Daria On the Trail: A Letter to Brother Osgood

DISCLAIMER: I do not own either A Song of Ice and Fire or A Game of Thrones. Nor do I own Daria Morgendorffer. This story is set on the real Oregon Trail during the Summer of 1860 and is based on my research, not on the computer game of the same name.

This story is written for fun and for ego gratification. I neither expect nor deserve any sort of financial compensation for this work of fiction.

Again, I thank Ultimate Paladin for the idea that inspired this story.

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A letter from Orrick Trout to Brother Osgood from Ft Laramie

From Orrick Trout

To Brother Osgood, Septon of the Seven
Westport, Territory of Kansas

Dear Brother Osgood,

Greetings from Fort Laramie! May the Seven look down on you and your works favorably and shower you with blessings!

After weeks of travel by wagon, our company has crossed much of the sea of grass that the Americans call the Great Plains. We are now 653 miles from Westport and about 500 miles from the Arch. I am told that we have now completed a third of our journey to what the Yankees call the Oregon Country.

I am well, as are my wife Kara and my children Kennard, Jilla, and Minti. Thus far we have been spared the diseases and accidents that have claimed the lives of so many Yankees as well as those Westerosi who have dared to trek to this world's western ocean. The children are happy and excited to be on this great journey and have made friends with some of the other families in our Company.

Most of our Company are Yankees, the exception being a man named Georg Stauffer and his wife. Georg Stauffer and his wife's forebears are from a place called Germany and they speak German among themselves. They consider themselves to be Americans, although some of the other Yankees don't. Back in Westeros, we would all be considered smallfolk: most of us more prosperous than most, but definitely not part of the nobility.

We have seen many wonders on our journey: great grasslands stretching as far as the eye can see, huge and frightening thunderstorms that send great bolts of lightning across the skies and terrify men, children, and cattle alike, as well as the strange and wonderful rock formations that the Yankees call Chimney Rock and Courthouse Rock. We have yet to see any buffalo, at least not near the trail. Considering what havoc they caused shortly after the Arch opened to this new world, I am just as happy if we don't.

The weather has been warm, the grass plentiful, and our oxen have had good grazing. Alas, firewood has been scarce, and Kara and the other women of our company have been compelled to cook with animal dung like the nomads who dwell on the Sea of Grass in Essos. As for water, we have been compelled to use water from the Platte River. It is muddy and often covered with insects. It is dirty and the very idea of drinking it is repulsive. Small wonder so many Yankees and Westerosi took ill and died in the Cholera epidemics several years ago!

There have been some changes in our wagon train. Our Company left Westport weeks ago under the command of a Yankee named Thomas Ridge. Captain Ridge had a commanding presence and he may or may not have been a great fighter, but he failed to show good judgement. Just over fifty miles from here, the members of our company voted him out and got someone else. To my surprise, I was that someone else. I intend to do my best and pray that the Father, the Warrior, the Smith, and the Crone will guide me as I lead our Company west.

Our party has gained a new member within the last fortnight, a young woman we found lying near our wagon with nothing but a blanket and the clothes on her back. She is a Yankee girl, not a girl from Westeros or Essos. She says that her name is Daria and that the strange thing is that she says that she is from the future: not our future, but that of another world, a world where only a handful of folk from our world or one much like it came over to hers. However, unlike most Yankees, she speaks the Common Tongue and unlike many in our party, she knows much about the trail that lies ahead of us. She also lacks the customary Yankee attitude of superiority. She has already made herself useful and I believe that she wishes to accompany us on the rest of our journey to Oregon.

Fort Laramie is more of a town than a holdfast. There are few walls and none of them would stand an assault by an army of civilized men-at-arms or even mounted savages like the Dothraki. There are buildings here: storehouses of goods and supplies for the soldiers stationed here, barracks for the common soldiers, houses for the officers, and smithies and barns for shoeing and housing the horses. However, as a place to awe the local savages and to deter their attacks on emigrants headed west, it serves its purpose well enough.

Despite the fact that I am but one of many emigrants headed for the lands near the western ocean, some of the officers at the fort have invited me to dine with them and their wives. To my surprise, or perhaps not, Kara and I spent much of the evening talking about our old home in the Riverlands, the Seven Kingdoms in general, and what we knew of the major players in the Great Houses' game of thrones.

We plan to tarry here for several days. Our beasts could use rest and grazing and some of our wagons are in need of repair: the dry air here shrank the wood of our wagons' wheels and their tires need to be refitted. Some of us are also going to have repack our wagons: some folk have brought too many goods from their homes while others failed to pack enough supplies when they left Westport.

We have heard little news of what's happening back in the Seven Kingdoms, save hints of fighting, killing, robberies and burning back in the Riverlands. I fear that we can do little for our countrymen from here. I can and will do what I can to put my family beyond the Lannisters' reach. We will resume our trek to Oregon when our company's wagons are repaired.

We ask you to pray for us and other travelers as we continue west. You are in ours.

-Orrick Trout.

Author's notes: So why was Brother Osgood at Westport? Westport, Kansas (Now part of Kansas City Kansas) was not only a "jumping-off" place for pioneers about to set out on the Oregon Trail, but until the early 1860's was also the terminus of a railway that ran from the banks of the Missouri River across the plains to what in our timeline would be called Wichita, Kansas and through the Arch (dimensional gateway) to the banks of the Green Fork of the Trident in the Riverlands. Brother Osgood made it his mission to minister to the Westerosi either doing business in Westport and other American frontier towns or about to set off on the Overland Trail to California and the Oregon Country.