The "Disciples' Conclave" was Aldric's insurance policy. He intended to systematically explain the tenets of the Light and the strategies for the struggles ahead, vetting every potential talent personally. Though he had made common cause with the High Sparrow, he had no intention of becoming a mere "Seed-Sower"—a tool used by others to grant power without holding the reins.
Power abhors a vacuum. Aldric knew that if he didn't set strict rules for recruitment, the organization would bloat with opportunistic rot. If a Sunwalker strayed, using the Light to harm the innocent, Aldric would be forced to turn the Serpent's Striker against his own.
He had read enough history of his own world to know that when a leader wavers, the ambitious immediately plot to replace him. He who wears the crown must be the one who forged it, he thought.
Sparrow, moved by Aldric's apparent concern for "sacred energy," had readily agreed to the Conclave. The old monk didn't realize Aldric was building a political filter; he simply thought the youth was worried about wasting "Divine Grace."
The Sparrow had felt the cost of the Light first-hand. After his first healing, he felt as though half of his very essence had drained away into the golden shimmer. Aldric had called this "Mana"—a measure of one's pious reserves. To the Sparrow, the fact that Aldric could grant this power to others suggested the young Captain possessed a reservoir of spirit that was almost frightening to contemplate.
During a quiet breakfast, the Sparrow presented his list of candidates. Aldric scanned the names, his finger stopping at the third entry.
"Willy Tully?" Aldric asked. "As in House Tully of Riverrun?"
"Ser Willy is a pious and just knight," Sparrow explained. "His father is a cousin to Lord Hoster. He held the village of Greenstone until the Lannisters burned it. He is a man of experience."
"Cross him off," Aldric said, sliding the parchment back.
Sparrow blinked. "Why? A seasoned commander would be a pillar for our cause."
"No, Brother," Aldric replied, leaning back. "I am not looking for a military vanguard yet. I want men who are hungry for change—men whose hearts are already sickened by the way of the world. Carpenters, monks, farmers, even beggars. But not high-born lords. Not yet."
Aldric looked out the window at the scorched courtyard. "A Tully's loyalty will always be tied to the trout. If the Sun ever demands we stand against his kin, Willy would be torn apart. I will not trap a good man in such a dishonorable position. Furthermore, our Order is an infant. If we take in lions and trout now, they will swallow us whole. I have been a tool for the nobility once before in the North; I did not enjoy the taste."
"But our strength will grow slowly," Sparrow warned.
"Better a slow-growing oak than a weed that withers in the first frost," Aldric countered. "The nobles have systemized martial arts and fine steel. We can earn experience in blood and take their gear from their corpses. But you cannot loot a pure heart. We will build our base with the smallfolk first. Once we are an ocean, the lords can choose to swim with us or drown."
Sparrow nodded slowly, the gravity of Aldric's resolve settling in. He struck through a dozen names and replaced them with "Rivers," "Flowers," and commoners with no names at all.
With the Conclave set for a fortnight away, Aldric found himself with a rare window of time. He had a meeting pending with Harwin of the Brotherhood Without Banners at the Isle of Faces, but that was still days away. He turned his eyes back to the forge.
He had witnessed too many good men die for lack of a breastplate. If he was to elevate the "best of the best" to Sunwalkers, he had to ensure they didn't fall to a stray arrow or a lucky mace swing.
Sunwalkers were not invincible. Aldric had observed Jon and Kevin closely; their reserves of Light were shallower than his, and their physical strength, while enhanced, wasn't god-like. A handful of armored veterans could still overwhelm a Sunwalker through sheer attrition.
To improve their survival, Aldric needed a dedicated armory. He asked John to lead him to a nearby village—a nameless cluster of a dozen huts three miles from the monastery.
"The Bloody Mummers used the villagers as human shields to get the monks to open the gates," John said, gesturing to the empty, silent street. "The village smith, Corleone, was a master of his craft. He died with his family. I buried them myself."
Aldric stepped into the ransacked smithy. He began picking up the tools. The smooth, polished wood of the hammer handles told him everything he needed to know. Corleone had been a man who loved his work.
"I won't let his steel go cold," Aldric murmured.
With the help of his refugees—including two carpenters and a village smith's apprentice—Aldric replicated the advanced forge he had built in the Winter Town. Within days, the first heat of molten steel was glowing in the crucible.
Aldric decided to use this first experimental batch to solve a logistical problem: the "Recommendation Sigils."
He had decreed that any seeker of the Light must be sponsored by two Sunwalkers. But he didn't want his best warriors having to travel hundreds of leagues just to vouch for a recruit. He needed a physical token of trust—something impossible to forge.
He chose to create Wootz-work sigils: small, thumb-sized plates of pattern-welded steel.
The process was intricate. He folded the high-carbon steel repeatedly, then used an "acid-wash" to reveal the shimmering, watery patterns in the metal. He extracted the necessary oxalic acid from wood sorrel and dock leaves gathered by the river, simmering them down into a potent brew.
Once the steel plates were hammered thin, he used a die to stamp the Seven-Pointed Sun and the name of the sponsoring Sunwalker into the metal.
The result was a beautiful, rippling piece of steel that caught the light like moving water. Each Sunwalker was given five. To earn an audience with Aldric, a candidate had to produce two sigils from two different Sunwalkers.
When he returned to the monastery to distribute the tokens, the Sunwalkers gathered in awe.
Ser Roger Hughes, the former hedge knight, took his sigil and held it up to the sun. He turned it over and over, his face pale with shock.
"Lord Captain," Roger whispered, his voice trembling. "You made these sigils out of Valyrian Steel? Is this not... a bit excessive?"
Aldric paused, looking at the shimmering, acid-etched pattern. He realized then that to the people of this world, pattern-welded steel was not just a technique—it was a lost legend.
"If the soul is precious," Aldric said, playing into the misunderstanding, "should the key to its awakening not be equally rare?"
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