The Great Raid of 285

Early 285 Summer

"You were supposed to be gone! It was supposed to be over!" sobbed a heavy chested blonde woman as I smashed her husband's skull to meaty chunks and boney pieces with my punches. 

His wailing family huddled together in their yurt, and I responded, "Nothing is over." 

It felt good to be back to my true purpose, saving the human race one destroyed wildling at a time. It seems like an oxymoron, killing people to save humanity, but most of these people would die anyway to provide fodder for a necromancer's army, so really I'm just bumping up their execution date and denying an evil and formidable foe new assets. That's a morally grey action paired with a morally good one, so positive karma my way. Plus I'm saving this guy's family afterward by relocating them, so that's even more good guy points for me. 

I really am the greatest hero in Westeros. 

I exited the yurt to allow some of my younger followers to process these thralls. All around me men are hard at work. Not just my men, or the men of my alliance, but all the men of the North willing and able. Rickard Stark pushed this policy before the war, to join me in depopulating the lands beyond the Wall, and his son Ned chose to continue it, as it allowed the men hardened by the campaign in the South to continue plying their violent new capabilities without turning to banditry as is common after wars. 

Ned came with us for the Great Raid of 285, and all other able lords chose to do likewise. Many viewed our actions here beyond the Wall as just retribution for millennia of grievances and others saw a fine opportunity to let loose against a largely impotent enemy. Righteous fury or sadistic glee, it didn't matter to me so long as we carried out my mission and rendered the White Walkers strength down lesser and lesser.

More personal than that is my deep need for lumber, specifically ironwood. The rare tree grew more in the lands beyond the Wall than south of it, in such a huge primeval forest the specimens for taking are well beyond the size of those the lands controlled by the Foresters. Back home, the bones of my floating fortress, The Great Seabeast, rise up out of the land cleared for its custom dry dock. Great beams of ironwood formed a rib cage of strength soon to be covered in thick planks of the same. A big bellied hull like tenfold shields patterned after the most powerful Ibbenese whaler ever built. 

The project to build my new monstrosity of a ship would sink most noble houses in Westeros, but the constant influx of new workers coming online from the ongoing baby boom is keeping me afloat. Nothing is more socially destructive than young men with nothing to do, so I've embraced the worst aspect of the industrial age and started thinking of my citizens as worker drones for me to exploit as much productivity out of as possible. Keep the young bloods busy and once a year take them out to violate the great outdoors and all the unwashed savages camping far away from civilization, it's a winning strategy so far. 

With my personal fun concluded I left my boys in charge of the party with the obvious instructions of keeping the ironclad discipline that built the temple of success people worship me in. I rode north to address the elephant in the room, or in this case the mammoths hiding behind the bronze clad Thenns. I may feel nothing much butchering willfully ignorant barbarians, but the Thenns are real people. They farm, raise cattle, work metal, create art and music, and have risen above the absolute anarchy of their southern neighbors. 

I came to the border of the Valley of the Thenns where their army, thousands strong, assembled to defend the pass into their homeland. I came with my best men - my top three crews and my beasts - and the other lords of the North came with theirs, an elite force thousands strong marched to the ends of human territory to establish the new paradigm and once and for all end of the Free Folk. 

Magnar Styr represented his people, the sole clean shaven man in the host. Like many others he sported frostbite wounds sustained in the cold snap that came at the end of 281, even this man worshiped as a god lost his ears to the bitter chill. We'd come to the Thenns at their lowest in generations, as usually the volcanic valley supports over twenty thousand people, but a winter that claimed their Magnar's ears wasn't something the elderly or the young could survive. 

The Thenns understood the concept of parley, and Styr led his vassals forward to treat with us under the white flag. I rode forth with the representatives of the high lords, Stark, Bolton, Karstark, Manderly, Umber, Glover, Dustin, Ryswell, Tallhart, Hornwood, and the Flints. 

"Styr, Magnar of Thenns, demands your army leave these lands." the translator on the Thenns' side spoke in common for his group that spoke the Old Tongue. 

"Lord Jorah, master of this raid and those before, demands the Thenns surrender to the authority of the Stark of Winterfell." I called back and then repeated myself in the Old Tongue. 

"The Stark came all this way, destroyed so much, to demand of me to kneel?" Styr spat and responded in the Old Tongue while his knuckles turned white around his weirwood spear. 

"We have come to destroy the Free Folk." I announced our intent, "The only reason we are talking, and not fighting, is because the Thenn have lords to talk too."

The translator spoke the Common Tongue translation of our words for the other Lords of the North. 

"The terms of the Stark?" Styr grunted in frustration.

"The Thenns become vassals of the Starks." I informed the man of our terms, "You will pay tribute, you will abide by Lord Stark's judgments, and you must lead your men to war if the Stark demands it. In return for this, the Thenns will come under the protection of House Stark, who will defend and shelter you in time of need."

"These terms are unacceptable." the Magnar sneered.

"These are your best warriors." I told him even toned while indicating to his bronze bearing horde, "Hidden not far you have thousands more ready to come to battle who are not so well equipped, nor strong. You are the greatest force in the lands beyond the Wall… when we aren't here. The men with us are veterans of war, men who fought in battle where more fighting men died on the field in a day than are alive in your entire tribe from the youngest babe to the oldest crone. We have driven our foes before us when their host stretched across the horizon." the armored bears among my men roared and my dogs barked then I continued, "The giants you have in reserve will not carry the day. They will fall to our arrows and spears. To fight us is to invite destruction."

"Let us settle this then, in the old way. I will fight the Stark for my people, and he will face me for his." Styr's proposal matched our expectation, and Ned came ready for this battle. 

Say what you will of Ned Stark as a statesman, the man in his prime is an expert swordsman, and armed with his ancestral greatsword Ice, few stood a chance against him. Styr, armed and armored in bronze, came in at a slight disadvantage. His equipment is heavier, and more prone to bending, but a bronze edge is sharp. 

When the fight started, Ned quickly put that Valyrian steel to use, and the razor edge capable of shearing metal made short work of Styrs spear shaft. With the reach advantage lost, the fight quickly became a one sided game of keep away as the Magnar desperately tried to get Ned to overextend. Eventually he surrendered to Ned's superior skill and equipment, and though bitter, he didn't try to pull the same move he did on Mance Rayder and try to demand the man beat him three times over. He'd danced long enough just out of reach of Ice to not want to risk it again. 

Styr took a knee in the snow and made his oath to Ned Stark. 

With politics handled, I was free to turn my attention to the real prize of this trip. I entered the Frostfangs, and entered the pitch black cave systems home to the most savage wildlings left, those who worshiped dark gods in the deep places of the world. My axe led me to those zealous followers of evil, and we did one sided battle. I purged them all, sparing not a single underground man, woman, nor child, for even when they tried to flee me into cracks and crevices too small for me to follow, I pulled them out with subdued animals. Ever seen what a wolverine does to a skinny cave-child? My axe drank deep the blood of the cave dwellers, and I hacked apart their idols. Once my work in the darkness finished, my fell axe felt more powerful than ever. 

I returned to the expedition in time to organize our supply routes back home. Lumber would flow down the icy Milkwater river to the Shadow Tower, pulled out before the rapids and falls of the Gorge. I'd ship it all over Westeros and grant each partner their cut of the profits, but I paid for the ironwood out of pocket. Though so painfully hard to work with, the structural properties are unmatched. More than just The Great Seabeast, my in progress castle, Weathertop, and its many guardhouses are using ironwood framing and roofing.

Such a great undertaking - depopulating and harvesting the lands beyond the Wall and shipping the goods south - took us half a year. In a more agriculturally productive kingdom people would starve from lack of hands to work the fields, but in the lean North this kind of work was a net positive on the food supply as we had more valuable trade goods to take to market in Westeros and Essos. Fortunately, only Ned needed to understand the concept of opportunity costs, and the rest could just go along with his decision. 

When I finally returned to Rockhall after my boys trip, I was presented with many of my new children, including my second son from Lythene and my first from Rhaella. Like his older brother, Lythene's baby was a mini bruiser, huge and dark haired. The boys of her line would be bigger than me, and just as strong, my physically most powerful offspring. The boy from Rhaella reeked of powerful magical potential, and had the inhuman coloring of the Dragon Lords, practically glowing silver-gold hair and violet eyes. More than any others, my children by Rhaella will require my attentive eye and my hand carefully guiding them to greatness. 

"This one is Jorah." I told the woman holding this magical child and she smiled at me despite the cruelty of her circumstance. 

She should weep for what I will do to this child. 

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