Dressed to Kill, Chapter 8 (ASOIAF FI)

In the end, a dozen of the people who came to Ladon’s forming fort left, taking two wagons with them - one to carry themselves, the other to transport supplies. Apples and grain, fish and dreadroot as well as what foods they managed to preserve or gather during the trip to his settlement. The remaining refugees chose to settle down under his aegis, instead, and were already falling into a routine. Partly labor, but just as much training as Ladon’s bodies joined in on the effort, helping with the tasks that required more strength and endurance rather than skill.

They helped and watched, learning in more detail than what the fragmented minds of those Lhazareen that gave up taught him. Shearing sheep, preparing wool, carpentry for tools with which to build a smokehouse - they were, understandably, leery of setting fires inside the trees that provided them shelter. There were even discussions of setting up a wind- or water-mill for the bitter grains, to help process it more efficiently than a quern hewn from two convenient rocks. 

Other aspects of his lair were progressing somewhat more slowly - Ladon had just barely managed to get a dugout canoe to float, eventually having to settle for the relatively soft trunk of a shimmering mangrove with the bark removed to make it less blindingly obvious from a distance. It was both light and hard enough to actually make it work - his own ‘apple’ trees and dogthorn were both too heavy and barely managed to stay on the surface without any load placed on them. Tanglewood just plain did not have the right shape for it.

But after several days of effort, he managed to get a functioning boat, mere minutes before a subsumed fish darted past a drinking wild horse and got him a scout and foothold tens of kilometers downstream. Because that was how his luck worked, apparently. At least he now had a pair of eyes into the Dothraki Sea proper, even if it was close to its edges. And his gaze would likely multiply in the near-future as he claimed the grass and wildlife in equal measure, although much of his focus did remain with his forming settlement.

While his long-term plan to construct a star-fort remained distant even if the viability of it had increased thanks to the sudden hike in skilled workers and people to actually make and use tools he could not. So for now, he contented himself by expanding the defenses by extending the ‘walls.’ A second layer of dogthorn trees forming a ring farther out, with the same sole-stabbing plants adding to the defenses. At the same time, the inner layer was made denser with the occasional gap opened up to permit easier movement for wagons as well as to serve as chokepoints.

The outer layer was left mostly empty for the time being, save for some fields of crops. Ladon could build quickly, for a given value of the term, but he could admit that building everything out of wood made things vulnerable to arson - either accidental or deliberate. There was certainly enough clay around to make bricks and build with them, and he had the tools, raw labor capacity, and the agricultural output to make a quarry for stone.

A bigger hurdle was metal - there were only two smiths in the full roster of refugees, and while they could work metal and teach the very basics to Ladon’s bodies, the fact of the matter was he only had a very limited capacity to work metal - mostly copper, tin, bronze, and iron. Steel was considered something of a luxury out here: the handful of Lhazareen towns produced small amounts of it and a good chunk of even that minimal output was taken as tribute by the Dothraki. The hordes likewise lacked any serious metalworking ability save for smaller portable smithies more suited for repairs than production, although Vaes Dothrak, their capital at least three weeks North of his current position, probably had smithies and forges fit the name, if manned by slaves. As for Meereen, Yunkai, and Astapor… they gave tribute in slaves, goods, and wealth, not weapons. They had enough sense to NOT provide the raiders with equipment that would make them more fearsome, and enough strength of their own that no Khal had pressed the issue.

In short, his most reliable and expedient method of gathering metal would be to overwhelm various clusters of Dothraki, eliminate them - by either combat or the simple expedient of devouring their minds - and take all their metal items, from swords to tools to even the bells in their hair and buttons on their clothes, to smelt them down for his own use. In theory, mining was also possible but it wasn’t like he could Google a mineral survey of the region - the Lhazareen did not settle this far North of their grasslands and the Dothraki had not yet found a way to use horses to mine so they found the entire concept to be something of a quaint joke.

There may be some esoteric plant or other he could transmute up to address the issue of prospecting and stabilizing mines, but if it existed he hadn’t figured it out yet nor really knew where to start. All his plants had come about from a vague want of something or other resolving itself through instinct and something quite a lot like water taking the path of least resistance.

A string of brief experiments did not yield anything of the sort - the closest he came was some sort of sponge-like dull yellow plant that compressed the soil beneath it to form a pit. Closer examination revealed it could both hold water and, when not held back, would deliberately impale anything that tried to drink from it with envenomed needles. A paralytic, so that its prey would stumble into the pond and drown, nurturing it. On the one hand, it deliberately kept the ‘pond’ it held crystal clear and perfectly drinkable as a few tests with both controlled sheep, horses, and bodies confirmed; so it would suffice as a form of storage. One that required constant attention but would be very difficult to actually steal from.

It was not at all something he wanted. Ladon’s best option to make a mineshaft or something along those lines would be tunneling down to the bedrock by focusing on the roots of a tanglewood and trying to form them into a deep tunnel, but even that would be just getting a head start instead of actual information. 

It was still something he could use, though. 

He had to take his time upgrading the dam, increasing the flow while narrowing the channels through. It took a fair bit of vitality and mental wrangling to get sponges lining the bottom to grow for a longer stretch and filtering out both microorganisms and contaminants - as well as sediment. Somehow. He’d just chalk it up to some evolutionary gimmick like how the closest thing he had to potatoes made individual bodies feel absolutely terrified when they went near. The paralytic made up for it - potent stuff, enough to seriously impair even one of his enhanced bodies. Interestingly, it didn’t actually seem to be able to kill, no matter how much of it was in the body, merely relaxing voluntary muscle movement into total limpness while the heart, lungs, and rest of the important bits remained unaffected.

Definitely going to see a lot of use. Especially if it kept well, which was to be determined. Blades, arrows, caltrops, something to slip into food or water on the sly if he ever bothered with subterfuge. Still didn’t fix the matter of armor, but– 

Several bodies simultaneously palmed their faces.

He had surpluses of leather, wool, and hardwood. Hardwood dense and solid enough to be useless as a boat. It wasn’t exactly full plate, but overlapping scales or lamellar would give his forces better protection and more mass with which to actually carry out cavalry charges. It would probably be rather warm, but then again his bodies could handle the heat better than an un-enhanced human so that was something of a moot point. He briefly considered adding barding to his horses as well before deferring that part of the plan for later - he didn’t have that much of an excess.

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His hands moved slowly, gently across the curves. This was not his first time, even if he could not boast the experience of some other men - but that was no excuse to be careless and waste time. His efforts bore fruit, slow but steady, and the target of his attentions shifted, taking on a hue more pleasing to the eye. The clay vessel he was forming blushed, the ruddy tint of dried, then crushed fruit-peels giving it a deep and bright red that drew the eye. 

It would remain to be seen if the color was retained through the firing process, but he had sought and was given permission for this. Artistic pursuits always drew his attention, despite the little time and effort he could dedicate to them before. Here, under the protection of Ladon, he only had to ask - another vindication of the godswife’s decision to bring them here. He understood why some left to return to their kin - it was unsettling to see so many bodies that looked like larger humans moving with such eerie unison - but that did not mean he would trade the safety and prosperity he had now for familiarity.

“Still working on that?” He paused his work, turning to glance out the gap that served as a ‘door’ to his hut, woven grasses and reeds serving as a curtain parting to reveal Adervara. The woman looked… a lot better than when he last saw her. She was beautiful before, but now? Her eyes and skin were clearer. Her hair almost seemed to gleam like the silver it resembled. There was a confidence to her movements that wasn’t there before, and while her clothes were much the same as everyone here wore - thin wool, to account for the heat - Adervara’s attire was almost lifted up in quality just because of who wore it. 

“I am,” He responded with a casual shrug, returning his attention to the pottery. “I do, in fact, enjoy this. Experiment with materials and colors, I mean, not…” He gestured in the general direction of the day’s prior, less successful attempts. Lumpy, misshapen, and significantly below the standard he intended to set. “Still, I imagine you are here for a reason?”

Adervara nodded, stepping inside. “I require your aid in convincing Ladon to open up trade. But for that to happen, we need to have goods worth trading - I wanted to ask you to support me when I broach the subject with him,” She explained without preamble, knowing him well enough by now.

He shrugged. “Trade with whom? The Dothraki would hunt such merchants down unless Ladon protects them as well as us, and while I have seen his might… I have doubts he would guard and protect all of them. In the distant future, perhaps - but I do not cling to hope that we shall become a center of trade,” he explained. “Maybe some can be sent to Kosrak or Meereen or to the Free Cities if we feel ambitious, but I am of the stance that it should be left to develop naturally.”

“Do you not wish to see others appreciate your work?” She asked, tone closer to inquisitive than surprised.

“I do not work with clay and pigment because I want to be appreciated. I do it because it’s fun.” He waited for a few moments to see how she responded, but she seemed dumbstruck by the idea. He didn’t see why, it was perfectly natural to do what you enjoyed if there was an abundance of food and safety. Granted, for most men the answer may have been women, but he never saw the appeal.

He was a hellion as a child. Never saw the need to inflict that on himself. 

“I shall keep that advice in mind,” Adervara finally replied, departing his hut. He returned to his efforts with a shrug - he’d get the color right sooner or later. The spirit would probably appreciate his first success as an offering, wouldn’t he?