Chapter 23

While you had yet to find a new Goal worth striving towards, focusing your Mind on buying more Assets for your Guild made the time quite bearable, and when the Invitation from the Capital finally came after some two Weeks of waiting, you weren't disappointed. For your Father made clear from the beginning, that you and your Siblings will have to behave, if any of you will ever want to see the Capital again, or put into more simple Words, there's something of interest in King's Landing, and you can't even make a decent Guess, as to what that will turn out to be.

So it is with great wonder that you accompany your Family to the Crownlands, just what could be of interest to your Father, the great Lord of the Rock, that he suddenly actually cares about the Opinions of others? Mayhaps you could use exactly that, for your new main Objective, it doesn't sound all that bad after all, especially with how you would get to annoy your Father and improve your mental stability at the same time. It's not like you could help out in the Capital anyway, with the King ruling, well, the Crownlands, and your Family being somewhat opposed to the Crown.

But after you remember that your Father had to put up with who knows what from the Royal Faction and the King, taking Happiness from annoying your Father started to feel so very petty, and that in no time at all. Though even then you needed a moment to scrap the Thought of finding out your Father's current Plan, but you still managed to do so, for in the end, it would hardly matter with how much you helped your House already.

Yes, you truly can't make a good Guess as to what made your Father so rigid in his Messages, but you can still make out what didn't interest him, which sadly included your efforts in Lannisport. Hence, your own interest diminished after a few Days of traveling through the Snow, you find yourself once more regretting the extraction of the Rock's Gold, for it blinded your Father to the little things, or in other Words, all the new Opportunities distracted him from you.

Expanding the greatest City of the Westerlands and then restoring the Trade, several Years before the rest of the Realm could do so, and you don't even get a single Sentence of Praise out of your Father. It seems like you will have to elevate your Mother to Parent of the Year, despite how you felt like a Captive in the Rock, with how she was the only one that gave you some actual Praise for your Idea.

Well, perhaps your Knights were impressed with you, but then, you couldn't claim that you would care if that was indeed the Case, seeing as they aren't able to truly become close to you with the Norms of the current Age. Descendants of the great Houses can't bond all that much with simple Knights, even if they wouldn't mind it at all, for their Duty is commonly to fight and die, be it for the Smallfolk, the great Houses, or even in the Name of the Faith itself, while Nobles weren't thought their Skills to be killed off in Melee, while they help their Knights.

And while you focus on these Thoughts, you realise that you already had a great Objective right in front of you, but while setting up a standing Army was always included in your Plans to heal the World, you had no way to achieve its creation until now. For one does not simply create an entire Army without a lot of Groundwork, and Nobles like those you passed while leaving the Westerlands wouldn't be too happy about centralising more Forces around the Rock, which made you dread the amount of effort required to push it through to the end.

But now you had finally realised that there are even smaller steps that you could pursue, like the creation of a Knight Order, that could drain even the best of your Enemies of Talent, while elevating the Rank of Knight in the Eyes of the Nobility, and so forcing them to break down some of their Restrictions of Conduct. So that once the creation of a standing Army is brought up Nobles and Knights alike wouldn't complain too much about serving united, a small step for sure, but a step you can focus your Mind on nevertheless.

And from here, you can now see the following step as well, though you soon decide against allowing your Thoughts to wonder, for one good Goal was all you required, and long term planning on such a small Scale, would be of little worth. Same as your first Sight of the Capital, or perhaps that would be a bit unfair for the creation of fragile Plans, seeing as they at least have the Potential to impress someone.

While King's Landing is just the saddest Sight you ever saw in both of your Lives, for the Gods sake, some small half burned down Village makes for a three times better place to visit. You truly hope this isn't why your Father is away all the time, for this would be the most pungent Fruit of labour you could ever have dreamed of. No, you couldn't have dreamed of this Corpse of a City even if you were still able to sleep, you're sure of it.

The Walls are weak, the Houses are ramshackle, then on top of that, the People are sick and starving, while they move in the Shadows of the greatest Sept you ever saw, and a Castle that has no Right to stand with how much was picked away from it. A truly dismaying Sight, you know much of this has come with the Winter, but with how the Stone feels it's questionable if it could even be lifted out from this undead like State. Especially after you glance at the People of the City, going about their Lives in Misery, as if they never knew something else, you always thought the Realm was in a halfway decent State, but this Pit of a City could be burned down to the very Ground without anyone else in the Realm missing it, it seems.