Growing Stone
Twenty Second Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
As you and Ser Richard depart Oakbarrel unseen on steeds of smoke and shadow, just as you had arrived, welcome news soon catches up with you. Lady Arild Shawney had agreed to swear to your banner in exchange for books on warging and a discrete leshy tutor for her children. According to your mother's letter, the lady had practically converted to the Old Gods on the spot. Not from any great religious yearning, but because it would simplify the relationship of her children with magic and help assure their inheritance. There had also been some trouble with overly insistent would be suitors, but having found herself on firmer ground where here children's magic was concerned, the head of House Shawney had made short work of the nuisance. You can only hope your own destination will prove to have so straightforward a solution.
The lands of House Lychester are not far as the raven flies, though it would take far longer on the winding paths between the crumbling chalk hills. Even with the lingering effects of the drought in Lolliston lands, the herds grow scarcer and the lights of villages more distant form one another as you move west towards the sea. Yet these lands had not always been so lonely, you soon realize, as you spot the too-regular outlines of three First Men barrows and even a lone surviving standing stone at the edge of some forgotten clan's territory, now standing in mute and unsung warning atop a steep hill not even the shepherds had bothered to claim.
In the wind-swift peace of the spirit horses, the monuments of the ancient dead are quickly left behind for the halls of the living. Lychester Hall looks... lopsided. The hill on which it was built had collapsed somewhat on the south slope, leaving one of the keep's four corner towers shaken from its foundations and deserted, judging from the lack of light in any of its widows. It would seem Lord Derman Lychester would rather take the chance of an invading army than a further collapse that could cost him the lives of his garrison.
Although you are late arriving in the village at the foot of the keep, it is never so late that you cannot buy drinks and listen to tales in the guise of a peddler foreign enough to be interesting, but not so foreign as to cause the locals to close ranks at any questions. Even so, for hours no one is willing to talk about the 'silver mine' in any but the most general and blatantly false terms.
Just as as you are beginning to worry that you may have found a kindred spirit to Ser Jorah Mormont, this one with the complication that he was selling slaves to an ally, you finally manage to draw a straight answer from one of the 'miners'.
"There ain't nothing but chalk and flint in thee hills, so we're growing rock, you see, from the spirits themselves," the man explains before adding boastfully, "They need light and air to grow, and there ain't any better of either than right here in the Riverlands." Unfortunately, the man's description of the crystals he and his fellows have been farming is too vague to even guess at their origins. You would have to inspect them yourself or simply speak to Lord Derman on the matter.
What do you do next?
[] Speak to Lord Derman Lychester
-[] Write in
[] Try to infiltrate the crystal farm
[] Write in
OOC: Not the longest update this time, a set up and some world-building, along with an account of background diplomancing. Not yet edited.
