“It’s not just about ‘bringing craftsmen to Winterfell,’” I began selling my main idea. “...but also — thanks to my abilities, cheap wood, and steam — about offering them cheap housing, constant access to hot water and sewage, unparalleled entertainment —
— with the King’s permission, three years of tax exemption, the possibility of receiving free housing in the Gift and New Gift in exchange for an obligation to pay taxes to the Night’s Watch... which can be reduced with a one-time payment —
— about my offer of one-time healing of minor illnesses in exchange for two years of paid work in the North’s mines, with a guarantee that if anything happens to them, their families will receive a large compensation —
— and much more about North and creation a full-fledged city from Winter Town.”
“It’s overly...” Ned tried to say something, but clearly wasn’t sure what exactly.
“Overly grand?” I asked.
“What you’re describing isn’t Winterfell. Isn’t the North,” Rodrik Cassel angrily declared.
“Perhaps,” I agreed. “But as Benjen said, ‘wood is everywhere.’ If this isn’t the way for the North, then I’ll offer it to someone else... Perhaps, for a joke, to House Frey, so that even worst from Frey's could with pity look at Lannister's misery and maester's savagery,” I half-joked and half-meant it.
“Earlier, you said this is just a big plan, the details of which can be used separately. How exactly?” Benjen said, rubbing his eyes wearily.
“Of course. I can repair the Kingsroad. Or even enlarge it for much more carts and wagons, also made by me.
“These are mechanisms for making ropes I talked about.” I placed on the table, connected by a wooden frame, two granite gears with a wooden handle. “I call it the Crusher. By turning the handle, it squeezes fresh plant stems, which can then be spun into ropes. In an hour, I can create about 100 of them.”
“I can also create...”
“Does anyone else have a headache?” asked Rodrik Cassel, which prompted laughter and smiles.
I sighed. “Here, I’ve prepared brief lists,” I said, picking up two sheets of paper from the desk and placing them on either side of the table.
List of goods:
Extraction from trees:
Substance for paper production.
Pine sap for glue. And other resins.
Water for firewood preparation.
Everything except fibers suitable for rope-making.
Glass:
Lenses for Myrish eyes.
A vision improvement set for bad-sighted nobles: a set of lenses with various properties for selection of the best ones for attachment to nobles face by wooden frame.
Luxury:
Carved paintings. Large stone and wooden statues of noble house animals.
Exquisite weapon handles; jewelry boxes; chests; sundials, and so on.
Furniture. Very sturdy doors.
Fast production:
Mechanism for rope-making.
Mechanisms for lifting and moving water through pipes and canals in any quantity.
Hollowed or hollowed and enclosed tree trunks for small fast ships and bridges.
Wolf traps made from hollowed logs.
Wind and Steam Powers and Their Use:
Windmills.
Steammills powered by firewood and charcoal.
Steammills powered by hot spring water. Which returns water to hot springs.
Stone furnaces for producing charcoal.
Fast tree felling mechanisms.
Woodworking mechanisms. To begin with, for very fast firewood splitting and production of warm insulating wood sawdust.
Need time:
Large ships. For river, sea, and for coast guard.
Carts, wagons, carriages. 11-meter-long U-shaped wooden boards for cart wheels.
Repairs of the Kingsroad and Winterfell.
Buildings. In the stone quarry I can create housing for hundreds of people and large warehouses.
Vertical greenhouses for growing rice in movable pots with water.
Granite rollers that squeeze iron into thinner and thinner sheets. Down to the thickness of a fingernail. With presses that allow cutting iron tools from such sheets. Like saws.
Lightweight, easily transportable, tall, reusable beacons for shorelines. In the future, capable of transmitting short messages.
Bows, crossbows, ballistae. Including fast-loading ones.
Mechanism for quickly producing of similar books or similar book sheets.
Seed sower: a mechanism that dispenses seeds in neat rows. For spreading designs among smallfolk and crafters.
Knowledge for sale:
None of the listed knowledge items should be given to the Maesters or anyone else within 2 months period after purchase.
25,000 gold: a way to rise people into sky by mechanism tied to a rope. Complex creation.
10,000 gold: recipe for making a strong and very useful in medicine alcoholic drink.
5,000 gold: glass production and related mechanisms.
2,500 gold: mirror production. Dangerous and likely requires a rare substance.
2,000 gold: information on medicine and protection against recurrence of the Great Spring Sickness.
1,000 gold: more efficient farming.
500 gold: perfumes made from flowers.
500 gold: a way to produce a very large quantity of steel from iron ore.
500 gold: cheaper alternative to pen and ink.
250 gold: very strong glue made from animal parts.
“Myrish eyes are only made in Myr. The others are called ‘far-eyes.’” Luwin absentmindedly corrected.
“This only made my headache worse,” Rodrik Cassel groaned, but this time no one laughed or smiled.
I frowned. “I told you so. I’m Max the Maker. I make things. Those on the list? Its only things which shouldn't attract too much attention before the king’s arrival.
If it's still not understandable I would say it outright.
Granite Quarry near Winterfell? It's not my type of work, but — as I'm right now — somewhere in half of year, I can make from it fortress bigger and better than Winterfell without single tool or helper. And in the future, sorry if this was too much blunt,” I said looking straight at Rodrik Cassel. “I can make Lannister joke into my motto.“
It didn't reach them for a couple of seconds, but then Jory laughed, Luwin coughed, and Rodrik looked away, perhaps finally understanding that I'm beyond his pay grade despite any level of authority given by Ned.
“At least now we know that you have the most expensive roof in history, lord Stark” tried to lighten mood Benjen at Ned's expense. Who rubbed the bridge of his nose and asked: “How much will it cost to transfer magic to Benjen like you did yesterday?”
“1,000 gold per day and quickening of consideration about the list I handed to Maester Luwin,” I replied.
“By annual price that’s almost half of what I pay to the Crown,” Ned said with consternation.
‘What? Doesn’t Tywin can afford to pay a million golds for just one sword?’
“For anyone, magic is a sword without a hilt. I sell a sword WITH a hilt. Right now - only this one. But in the future, there will be similar ones,” I started to explain the price, but then decided it wasn’t the best approach, so I changed direction. “Right now, I only need money for maidens, so if you buy information for 3,500 gold dragons, I’ll sell you 7 days of magic transfer for 3,500 gold. With a possibility of lowering the price after that.”
“Can you transfer other types of magic, like flight, or to more people?” Benjen asked.
“Yes. And no, I can only transfer one magic once a day.”
“Why?” Benjen seriously asked.
“Because that's how it is. So, Lord Stark, do you agree?”
After a brief negotiation, I agreed to sell secrets of farming and glass production for 5,000 gold coins total.
Unfortunately, I remembered rather little about the glassmaking process, just: ’white sand, soda ash made from ashed seaweed, two weeks of indirect heating in a huge kiln for degassing, then breaking the glass into small pieces and blowing it into the required shapes.’ But considering ridiculously small price, that was more than enough.
In total, including the 7 days of Sculptor magic transfer, I earned 8,500 gold dragons. According to Maester Luwin, this was enough to buy between 4 and 10 ships of various sizes and types. A fucking full-fledged trading fleet.
But, of course, the main profit from today was — expressed by such a transaction — Ned’s trust. Just after two short meetings.
After resolving the Sculptor and information sales, we returned to the discussion about my today's 5 hours workday.
“What from the list is the most useful?” Ned asked me directly. “Except for obsidian, which we don’t have, right, Maester?”
“At most a couple of kilograms, my lord” Luwin replied.
“Useful for making money right now, or for the development of the North and profits from taxes?” I asked.
“From taxes,” Stark replied.
I thought for a moment. “The most useful is saving my time. So, probably, the creation of a substance for making paper and pine sap for their distribution among the craftsmen. Although I think that for paper creation the substance just needs to be mixed with water and then compressed in a press, but that’s just a guess. As for the pine sap glue, I’m not sure.”
“The recipe for pine glue is known to us,” Benjen sighed, then looked at me and continued. “Max, we can accept the fact that the information you’ve offered doesn’t fall under your ‘I will create whatever House Stark desires from you,’ but not that we’ve come to you primarily for crossbows,” Benjen said.
“And ballistae,” Jory Cassel eagerly added.
‘Makes sense,’ I thought. ‘In Westeros, everything depends on military power. Which primarily depends on the size of the cavalry. The fastest, most mobile, and most resilient type of troops.
Right now, pikemen are the only real counter to it. Slow, highly reliant on good command, requiring good reconnaissance and terrain.
But if you replace even half of pikemen’s number with crossbowmen, the result will be similar to the emergence of the arquebus - the cavalry, especially as lightly armored as Westerosi ones, will immediately become obsolete. And the role of fortifications will increase over the roof. So, Benjen’s request for mass crossbows is essentially a request for military superiority.’
“I’m not against it, but Lord Stark asked what I consider most useful. And to be honest, spending several days designing a good crossbow, and then making about 100 crossbows in 5 hours, doesn’t seem like the best use of time right now.”
“Then perhaps it’s better to start with a demonstration of at least one of the described windmills and wood-processing machines? So we understand what you are talking about,” Ned asked me, but turned to his brother.
“How much time will this take?” Benjen asked me.
“I was already planning to work on them beyond the 5 hours a day I promised. In a small scale, perhaps on the First Keep roof.”
“Wait, you’ll be doing this beyond the 5 hours?”
“Of course. 10 hours of sex per a day isn’t healthy.”
“You’re not serious, right?” Benjen asked rather uncertainly.
I silently looked at him, trying hard to hold back a smile.
“He’s joking,” Luwin answered with a slight smile and shaking of his head.
After another round of questions and confirmation that Winterfell’s hot springs were quite clean and large — with a few ponds bigger than my room — though, alas, inside the Godswood — we finally settled on today’s plan.
Benjen will make bows and, with my tomorrow's corrections, will attempt to replicate crossbows.
Meanwhile, I will spend two hours with Luwin working on lenses. After that, I’ll spend three hours extracting cellulose for paper and bureaucracy - the most effective early-stage productivity kickstarters. And will create crushers.
Then, in my free time, I’ll create and sell shafts and bushings to the Starks at half the market price. Potentially earning even more than from creating luxury items, which, instead of a few fast simple actions, required numerous small tweaks and then either sellout to the Starks with discount, or waiting weeks for their shipments.
At the end of our conversation, I gave each guest part of models and various decorations and interesting toys. Clearly, for distribution among their relatives. Part of which I will soon fuck. Except for Luwin’s, of course. I think. With Power Manipulation you can never be sure of anything.
After they left, I had lunch, and half an hour later, Luwin returned with various types of glass and an hourglass, about which existence I had completely forgotten. After two hours of experiments, two guards brought me excellent clothing and led me to a massive tent, set up near the guesthouse.
There I spent another couple of hours experimenting with 'Wood: Extraction,' which turned out to be much more formidable than I had anticipated.
What happens if you quickly extract water and resin from a small piece of wood? The resins self-ignite and start to heavily smoke.
What happens if you sequentially extract all the 'constituent substances' from the wood and then set them on fire? The powder and residual gases explode, and resin scatters everywhere with burning drops.
I wasn’t very good at chemistry, and the superpower only gave me a vague idea of the substances being extracted, but some gases coming from the wood also were undoubtedly very dangerous in a high concentration.
After leaving Luwin with not just cellulose and resin, but NINE types of powders, crystals, and liquids, I returned to my room and began awaiting my main reward to visit me and grant the long-awaited superpower.
Due to the lack of access to biomanipulation powers, I had initially planned to buy a superpower that would allow me universal control over the fertility of flora and fauna. But then I discovered another diamond, one that skirted the boundaries of the biomanipulation restriction. And which I now wanted with a great passion.
Not that I didn’t also want sex... but the facts that I was still under constant stress, and that this kind of sex had become a kind of forced work for gathering a resource necessary for my survival, was, to put it mildly, impacted my sexuality.
In fanfics, such matters are much simpler. But in reality? The transmigration experience is so abnormal that even your lizard brain becomes glitchy and buggy.
‘But I suppose these thoughts about sex and superpowers will be actual only tomorrow,’ I decided, as I lazily sketched on paper still without long-anticipated knock on the door.
Only when my body and mind begin look forward for a good sleep far stronger than for any form sex, even with Daenerys Targaryen, did I hear a quiet knock on my door.
’Hurray, my reward,’ I thought drowsily, and with slowly returning enthusiasm, beginning to imagine who the Starks had sent to me at such a late hour.
‘I hope it’s not Osha,’ I thought. ’I wasn’t sure if STDs even existed in this world, but even if they didn’t, I really didn’t want to mix any mucus with a middle-aged wildling.
Hope it’s Jeyne Poole. I don’t remember anything about the appearance of the Kennelmaster’s daughter, but she’s unlikely to be more beautiful.
Sansa’s septa should be old and grumpy.
Rodrik Cassel’s daughter would limit me to boring vanilla.
And Bessa... Although she’s rather hot, she’d make me hurry my plans with Kyra.
Who else could it be?‘ I wondered as I walked to the door.
‘Though, considering that Lyanna and Rhaegar managed to secretly marry, a similarly secret annulment shouldn’t be a major issue either. So, it could be even Catelyn’s attempt to trade herself for her daughters, or to tie me to the Starks. Which, in its own way, is rather logical - at least the show’s Cat wasn’t much different and smarter than Cersei,’ I thought, as I reached for the door handle.
All these thoughts were immediately forgotten as I cracked open the door, heard a quiet: “You... aren’t... Harry... inside...” and, despite my brain blue-screening, reflexively grabbed collapsed onto me pale Hermione Granger.
Only after a some time of mental rebooting did I manage to say: "Fuck..."