Eventually I gave up on trying to sleep, getting out of bed in the early hours of the morning.
Figuring I needed some time to relax, I made my way over to the sweathouse after pocketing my personal skin-scraping tool and having the fabricator spit out a patch of fabric to use as a rag. It'd been taken from the clothes salvaged after the slaver raid, some sort of linen.
I filled a bucket with water from the cold-water tank, grabbed some firewood, and set about getting everything set up. Closing the door to the small chamber, I stripped down, neatly folding my clothes and setting them off to the side.
A tiny thread of Fire to spark the wood in the brazier, a few more threads to cultivate it faster than it would otherwise have grown, and within moments the room had warmed significantly. I spent a while sprinkling water into the fire, gradually bringing up the humidity until it began condensing on my skin. Sadly, the light granting my temperature immunity made it all but impossible for me to sweat, but I could make do.
Putting some water and soap in a small bowl, I mixed it to a lather, then applied it to my body. The physical action of taking careful, slow scrapes with the little wooden tool, wiping it off on the rag after each scrape, certainly helped relax me.
My wings were a little bit of a struggle to figure out, but eventually I settled for running my fingers through the feathers and shaking them out after. I might need to put together a comb or something, but they didn't seem to be picking up a whole lot of grime to begin with.
Eventually, I'd cleaned myself completely and could sit back in the hot, humid air of the room. My thoughts turned introspective, and once I realized where I'd been going mentally, I decided to consciously work on that.
It seemed that I'd been neglecting doing this proactively lately. Before waking up here, I second-guessed myself quite a bit, but less so afterward.
Part of that was probably from how I'd been attempting to fit in with these people. Honestly, I might have been far too happy to latch onto the first people I met once I realized that there wasn't an easy way to head back home. That… Might be a problem. No, it was absolutely a problem.
I didn't even really know them, and I'd been ignoring the pretty awful parts of their culture. I'd studied a little bit of history and knew enough to realize that wife-taking had been pretty common with quite a few groups. It seemed to range quite a bit, though, on a spectrum from highly-ritualized cultural expectations to just sexual assault and slavery.
In hindsight, maybe that was why I'd gone for the consent rant over trying to ban the practice altogether. Remembering how I'd gone about that made me physically cringe. It sucked, but at least I could pat myself on the back and tell myself that cringing at my past actions was me learning from them. It didn't help much.
Anyway, given how much of a focus there is on strength and martial skill here, I can't really try to ban the concept of wife-taking. It was how partners seemed to be chosen, but if I could at least try to influence them to take a more consensual stance on it… Well, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. I really didn't care what people did with their love lives as long as consent was had.
My thoughts turned back to my vague concept of educating them. It was going to be more difficult than I'd originally figured, even with the time compression helping out. The ecotech curriculum depended on having information readily available, educational materials, all manner of things that I just didn't have on hand. I could, at least, teach reading and writing. Maybe more concepts that didn't necessarily rely on consistent study, like the scientific method, ethics, critical thinking, and other ways of working out how the world around them functioned and how they interacted with it.
More specific things, like chemistry or geology, I might be able to generalize. Really, I would be well-served by getting some paper and writing tools together.
Frowning, I realized I could probably just Travel to a city down south and acquire what I needed. Bring it back, toss it in the recycler to scan it, then fabricate in the amount required. It was fortunate that pretty much every organic molecule was made up of the most common elements around, and I could just toss dirt, water, rocks, and trees into the recycler to satisfy most fabrication projects.
I might benefit from travelling around a little as well. Symon's education was helpful, but it couldn't substitute for first-hand experience. He had said that slavery was outlawed in Westeros and was of the opinion that the life of these "smallfolk" was still far better than the most comfortable "wildling," in his words. I couldn't agree or disagree in good faith without actually studying it, and despite my biases against feudalism, I did have to admit that the common people probably didn't have to worry about raiders as often as the free folk seemed to.
He had also mentioned the Summer Isles, far down south in the Summer Sea, where men and women loved freely, and warfare was far different than anything I was familiar with. It was ritualized, and he likened it to a tourney of champions determining winners and losers of a conflict. They sounded like a very interesting people, and he'd promised they didn't practice slavery like the Essosi.
Come to think, I only really felt like I had a grasp on how these particular free folk did things. Jenine had reacted completely differently than anyone else here had, I remembered Wyck being afraid when I was practicing with that tree, but he'd still questioned me instead of running or attacking me.
I wondered if the people living along the river might just be more mellow. The woods were good hunting, and when hunting gets sparse there'd be fish in the river, as well as easier access to fresh water. They also seemed to live in villages, while Jenine had mentioned her entire clan travelling. Grenwin, also, had spoken about her past as an ice-wife, riding her bear around in the north. She hadn't said anything about villages up there.
Maybe these villages were rarer than I'd figured up here. If this is a minority of people, I had no idea how to convince the nomads to settle down along side us. There's bound to be a whole lot of cultural clashes with that sort of thing, and I questioned the wisdom of even trying.
Right now, with these people, I had a good chance of being able to convince them to settle in a city once we can put the Wall between us and the Others, for the most part at least. I'm sure there'd still be a good many who would rather live in smaller communities, but that wasn't necessarily becoming nomads in the lands below the Wall.
They'd be more likely to follow restrictions against raiding, especially if they already have everything they needed that they'd otherwise get from raiding. I doubt that the common people below the wall would appreciate raiders coming through, and when we moved down there...
Well, shit, I'd have to help them too. Symon had said that there were farmers and other small villages throughout the Gifts managed by the Night's Watch, and if I went forward with this, I'd have to really work to try to get our two groups to go along. He'd been absolutely confident that those people would hate us. It was the kind of hatred built up over thousands of years of suffering the brunt of free folk raids coming over the wall, and I was pretty sure a few gifts wouldn't solve that problem. Getting everyone to get along would be a challenge, if not impossible.
That was a problem for the future, once more concrete plans are formed. I shouldn't try planning all of this alone, I had knowledgeable people around me with opinions that I respected. Symon was educated down south in the center of knowledge in the known world, Ellir had been a leader for the vast majority of her life, Grenwin was very down to earth and easily saw the practicalities that I tended to overlook. I needed to work with them, and probably bring in more people to counterbalance my… Well, extreme ideas.
I'd just earned my bachelors in Sociology before waking up here. That, at least, was all me, and not just given by one of my lights. I'd taken a couple of history courses, but they were a very general overview of the past from a modern perspective. Here, I was living in a place that seemed like it could fit in with the history I'd learned, but I was limited by my own present perspective on things. I didn't have a thousand books by a hundred different sources describing all manner of events to help guide me.
Yeah, I really needed to go and see how the world really worked. I'd been generalizing the societies of the Seven Kingdoms as feudalism, and my own hangup of "feudalism bad though" really was a product of my own education and upbringing. There'd been a range of rulers all across the world using systems that were generally similar to feudalism, at least with the concepts of higher and lower birth with rule done by the highborn.
There'd been serfs in Europe, but they were a small proportion of the lower classes. Most people had some freedom of movement, even if social mobility was limited. I didn't even know if the lords below the Wall had serfs, and Symon hadn't been very clear on how the smallfolk were categorized. Most were tied to land, which could be traded between lords, but at the same time they had their own economy and even the meanest farmer could trade for goods or currency. Serfs, in contrast, were laborers who weren't paid but lived and worked on the lord's land under his protection.
Idly, I thought about heading down to the Citadel and stealing their library for a couple of weeks. If I could read through the histories and studies that had been written, it might help build a better picture of society. Alas, if only Symon had studied these topics.
My thoughts turned towards that dancing set of constellations in that other-space. What was the point of it? Was there a purpose, or was it just incidental, some byproduct of how I found myself here? I wished it had come with an instruction manual, or at least a general reason for its existence and why I had it.
It granted abilities, items, skills, and more. How did it do this? The pocket reality was real, but was it taken from somewhere else? Was my VF-1S stolen from some UN pilot from some other reality, or my clothes, or the PDA and pistol? Did I come into possession of some seed-vault's precious stockpile, depriving them of it?
It probably didn't matter, honestly. I doubted I'd ever have confirmation either way, so it was just a little bit of a silly topic to get stuck on. Moving on, how were the abilities applied?
A light comes by, and that odd extension of myself would reach out and catch it, dragging it closer to me. That took it out of the constellation it had been in, and while I'd not seen any noticeable depletion of those constellations, they might be limited.
There were thirty-seven constellations, each of varying size. I still didn't have any more information granted to me on them, and given how they constantly moved, it was hard to tell them apart when they were far in the distance. Given what I'd already gained from them, it represented a potential that I had difficulty grasping. I felt like a fly walking across the stained-glass window of a cathedral, trying to understand the colored glass below me. It was… Too big, and so far, I didn't even have a good enough grasp of what it contained to even guess what else might be present in those constellations.
Almost as if summoned by my attention, one of the constellations whirled closer to me. As it passed, I reflexively grabbed a single large light.
Oddly, perhaps due to my prior focus on that space, or perhaps the data was just short and simple, I was able to retain the information given as the light fell into its orbit around me. It was some sort of data archive, not knowledge dumped into my brain, but a physical structure that I had to access. This time the oncoming light had felt the same as they usually had, making that previous occasion all the more peculiar.
I could check out the archive later, honestly. While that light had been one of the largest I'd received, the fact that it was just a thing in a safe place meant that it didn't leap to the top of my priority list, unlike dealing with many of the other lights when I first received them.
Focus sufficiently derailed from what I'd been considering before, I thought back towards the Hardhome question. If Ellir was right, there was a natural bay, and it was at the end of a long peninsula. Assuming the Others couldn't just freeze water and walk across the ice, it might serve to be a helpful defense.
It would be almost the opposite of the location of Mance's camp, far on the east coast as opposed to in the mountains to the west. My original idea of resettling Hardhome and keeping First Fork as an outpost along the Antler had some merit, as this place could serve as a gathering point before moving on to Hardhome. Probably on foot along the coast, unless there just happened to be experienced shipbuilders and sailors already hanging out in the area. That was pretty unlikely, but it was about as unlikely as finding an educated ex-maester in the first group of free folk I stumbled across, so I had some small hope.
Interestingly, my ecotech had a pretty large emphasis on sea travel. There were a multitude of vessels that I could build, if the infrastructure and modern materials necessary were present. The education had a commensurate amount of focus on naval stuff, as well as nautical engineering and design. If I spent an hour every day working with some volunteers and teaching them those concepts, how long would it be until they could design and build a seaworthy vessel and be able to operate it, as well as navigate the coastal waters?
Come to think, maybe I should section off the people into groups of a couple of dozen, then spend an hour a day with a particular group, swapping for another the next day. Cycling through them like that, I could get the basics I wanted across in a few months. Maybe even sooner if I manage to find the best way to communicate that information to them!
Anyway, I still needed to go check out the ruins of Hardhome and figure out what was going on with those haunted caves. It probably was just superstition, but I did promise to take a look and make sure it was safe. First Fork would be fine without me for a couple of days, and how hard could poking around some caves be, anyway?
Finally feeling relaxed and satisfied, I dried off, cleaned up after myself and donned my parka once more, ready to face the day.
The barest hints of dawn were lightening the sky to the east, and the cloudless sky gave a great view of the stars. The fact that none of the constellations were familiar to me was just one more confirmation that this couldn't possibly be Earth.
First things first, I needed to get through my morning channeling practice. I'd been working on isolating the components of the Gateway weave I'd been using, trying to figure out how everything worked together.
Really, the weave I was using was a kludged-together formation of threads that relied on raw power rather than subtlety to form the Gateway, as evidenced by the smoldering cut of a stick I'd used to test the cutting aspect of one opening.
In the books, these cuts hadn't smoldered, and it gave me the impression that I had a great deal I could improve. I hoped that I'd be able to figure out how to stop unwanted cutting, making them safer to use in populated areas. The simplest solution to that really was to just designate a space that I'd use when leaving and arriving, and I'd set aside such a zone in the workshop.
Otherwise, I might be able to figure out how to add some sort of sensor to the weave that would detect obstructions and prevent the full gateway from forming, or threads of air that hovered over the cutting edge and prevented anything from being sliced, like a blade safety. Hopefully. The idea that I might return from a trip to find that my Gateway had cut someone in half horrified me.
Sadly, these safeties seemed as though they'd take me a long while to figure out, if they were possible at all. At the moment, my largest breakthrough was identifying the method that prevented gas exchange across the Gateway while permitting fluids and solids to pass, except in the case of gasses that were contained.
In other words, people could walk across without the air in their lungs being blocked from passage, while free gasses were blocked. It explained why there'd been no odd air pressure issues with my opening Gateways at various altitudes, and the peculiarity that wind didn't seem to transit over, while snow blown would.
It was an intriguing weave of its own, and I'd been trying to figure out how to tune it consciously. Being able to control what could and could not pass through a Gateway had a great deal of utility. Marine biologists would probably love a magic window that was impermeable to the ocean water while permitting tools and equipment to pass.
Today's experiment was perhaps a little silly. I had used the Power to assemble a round-bottom wooden bucket with an interior lining of reinforced stone, about a meter tall and half as wide. The walls were extremely thin, only a few millimeters, relying on my reinforcement ability to keep it together. The whole construct probably only weighed a tenth of a kilo, at most. It would, hopefully, be airtight. I was going to try and see if I couldn't tweak that weave slightly to allow passage of ambient gasses in at least one direction.
So, I formed the weave over the top of the bucket, just under the lip. Anchoring it to the bucket was tricky, as this weave was just a component of a freestanding weave that wasn't ever originally intended to move, but eventually I worked out a bodged-together method that involved wrapping the entire container in the weave with a multitude of anchors, not just across the top.
Happy with the result, I carried the container out to the riverbank. It seemed to me that the easiest way of getting the air out would be to submerge it in water, but if the air couldn't escape in the first place, the water couldn't enter. First, though, I'd try a test dunk with the unmodified weave.
As expected, it took a good deal of effort to submerge the container, and after retrieving it I noted that water had been unable to enter. Without a way for the air inside to escape, it couldn't be displaced by entering water. Of course, I'd only placed it just under the surface, so if I tried putting it further under, I might get some water inside as the air compressed. Something for the future, at least.
I made a small tweak to the weave, hoping that I'd properly identified the screening function. Trying to put it in more modern terms, I was doing the equivalent of turning everything off by flipping the switches.
The next attempt indicated that I'd at least done something correctly, as the air bubbled out and the bucket filled with water. Pouring the water out allowed the air to flow back in, so it seemed that I was on the right track.
A few tweaks later, and I managed to get the air to bubble out. Oddly, the container became more and more difficult to keep submerged the more air left and didn't seem to be filling with water. Within moments, I lost my grip on the smooth sides, the container bouncing up to the surface with a great deal of force.
I barely managed to dodge out of the way as the container rocketed past, rising with great speed into the early morning sky. I stared after it, befuddled, until I lost sight of it. I was so shocked that I only remembered I could have grabbed it with saidar after it was long gone.
The weave should run out of power in a few minutes, but who knew how far it might get before then. Winds might push it a bit, and hopefully it wouldn't land on anyone. It had a pretty massive ratio of surface area to weight, so hopefully it's terminal velocity would be low enough to not hurt anyone if they were unlucky enough to be struck by it.
What had gone wrong? I didn't think the shell had been compromised, and I hadn't felt the feedback from any thread in the weave snapping from strain. Air had simply left the container!
Wait, that might actually have been the problem, come to think. If water was blocked from entering, while the air within could exit, that would have left a vacuum. Still, that probably shouldn't have caused it to go flying off into the air like that. Maybe I'd made the container too lightweight?
If a vacuum had formed, the weave had probably done all the hard work of fending off the atmospheric pressure from cracking the container. Otherwise, it probably would have been compromised the moment the vacuum formed.
For the next few minutes I kept a lookout for the errant bucket, the pre-dawn light illuminating the sky in a deep teal. I spotted it as a flicker of distant motion, and quickly used a few threads of air to catch it out of the air.
Retrieving the container, I inspected it closely. The residue of the weave was still present, somehow still attached by the anchoring process, and the bucket itself seemed unharmed. There may still be microfractures that I couldn't make out, but it might still make for a useful container. I placed it in the workshop, feeling a little satisfied with the progress I'd made so far.
I decided to cut the practice short, however, as it was becoming increasingly apparent that I was playing with things I really didn't understand. I wasn't too keen on playing around and getting other people hurt by accident. I made a resolution to take greater care. I had Gateways, I could go anywhere to practice, and the further I was from anyone that could be hurt the better.
The constellations in the other space were moving actively again, and I grabbed a smaller light as one passed by me.
The small light sidled up to the one that represented Woodworker, and the two began orbiting each other. It seemed like an expansion to Woodworker, or maybe Woodworker was only one component of a larger cluster. This new light extended the benefits of Woodworker to stone and crystal, which covered a massive range of potential. I was able to use these materials in my mental blueprinting, which would certainly make future construction much easier, as well as being able to tell what potential applications they may have.
It was much more useful than I could have expected, even for a smaller light. I could make glass with certainty with the right materials, process certain types of stone into useful materials, like salt or lime. It seemed to factor in my channeling into the processes, substituting mechanical action with saidar supplied force. It didn't give me any new weaves, but it told me what and how much heat and pressure to apply.
It also would help identify various ores, as well as their quality and basic refinement. This light didn't work with metal, but it seemed as though there was almost a sort of socket where a future expansion that did would attach. In conjunction with Earth Delving, I should be able to much more readily identify ores of various types.
Chewing my lip, I know I just decided to not practice channeling in camp, but this was potentially really useful. I made a Gateway leading a mile away in an south-eastward direction and stepped through.
Earth Delving had been a weave I didn't practice a great deal with. It had, in the past, overloaded me with useless information. It was synesthetic, materials taking on colors, flavors, smells, tastes, and almost physical sensation. It was easier to work out what, in general, was stone and what was loose gravel or soil than it was to get more specifics.
This new light helped with that, providing something like a translation for the various sensations. With some effort I looked for any sort of iron ore, tuning out the spicy flavors of igneous stone and the silty feel of sedimentary formations. Eventually, I found a deposit that smelled like I thought iron should, and I pulled it up to the surface.
I'd not been tracking my personal growth with the Power as I probably should have been. As such, it was a great surprise when the surface seemed to bubble aside, trees and smaller plants falling as an immense amount of a brown rock streaked with yellowish brown surfaced like a breaching whale.
The deposit had seemed small within the odd perception that came with delving the earth, yet it was a colossal amount of stone that had been drawn to the surface. Personally, I was amazed that I only felt like I'd run a few miles given the sheer size of the deposit.
The Woodworking expansion, I figured I might as well just call it Stoneworking to simplify, was positively identifying the rock as an iron-bearing ore. The Ecotech training was, on the other hand, telling me that it was more than likely mostly limonite. It wouldn't be difficult to extract the iron from this, and given the size of the massive clump of rock, this much should last our fledgling settlement for years.
It did seem like a small hill, bare of trees, soil, or snow. Most of the deposit was still underground, maybe three-quarters of it. I was feeling giddy, the sheer amount of iron we could get from this would be invaluable!
I'd need to speak with Symon to figure out where other useful metals were often found. I needed pretty much every kind of basic metal, copper, tin, lead, nickel, and so on. Those, at least, should already be known and exploited by the southern kingdoms, and the maesters were the keepers of knowledge. He'd know, if anyone up here did.
Otherwise, I might have to ask around when I go down south. He'd mentioned the Westerlands was known for having extensive mines throughout the mountains. That'd be a decent place to start looking for people who could tell me what to look out for when surveying the surface.
There were better methods, of course. Hyperspectral imaging could readily identify all sorts of useful things with the right processing setup. Problem was, data gathered from such an imager was very dense and would need a fair bit of storage. Of course, I didn't have any of that on hand, and it would take a while to be able to make a simple computer. Taking apart the variable fighter for some components was out of the question, as I didn't want to risk damaging it if I needed to use it at some point.
Still, the idea of dozens of imaging aircraft flying over these lands and surveying massive swathes was tantalizing. It would let us identify caves, mineral deposits, natural springs, all manner of useful information about the land in a fraction of a fraction of the time it takes to do so by hand. Imagining what prospectors below the wall probably had to do seemed almost painful by comparison, what with trekking for months through untouched country looking for particular rocks that might indicated something useful under the ground.
I guess if someone had the mentality for it, it might not be so bad. Myself, I liked my comforts, like having four walls and a roof between me and the weather.
I broke off a decent chunk from the deposit with a few threads of earth and air, then brought it with me as I walked back to the settlement. I waved to those keeping watch in the early morning, slightly amused by their goggle-eyed expressions as they watched a pretty large boulder bob along in the air behind me.
Dropping the chunk near the smithy at the workshop, I made my way to the lodge to get a head start on making breakfast for those that wanted some.
Like almost every day, it was a simple stew of foraged edibles and fresh meat. What little herbs and spices we had were put to good use as everything was brought to a simmer in massive pots over the fire.
Feeding over a hundred people required a lot of food, and helping prepare these meals helped give me a better perspective on just how much was needed. Still, our larders were steadily filling by the day and we could easily afford to do this in the morning and the evening every day. That it helped use up food that was soon to go to waste anyway was probably one of the reasons they'd had this tradition to begin with.
I couldn't wait until the first harvest from the agroponics. There was enough rice and other grains growing to mill into a substantial amount of flour, flour that would keep for a good long while with my very stringent food preservation ideas.
It wasn't so much that I was craving bread, but wow did I miss fresh bread. A nice fluffy loaf sliced, toasted, with a little bit of butter would go perfectly with this stew. Noodles would help add some body to it too, the glutenous compounds thickening it up. Some potatoes for volume, and we could make a batch this large feed even more people.
Elk noodle stew sounded like it could be a big hit, as long as the elk was prepared well first. I found it to be tougher than beef, but with enough tenderizing and proper care, it had a wonderful flavor and texture. I could easily see elk steak as being one of those top-tier meals that people looked forward to for a long while, as long as it was prepared by an experienced chef.
I wondered how the culinary scene would develop with access to these new plants. It was bound to be an experience, for sure. People playing around with all sorts of new recipes and ideas was how pretty much every dish I'd ever eaten had come about, even if some were driven by necessity.
Crusted foods, like meat pies, had originally come about in mining camps, if I was remembering right. The miners had put together a food with a good sized crust that they could hold onto while they ate the rest of the meal, and that had caused a bit of a revolution in hand-held foods.
Hopefully, something like pizza could come about. There was already several cheeses that were made from goat and sheep's milk, but I personally found them to be too strong for my palate. It was an acquired taste, just like that fermented milk monstrosity they liked to drink.
There was a whole range of new things they might try to make. I'm sure that people would be smuggling off all sorts of plants to see what kind of alcohols they could make, and I almost looked forward to it. It was bound to result in unique flavors, at the very least.
I'd been working alone for the last little while, but I wasn't surprised when a few more people started filtering in to the small kitchen. Lom, a tall reedy man, took great care with his dishes and bustled me away from the pots. I didn't mind so much, he knew what he was doing and every time I helped out with cooking I learned more from him.
He tasted the stew with a spoon, as he did every morning when I had a head start on it, and grinned. "Aye, not bad. You're getting better at this!"
"Thanks, Lom. I'm learning from the best, right? I'd better be getting good."
He laughed a bellowing laugh that contrasted greatly with his thin frame.
"That's right! Now, I heard about that announcement of yours yesterday." His jovial mood dampened somewhat. "It true you banned wife taking? That you'll kill anyone who does it?"
I blinked, shocked. "No!" I waved my hands before me, as if to ward off the insanity of that notion. "Not at all! All I said was that I wouldn't abide rape, and those that rape will be exiled and disallowed from benefiting from anything I do. That's all."
He was quiet, studying my face, before his lips quirked back to a smile. "Aye, that sounds more like you. Yer too soft to just kill, not an insult mind you. Well, I'll be sure to shut down those rumors when I hear 'em. Scaremongering is all that is."
I nodded, relieved. "Thanks, Lom. I know that… Well, taking a wife is pretty significant, right? All I want is to make sure that the woman wants to go through with that if it happens. Ygdis' has talked enough about hoping to find a man who's skilled and strong enough for her that I'm sure I can't just say 'don't do this at all anymore.'"
He nodded, stirring the stew and tossing in a few more herbs. "Ye know that there's gonna be men who don't like it. You think you can really make due on that promise of exile?"
Frowning as I chopped a root tuber, I thought about it. "If it happens, I'm a woman of my word, and I've a memory for faces. I can't punish what's already happened before I said that, but I have to follow through if it happens again."
Taking the chopped root after I passed it over, Lom looked speculative. "My da did used to always tell me to find a nice girl to take as wife. There was a pretty one come with some traders, hair kissed by fire, and I thought about wooing her. Day before the traders were set to leave, we found her with a slit throat next to Filk, a knife in his gut."
I listened quietly as he spoke, his tone turning somber towards the end.
He continued, "Anyway, the idea of taking a wife never had much appeal to me after that. Seems like people die pretty often from trying, and I like living too much. You think that makes me a coward?"
Shrugging, "I don't know. I've the same opinion on life, and if it makes you a coward, then it makes me one too." I frowned, "Then again, I am probably pretty cowardly compared to everyone else here. You grew up with… I don't know, fighting to live. My upbringing was pretty soft, and I didn't really have to worry about death."
Lom made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh, covering his mouth. "Aye, you act like it. No insult, you know, but you saying that is like saying the sun rises in the east."
I chuckled, and a moment later he laughed with me. By now, more people had come in to get a bowl of stew or to help keep things going, and Lom gestured at the rack of clean bowls.
"Go get yourself some of this, you've been up and working 'fore me. I'll take care of the rest."
It was as clear a dismissal as any, and Lom was the boss of his kitchen. Nodding thankfully, I took a bowl of stew and sat in the main lodge area to eat.
It was somehow better than when I'd tasted it before he took over. I didn't know what the man did to make it so, but my stew paled in comparison. Idly, I wondered if his work was better than masterwork, or maybe that light of mine could only do so much with my limited skill to begin with.
As I ate, I noticed the stares and hushed whispers of the others present. I overheard snippets of conversation, words like "witch" and "dangerous" cropping up fairly frequently. I tried not to let it get to me, but I still noticed.
Comfortingly, none of the original First Forkers were participating in that sort of talk. They treated me like anyone else, those not off hunting or on watch coming by to sit with their own bowls of stew. Occasionally, one of the newcomers would join us, and I made a point of welcoming them in. I sincerely wanted to avoid cliques forming, as much as I took comfort in the normalcy of the people that knew me best.
We chatted, told stories, tried to one-up with even better stories. Wyck wanted me to teach him the words to Two Kings Hunting, and I was happy to oblige.
After I'd finished my stew and put the bowl aside, I raised the idea of spending a couple of hours a day to teach them things I knew. While nobody was as enthusiastic as I'd optimistically hoped, they were by and large willing to try it. Most everyone had more time free of chores or needed tasks nowadays, and it seemed to me that some of the agreement I got was from avoiding boredom.
We negotiated on times, and eventually settled to meet back at noon today. Partially because of difficult it was to determine specific times, and if it wasn't at something as easily identified as noon, I'd end up just having to send out a gathering call via a few volunteers.
That settled, I bid my farewells. Taking my bowl, I cleaned it with hot soapy water and returned it to the kitchen, giving Lom a nod.
I had plenty of time to go out and start making the stuff I'd need to teach. I'd be working on reading and writing, and so I could certainly use writing utensils. Sadly, without access to paper and parchment being too valuable to expend on practice writing, my best bet was probably thin wooden boards and charcoal pencils. I could get some fabric from the fabricator to use as rags to wipe away markings.
I set about assembling the various implements. I was curious to see whether or not a charcoal pencil I made would actually be viable with this idea, what with the reinforcement aspect, and I hoped that it didn't make it harder to mark the wood sheets.
Taking some of the charcoal Symon had had made, it took a little while to adapt the wood-shaping weave to work with the charcoal. I wasn't sure why, probably something to do with changes to the chemical structure of the wood during the charcoal making process, but for safety's sake I worked at a good distance from the village. Fortunately, there weren't any incidents with sudden surprise charcoal shrapnel, and once I'd figured it out it was easy enough to shape small charcoal rods and surround them with wood in the proper pencil shape.
In contrast, the wooden sheets were easy enough. They were as thin as I could make without them being prone to snapping, a few millimeters thick, and about the size of a regular sheet of printer paper. Producing them was very quick once I got the methods down, and before I knew it I'd put together a stockpile of several hundred sheets.
I took some of the sheets and used fine threads of air and fire to inscribe information on them. A couple dozen were used to demonstrate the alphabet, with little pictures and a simple word under each letter as an example. It was a fun exercise to tailor it to the environment, and I hoped nobody was insulted by the simplicity of it. This is what would be used to teach children, and I'd probably have to put together some simple books for them to practice with.
At least I could do that with these wooden sheets, just make small holes and bind them with wool thread or something. Surely, that would work well enough for now.
As I worked, a constellation whirled past, and I snagged a solitary small light. It settled into place around me, and I suddenly knew how to do pretty much any mundane crafting I could conceive at a reasonable level. Not to the degree of instant mastery, but with at least some expertise.
Cobbling, blacksmithing, basketweaving, netmaking, book-binding, and so much more seemed included. It didn't cover anything more modern than the cottage industry of the seventeenth century, but the sheer breadth of it took my breath away.
When I'd considered refining that chunk of limonite into iron earlier with Stoneworking, it had told me what to do, but not the context as to why or how it worked. With this, I understood those little details, what the mechanical action did to separate the heavier ferrous limonite from the lighter non-ferrous minerals, what the addition of lime to the smelting furnace as flux accomplished, and why the specific temperatures applied resulted in simple pig iron.
From there, it could be used to make tools, or further refined into bar iron, and even further into various types of steels. I had the skill and knowledge, now, to actually work metal like any experienced blacksmith instead of just playing around with saidar and hoping I get a useable outcome.
Even my wooden tools should benefit from the carpentry skills imparted by the light. Now, I could look back on several things that Woodworking had demanded be done when constructing the new buildings and really understand the purpose behind it!
I didn't feel like I was flying blind as much anymore. Sure, anything to do with saidar would still be a matter of practice and experimentation. Now, really understanding what I was using the One Power to do seemed to take a weight off my shoulders that I'd not even realized was there.
This did all seem to be skills I could teach, thankfully. It wasn't like Masterwork that seemed to apply magically, it was knowledge and experience that could be passed on to others.
As far as my plans to help these people out went, this was massive. It very nearly completely bridged the gap between the current late neolithic techniques in used and those used for cottage industry during the industrial revolution. If I could spread this knowledge, it would form an incredible foundation when it came time to transition to the industrialized processes necessary to use the ecotech.
I was practically buzzing with excitement as I finished putting together the educational materials. I couldn't wait to go and tell Symon! He, of anyone here, would understand. The citadel practically trained polymaths, people with such a wide range of knowledge, so he'd surely get why this was so exciting!
Then again, he might be insulted that some mystical thing had just given me the knowledge it took Maesters decades to learn. Honestly, I was still a little uncomfortable with the whole constellations giving me things, but this was certainly one of those cases where the utility outweighed the discomfort!
I put together a couple of crates to store everything, then lifted them with saidar and carried them back to First Fork. The confused looks from the people on watch were enough to make me quietly chuckle this time as I passed them.
As I approached the workshop, I noticed Symon walking around the chunk of limonite with a speculative expression on his face. I put the crates inside before coming back out to greet him.
He noted my approach, gesturing to the boulder. "Is this your doing? No, don't answer that, of course it is. This is an iron-bearing mineral, yes? This orange streaking is rather indicative, and this seems quite a pure…" He trailed off for a moment, "Sample."
Nodding, I smiled at the chunk of mineral. "It followed me home, ask anyone. Really, I've just been working on developing my skills. I…" I considered for a moment, "I might be much stronger than I'd figured? The rest of it is sitting out in the forest a ways that way." I pointed back towards the surfaced deposit.
He blinked, "Yes, well. I suppose we should speak inside?" He nodded towards the open door of the workshop.
"Oh, sure. I was meaning to talk to you anyway." Gesturing for him to follow, we walked inside, the warm air of the interior a sharp contrast to the chill beyond the threshold of the door.
"You should know that I don't actually know how to extract the iron from the ore." Symon began, "I can work the metal, but I have- Had no lead links in my chain."
"That's perfectly alright," I reassured him, "We can set up a simple process. That's not really what I wanted to talk to you about, though."
He cocked his head, "Then what?"
Waving to the crates in the corner, "I've put together the basic stuff that I feel like we might need for the first session of schooling here. I'm focusing on reading and writing first, and I wanted to ask if you'd be willing to help."
He shrugged, "Might as well. Seems you've already done all the hard work of convincing these people to sit down and pay attention. That's more than I'd been able to do."
Nodding, I favored him with a smile. "Thank you. I'll also need your help teaching the history of the world, as you know it. I understand if that's a lot to ask, but I can't do that."
"Possibly." He rubbed his chin, "The generalities, what I've told you, yes. I had earned copper link. For specifics, I fear we would need the books, and those are in the Citadel library. Though, a few lords had maintained their own libraries. The Starks have one in Winterfell, as I understand."
I shrugged, "Well, maybe I can see about borrowing those books?"
He looked confused for a moment before a look of realization crossed his features. "Ah, yes, your Gateways. They can reach below the Wall?"
I nodded. "Anywhere in the world, as long as I have a decent idea of where to go."
Humming speculatively, "I have no great love for the Citadel or the nobility, but I fear this environment is not friendly to books. Not that I'm opposed to the idea of you.. Borrowing the necessary tomes, but how will we ensure their integrity? Many are old and quite fragile."
That was a good point. "I…" I could probably use the fabricator to copy the books, but if the originals were fragile to begin with, so would the copies.
"Alright, we can build a small library. I'll have to travel around to acquire what we need to make newer copies of the books, and if I worked with a small team of scribes, we can probably copy… How long does it take to copy a book, anyway?"
He snorted, "Depends on how long they are. Some can take as little as a few months, but many take upwards of a year."
Nodding, "Then I figure we can copy a few books a week, then. That's if I don't figure out alternative storage methods, first." At his questioning look, I continued. "There are ways to inscribe a ferrous material with information, and later retrieve that. It doesn't last as long as a well-kept books, but you can put many many books on one such storage device. Accessing them requires an intermediary, a terminal that can translate the stored information into text."
Frowning, "I've heard of nothing like this. Well, you've already performed things I'd never thought possible, so if you believe you can create this… mechanism, I believe you. Would you be willing to show me how it functions when you begin work on it? Could you store an entire library on such a thing?"
"Sure!" I thought that was a great idea, honestly. Symon seemed the type to grasp new concepts more easily than most people, and he wasn't decrying it as sorcery, which was nice. "I'd be happy to. And yes, we could store an entire library. One of the benefits to it is that while there is one central storage, any number of terminals can access it at the same time, even the same books."
He blinked, "That… Seems too good to be true. Needless to say, I'm rather looking forward to when you bring this about."
"Sure, but it's one of those things that might take a while. I need to create the tools to create the tools, and so on, until I have the tools to build that kind of system." I shrugged, "Anyway, I wanted to ask about traveling."
Symon huffed, but nodded. "Very well. Travel where?"
I waved my hands in a vague gesture, "Everywhere? I've come to the realization that this group of people are the first I've met here. I'm a little concerned that their biases towards other people are coloring my own perspective. Specifically, I wanted to travel down south for a little bit, see how things are."
"How things are," he repeated slowly. "What do you mean?"
Frowning, I kicked at the wooden floor. "The free folk here call the people below the Wall kneelers. They talk about how the lords and kings stole the land from the people. You yourself said that slavery is endemic across the narrow sea, and I worry that some aspects about feudal society is similar to that sort of system. I want to get a gauge of how the average person lives, if they're actually suffering in the way that I fear they are, or if I'm just misunderstanding."
He brought hand up to his face, pinching his nose. "Maia, here is something you must understand." He lowered his hand and looked me in the eyes, "Even the meanest of the smallfolk live far better than the most comfortable wildling. What you've changed here, shelter, food, safety? The effect it's had on these people? This is the standard across Westeros. Yes, perhaps they do not have enchanted buildings that remain warm, or wooden tools as good as any fine steel, but this here is near the same as any small village anywhere in the seven kingdoms."
I blinked, "I… Hadn't considered that." The metric I'd been using to judge wellbeing had, after all, been based on my own experiences and not measuring them to other local people. "Well. I'd be well served by broadening my horizons then, no?"
Nodding, "I'd say so. Though, I hope you aren't going to be leaving us anytime soon. You brought these people together, you've taken that responsibility."
"I don't know when, but I'll have to at some point. Maybe not anytime soon. I still should check out Hardhome before going further south, gather more people. Oh, and learn more about the Others. We don't know anything about them, their motivations, their capabilities. If they're really our enemies, or if we just can't communicate."
"Still on about Hardhome? Truthfully," he sighed, "If you desire access to the ocean, would it not be simpler to move to the coast where the Antler empties into the Shivering Sea?"
I shrugged, "It might be. At least that wouldn't have the reputation of being cursed, and it'd be easier to manage one settlement rather than two." It wasn't a bad idea, honestly. Still, I'd promised Ellir to look at the curse at Hardhome, and I was a woman of my word.
He nodded, satisfied. "As for the Others… I wouldn't know where to look. Perhaps the castles on the Wall have ancient texts that mention them, perhaps. I'd simply thought they were superstitious tales, until they came for us."
"I don't know if I'd be able to infiltrate the Watch's castles. Honestly, I don't feel the cold, I might just go and try to find some and work out some means to communicate? At the moment, that's the best I have. When we have more of an infrastructure there are other methods we could use, but until then, I've not many options."
Grimacing, he shook his head. "Still, that seems far too dangerous. You're the only thing keeping these people from fleeing to the winds, and if you were to be killed… We don't know what a Wight is or how one is made, nor the properties of the Other's weapons. Can you truthfully say that nothing they have could circumvent your defenses?"
"That's… Yeah, that's a fair point. I can't say for certain." I shrugged, "Then it's going to have to wait. We'll have to ask around and gather up the myths and legends, and hope there's grains of truth somewhere in them."
"You'd best ask Ellir, then. She'd know many of those, if anyone does."
Nodding, "I'll do that."
He clapped his hands, "Well, about that ore, we'll likely need it to be broken down into smaller chunks. I'll go about getting people together to break it down."
"Alright, good idea." I didn't mention I could probably just do that with the One Power, but at the same time, I'd rather not have to do literally everything myself.
He nodded and left, bracing at the cold air outside.
Leaving through the front door, I noted that we probably still had a couple of hours until noon. The sun was climbing, but it was still the early morning yet.
Making my way through the small village, I eventually found Ellir in the lodge, working wool into thread by hand. Approaching her, I gave her a friendly smile.
"Morning, Ellir."
"So it is." She looked at me for a moment, then pat the bench next to her. "You look like you need something. What is it?"
Sitting, I shrugged. "I need information. Myths, legends, tales about the Others. There might be useful things to know buried in there."
She nodded, picking at the wool. "Perhaps. There are a good number of stories, and each is different." Humming for a moment, "We should ask the forest giants. They know many things, and though they're a secretive people, they will gladly trade an evening's shelter for a good tale."
"Forest giants?" I blinked, "I thought… Symon had said that giants were a brutish people and spoke little."
She chuckled, "That's the plains giants, those who tend their mammoth herds. Truthfully, they are not as crude as many think. No, the forest giants are different. They are smaller, though still much larger than any man, and are far more ferocious when provoked."
"Dangerous, then?" I asked, worriedly.
She shook her head, "Never have I heard of them starting the violence. They don't much like people, but sometimes there are fools who take their placidity as weakness."
I wasn't sure what to say about that.
She continued, "They live in the places of the gods, though there are no weirwoods in their homes. But…" She sighed, closing her eyes. "I've never been closer to the gods than when I stayed beneath their trees. It is a difficult thing to describe."
I was quiet for a moment, thinking. Would it be a good idea to approach these forest giants? "Ellir, if we came in peace, would they treat us in peace?"
She opened her eyes, nodding. "They would. We would be safe with them, safer than anywhere else, unless we threatened them."
We did need more information, and this seemed almost too good to be true. Still, worst case, I could just Channel my way out of any trouble.
"Would you be willing to lead me to them?" I asked her.
"I could, there is one of their enclaves half a moonturn to the east and south. I have not visited them since I was a girl, and I don't know if they would remember me. Still, I think I would like to see them again. Yes, I will take you there. Would you be using your gateways to transport us?"
I nodded, "We can go tomorrow, if that's alright with you."
She nodded, "Aye, that will be good."
Standing, I stretched. "Thank you, Ellir."
"Of course! It's nice that some are interested in the old tales for more than bragging rights." She shrugged, "Though it is important to be able to tell the story in the right way."
"Sure," I replied, "Makes sense. I need to go prepare for the first day of schooling. I hope it goes well."
"You'll be fine. Those attending are already those that have some respect for you. That alone would be enough for most to put their best effort forward, I think."
Giving her a thankful smile, "I appreciate that."
She waved me away, "Off with you, then."
Nodding, I left the lodge, returning to the workshop. I made a quick stop in the pocket reality, noting the large and almost ominous looking metal bulkhead that had been added to the entryway, to get a few scraps of cloth for rags, then set about organizing the rest of the materials. Once it was all set to my preferences, I carried everything to the lodge by hand, setting up a space off in a quiet and well-lit corner.
I had high hopes for today, and I was confident that they'd at least put in a good effort.
Finally, around noon, the first class started filing in, quietly sitting on the benches I'd brought over. Some looked expectant, some looked wary. Symon entered, walking up to stand next to me, and once everyone was present, we began.