Chapter 1: Morden Wytch I/ SI POV I

The memory of the Dance of Dragons remains fresh in the minds of the lands united under the Iron Throne. The Targaryens yet reign, though not without great loss, for their divided kin have been slain by sword, dragonfire, or treachery, reducing their numbers to a mere shadow of what they once were a generation before. Their dragons grow less and less fierce, and less capable of retaining the power that had won their ancestors a continent. The new king, Aegon the III, stews in his isolated silence and deep melancholy, whilst his brother Viserys seeks to heal the damage caused to their family and the lands they hold sovereignty over. Their respective families grow, but the seeds of division already sprout even in the aftermath of the Silent Siege, a truth they both willfully ignore.

The bloody, burnt swath of the Riverlands remains a smoldering ruin, the smallfolk yet tearing down ruined homes and rebuilding what they can as bodies are buried in vast numbers, with many more likely to rot before being found. Fields and orchards lay as charred wastes, with villages and towns alike being naught but lifeless husks, their people destroyed or displaced by the destruction of their systems of support. Livestock are scattered or dead, roads ruined from marches and battle alike, and some rivers yet remain scorched along their banks, the waters of smaller streams remaining foul with corruption and devoid of fish. Other scenes echo across much of the southern kingdoms, whose nobility have not suffered such a loss since the days of the Conquest itself, with many lords great and lesser lie dead, their sons or kin taking their place in their halls and seeking to rebuild from this great war. The unscathed smallfolk remain few and far between, scattered and cold, the latest long winter drawing many into its icy embrace and casting many more into graves from hunger. They seek to rebuild, and many buckle under the harsh methods of their lords and ladies, who seek to restore their house's power over that of their lands first and foremost.

Though escaping the destruction visited upon their southron fellows, all is not well in the North, where the lineages of First Men grumble and stew in their northern holdfasts, withdrawing further from the cloaks and daggers of the Andal-kin below the Neck and the Valyrian overlords they are pledged to. Continually isolated by their supposed equals, uncompensated for their efforts in the war, and with too many bearing a grudge against other insults, they remain in their chilly lands, looking to grow and store food for the coming winters, as they have for hundreds of generations. The cold winds of winter always strike them first, casting newborns into graves and driving whitebeards into deep snows to 'hunt' for game that has long since fled. Though the Nights Watch yet remains strong, wildlings continue to raid across the Wall for whatever they can carry off, and the silence of the Ironborn in the war's aftermath has many a northern lord uneasy, looking west with trepidation for dark sails upon the horizon.

To the East, Essos too suffers from the aftermath of the war's end. The mighty Rogare bank has failed, falling into ruin in so short a time as to be catastrophic for a great many old and powerful families, with the Iron Bank quickly sidling in to fill this void with an iron fist and Faceless Men to carry out its will. The lands of old Sarnor continue to be put to ruin by the roving khalasars of Dothraki, and the wars in the Disputed Lands continue ever on. The Stepstones have since cast off the hold of Dorne since the Lysene Spring, and are once again a lawless string of isles, infested with pirates, slavers, and worse. Though strong and unchallenged, the Sealord of Braavos retains a wary eye on the shores of the Sunset Kingdoms, knowing full well that the dragons are not yet gone, and his city's hold over much of the Narrow Sea may yet be wrested from the hands of the Bastard Daughter of Valyria.

Across the known world, sorcerous societies see the failure of the magic more starkly, driving desperate attempts at regaining their power and abilities, but with costs beginning to far exceed tangible results. Tenuous grips upon the power these groups once held keeps them together, for now, but already division amongst their ranks begins to grow, like a weed unnoticed in a garden. Organizations formerly far more open to discourse and invention, even in the aftermath of the Doom of Valyria and the Century of Blood, draw into themselves, becoming secretive, mistrustful, and slow to accept change and new ideas. Others, claiming to be grounded in the realities of the world, are driven by newfound purpose to rewrite the histories so recently lived, to put certain men in better light, or to damn the memories of those they see fit to do so. In this, the quill truly shows its might over the sword.

The gods of the world watch, helpless, as this continues unabated. They could no more reverse this waning than they could move the moon or the stars, or bring the sun to rise in the west and set in the east. This waning would have simply been part of their endless cycle were it not for the folly of the children of Valyria. Their attempts to harness and control magic so tangibly and intangibly, to rise above the moral coils in which they dwelled, and to ascend to greater greatness than any before them, had irreversibly damaged the very foundation of magic, and thus the cycle of the gods. The creatures of magic in the world fade or struggle to survive, and the unseen is forgotten entirely, dooming untold people in the generations to come.

It is the age of the waning of the world, of men and women struggling to hold on to and rebuild in the face of harshly uncertain times. Magic fades faster every year, tipping the scales in favor of whatever few holdouts remain, but even these strongholds are not without uncertainty. In time, the unexplained, the unnatural, and the unknown will fade from the world, and memories long held sacred will peter out and die, not with a blaze of glory, but with a whimper.

Yet all is not lost.

******

Morden Wytch I

147 AC

He awoke with the sun, much as he had done in his childhood, tending to whatever tasks were to be accomplished before he joined the older boys in the mines. Every day had been a hard one, the fear of a cave-in, gas, or bandits wracking his fellows with fear. When his father Kennon returned, usually only for some moons, his spirits were oft lifted enough to see some good in life, rather than remember the friends who died in the mines, or hacked out their lungs from breathing in the dust and poor air. Even the local lord, a man he'd never seen or even met, had died in an accident while visiting the mine, and the son had taken over shortly after with little word of it all.

That was the great irony of it all, Morden had realized. For all the great differences between the highborn and lowborn, there were always similarities, one in particular being a stark reminder that none who lived could escape work. Just as a smallfolk needed to work to earn a wage to feed themselves, there was always work of different sorts to be done in the life of a lord. Not of the backbreaking kind, not that he missed working in the mines, but of the day-to-day toil that never ceased, no matter rain or shine. Whether it was overseeing the training of men pledged to his house, hearing petitioners and ruling in their disputes, ensuring a fair and just level of tax that would not beggar his smallfolk nor leave his coffers dangerously low, it was as varied as it was dizzying. Just now, going over the accounts with his wife, he'd found himself reaching some sort of exhaustion that had nothing to do with his body.

His mind, it tired of looking at all these figures and sum, trying to make sense of taxes paid to him by his smallfolk and then his own taxes to his liege lord, with all the middlemen in-between needing to be paid their fair share as well. His lady wife knew these far better than he, and while together they persevered for the sake of their children and their new house, there were days where he mused on how life would be if they'd still been smallfolk. Simpler, for sure, perhaps far more dangerous, but simpler indeed. Janyce and his daughters tending to the garden and livestock, he likely as a lowly retainer for some Stormlord, with his son as his page or the page of another knightly retainer. A simpler life, one no less filled with love, but with none of the promises and security the death of his father had earned them all, bless his soul.

In the midst of his wandering mind, his wife gave a small cough, and with a sheepish smile, he focused back on the task at hand. Losses from several outer wheat fields were lighter than they'd expected, thank the gods, but the corn along the southern reach of Lowhill was a total loss, good now only for roughage. The crops did not grow as thick as he'd have liked, but the smallfolk planted them as best they could with whatever tools they had on hand. Were he a smarter man, he'd have tried to find a way to resolve this, but such answers escaped him.

Unexpectedly, there was a knock at the door to his solar, interrupting his task. He was not expecting company, but no runner had come with news of arrivals, so with a nod, his guard opened it. Another guard, with a rather tired expression, stood at the door, only to move aside to allow his little Casper to trot in. His heir was, for some odd reason, clutching an assorted mess of plain cloth, a great line of woolen rope smaller than most he'd seen, and some long, thin pieces of wood that reminded him of the shape of a shield. The cloth itself was stretched over the wooden pieces, with a long stretch of some kind of banner trailing from the bottom like a tail, and the thin rope fastened to the very center of it. It reminded him of a shield whose name he couldn't remember at the moment.

"It works!" his heir cried out, smiling and nearly jumping for joy. An excitable lad, his little Casper was, something he'd known from his own childhood, and was glad his heir had inherited. No sense in having a brooding, unpleasant little shit he'd known some boys to be at that age. With luck, Arenna and Shyra would share this behavior.

"My boy, just what have you got there?" he asked, perplexed. He had noticed a change in Casper's behavior recently, perhaps from the stress of his youngest sister being born a few moons before, but the maester had told him it was nothing to worry about, that most boys went through such a change, and he tended to agree with his maester. If anything, his wonder at the world, his questions, and his pursuit of exploring their castle had only increased since Shyra's birth. Maester Gorman would be tearing his hair out in due time, if this kept up, just from the sheer stress of all the questions.

"It's a kite, father! Come, watch, I'll show you how it works!"

"Like the bird?" Now that he mentioned it, that shield did look like ones used by footmen and some knights, although most tended to call them almond or teardrop shields.

"Yes, it stays in the air with a good wind, you can even make it do tricks!"

Well, this was something entirely unexpected, and then some. Making something fly with the wind? T'was not quite madness, as he had heard rumors of Essosi creations that did much the same, but what would he know of those? Only occasional merchants spoke of such things, and those were still rare these days. Glancing to his wife, who merely shrugged, being as surprised as him, he looked back to his heir. He hated to crush the boy's spirit then and there, but there were more important things to be done. "I'm afraid I have much work to do, son, specifically our taxes. Perhaps another time?"

The barely restrained crestfallen expression was like a punch to his heart, but there was little he could do about it. Running his keep and his lands often left little time for other activities. It'd been a miracle that Arenna and then Shyra had been conceived, given how tired he or his lady wife often were after their long days. Their maester took a great deal of work from them, but there was still just so much to do, so much at stake for such a new house. An older, established house likely did not have the same troubles with the established funds and connections that they had yet to make. Their family was yet small, and he could not simply put some cousin or nephew in charge of some important task, instead having to evaluate every man and woman who could work for their house.

"I'll go," his wife said, giving him a sly wink as she rose from her seat. "Perhaps your father may be able to see from the window?"

"Oh, right!" his heir said, smile returning, his small legs just trembling with excitement to leave.

As one of the guards escorted them, Morden turned back to his work. Losing himself in the rhythm of signing forms and making sure accounts were up to date, time seemed to take on no meaning, passing by without a thought, before a great deal of noise from his window reached him. Curious, he moved from his solar desk and fully opened the shutters, only for something to fly swiftly past the window. Startled, thinking it a bird at first, he saw that nay, it was no bird, nor bat nor any other beast, but the 'kite' his son had built. It was flying! The streaming tail fluttering sharply with the eastern wind, the frame trembling fiercely yet staying together, it made a noise that reminded him of a great flapping bird, like those great gulls nearer the coast.

He looked down, tracing the kite's length of rope down to his son along the slope of the hill their hall sat upon, watching him running back and forth, pulling in and letting out rope at seemingly random moments. The 'kite' followed these motions, drifting left or right, up or down, or even doing a great spin at times. His lady wife, with a pair of their guards by her side, sat in the shade of a large parasol, clapping as their little boy made a spectacle that was quickly drawing the attention of the smallfolk tending to their small apple orchard. Most seemed intrigued by it, as such a spectacle had likely never graced their eyes before. Hells, he'd never seen something like it, despite having seen more of the Stormlands than near anyone else in his lands.

He sighed, even as a smile graced his lips. Leave it to his son, a boy of seven, to make something that could fly, like a leaf in the wind. Hopefully the smallfolk would see it as a curiosity, and not some kind of foul magic. He'd have to talk with the local septon on the matter, just so they didn't get the wrong idea about his heir.

******

SI POV I

There was no bright light, there was no wasting away in a hospital, or being struck by a car, or stabbed or shot or whatever. I guess I could count myself lucky I didn't end up in such a situation that led to this, the potential trauma of phantoms aches and the like were something that would have no explanation, and would mess me up pretty good. Yet despite the odd dreams of storms, and maybe a few of fire or places I've never visited, I doubt I died when I fell asleep that one last time on Earth. Waking up as a child was something like out of a dream, like one of those wishes that you could take the mind and mentality you have now and travel back to younger days, with thoughts of what you would do differently, what you could change about yourself or your situation. All of us had thoughts like that, I realized, but to find myself at such a young age was certainly a surprise.

Even more surprising when my father and mother were not the parents I had grown up with. The language they spoke was definitely not English, more like some strange mishmash of old European languages and non-European accents. This was my first cue something was not right, though I'm not proud to say this took me some time to realize, and the fact they seemed to have no 'modern' technology I could recognize was another, entirely unneeded secondary shock to my fragile mental state.

Coping for the first few weeks, and then months, which they alternated between calling months and moons here for some reason, was one of the hardest things I'd ever done. I'd had to accept, in a short time, that I was gone from Earth, and now not only a child, but one in a rather shitty place in whatever served as history here. Thankfully, there must have been some jumbling from my Earthly 'departure', since despite being scared and feeling entirely out of place, some of my vices didn't seem to come with me. My guess? Having the knowledge of an adult being thrown into the mind of a boy doesn't translate post-pubescent urges and adulthood anxiety and depression all that well.

Thank God.

So, secretly, I learned to cope without trying to raise any suspicion. The man who seemed to be a doctor of sorts, though that's a rather generous term, simply chalked it up to boyhood changes and the birth of my newest younger sister. Nobody really seemed to look past that, thankfully, as otherwise they'd probably think I was a changeling or something that had replaced the 'real' Casper. Come to think of it, he's still here, but not a separate entity anymore, otherwise I'd have not known anyone's names, or the layout of the small castle I now called home, or even how to speak this odd language. Maybe my 'transplantation' caused us to merge into a new being? Hard to say, and it's something I try not to think about.

Part of my coping was an effort to rationalize my predicament, in which I had likely been sent to an alternate universe or likewise mirror reality by some unfathomable cosmic coincidence or being. Given my 'fusion' with the old Casper, perhaps there was brainwave synchronization wibbly-wobbly stuff going on? For a while I'd wondered if God sent me, or some ASB instead? I had no idea why, but in some aspect, I fell away from existential pondering, as it was getting me nowhere, and grew to see this like a dream of sorts, one in which vices and certain character aspects from my 'previous' life had fallen away. It was truly liberating to literally not feel the anxiety I had before.

That was, of course, before I found out I was in Westeros, which took a big hit to my levels of nigh-nonexistent worry. Again, this took longer than I would have liked to admit, despite my innocuous exploration, but finding out this was indeed the book world, and not the television series, put any plans I had in a bind.

I'll admit it's not the absolute worst place I could have found my fused consciousness, but still bad. At least I was the son of a lord, so life as some dirty peasant, I mean smallfolk, wasn't in the cards for me, but exactly where and when I had wound up had taken some further investigating. As it turns out, my grandfather Kennon Storm had served and died in the Dance of Dragons. Despite being just an unlanded knight, he had done something important enough before dying to earn a minor lordship for his son, my father Morden. There was a rumor my father told me that Kennon had been a bastard of a Baratheon given our family looks, likely spawned from a grandson or great-grandson of old Orys himself, given that my grandfather may have been born in 79 AC. Meanwhile, on my new mother Janyce's side, she had apparently been the daughter of some merchant family that father courted before his ascension to lord and married soon after and thus elevated her to a lady. Her side was a bit harder to track back as anything but merchants, as Westeros has this odd innate disdain for anyone making money that isn't a lord. Even then, my father said many lords don't seemed concerned with how their wealth is accrued or maintained, something I could not hope to emulate.

From what I could further gather, the Dance had ended in 131 AC, and seeing as I was born in 140 AC, that would put us at around 147 AC. So, I now lived in a world without dragons, save for the ones on the banners of our king, Aegon the Dragonbane, and whatever sickly ones he's been trying to hatch that are likely to die out within a few years. This is good, I'd rather not have to deal with those pesky scaly firecats, but unless my mere existence threw things off this early, the Targaryens didn't really concern me, or the rest of Westeros for that matter. Instead, after trying to secretly look over maps my father had, giving up, and then just asking the maester for clarification in a childish fashion, it turned out I lived in the Stormlands. More precisely, in a primarily unforested region bordering the Dornish Marches, or perhaps somewhat in it, I couldn't quite tell from the maps given that some put 'Marcher' boundaries in different places. God, I wish I had some accurate and standardized tools to use, that'd make so many things simpler.

As it turns out, these lands had long been the demesne of a lordly family known as Stormhills. My guess is they were either Baratheon offshoots from centuries before, given their smaller size, or maybe scions of a Marcher house, given their location. Regardless, they hadn't done so well these past few generations, with most of the different branches dying out either during the Conquest or Maegor's reign, and then the rest died of some plague that swept through the area years before the Dance. The lands had gone back into the holdings of the Baratheons, whose current lord was named Royce I believe, but ever since then, it'd lain empty. My father had told me the locals had avoided it out of superstition after the deaths of the Stormhills, so thankfully there'd been no squatters, and with everything going to the Baratheons, looters hadn't been an issue either.

Yet despite falling under the rule of the Baratheons for decades, I was disappointed at the lack of investment in these lands, a common occurrence I knew I was going to suffer for the rest of my life here. They'd done nothing for these lands other than ensuring their taxes were collected from the smallfolk and maintained the keep with the least amount of effort imaginable. The fact that the hall's ceiling hadn't collapsed from lack of maintenance, according to conversations between my parents, was as impressive as it was depressing. Now, though, with my grandfather's sacrifice having earned my parents the keep, a name, and a small treasury of their own, it was livable once more after a few small renovations.

The keep itself was called Stormhall. Not exactly original, but very Stormlander-y in all regards. I was thinking it could be named something else, but I doubted anyone would have listened to a seven-year-old, and father still liked the name. At least choosing our house name had been something of an inspiration from the gods, and not the leftovers from some dead people. I just so happened to be born the day a "wytch" came through the area, a fierce and powerful winter storm that, had it been over water, would have been equivalent to a hurricane. I recalled it being called a "November witch" on Earth, but the months are labelled differently here, and such a unique storm is simply called a "wytch", and thus that was our house's name.

The name my 'new' parents gave me that day was Casper, by the way, after my mother's grandfather. Casper of House Wytch. I can somehow hear the friendly ghost and Halloween jokes bombarding me from a cosmic perspective.

Given the suddenness of the storm we're named for, it only made sense for father to make our house words "Dread our Wrath", and while not the catchiest of sayings, I'll admit it's better than most others I've heard. We also likely have that Baratheon and thus Durrandon blood somewhere, so I'd not be surprised if I had some diluted form of that famous fury. If I do, it'll help for bashing people with a warhammer or sword, though not for keeping my temper if I can't control it. Our eventual sigil wasn't too bad either, a white spearhead upon a field of alternating blue and red bars, though I'd have preferred something "stormier" than that. Oh well, a simpler sigil to remember is a simpler sigil for the smallfolk levy to sew onto their clothes or remember whenever we're headed somewhere.

All in all, these factors seem to make us sound very martial and brave, good things to be in a world now lacking in dragons. Since the Dance happened so recently, I'm not going to worry about the Others, as that's a Sword of Damocles I don't want hanging over my head. If I should manage anything from my little pissant corner of Westeros, maybe I'll make some friends with people who can make changes down the road that I couldn't. Regardless, if this isn't a dream, my successors and their descendants can deal with that shit, I just want to survive and prosper as best I can. As it is, though it'd help against those ice demons, industrializing would take far too long and with far more resources than I'd ever have available in my life, and the proper social and governmental changes needed for that would be impossible for me to create. Yet seeing as I'm more educated than eighty percent of the entire population of this planet, I've a responsibility to leave at least something behind that advances us all. I'll at least try and make my lands and house prosper while I'm around, as well as the lives of the smallfolk, because well-fed peasants in Westeros, are less likely to zerg-rush my keep during a famine and rip me apart with their bare hands. They might still do that if they think me a heathen, so I'll have to really dive into the faith of the Seven to cover that potential problem.

Come to think of it, Westeros is an odd place. For a realm that is comparable to fused portions of Europe, the scale seems rather off. Compared to our larger neighbors, our family lands aren't massive, but I'd say in total they are near the size of a small US state, which is still huge given how sparse our smallfolk are. We're easily talking hundreds of square miles of primarily pristine, untouched wilderness with only scattered settlements and development in a region that's been feudal for thousands of years at this point. It reminded me of Middle Earth in a way, but that has way more problems going for it than even Westeros does, so I'm rather thankful I didn't end up there.

As for the lands themselves, they're nothing really to write home about. There's no coastline for trade or fishing, no sharply defining terrain like canyons or volcanos, barely any waterways that I would call a 'river', and a stark lack of natural defensive terrain other than some steeper hills. There are small lakes scattered everywhere, but many of these dry up during the cooler months, and every one of these ephemeral bodies is good only for bugs, frogs, and whatever birds nest nearby. If there isn't varying levels of grassland, which is friggin' everywhere out here, there's small scattered forests, with one 'larger' one bordering a neighbor to the north and east, and certain hills are rockier than others. Our only defensive terrain is the mountainous foothills to our south, the Red Mountains, I think. As for how our lands are developed? Rather simply, both a good and bad thing I suppose, as it at least gives me something to work with in the future. There's plenty of sheep in many meadows, a Stormlander tradition I think, and our family has a small herd of dairy cattle directly for our own usage nearby. Every village, my father has said, maintains small communal orchards, usually for brewing hard cider or for preserving as food, with our own larger orchard planted along the 'road' leading up to our keep. Fields are plentiful but seem rather sparsely planted, a given seeing as the smallfolk just thrown the seeds in the furrows and hope for the best, and oddly we have almost no mines, save for a few in the hills to our south. As for our smallfolk? If they aren't a farmer or shepherd, then they're likely plying a trade, but there aren't that many to speak of. There's smiths and weavers and the like in practically every village, but only the larger ones have anything resembling scribes, masons, dyers and whatever else is a more 'specialized' profession. I think our only true merchants are all relatives from my mother's side.

So far, from what I've managed to experience, life in Stormhall isn't bad. It absolutely sucks compared to where I came from before, especially with the lack of indoor plumbing, but since I'm not reborn into the middle of the more grimdark fantasy timelines of Westeros, I can't complain much. While not sealed as tightly as I'd have liked, the castle is dry and warm enough that I don't need to wrap myself in blankets or sit by a fire all day during the warmer months. As befitting a lord's heir, I've always plenty to eat, though the lack of herbs and spices is rather depressing, and while I'm partial to not wanting to indulge too soon, given my former life's battle with weight problems, there's something to be said about wanting something a bit more varied than what is made in the kitchens. At least, as a lord, I'll be expected to stay in better shape, what with riding horses and swinging swords and lugging around my armor. That, and although I wished I had some hidden access to the internet to help me, adapting to more martial hobbies will not only keep me healthier, but earn me more respect from likeminded Westerosi.

Despite his background as the lowly smallfolk son of an unlanded knight, my new father is middling with a lance but much better with a sword or axe. Good thing too, seeing as he's trying to get me started on that type of training at a young age. Surprisingly, my new mother is quite well versed in trade, more than I'd have given her credit for at first glance. Between the two of them, they've managed to rebuild and expand the keep from its former state, as well as manage and even grow the few true settlements in our lands. While we're not rolling in gold, they are doing as well as can be expected for a lord and lady of their origins. Father doesn't mind mother dealing with trade and finance, instead training with the few knights and guards we employ, as well as dealing with his levies and neighbors every now and then. Our neighbors consider this strange, allowing a woman to hold such power alongside her husband, but hey, I'll take whatever advantages our family can get.

Our maester also seems oddly comfortable with this affair, which is strange given that the Citadel is a strictly no-girls-allowed club and allowing Janyce to usurp what some would consider a maester's task would lead to whispers in other courts. Gorman is his name, by the way, formerly of House Frey, and while I find his Riverlander accent rather endearing in a kindly distant uncle sort of way, I'm not sure what to think of the man's training. In fields like economics and statecraft he's a rather smart man, but in medicine and others he's not exactly the cream of the crop. Then again, this is a rather backwater posting, and I'll admit I'm unfairly biased in favor of Luwin. He's somewhat of a miser, preferring to amass wealth rather than invest it unless there's a sure return on such spending. Smart, but not daring enough I'd say, not that I'm an economic genius or anything. Before my 'awakening' in Stormhall, he's been the one teaching me my sums and figures, but seeing as I'm just seven, he doesn't expect too much more from me than that. I did overhear him talking with father about moving onto more "advanced" stuff, whatever that means nowadays, and I take care to show that I'm learning, even though I must be careful to not advance too far or fast. People don't seem to like a 'genius' in Westeros unless they're somewhere in their teens, calling it unnatural, which I find stupid. Still, I was surprised to learn he was a Frey, as he's nowhere near as weaselly as any Freys I recall. Maybe Walder was just the worst of the batch that ruined future generations? I mean, Gorman treats people with respect, is far more patient than most might be in his situation, and even if he is miserly, he haggles far better than I ever could.

While Gorman supervises my lessons, father has had me begin my more martial lessons, usually after my morning figures and sums. Being only seven I'm not training against anyone, instead learning about proper weapon usage and physical training as the page for one of my father's few knights and master at arms, a rather fierce fellow named Roland. Thankfully, there's no wars currently underway, as whenever I'm not with Roland, father ensures I'm practicing my footwork, dexterity, and how to command the men that will one day serve me as lord. Yet I know war will come, as given the current timeline I'll be old enough to participate in King Daeron's Conquest of Dorne, unless I somehow manage to butterfly that. Here's hoping it won't go as badly as originally for everyone involved, except the Dornish lords responsible for killing a man under a banner of peace, because seriously fuck those guys. That shit is violating Westerosi Geneva Conventions, just like violating guest right or something equally abhorrent. The smallfolk could likely be reasoned with once the war is over with a hearts and minds campaign, even with their strangely nationalistic ideals.

Yet as I considered the coming fustercluck that the Conquest of Dorne could bring to my doorstep and Westeros as a whole, that does raise a good point. I'm a man, or boy now, out of my own time and reality. I have the power to bring about change, not only to the timeline of this universe, but to Westeros and then the world, some of it just through my mere existence. Yet just what do I try and change? I consider myself rather practical in most regards, so no attempts to claim anything far above my station, like Storm's End. Shortly after my awakening I managed to find a place to hide parchment, in which I began to write and stash every scrap of information I could think of for future use. I was undoubtedly forgetting things, but a solid core of what I wanted to achieve would be the best in the long run, even if I didn't know how I would achieve many of those goals. After all, even if I didn't know how to synthesize fertilizers from manure, something about distilling I think, I knew it was possible, and could look for means of accomplishing this with whatever was at my disposal. Yet regardless of what I wanted to do, I had to step back and look at my situation, both with the culture I was born into and the lands I now called home. Though it'll work here as well, if I were in the North, I'd focus almost entirely on expanding and improving my agriculture, and maybe timber production if the lands were suitable for it. Thank whatever god or gods exist here that I didn't wind up in the Iron Islands, I'm not sure I'd be able to accomplish much given how ass-backwards that entire region seems to be.

So, ensconced in my little hidey-hole, I put my mind to work over the coming months to try and put down anything and everything I could think of, and compare its suitability for not only my situation, but for that of this world as well. I recalled a research paper on the Dutch iron plow I did in middle school, and while I'd never seen one, I knew the basics for a seed drill and the benefits both would bring. Yet despite knowing I'd seen something on it, I had no idea how to create a mechanical reaper, and given the current state of Westerosi society, I'm not sure I'd ever want to try for a threshing machine. Threshing grains from chaff was a laborious task and a source of income for many smallfolk. Taking that away in the name of efficiency could see unrest or even riots unless I had other work for them to fall back on. Yet even if that worked in my lands, most lords would not have my same foresight, and that could spell disaster for all of Westeros, and I didn't want potential future enemies to gain from that. If I ever did somehow create those other two, selling them to the Vale and the North would probably be fine, given how far they would be from me and the Stormlands.

Other than knowing I needed saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal, I know nothing of making gunpowder, there's no way of knowing if it'll work unless I try and make some, and this world does not need access to that stuff now, or maybe ever. If I did make it, or led someone to make it, there's be some Guy Fawkes-esque plot to blow up a city or castle, but because it'd be more explosive or something related to the bullshit magic seeping everywhere, the detonation would mirror an atomic bomb. Not to mention that any errant flame or even lightning could set it off. I think the latter happened in Italy back in, what was it, the late 1700s? So no matchlocks, flintlocks or cannons for Daeron to conquer Dorne with, or for anyone else for that matter.

My house is too much of a small fry to try and do anything with a printing press, as I'd likely need royal patronage just to get that up and running. There's no such thing as paper in Westeros, or good paper that isn't imported from Essos at a huge markup, and I recall that the ink needed to be specially made to not be too thick or runny. Never mind the outcry from the scribes' guilds and the Citadel on the damn thing likely putting a huge portion of their members out of a job, and the latter was an organization I did not want to get on the bad side of. I knew it'd be an immense boon for trade and record keeping, but what we have now isn't the worst, so that handy device will just have to wait until times are better.

I know the very basics of steam engines and how they work, but there's more than a few problems with them. Getting the fuel for heating would mean either specifically mining for coal, which I'm not sure anyone in Westeros is mining for, and if I didn't have coal, then I'd have to clear-cut entire forests just to make enough charcoal. Not to mention the pollution problems with building and operating them, and I didn't even know if the current metallurgy techniques were good enough to make strong yet light enough engines for use in, well, anything. Even if I somehow made a working one that didn't blow up in someone's face, it'd be too crude to be genuinely useful, and smallfolk would likely break or steal them for the highest bidder, or maybe lynch me for witchcraft. This means no trains, boilers, pumps, or steamships for the foreseeable future.

Speaking of ships, I know there's something about triangular sails and certain hull designs and other stuff that allowed for larger oceangoing vessels to be made, and something about lashing trunks rather than using a singular one as a mast, but otherwise I'm at a loss for what I could do in that area. Copper bottom hulls would be a good idea to forward to any seafaring or coastline allies, but again, would they be able to mine and refine enough copper to even make thin enough sheets that didn't sink the ship they were nailed to? Who would even listen to me on this matter? My family's lands don't border the sea, so unless I had a canal from the coast to my lands, nobody would take my idea seriously. Gah, canals! That's another idea that would help Westeros, yet they'd take longer to build and earn a profit back from than I likely have years left to live in this world. Unless I made an incentive for someone to design a better ship, then there's nothing much I can do, and that'd take a lot of gold anyways, far more than I have at my disposal.

I really don't want to touch on Wildfire and anything else those pyromancers can create unless I'm either desperate or they come to me fire. I know there's ways of making a substitute for Greek fire, using rendered dolphin fat or something equally odd, but again, why risk burning myself or my keep to the ground? Seriously, it's bad enough with Wildfire, which seems to be as if chlorine trifluoride had unholy sex with ethanol and the resulting abomination could be as easily made as moonshine and literally left to grow stronger out of sunlight. No wonder Aerys wanted the stuff to burn Kings Landing, it's have done the job of carpet bombing with napalm a hundred times over.

I know how a portion of concrete is made, with lime, crushed gravel and other stuff, but the really good Roman stuff had a specific type of volcanic ash in the mixture. Dragonstone and other volcanic islands are 'close' by if I wanted to try my hand at it, though with my luck I'll discover some sort of proto-Valyrian concrete and the maesters or another group will try and have me killed or steal my work. Why are there so many potential factions that could want me dead just to deny their rivals a resource or ensure I don't 'steal' their secrets? No wonder the world seems to be perpetually stuck in a medieval era, there's no real cooperation and every intelligent ruler is quickly replaced or usurped by some idiot that undoes nearly all former progress. Or some catastrophe strikes, like a bubonic plague-proxy or long winter, which screws everything up even more.

More than once I had to stop my scribbling, in English by the way just so if anyone found it they wouldn't be able to decipher it, and take a break from it. I'd visit my new little sisters more often, watch my mother work on ledgers with the maester, and fly my kite when the winds were right. Though the fate of the world wasn't in my hands, I still had to stay calm. Fear was the mind killer after all, and if I let it control me, I'd either develop some sort of paranoia, grow too cynical for my own good, grow too depressed to actually try anything, or just go mad.

Coming back to my scribblings, I looked away from the more drastic creations, and looked instead to doing what I could with what I already had. I knew selective breeding was already a thing, but from what I'd gingerly spoken with the maester about, it wasn't an exact science. Most just simply allowed their animals to breed willy-nilly in their flocks or herds, rarely targeting for certain traits unless they were dogs or horses. Hell, beef cattle weren't a thing in Westeros, just like they weren't until relatively recently in Earth's history. Or at least large ones weren't, since I recalled most cattle nowadays were far larger than they used to be. With some luck and buying up good stock from nearby lords or kingdoms, I was willing to bet I could increase the average size of my animals in a relatively short amount of time, maybe ten years or so, though that'll take some time to even get started. Gods, what I would do for some brisket, but I lack beef cattle and pepper is terribly expensive.

Most of the Stormlands is known not for cattle, but for the flocks of sheep grazing its many pastures. Rearing larger, meatier sheep for consumption or those specializing in thicker or finer wool could certainly help grow the prosperity of my lands and give access to more food and goods. I'd likely not have to look far for good stock, be it from Dorne, the Reach, or the rest of the Stormlands, but ensuring they'd arrive safely would be risky. I doubt anyone would learn what I was looking to do, but if word got out too quickly that I was looking for big and healthy animals, every smallfolk and lordling around would charge me far more than fair price for animals to grow my herds, not to mention the problems with predators and bandits.

I began to run low on energy with much of my scribblings, taking a small break by the time of the next harvest, and as I sat under one of the larger apple trees, going over my studies, I saw a rotten apple being swarmed by honeybees. Thankfully, I was not Newton and had one land on my head, allegedly, but an epiphany came to me all the same. Our fruit harvests were plentiful as were whatever barley fields that grew around Stormhall, and alcohol was a fine way of storing such foods for later consumption, as well as serving as a good way of getting drunk. I was originally from Wisconsin, where alcohol is as common as water and likely drunk far more often, and other than Myr with their pear brandy, and maybe the Reach, I'm not sure at this time, nobody else seemed to know how to distill whiskey, brandy, vodka, or any other kind of spirits. I'd toured a distillery once, and while the specifics were long lost to me, I think I knew most of the basics. Yet it wasn't just drinking alcohol that came to mind with distilling, but also the kind for cleaning wounds. Using that for cleaning the tools of barbers and maesters could revolutionize the chances of survival of labor accidents and battlefield injuries.

Speaking of labor, the good thing about being a lord was that it was much easier to get shit done, at least in Westeros. Here, you'd hire out smallfolk to accomplish a task and pay them for their efforts. No unions, unless you counted guilds, and whatever the work was, you'd have the smallfolk do the heavy lifting, and the engineering stuff was left to masons, architects, and whoever else had more training on the matter. The biggest and best project I could think of involving this labor would be building roads, specifically like the higher quality ones the Romans built. I didn't have their concrete but building the road wide and deep would certainly make them last longer and be sturdier than any old dirt wagon paths. After all, roads are good for trade, messengers, and moving armies, so that when war comes it'll be better for everyone if my roads leading to Dorne are better than simple dirt paths. In the villages and towns I'd look to make inlaid bricks and cobblestones, but whatever I do, it's going to be laborious, expensive, and time consuming. At least by then I'd have the food available to feed these workers enough to get the job done and ensure their health.

Come to think of it, an interesting thing about Westeros is the amount of Earth New World crops present, stuff that would not have been around if Westeros was a western Europe/Britain proxy and the Age of Discovery had not yet occurred. Crops like pumpkins, beans, and corn were grown together in comparably efficient and productive fields by many Native American cultures, the 'Three Sisters' if you will. From what I've found, here that's not the case, so encouraging these to be grown in similar methods by smallfolk would go a long way to increase available food, and in time, perhaps create enough of a surplus to sell at market. I've no idea if potatoes, tomatoes or other crops are also present, but I'm keeping an eye out for them, along with whatever leafy vegetables might find their way here. A varied diet is a better diet than one consisting of bread, corn, and mutton, or whatever the smallfolk manage to grow for themselves and buy at market.

Just as well, growing crops in different formations also led me to the idea of aquaculture, like that of southeast Asia and other countries with similar resources. Few of the lakes and streams on Wytch lands are available year-round, but those that are represent a potential source of food diversity these lands would otherwise never know of. If I could build some sort of dam system before diverting streams to fill an infertile valley, I could create either a reservoir, which I'm not sure Westerosi have ever done, or create the foundations for a deep marsh for growing food. It'd be extremely labor intensive, though, and foolish thing to do without triple the funds expected to complete the project on time. A cheaper solution would be simply diverting more water into existing marshes or lakes, especially if rice exists in this world and I could snag some from traders returning from Yi-Ti. Are cranberries a thing in Westeros? What about crayfish farms, or similar ponds for rearing fish commercially? I'd have to investigate that at a later date.

It didn't hurt to plan all of this, since I'm hoping I can alleviate more and more of the burdens of ruling from my father as time goes on. I'd prefer not to lose him soon, but there's not telling what the future holds for our family. With luck, it'll be one of measured and profitable progress, all of which could go down the drain if Morden were to die from some unseen ailment or accident. I'd also rather not gain power through kinslaying, despite all of my practice through playing Crusader Kings II and III. I'm also seven years old, nobody would take any of my ideas seriously until I'm closer to my majority. Even if my father doesn't die, my best course of action thus far would be to start small, earn his trust, showcase things as a proof of greater concepts. These small projects would have to be paid with whatever sort of allowance I'm gifted, as many young heirs are, but surely my father will see me as a wise investment as well. Any heir that brings greater prestige and wealth to their family through wisdom and good deeds is a greater boon than most lords might realize, my father included.

At the end of my scribblings, in which I had slowed to nearly a crawl as things began to grow fuzzier and less distinct from my Earthly past, I decided to put my first plan into action. I just have to survive childhood, something not guaranteed even for royalty in Westeros, and try to ensure that the changes I bring will not only benefit our family, but the future of our people and Westeros itself.

So, no pressure or anything.