Northern Renaissance

by anthonyjsantana44

The Old Gods knew the Second Long Night was coming. They could foresee it as well as the likely paths it would arrive. But their past strategy, of a great champion to unite the souls of Westeros against the White Walkers, came too close to failing last time, and they did not like their prospects of merely repeating it. The realms of Men needed an edge, a sturdy shaft to back the sp

3. chapter 3

…yet the North had surprisingly little impact on the outcome of the Dance. The five thousand strong Winter Wolves were betrayed and slaughtered by dragonfire at First Tumbletown, and while the Wolves had brought scorpions and two ballistae in anti-air mounts, those were the first things that burned when the two traitorous dragonriders turned their cloaks. And by the time the North's main army, five-and-ten thousand strong, with Lord Cregan Stark at its head, arrived in the south the war had ended.

Many have asserted the impending arrival of the North's forces was a key driver in the Greens making peace, yet it is unclear if a mere five-and-ten thousand men would have significantly changed anything, and with winter arriving no further reinforcements could come from the North…

…The North's greatest impact was on the Sunset Sea. After the Iron Fleet was destroyed by the might of the Westerlands and the Reach, the North's Western Fleet set sail from Dragon Harbor and came south.

At the start of the Dance, the Western Fleet consisted of eight galleons (fourWrath-class, threeWinter-class, and the flagshipWeirwood's Resolve) and six-and-forty light galleons (of which a full twenty were the iconicWolf-class, which would be a workhorse of the Northern fleets until 200AC).

Meanwhile the combined fleets of the Westerlands and Reach, once losses inflicted by the Ironborn are taken into account, consisted of three-and-ten galleons, seven-and-eighty light galleons, six-and-thirty galleyasses, and two-and-fifty obsolete war galleys.

On paper, an overwhelming advantage to the Reachmen and Westerlanders. In practice, not quite. The galleys and galleyasses were kept near ports as a final harbor defense, and thus didn't take part in any major naval actions. Of the galleons and light galleons, where the North had only three classes of galleons and four of light galleons, all with extremely similar sailing and handling characteristics, the southern fleets had over two dozen different classes of light galleon alone, and each galleon was essentially unique. In addition, a sizable portion of the southern fleets were made up of first-generation light galleons, which universally had significant structural and/or handling issues and were clearly inferior to their successors, which in turn were noticeably weaker than even their oldest Northern counterparts.

The three-and-thirty surviving longships of the Iron Fleet rallied to the North's fleet, and while they were kept as far from action as possible, they provided far superior spotting and reconnaissance to the ships of the south….

…Compared to the static blockades of the Narrow Sea the naval theater of the Sunset Sea was exceptionally active. The Northern fleet preferred to skirmish, whittling away the strength of the Green's fleets in a series of small engagements where the superior quality of their ships gave them assured victories.

Lord Redwyne, who was in command of the joint fleets, was not inclined to let the North pick off his forces piecemeal, and tried to force a battle multiple times. Twice the Northern fleet, under Lord Seastark, baited Lord Redwyne out into the open ocean before using the then newly invented sextant and compass to break contact at night, leaving the Green's fleets searching aimlessly for their quarry for several days before they returned to port.

The first time the North did this they sacked many small holdfasts along the coast of the Westerlands before the Greens could return. The second time the North and Ironborn raided Lannisport.

The defending galleys and galleyasses were quickly smashed aside by the North's warships, which anchored in the harbor and began to bombard the city while Ironborn stormed the port. As part of an agreement with the North the reavers didn't take saltwives or thralls, but were free to seize as much loot as they could carry.

The raid lasted less than twelve hours before they retreated to their base on the Iron Islands, yet did so much damage it took two generations for Lannisport to recover.

This caused a significant loss of morale among the Westerland crewed ships, and Lord Lannister's ire nearly cost Lord Redwyne his position as Commander of the Fleets.

Rather desperate due to the political pressure on him due to his failures, Lord Redwyne marshaled the fleet and set sail for the Iron Islands, intending to either force and engagement with Lord Seastark or raze as much of the Iron Islands as he could if the North declined engagement again. They did not.

The Battle of Pyke. The greatest, and largest, naval battle since at least the Doom of Valyria, also rivaling the Battle of the Gullet for the bloodiest. Many books can and have been written on it in great detail, so it will only be summarized here.

Lord Seastark entered the battle with his ships in line astern, while Lord Redwyne attempted to break the North's line and force a melee where he could leverage his superior numbers with a head-on charge. Technically, he managed to do it, but the somewhat calm winds meant that it was incredibly costly. To both sides.

The North lost five galleons (one sunk, one captured, three constructive losses) and two-and-twenty light galleons (five sunk, three captured, four-and-ten constructive losses). The Reach and Westerlands fleets lost eight galleons (three sunk, two captured, three constructive losses) and eight-and-forty light galleons (two-and-ten sunk, nine captured, seven-and-twenty constructive losses).

Lost ships alone does not showcase the sheer damage done to both sides. Two of the North's remaining galleons would be under repair for the rest of the war, with onlyWrath of the Bearsable to set sail three moons before the Dance's end. After two moons of repairs (neither side had any ships capable of battle without repairs in the aftermath) the North only had two-and-ten light galleons capable of fighting. On the Green's side, none of their remaining galleons left their drydocks before the war's end, and after two moons they had only eight-and-ten light galleons.

Including the loss of men and ships, the North lost Lord Mormont and six lesser lords while the Greens lost Lord Redwyne and Admiral Kevan Lannister, along with six-and-ten lesser lords. Lord Seastark almost perished as well when the galleonsMight of the HightowerandMander's Strengthboarded and captured his flagshipWeirwood's Resolve(which would be renamedMight of the Reachand serve as the Redwyne fleet's flagship until it caught fire in harbor in 232AC), the head of House Stark's cadet branch throwing himself overboard and swimming to safety with the help of his pet dolphin.

Tactically, the battle was indecisive, the two fleets mutually disengaging from each other after night fell. Strategically, it was a pyrrhic victory for the North.

In the aftermath one would be forgiven for thinking that the North had a credible chance of seizing control of the Sunset Sea, the qualitative superiority more than capable of offsetting the Green's six ship advantage, especially if Lord Seastark could get local numerical parity. Indeed, many have criticized Lord Seastark for not acting aggressively in the moons that followed. Those critics have either forgotten or discarded that the Greens still had almost seventy galleys and galleyasses at this time.

Obsolete they may be, that was still more than large enough to overwhelm the North's remaining light galleons if they sortied as a single fleet, and that was if none of the remaining light galleons joined it. And so Lord Seastark resumed his strategy of cautious skirmishing and raids, steadily picking off warships a handful at a time. By the end of the Dance the few remaining light galleon captains had taken to adding every galleyass they could find to their squadrons, especially afterWrath of the Bearssailed past Faircastle with five newly built light galleons…

…Some have speculated what might have happened had the Dance continued. An eventual Northern dominance of the Sunset Sea is uncontested by all, the Greens were decisively losing that campaign. But despite what some may want to hear, as a naval invasion is a popular scenario, not much would change once total dominance was achieved. The North and Iron Islands simply did not have enough shipping left to enact either a naval invasion or a blockade…

…There is broad agreement that had the Sea Snake not rejected the North's offer of assistance in blockading the Gullet the Battle of the Gullet would have gone very differently. The Triarchy was slow in developing galleons, the Stepstones favoring the shallower draft of galleys, and thus the fleet they sent consisted of galleys and galleyasses, with a single light galleon acting as flagship…

…Prince Jacaerys Valeryon's recklessness got himself and Vermax killed when he flew too close to the Triarchy fleet…

…the southern force managing to slip past the Velaryons in the night, allowing them to sack Spicetown…

…come morning the southern force did not manage to escape the vengeful wrath of the Sea Snake…

…in the end only two battered ships made it back to Tyrosh. The unmitigated disaster causing political unrest that took the Triarchy out of the war…

…The Hour of the Wolf is regarded as the definitive end point of the Dance of Dragons.

-The Dance of Dragons, by Maester Wyman, 241AC

…The meeting Lord Cregan Stark had with King Aegon III at the end of the Hour of the Wolf set the tone for the relationship between the crown and the North once the regency ended. What was discussed is unknown, though given how it left the Dragonbane in a towering rage it presumably touched on dragons at some point…

…Lord Manderly was summarily dismissed as the Hand the moment King Aegon took the throne from his regents, not even receiving a word of thanks from the king for his service, greatly insulting him and the North…

…When informed of the death of the last dragon, a stunted, twisted thing that lingered more than lived, the king is reported to have said "Stark was right" before ordering his master of whispers to investigate the Maesters, resulting in the Grand Maester and several of his assistants being executed for supposedly poisoning the last dragons though the evidence of their supposed guilt was circumstantial and weak…

…Eventually, with great reluctance, late in his reign King Aegon came to believe that his dynasty did, in fact, dragons in order to enforce their will…

…In 154AC King Aegon abruptly left for Skagos, setting sail from King's Landing with only a handful of guards and servants with him, saying that he was "going to solve the dragon problem". How Skagos fit into the "dragon problem" is unknown, though there have long been unsubstantiated rumors of dragons in the far north.

Unfortunately, the king's ship struck a submerged rock off Skagos' notoriously treacherous coast and foundered. The Skagosi attempted to rescue them, but most drowned or froze to death in the icy waters by the time they could get a boat to them, hampered by having to avoid the very rocks that sank the king's ship.

King Aegon was not one of the handful survivors pulled from the waves, and it is unknown if it was the cold or the sea which claimed him. Even then, most of those survivors would die from illnesses caused by their exposure to the freezing seas. A single lone sailor would eventually return to King's Landing, the sole survivor of the doomed voyage.

-King Aegon III Targaryen the Dragonbane, by Maester Gerard, 177AC

"No, I don't know why Father went to Skagos. Maybe he thought the remoteness would allow him to hatch new dragons without interference?"

-King Daeron I Targaryen

…The North withdrew from southern politics following the Dance of Dragons. Between Aegon the Dragonbane's antipathy, the death of the Stark heir in Dorne, Baelor the Oathbreaker's insane zealotry, and Aegon the Unworthy, who needs no further explanation, this should be unsurprising to any with a decent knowledge of history, but it would still be nearly a century before the North meaningfully engaged with the rest of Westeros, the kingdom's attention turning inwards and becoming insular.

For most this would cause stagnation, yet the North was not focused on preservation, like most insular societies, but innovation. For the seeds Torrhen Stark planted finally began to flower in full. The improvements in food production meant that the North's population began to boom after the winter of 130-136AC, new settlements and holdfasts springing up all over the North. The increase in population allowed more lands and resources to be exploited, and the prosperity generated was funneled back into building more settlements and infrastructure, driving the cycle onwards.

It is a testament to just how underdeveloped the North was that this economic boom lasted over a century before the North had to start looking beyond its borders for resources to feed its ever-growing industry.

Countless innovations occurred during this time, not all of which were derived from blessed Idgra's knowledge, such as the horse-drawn seed drill, thresher, and harvester, the first steam engines used in mines to pump out water and bad air, canning, modern cartography that produced the first truly accurate and detailed maps, pendulum clocks, and so many, many more.

But there are a few inventions that stand out.

First was that House Clayfield, lessor lords that ruled Ramsgate, finally managed to start plate glass production in 148AC after many false starts and failed attempts over the preceding century, the delta of the Broken Branch river providing the best sand for glass making in the North, and in 155AC they figured out how to produce tempered glass, the strongest glass in the world to this day.

With the harsh winter of 130-136AC still well within living memory, Lord Cregan Stark decreed that glass used in the construction of glass houses must be sold at-cost, a decree that has never been rescinded, House Clayfield receiving partially waved taxes as subsidy. Such was the demand for glass houses that nearly all of the North's glass production was consumed domestically for decades, the few pieces sold outside the North at great mark up being treated more as curiosities than a true threat to Myr's glass monopoly.

As such it wasn't until 180AC that the Myrish realized they had not only had a true competitor in the North, but that the North could produce superior glass to them. When they complained to Aegon IV the Unworthy, he levied an excessively heavy tariff on Northern glass in exchange for numerous gifts from Myr, something that greatly annoyed the North yet domestic demand was such it had barely any impact on the North's glass production.

Ever since the tariff was lifted by Daeron II in 185AC Myr has been steadily losing its share of the glass market to the North, with Westeros having almost entirely weaned itself off of the slave city by 225AC…

…Many who lived though this time described it like riding a galloping horse that only nominally listened to its rider. Between the constant upheavals as industry after industry was revolutionized by new inventions, and keeping the secrets of their manufacture out of the hands of greedy southerners and Essosi, living during such times was certainlyinteresting. It would have been cold comfort to them to know that the breakneck pace of advancement was being throttled significantly from what it could have been due to the fuels that could be found in the North, or rather, not found.

The North's few coal mines yielded coal that ranged in quality from poor to very poor, and the only oil seeps were located deep in the Neck, impossible to exploit due to the terrain. Some have pointed out it was, and is,theoreticallypossible to set up a trade lane to exploit the rich, and high quality, coal veins in the mountains of the Stormlands, but the upfront cost to build the needed infrastructure and coal ships was, and remains, so prohibitively expensive, and would be equally expensive to maintain and protect, that it would stunt the North's economy significantly. And that ignores the political situation.

Importing the massive amounts of coal needed would leave the North catastrophically dependent on the Southern, Seven-worshiping, Stormlands. Any disruption to the supply, either from natural causes or manmade ones, would crash the North's economy, and any who think the Baratheonswouldn'texploit their leverage until the North bent to their every whim is either dangerously naive, a fool, or being paid off. The very concept was, and is, antithetical to the North.

So they made due with wood and charcoal, and intensely studied every scrap of knowledge Idgra imparted about thermodynamics and boiler design to extract as much efficiency as possible from sub-par fuel, though they were and remain constrained by metallurgical knowledge and manufacturing as steam, especially pressurized steam, is particularly corrosive, and the work arounds and compromises made to deal with that all had their own issues…

-The Century of Innovation, by Historian Edric Flint, 277AC

…By 150AC the North's directed breeding of direwolves had increased their average size to the point where they could start being used as war mounts. Initially only used among scouts and light cavalry, it wasn't until 220AC that direwolves were large enough to mount barding and be incorporated into the North's main cavalry formations.

Compared to traditional horse cavalry direwolf cavalry lacked the shock value of their heavy charge, but were much more dangerous and terrifying in melee. The wolves also caused horses not acclimated to them to panic, making them particularly effective against southern cavalry.

While direwolf knights did use the sword and the lance, as a whole they favored pole- and war-hammers, as direwolves tended to move a lot more than horses in combat as they bit, snapped, and clawed at foes, making precision strikes through the gaps in plate much more difficult with swords and lances, even for wargs half-merged with their mounts. Impact weapons don't require such precision…

…Direwolf knights fought on foot alongside their wolves as often as they fought from wolfback. There have been many debates whether unhorsing a direwolf knight actually made the pairmoredangerous…

…While direwolves are omnivores, like dogs and wolves, they do require a fair amount of meat in their diet to remain healthy, resulting in direwolves being more expensive to keep than a warhorse on average (all other factors being equal). This has resulted in direwolves becoming a status symbol among the wealthier nobility, and knights and nobles who will not or can not keep their direwolves in good condition (within reason, no one expects a wolf to be well kept after three months on campaign or traveling though the wilderness) quickly find themselves shunned by their peers…

-Rise of the Direwolf Knight, by Brandon Stark, knight and honorary historian, 272AC

…Between Idgra and the return of the Forest and Earth Singers, known in the old tales as the Children of the Forest, it should be unsurprising that faith in the Old Gods began to resurge, but it wasn't until 141AC that the Green Men were officially re-founded. Concurrently the number of wargs, skinchangers, and greenseers in the North became large enough that the noble families began to be more selective about the ones they married, and many produced multiple wargs each generation with the exception of the Starks, who were always skinchangers in the main line, and it was incredibly rare even in the cadet branches for a child to be born without magic in their blood.

As such no one thought much of when the first wargs joined the Green Men, but when they began to not onlycommunicatewith the Old Gods, but enactdivine miraclesas well, everyone faithful to the religion of our ancestors immediately paid attention. Fiercely loyal and deeply religious men were quietly sent across the known world to find out more as the Blessed Wolf had not left behind even the slightest hint that this was possible in any of the knowledge Lord Torrhen Stark had put to paper, not even in the restricted books kept under close guard by the Starks. But between the Green Men asking the Old Gods and the explorers sent abroad, knowledge quickly came in.

The Gods exist. All of them.

Their power comes from their worshipers, the more they have, and the more devout they are, the more powerful the pantheon, though gods with fewer worshipers than men in a moderately large city are so weak they are irrelevant for all practicable purposes.

But in order to act they need a bridge between themselves and the mortal world, a mortal (the Singers existence proves they do not need to be human) who has awakened the magic in their blood and is sworn to them.

Rather embarrassingly, this was, while notcommonknowledge, still well known among the upper ranks of the Essosi religions, to the point being a mage-priest was a de-facto requirement for attaining high office in many of them (the fire priests of R'hllor are a good example).

The Old Gods, though the Green Men, also informed that while many deities and pantheons liked to proclaim themselves all-knowing, the truth was that their ability to gather information, and generally act on the world, even with a mage-priest, sharply decreases the further they get from their domain. For the Old Gods, their domain is wherever the weirwoods grow, with godswoods and heart trees being local nexuses of their power that magically inclined Green Men can tap into.

Unsurprisingly, a great many weirwood trees would be planted in the fallowing decades …

…The Seven-who-are-One do not have any mage-priests among their Septons or Septas in this age, but they did once. When the Andals first invaded they brought mage-Septons with them, who managed to successfully counter the magically inclined Green Men and Singers who faced them due to having blooded themselves against the far more dangerous mages of Valyria…

…Even back then the Andals and the Seven had a deep antipathy towards magic, likely a reactionary movement from dealing with the horrifyingly creative nastiness the Valyrian Freehold's mages came up with, and after they conquered all the kingdoms south of the Neck that antipathy turned to persecution.

The fact that killing everyone with magic meant that there wouldn't be any who could become mage-priests doesn't seem to have occurred to the Seven, or if they did eventually realize it was at far too late a date to stop it.

The last mage-Septon that can be definitively identified died in 849BC, burnt alive on charges of witchcraft by a High Septon who in turn would be executed for a long list heinous crimes…

…Even ignoring the obvious aspects, the Green Men differ greatly from Septons. For starters, while they do forswear any prior allegiances and inheritances, they do not take a vow of chastity and are allowed to marry and have a family, those with magic in their blood being greatly encouraged, both societally and divinely, to have the latter. As the Old Gods are deities of nature denying those in their service the opportunity to reproduce runs counter to their nature. They also allow women to join…

…There was a great deal of concern when Baelor the Oathbreaker ascended the throne as many worried that he might awaken as the first mage-Septon of the Seven since before the Doom of Valyria. Especially when one of his earliest acts was to have the Red Keep's godswood cut down.

Eventually the conclusion was reached that he was not a mage-Septon, namely because none could believe that the Seven would let their mage-priest be so incompetent if they were whispering in his ear, rather than the complete dearth of miracles the King routinely failed to perform.

Some have humorously suggested that the Sevenwerewhispering in Baelor's ear, but he was justthat inept, and would have been far worse without their guidance. Others have posited that the king could hear them, but with great difficulty, like trying to listen to someone shouting to you from a great distance.

All the same, Baelor's unthinking destruction of the ancient treaties not only between the Targaryens and the North, but between the Andals and the First Men, very nearly tore the realm apart into a religious war between the Seven and the resurgent Old Gods.

Mobs of zelous smallfolk and hedge knights led by ambitious and/or bigoted Septons ravaged the Riverlands, burning and cutting down any weirwood or heart tree they could find and lynching any who tried to stop them. Of course the First Men did not take this lying down and gave as good as they got, especially after the North, with Lord Stark willfully turning a blind eye, sent men and arms, including a hundred of the new and untested direwolf knights, to assist in response to Baelor forbidding Lord Tully from calling his banners to put down the unrest…

…The Clash of the Faiths ended with the death of Baelor, as the moment Lord Tully received word of the King's death he called his banners and rode out to put his kingdom back to order. The First Men and Northern soldiers largely stood down peacefully, but the Faith, who were rapidly reforming into a new Faith Militant, did not, resulting in several bloody clashes before the order was put down once more.

In the end the Old Gods won the Clash, successfully converting over half of the Riverlands' smallfolk to their faith, thanks to the Green Men performing miracle after miracle in front of the smallfolk (which the Maesters and Septons wasted no time in discrediting and "debunking" but only convinced the nobility, who remained largely uninvolved, and the other southern kingdoms) and re-settled High Heart, the weirwood grove resurrected with new growth from the stumps through the ritual sacrifice of thirty-one septons who took up arms against them, one per stump.

That said, large and strong bastions of the Seven remain in the Riverlands, mainly around the major settlements like the Twins, Seagard, Riverrun, etc. which saw no fighting or attempted conversions, none wanting to give Lord Tully an excuse to disregard King Baelor's command…

…In a reversal of historical trends, since the Clash the Faiths of the Old Gods have been slowly expanding, spreading into the Westerlands and crownlands, though having little purchase in either the highly pious Reach or Vale, something that is a constant source of strife as septons still clash with Green Men…

…After the Manderlys converted in 181AC, the Seven no longer had any hold in the North…

-The Green Men and resurgence of the Old Gods, Green Woman Alyss Snow, 254AC

…One of the very few things Aegon IV the Unworthy did right was to stomp down hard on the religious unrest after ascending to the throne, even if it was because waging a war would force him to take time away from his mistresses, excesses, and general corruption (financial and moral).

Ironically, the North's isolationism during this time shielded them from the worst effects of Aegon IV's misrule, as they were out of sight and thus out of mind for the king. That is not to say they escaped entirely unscathed, the excessive tariff on Northern glass was the most egregious but not the only example, but compared to the other kingdoms they got off lightly…

-The Life and Misrule of Aegon IV Targaryen, The Unworthy, by Maester Warrace, 222AC

…Despite one of his great ambitions being to re-integrate the North, Daeron II spent his entire reign integrating Dorne into the Seven Kingdoms and dealing with the Blackfyres and thus did not have the time nor political capital to draw the North out of its isolation.

He did his best to leave a foundation for his successors to build of off, making great strides in calming the religious friction in the Riverlands, Westerland borders, and the crownlands…

-Biography of Daeron II Targaryen, The Good, by Maester Warrace, 225AC

…In comparison to the non-entity that was Aerys' rule, Maekar focused more on rooting out the Blackfyres and their supporters than continuing Daeron II's work of binding the Seven kingdoms into a cohesive whole, and he, like his predecessors, largely ignored the North as he had more than enough problems south of the neck and the North was content being under Targaryen rule. Or if they weren't no word of dissatisfaction reached King's Landing…

-History of the Seven Kingdoms, 200-250AC, by Maester Weagor

…Aegon V has been described as "a good man, one who you would be proud to have or be at his or your side, but a shit king" by the lords of the North. He spent the last year before his coronation in the North, exploring and discovering its wonders and magics, though he did not visit Skagos, never managing to find the time before he had to head south to take the crown…

…The newly crowned king went to great lengths to avoid answering whether he worshiped the Seven or the Old Gods, rightly believing that while his avoidances were annoying directly answering would cause unrest, but his wife had no such reservations. Bertha Blackwood was a proud worshiper of the Old Gods, and wasn't shy about admitting it, even having a Green Woman in her retinue, one without magic as everyone knew having a Druid in one of the hearts of Seven worship would cause significant trouble…

…Between having a worshiper of the Old Gods as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, the re-establishment of the Red Keep's godswood complete with weirwood heart tree, the assistance sent in the great winter of 230-236AC, and the many friendships among the nobility Aegon established before he headed south, the North finally roused itself from its long isolation and began to rejoin the Seven Kingdoms…

…Of Aegon's children only Duncan and Daeron took to worshiping the Old Gods, the others taking to the Seven…

…Aegon V's smallfolk reforms, while extremely contentious and the source of much unrest in the South, had largely already been implemented in the North as the Northern lords competed to gather as many smallfolk as they could under their banners, many of the wealthier nobles even sending recruiters past the Neck to convince Old Gods worshiping smallfolk to immigrate North, as even with the population explosion over the past century the North remained, and has remained to this day, short on labor. A common saying is that a Northman can do twice as much work as a Southron, which is a good thing because the North has four times as much work that needs doing…

…Becoming convinced that the Targaryens needed dragons in order to get his rebellious nobles in line, Aegon turned to the North for help, and Lord Edwyle Stark sent him five viable dragon eggs. Unfortunately the King's attempts to hatch them led to the Tragedy of Summerhall…

-The Re-emergence of the North, by Historian Torrhen Glover, 282AC

"Why did you not tell King Aegon about Skagos, Father?"

"He didn't ask."

"It's quite obvious that he doesn't know."

"And it's not our place to inform him. We have fulfilled the letter of our oath, he asked for dragon eggs and we have given him dragon eggs. If he fails to hatch them that is not our fault. And I rather like the Targaryens not having dragons. Can you imagine the damage Baelor or Aegon the Unworthy could have done if they had one?"

-Conversation between Lord Edwyle Stark and Rickard Stark

"…You might have been right about telling the King about Skagos…"

-Lord Edwyle Stark to Rickard Stark after receiving news of Summerhall

…While Aegon V is credited with bringing the North in out of the cold, it was Lord Rickard Stark's ambitions to see the North pre-eminent among the kingdoms that saw the North enter the Game of Thrones for the first time in centuries. He betrothed his heir Brandon to Catelyn Tully, securing the increasingly Old Gods worshiping Riverlands, sent his second son Eddard to foster under Lord Jon Arryn with the heir of the Stormlands, and had his eyes set even higher for his daughter.

But in doing so he forgot the watchwords of his ancestors. Starks do not prosper south of the Neck…

-Aerys II and the fall of the Targaryens, by Historian Eddard Flint, 293AC

Notes:

AN: A "constructive loss" means that the damage is so extensive it would be cheaper to just build a new ship.

House Seastark, a House Stark cadet branch that rules over Sea Dragon Point, sigil is a dolphin and many scions bond with them like the Starks with their direwolves.

Beaked pole-hammer, later known as a beak-hammer: bec de corbin

The North actually has a decent amount of acceptable quality coal, but it's all in deep veins that the prospectors can't find. Also, most of the North is a large igneous province, with only the area east of Last River and White knife, and south of the lonely and Sheepshead Hills being composed of sedimentary geology. This means, like Siberia, it has a lot of rarer and higher tier resources needed for modern industry, like cobalt, nickel,chromium(though they haven't found that yet), etcetera.

Green Men with magic eventually became known as Druids.

The Greyjoy rebellion of 219AC was smashed so quickly by the combined fleets of the North, Westerlands, and Reach that many historians barely mention it, as it didn't even last a year.