A City in Three Verses
Twelfth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
Sorcerer's Deep
Franklyn of Highpeak had not known what to expect of the City of the Dragon, not truly. With the aid of the Father and through Brother Lucan's intercession, he had a fair guess for what the Dragon was doing in the depths of his fortress and the sorts of threads he was weaving all over Westeros, better perhaps than the earthly princes who counted themselves his enemy, but that was not the same thing as knowing the place whence the Dragon King ruled.
Neither should I weigh the people by what I know of the prince when I seek to know what manner of king he would make through them, the septon reminded himself, paraphrasing the Book of the Crone,
for then I should bring no judgement back save that which I have brought with me and redoubled.
The first thing that greeted him at the docks had been the great bustle and noise in a thousand tongues of men and some far stranger sounds, hisses, roars, and lilting otherworldly songs that hung in the air, but even as his ears were bewildered his nose was relieved, the stink that inevitably followed whenever men had to live close together in a wooden boat with naught but salt water to bathe themselves in gave way to fresh clean air, and not just on account of the briny breeze. There was nothing of the stink that clung to cities like gnats on a masterless dog. Oh there were smells aplenty, of course, spices from the east floated up the quay, rare fragrant woods from Sothoryos being carried to the warehouse looming in the east fit to cover the sun, and street food roasting and sizzling for those who had the coin for food but not a roof to eat it under.
Or maybe just those who didn't have the time, Franklyn thought. There was a lot of meat on those spits and it wasn't the sort of mystery meat that sometimes made its way to the docks of Sunspear for those without the means to pay for more.
A prosperous people content in their lot, the priest nodded to himself.
Having seen how the needs of the body were cared for he thought to ask of those of the soul. Rather than going right away to the Great Sept King Viserys had raised, he went instead into the houses of those who were said to speak for other gods, for he was a child of Dorne and such arrangements were not unknown to him. He had never seen the harm of it.
If gold be pure then it would bear the scales and if Faith be true then it will stand fair and true among the words of the outlander, so said the Book of the Smith.
What he found was strange and troubling at times, but heartening, for though the shedding of blood was common in some of the temples most called upon, such as that of the Great Serpent or the green groves of the Old Gods, in other places it was counted an ill-fated offering. Even the priests of the Red God who counted King Viserys their savior gave but small offerings to the flame, far less than he had seen in his youth in Volantis. They said that the Dragon King refused to be recognized as their 'Azor Ahai' and that they counted it a test. Franklyn suspected it was simpler by far than that; King Viserys would not set his throne upon any altar, for he did not trust them to bear its weight.
A heartening thing for a missionary come to bring the word of the Seven-Who-Are-One to be sure, for when a man could work miracles by his own power and he was there to touch and see with the naked eye, why would those he had raised up not think him god?
Raised up from the Pit in some cases, the septon shuddered as he considered the scourge of slavery. It was not all of one piece, of course, few things born of the mind of men were even the most sinful. There had been slaves more fortunate than the smallfolk in some parts of the Seven Kingdoms, but many places were much,
much worse.
So it was that on the seventh day of his stay that the septon went among the septs, and there were many more besides the grand one that the Dragon had chosen to raise, and there he found much of what Brother Lucan had feared, men of little learning mingling the faces of the Seven with foreign gods and saying that you could worship half of the Seven and half some other Power, but he found much of what had been hoped for but not thought of. Men and women of charity and great heart, virtue not only among those who had been lowly and wished to raise up those whose sorry state they recalled all too well, but among those of means also, knights, merchants and master craftsmen. Wealth and ease had not made the folk forget virtue and instead chase after more of it paid in the blood of their fellows. It made them give with an open hand as they had seen their King do time and again, and not just for his greatness but for their lives to be better.
Seek not to tear down the might of princes and make yourself a throne of rubble, but bring all men together into the light wholehearted, so it was written in the Book of the Mother. Only a fool would preach against the Dragon King here, even if Brother Lucan's pledge did not bind him, but you could preach virtue here and be heard.
And so with these three verses the septon began his letter back home.
OOC:As is probably obvious from the update, really good rolls this time around. Not everyone was as convinced as Septon Franklyn, but he is pretty representative of the mood of the missionaries
