Where Blood Might Fail
Eighteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 292 AC
Much of the rest of the day is spent in the study of a matter you had wished to learn ever since you first dreamed true of this place. How different might your deeds have been if instead of blood you would had chosen to pay the Secret Gods of the stone stream and tree in treasure of a different sort? Might your name be less feared, or would you have merely done without all the aid and protection that those same sacrifices had granted your subjects?
You shake off the thought and fix your mind upon the mater at hand. Today's opportunities matter now, not yesterday's.
"Remember that in the beginning the Children worked no metals, and even bronze was a thing of the First Men and only the chiefs and heroes among them," Bloodraven explains. "Thus you cannot simply break a sword before the Heart Tree and expect the gods to drink the power brought forth. It must be worn and ground apart until its purity is lost and it becomes again one with the earth..." Bloodraven's voice is as dry as ever, but the subject matter is not. He works history, song, and the exploits of heroes into the explanation of arcane matters, in a way that shows a keen intellect not dulled by his long life, but sharpened to a razor's edge.
Learned Day of Change Ritual
So you discover the secrets behind what had always struck you as an odd moment in history: Theon the Hungry Wolf's 'Scouring of Andalos.' How could northmen, few and with little skill at seamanship and few ships, bring such ruin to the rich lands that would one day be the Pentosi heartlands? Such scenes are vivid in the mind and the eye, frightful for a generation perhaps, but to have deterred Andal raiders forevermore, to have broken their heartlands always felt to you like an excess of the scribe's quill. However, Bloodraven tells that more than swords went into the doing of it.
Locked in a fortified septry guarded with more fervor than the towers of Andal lords, the Hungry Wolf found a chalice sacred to the Mother that flowed with life-giving water that could make any who drank of it fruitful and even make fields sprout in midwinter. The Stark took then this chalice and broke it before the Heart Tree of Winterfell with his sword before burning the pieces in a fire made with the bones of seven times seven Andal knights and their petty king Argos Seven Star together, all to work a mighty curse upon the invaders: fallow fields, cold hearths, and barren loins he wished to give them.
"Alas for King Theon, he did not truly know his foe. He did not realize that in the veins of the Houses already across the water ran as much or more the blood of the First Men as that of eastern warriors, and that the septons had drawn to their faith many common men with not a single drop of foreign blood. So it came to pass the lasting legacy of Theon Stark was not to take back the South as he had hoped, but vengeance upon those Andals who had not set out upon the sea," the greenseer finishes his tale. There might be the faintest touch of amusement in his voice.
"A lesson?" you ask archly.
He snorts. "You are no child to be taught lessons and neither is your sister though she may still look it. Call it a reminder that blood is not all that matters, a thing easy to forget in eastern lands, and that the greatest of magics can fail from the simplest of causes."
"You teach history far better than the grandmeaster, lord Bloodraven," you answer with a slight bow.
You learn then that the red staring eye of the Last Greenseer can still roll back in his head.
OOC: Level up vote is now open.
