Game of Thrones: The Impaler of the Blue Fork

While lions, direwolves, and crowned stags clashed over the Iron Throne, the Black Eagle of the Bluefork River quietly forged his iron and phalanx. 287 AC, the sultry summer air thick with the stench of corpses. Otto Hohenzollern, clad in half a suit of armor, took control of a desolate stretch of mudflats on the edge of the Riverlands. He paid no heed to chivalry. He carried only a black ledger, its contents meticulously calculated down to a mere spoonful of coarse salt. Loyalty was priced, and law was defined by blood. The white salt here was used to siphon off smuggling ships, and the blackened silver filled the stomachs of greedy lords. The eagle banners of Seafront and the seals of Riverrun were merely political shells to conceal the rising graystone walls. Refugees were driven into quicklime pits for disinfection, then donned rough, fish-scale armor. They were deprived of their voices, only allowed the long, drawn-out sound of bone whistles. Shield walls pounded the ground, a brutal, crushing assault. They were like a cold, hard, foul-smelling millstone, using barbs to tear the noble knights who had trespassed into their territory from their saddles and crush them into pieces in puddles. Winter was coming. The only bargaining chips for survival were food, cold iron, and the unyielding, inflexible rule.