.
“If may I ask father please do not mention this to Maester Walys. I want to keep this device a secret for as long as possible” asked Ned. He did not want to keep the device a secret just in the North but he did not trust Maester Walys enough. He was sure that if he learnt of this device he would tell the maesters about it and his mission in Oldtown would become very difficult. He did not trust the Maesters especially Maester Walys for not using the device for personal gains.
His father just nodded and asked “What else would you require for your journey and stay at Oldtown, son?”
“I will be taking these men and women to the south with me. And also if possible would you be able to buy me a small mansion in Oldtown. It will be better if I stay there and not at the Citadel or some tavern.” His father just nodded.
One year later:
The Mansion, Oldtown:
It had been several moons since Ned had arrived at Oldtown. His stay here had been very productive for him till now. His training with Ser Rodrik was going very well. He was able to master every move shown by Ser Rodrik instantly and able to perform them masterfully after one or two tries. He had almost reached half of his education on Westerosi style of fighting and in eight to ten moons more he will be able to master it completely.
His education at the Citadel was going excellently as well. He had a whole lot of new information and all that information was also being copied by his people without any problems. It was because of these new informations that he was currently waiting for his Lord Father here at his mansion.
When he first came to the Citadel he had found out that there were reports on surveys made by each Kingdoms be it on population or land. He had the survey on population of the North but there were no records of land surveys. Thinking that the lords of North had simply forgotten to update/send the records to the citadel he had written to his father about this matter and asked him to send the said records. It was then that he had gotten the shock of his life. He had always wondered why the north did not produce at least as much gold as the Westerlands. The North had at least thrice the amount of mountains than the Westerlands. He always thought that the lords had done a survey but had found nothing.
But his father’s letter had changed his perspective. It seemed that the idea of a land survey had never come to the previous Lords of the North.
After receiving his father’s letter he had immediately written back to him and asked him to hire someone from Essos to undertake this task. It had taken six moons to complete this task but the results were astounding.
From gold to copper to iron all kinds of minerals and some very precious gems, some of them found only in their mines everything that they could possibly need they had it there. They even had three new types of minerals. Two were something the surveyors were calling Aluminium and Platinum.
As soon as he got his father’s letters he had asked his father to send him samples of all the minerals new and old to him. It had arrived a moon later. So that was what he had been doing for the past five moons. Experimenting and finding out new techniques for metal working and finding out the properties of the new materials. Aluminium while being very light was strong and rust free where as Platinum was very malleable and strong. So no here he was waiting for his father to arrive so that he could tell his father about the metals and also tell him about the plan he had for the North.
Soon his father arrived and after greeting him and he asked him about his siblings Brandon and Lyanna and about his mother. It was then that he got to know that his mother was with child again. After celebrating it with his father for a while he left him alone so that his father could rest from his travels.
The next morning the father son duo met in Ned’s solar. Ser Rodrik was also there sitting with them.
“So tell me son, what did you want to talk to me about?” asked Rickard.
“Father have you read this report?”
“Aye son. I have and I am completely surprised that no other lord had thought about this.“
“Father hear me out. I have plan through which the whole of the North can profit from”
“Okay tell me about this plan of yours.”
“We have approximately Eight Hundred and Fifty Seven thousand people living in the North as per the last survey which was done twenty years ago. The population has not changed much in these years. The gold silver and copper mines are all concentrated in single mountain range which comes under the Cerwyns or I thought so. These mountains are not inhabited by anyone and comes under no one’s jurisdiction as they are full of wild animals. I plan to take these lands back and to start the construction of two keeps as soon as possible.The two keeps will be made at the only entrance to these mountain ranges. One to the North and the other to the south. Once the construction is complete we start mining Gold, silver and copper. Winterfell’s coffers currently have approximately Eight Hundred thousand gold dragons in them. We use these funds to build these keeps. We will employ around ninety thousand people at each of these castles to work day and night to complete the castles in two years.”
“But son the funds that we have right now are for when we will need to buy food during winter and to employ so many people would mean a decrease in crop production. We will be starving during winter with these plans of yours.”
“I am getting to the point of food father. There is a special kind of cow North of the wall. They are called as yaks. They are very resilient to cold and hunger and with the right pastures we can breed them for meat and milk. They also as strong as Oxes so they can be used for transport also. I plan to capture them and bring back as many of them as possible and give them to the Cerwyns as they have the best lands for pasture. As winter has just ended we can take time to breed them and use their milk and such. If we can capture a hundred female and a dozen male yaks we can have several thousand of them during the next winter for meat.”
“Will they truly survive the Northern winter? And why is it the first time we are hearing about these yaks?”
“Father they have survived winters North of the wall for thousands of years. They will fare much better living south of the wall. The Cerwyns would be for the North what the Redwyns are for the Reach but only they will be trading in meat and leather. They will be the butchers and tanners of the North. I hope that they will make enough money and become very rich. We are hearing of this for the first time father because the fucking Maesters wanted us to starve during winter and so that we would have to buy food from the Reach. This is the reason why I wanted to come South to further my studies. The Maesters on the orders of first the Andals and then under the Gardeners and Tyrells have starved North for thousands of years.”
“Surely they won’t be so cruel?” his father asked.
“Father they are as cruel as any of the Southern Lords. They need protection and funding so they do the dirty work of their masters in order to have it. The Order of the Maesters may be an order which does not participate in the affairs of the Realm but they do manipulate the affairs of the realm.”
His father just sat there taking it all in.
“Also father I plan to introduce a new type of crop to the North. We have thousands of acres of swamp and marches in the neck. I plan to introduce rice. It is a type of crop which would do well in the Neck and areas surrounding the Long Lake, Fever river and White river. I plan to clear at least a thousand acres of land in the Neck and start farming there and all along the southern end of the Long lake and both banks of the rivers. Rice once harvested needs only to be kept dry and free from rats and such. They do not rot for several years as compared to wheat.”
“Truly son. From where can we get this crop.”
“You will have to import it from Yi-Ti as it is grown there. But first in these two years we have to clear the swamps and dig small canals along the lake and rivers. After two years once the castles are complete and we can start mining the resources we import rice seeds and start its production. For that we would need to bring in one to two thousand Yi-Tish people so that they could settle here and train our people on how to produce it. We will also increase the production of potatoes and onions and peas.”
“Okay, we will do as you say but till now you have solved the food shortage and made House Stark very rich. But what about the rest of the Northern Houses?”
“Okay so we have the Mountain Clans first. They have a lot of iron, aluminium and titanium in those mountains in which they reside. Their main occupation from now on would be steel works. They will make weapons for the North.”
“But how come they will become rich from this weapon crafting.”
“Because father they will not be crafting any steel but rather Northern steel.”
“Northern Steel? And pray tell what in the name of the Old gods and the New is this ‘Northern Steel’?”
“Ser Rodrik if you may.”
Ser Rodrik took out two steel longswords. Both of them were almost identical, just a small difference in colour of the two blades. “Father what you are holding is a sword made of Northern steel which I made and the one held by Ser Rodrik is the regular steel sword made by these Southrons. Swing your swords at each other.” Ned said as he stepped back.
Rickard looked at Ned sceptically before swinging the sword at Ser Rodrik. Both swords met and after a couple of clashes the sword held by Ser Rodrik shattered from the middle.
“What was that? How did that sword break so easily? Even with Valyrian Steel swords it takes more than a couple of swings before castle forged steel breaks” exclaimed Rickard.
“Well father, you remember how we found three new ores in the North. Two of them are Aluminium and Titanium.”
“Yes but the third one is useless. It’s too brittle.”
“That is because it is not a ore father but rather a fuel. Like wood it can burn and after burning completely it leaves ash and not charcoal. It is called Coal father, and it produces more heat than wood. Using coal I melted iron and into it I added some amount of aluminium and titanium to make it lighter but maintain its strength and the end result is this. I named it Northern Steel. It may be slightly heavier than Valyrian Steel but is lighter than the normal castle forged steel.”
“It may also be stronger than Valyrian Steel son.”
“We, that is Ser Rodrik and me do think so father but we have no way to prove it because Valyrian steel swords are very rare and if broken very hard to reforge.”
“Okay, so using Northern Steel you plan to make the Mountain clans as rich as Qohor. But there is a problem son. They mountain clans don’t live together. They live peacefully but not together.”
“Not yet father. But I plan to make a city for the mountain clans. The city which will be built for them would be made high in the mountain ranges. They will be ruled by the city’s council and any disputes will be solved by Winterfell. There will be no lord but the City Council will be made up of leaders of all clans irrespective of their sizes and they will get equal votes on the council. The mountains will come under the jurisdiction of the Council. They will be the one to decide how and who will be mining the ores and who will be the ones to do the crafting and such.”
“So who will pay for this city?”
“We will father. After we start the mining we will be the ones paying for their city. They will have to either pay an increased amount of taxes or will have to provide some amount of weapons and armour for Winter Wolves, Sea Wolves and Weirwood Warriors for free.”
“Winter Wolves, Sea Wolves and Weirwood Warriors? Now what in the name of the Old gods and the New are they?”
“We will come to that later father.”
“Okay so the Mountain city would be the new Qohor.”
“No father Qohor only deals with steel and swords. I plan to make the city of Mountain clans a place where all types of metal items are made. Aluminium is present in huge amounts in the North. It is more common than copper. For a single coin of copper smallfolk can buy a plate or other utensils and as it is stronger than clay it won’t break for several years. Also I plan to give the mountain clans the gem mines found in there. They are not as plenty as in the southern gem caves we found but between the two of them I can guarantee that they will be very rich. The Northern Lords will buy weapons from them for their men-at-arms, the smallfolk will buy their utensils and Lords and Ladies from all over Westeros would like to buy their jewellery.”
“You don’t plan on selling Northern Steel to the South do you?”
“No Father. I do not. We should have all the elements of surprise that we can have.”
“Well you won’t hear me complain” his father grumbled under his breath.
Ned just chuckled.
“We will start construction of a new keep and port towns at the bifurcation of White knife and Broken Knife. Oldcastle and Wolfs Den would be renewed. A new castle and city will be made at Sea Wolf Point. Deepwood Motte, Bear Island, White Harbour and Karhold will get new shipwrights which will make ships for the whole of the North. Dreadfort will also be made into a city through which a lot of trade would pass.”
“The Boltons will not be happy with that alone.”
“I know father. They are currently the biggest producers of wheat, corn, barley and rye. What I want them to do is that they buy some sugar from the Neck and add them all together in casks and leave them alone for the next two to three years and slowly increase this amount till the casks are left alone for nearly ten eleven years. This will ferment the wheat corn barley and rye and after a few more steps and we would have something which would have a lot more alcohol than the wine that we drink right now. It was suggested to me by an acolyte to me who was doing research on this matter. He is a low level acolyte and may permanently move to the North if I ask him. He researched this process completely on his own but the maesters here do not pay much mind to him.”
“How do you know how much alcohol the drink contained? Did you have a drink?”
Ned reddened as heat rushed up his face.”No father it was Ser Rodrik who took a drink and he told me about it. He also told me that it heated him up so much so that he was sweating as if he was in Dorne. May be we could look into it and it may help the elder people during winter.” Ned mumbled. He may be a prodigy and very smart but he was still only eight years old.
“Good see to it that you don’t drink any alcoholic drink before you turn six and ten” Rickard snipped before continuing “Okay son. I will talk to Lord Bolton about this and after two years the acolyte can join us in the North.”
“Thank you father. If you could ask Lord Bolton to also increase his production of the crops to as high as possible then it would be better.”
“I will talk to him.”
“Then next come the Umbers. They currently only have some sheep which they use for wool. With the amount of pasture land that they have they should easily have at least twenty times the sheep they have and increase their amount of wool produced accordingly. But yet they don’t.”
“Yeah those damned wildlings steal and kill their sheep.”
“I know father. That is why we will be making four new keeps here in the foot of the mountains. The only pass through these mountains are through these passes where the keep will be. The wildlings will be either forced to take the keeps which will be impossible or keep their raiding North of these mountains and out of Umber lands and the whole North.”
“But son these ranges fall under the jurisdiction of the Night’s Watch. It falls under the New Gift.”
“I know father. You have to convince the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch to relinquish the New Gift back to the Starks. It is the Lord Commander you will have to convince as only he can give it back to us. It said so in the contract under which the Night’s Watch got the New Gift. The lands south of the mountains are fertile so we could expand agriculture further. We will grow potatoes, onions and peas here.”
“Okay son, I will try my best to ensure that the New Gift is returned to us.”
“There will be one thousand Weirwood Warriors stationed at each one of these keep during peace time and six hundred of them during the time of war.”
“This is the second time you have mentioned them. What are these Weirwood Warriors?“
“I will come to it father.”
“The Karstarks and Hornwoods will make money by selling trees. Karstarks to Braavos and the Hornwoods to the Northern shipwrights. The Hornwoods will also start growing grapes and then start producing wine. The Hornwood wine will be better than those produced by the Dornish and the Arbor because the lands and climate the Hornwoods have is more suited for growing grapes. This will produce better yield and better quality wine than the Arbor. They will also build a new port city at the start of the middle branch of the Broken Branch. From here they will export the wine.”
By now Rickard knew that Ned was speaking the truth and just went with the flow.
“The Karstarks along with the Skaagosi will also become the fishers of the North on the eastern coast and the Mormonts and Cassels of Sea Wolf Point will be the same on the western coast.”
“The Skasgosi are the ones that are most angry with Winterfell and often accuse us of forgetting them. But not after this. The Skaagosi have the most amount of gem mines in all of the North and some mines of ores and copper but no Gold or Silver. They will mine these gemes and ores and sell them to the rest of the Westeros and Essos. They will have a powerful naval presence and they will fish for food. They also have these stones. He placed two big shiny stones on the table. One was black and the other grey. These stones are the ones that we will use to make the new keeps and castles. It is so because these stones while they look like granites are a hundred times more stronger than them.”
“This is also the stone and that will be used to reconstruction of Moat Cailin.”
“You want to reconstruct Moat Cailin?” Asked his father in awe.”Our family has for generations wanted to reconstruct Moat Cailin. But due to lack of funds we were unable to do so in the past.”
“Yes, but now that problem has been solved. Moat Cailin will be reconstructed and its reconstruction will begin in three years time. By that time we would have enough funds for the building and reconstruction work to start. We will also be reconstructing Winterfell.”
“But why do we need to reconstruct Winterfell?”
“For many reasons. The Skagstone walls will be stronger than the current walls. Many Towers currently need repair. It will be easier to just tear them down and remake them. The grounds of Winterfell are currently uneven. We will even them so that we can use all the land available to us and we will further expand Winterfell for what I have in mind. Currently Winterfell covers a total ground of twenty four acres. I plan to enlarge it to sixty acres in total including the two acres taken by the Godswood.”
“So much area? What for?”
“There will be many more instituitions introduced to the North. Some of them will have their headquarters in Winterfell. We will also increase the size of the outer walls to one hundred and fifty feet. The inner walls will be two hundred feet tall. All towers will be of five hundred feet and will be joined together by a series of bridges three hundred feet above the ground. The five towers will all have a diameter of six hundred feet. The towers would represent X if seen from the air.”
“It would look magnificient! But if the towers will be so tall then I better learn to climb so many stairs” his father japed.
“Do not worry father there will be six to eight elevators as that at Castle Black, for each tower. So you do not need to worry about that.”
Rickard just gave a smile at that thought.
“As for Moat Cailin we will increase the number of walls from three to four. The fourth wall would protect the town and port that I plan to make at Moat Cailin. A canal would be dug connecting the Bite to Moat Cailin. The canal will be wide enough to let three war galleys or four merchant ships to pass through side by side. The rest of the walls of Moat Cailin would be made taller. The newest wall (the fourth wall) will be one hundred and fifty feet tall and the rest of them will be fifty feet taller than the previous wall making the innermost wall three hundred feet tall. Instead of twenty towers there will be only twelve towers. Four towers on the northern side and southern side will each be four hundred feet tall and the four towers in the middle will be four hundred and fifty feet tall. All the towers will be connected to each other in the same way as that of Winterfell, bridges three hundred feet above the ground.”
“Okay all this looks good. But how will we the the manpower to work at so many places at the same time?”
“We buy slaves. Obviously we will free them as soon as they board a Northern ship. But we will have to buy slaves from Essos to bolster our smallfolk.”
“I can live with that.”
“Now as for the Ryswells and Dustins we help them by buying horses from Yi-Ti. We will buy hundreds studs and mares. We will give the studs to the Ryswells to breed them with their mares and the opposite for the Dustins. The resultant horses from these cross breeds would require less food as per the trait of the current Northern horses but would be far more stronger. They can sell these horses for coin.”
“I have to say it is a very good plan Ned.”
“Thank you Father. Now to the last thing. We have the resources but it will be all for naught if we can’t protect these resources of ours. For that purpose I intend to create three military institutions. The Winter Wolves and the Weirwood Warriors both of which will be land based military and the Sea Wolves to protect our shores from ironborn scum on the Western shore and the Essosi pirates on our Eastern shore.”
“The Winter Wolves would number around three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers including eighty thousand cavalry and the rest infantry divided into swordsman, archers, spearmen, axemen and pikemen. The Wierwood Warriors will be the elite fighting force numbered around twenty thousand. They will be trained in all weapons and they will be predominantly a cavalry force. Their task would be to protect Winterfell and the keep north of Last Hearth.”
“The Sea Wolves would man our shores on various Galleys, War Galleys, Dromonds and also protect various merchant vessels from pirates and raiders. Their numbers would be anywhere between hundred thousand to hundred and fifty thousand.”
“That’s a lot of soldiers” commented Lord Stark.
“The North’s population would increase by at least ten times in the next twenty years. So this amount of soldiers will be necessary to ensure their protection. During war times these soldiers would ensure that the production of the North doesn’t decrease. All three instituitions would be solely sworn to Winterfell. Other lords may train their own Man-at-Arms and Household guards to ensure the protection of their keeps and castles. But these men will be trained to patrol and protect the cities, towns and villages.”
“For this father you will need to buy some Unsullied, immediately. Thousand which have completed their training and are cut and another ten thousand which are yet to complete their training and are uncut. They will be required immediately after the two Keeps are finished protecting our mines. The trained Unsullied will then train our Winter Wolves and Weirwood Warriors. They will of course be freed after they are bought” these words left a terrible taste in Ned’s mouth.
“And how will do that son. That many Unsullied won’t come cheap and the coffers of Winterfell will already be strained.”
“You will need to take a loan from the Iron bank.”
“Okay son. As soon as the construction work starts I will go to Essos and buy the Unsullied from Astapor.”
“Thank you father for showing such confidence in me.” Ned smiled and said, touched at how much confidence his father was showing in him.
Four days later Lord Rickard Stark left for the North with a plan that would change the North for ever.