The massive squatter camps outside the walls of King's Landing were primarily filled with two types of people: peasants fleeing extortionate provincial taxes, and desperate dreamers hoping to find sudden fortune in the capital.
But it was violently clear that King's Landing was not an easy place to survive, otherwise Roman wouldn't have found thousands of skilled, capable people starving in the mud.
According to George R.R. Martin's lore, King's Landing canonically boasted a population of roughly five hundred thousand. Standing amid the endless, sprawling slums, Roman heavily doubted that figure.
Given the massive influx of refugees and the fact that the multi-year Long Summer had prevented winter from naturally culling the population, Roman estimated the true population was vastly higher than five hundred thousand.
Within a single week, Roman's recruiters successfully contracted over six thousand high-quality laborers. These were not the cutthroats, beggars, and thieves of Flea Bottom. These were healthy, experienced farmers, literate citizens, and skilled artisans who had simply fallen on hard times.
The fact that highly trained blacksmiths and carpenters were starving in the mud truly highlighted how suffocatingly overcrowded the capital had become.
Six thousand people represented the absolute maximum logistical limit Harrenhal could currently absorb. The newly trained grassroots bureaucrats in the outer towns were still finding their footing. Dumping a larger population on them all at once would crash the delicate new Whent infrastructure.
King Robert and Jon Arryn had attempted to politically force Roman to take thousands of crippled veterans and diseased beggars off the Crown's hands as well. Roman had politely but firmly refused. He was building an industrial powerhouse, not running a charity.
However, to keep the King placated, Roman swore that the first shipment of Harrenhal's new, master-crafted steel agricultural tools would be sent directly to the Red Keep at cost.
One afternoon, while walking the docks of the Blackwater Rush to oversee the final boarding process, Roman took a moment to practice his magic.
Channeling the Pale Flame into his eyes, he shifted his vision to observe the life-force auras of the crowd.
Seeing that the spiritual flames of his newly recruited laborers burned strong and remarkably stable, Roman couldn't help but smile. He had chosen good, resilient stock.
Suddenly, a blinding flash of light completely overwhelmed his magical vision.
Roman blinked, momentarily assuming he had strained his eyes. But as he focused his draconic sight, the light intensified. It wasn't just a strong life force; it was a roaring, massive bonfire of spiritual energy.
Roman quickly deactivated the Pale Flame vision, rubbing his eyes, and looked at the source of the anomaly with his normal sight.
It was a young girl, perhaps sixteen years old. She was incredibly thin and dressed in ragged linen, but her smooth blonde hair and startlingly bright blue eyes proved she was still relatively healthy.
She was currently engaged in a heated argument with one of the Harrenhal guards. Roman walked over immediately.
"You must let me see Lord Roman!" the girl's urgent, frantic voice carried over the din of the docks. "It is a matter of destiny! I must see him!"
"Absolutely not," the guard grunted, holding his spear to block her path. "Your background is unknown. If you want an audience with the Lord of Harrenhal, you will board the ship, work hard in the fields for a year, and if you perform exceptionally well, he might consider seeing you."
"But you don't understand!"
"Is there a problem here?" Roman asked, stepping up behind the guard.
The girl whipped her head around. The moment her bright blue eyes locked onto Roman, her gaze became piercingly intense.
Before the guards could react, she darted forward, pressing herself directly into Roman's personal space, and literally began sniffing his armor like a tracking hound.
Roman held up a hand to stop the alarmed guards from drawing their swords; he was genuinely curious to see what this strange girl was up to.
"Sniff... yes! The scent of clean ash and warm light!" she muttered to herself, before looking up with a massive grin. "You are Lord Roman, are you not?"
Roman couldn't help but laugh at her bizarre, puppy-like behavior. "I am. What seems to be the problem? What is this 'destiny' you mentioned?"
Hearing his confirmation, the girl's chaotic demeanor instantly vanished. She smoothed down her wrinkled linen dress, clasped her hands respectfully at her waist, bowed deeply, and spoke with absolute, unwavering devotion.
"Master."
Roman physically recoiled. "Ugh! Excuse me?!"
The title deeply startled him, and he quickly raised his voice for the surrounding crowd to hear. "Do not speak such nonsense, girl! When did I ever become your master? Do not try to drag me into your trouble!"
In Westeros, the buying and selling of slaves was a highly illegal, profoundly taboo crime. Jorah Mormont, the exiled Lord of Bear Island, had famously engaged in the slave trade to fund his extravagant wife's lifestyle, and Eddard Stark had nearly taken his head for it.
While it was true that many feudal lords treated their smallfolk no better than slaves, legally labeling oneself a slaver was a vastly different matter. Roman absolutely refused to let the capital brand him a slave trader.
"Who exactly are you, and what do you want from me?" Roman asked, his patience wearing thin as he noticed the dockworkers shooting him suspicious glances.
"My name is Fili," she explained earnestly. "I was guided to you by a profound dream. The dream explicitly told me that Lord Roman of Harrenhal was my true master, and that I must seek you out at the docks today. I even found food along the Kingsroad simply by following the visions!"
Fili took a step closer, her eyes pleading. "Now that I have found you, Lord Roman, you must take me with you. Do not underestimate me because of my size; I am incredibly capable!"
The surrounding Harrenhal guards breathed a collective sigh of relief. Thank the Seven, their lord was not a secret slaver.
The gossiping dockworkers, however, groaned in profound disappointment. They had been hoping for a scandalous noble secret to share over ale.
"Oh, by the Crone. It is just another hysterical beggar," a merchant scoffed, turning away.
"Move along, nothing to see here. Just a starving girl talking nonsense to get a free meal. Is madness the new trend in Flea Bottom?"
Roman kept his face perfectly stern, but internally, he was intensely intrigued.
He crossed his arms, pretending to be highly skeptical. "You claim you know me from a dream. But did this convenient dream happen to mention who I truly am? Are you not afraid I might actually be a cruel lord who will throw you in a dungeon?"
Fili shook her head vigorously, her large, watery blue eyes filled with absolute certainty. "No! I can feel the warmth of your soul. You have a deeply reassuring aura, like a protective fire!"
Roman found it incredibly difficult to maintain his stern facade in the face of Fili's utterly naive, unwavering faith.
"Very well, Fili. You may board my ship," Roman sighed, gesturing to the gangway. "But a word of advice for the future: do not put absolute faith in dreams so easily. You are not a Targaryen dragon-dreamer."
The moment Roman granted his permission, Fili let out a joyous shriek and leaped into the air.
Roman and his hardened guards stared in absolute, jaw-dropping shock as the malnourished, hundred-pound girl literally leaped three meters straight up into the air from a standing position.
By the Seven, this girl actually has some kind of supernatural power! Roman thought, stunned.
He subtly re-engaged his Pale Flame vision. Without a doubt, the spiritual fire burning within Fili was magnificent, blindingly bright, and entirely unnatural.
As the crew watched Fili casually hoist two massive cargo crates that were completely disproportionate to her body weight and sprint up the gangplank, everyone suddenly realized the strange girl might not have been lying about her "destiny" after all.
With his bizarre new recruit safely aboard, Roman bid a final, formal farewell to Ser Barristan Selmy, and ordered the fleet to immediately cast off for the Gods Eye.
"Thank the gods we are finally leaving," Roman muttered, watching the Red Keep shrink on the horizon. "Nothing good ever breeds within the shadow of that rusted iron chair."
The massive Whent fleet sailed smoothly up the Blackwater, eventually arriving at the vast shores of the Gods Eye.
During the voyage, the thousands of newly recruited commoners had grown deeply anxious. Despite Roman's kindness, the terrifying, continent-wide rumors regarding the Curse of Harrenhal were still deeply ingrained in their minds.
Though many cynical men claimed the curse was just a myth, the smallfolk believed it was better to be safe than sorry.
In this specific regard, Roman often quietly thanked George R.R. Martin. In the grim, gritty world of A Song of Ice and Fire, true magic and ancient gods undeniably existed, yet the general populace was remarkably unbothered by religious fanaticism.
Perhaps the brutal, dragon-riding Targaryen dynasty had simply beaten the fear of the Seven out of the realm centuries ago.
Whenever Roman thought of the Faith of the Seven and the High Sparrow, he was instantly reminded of the catastrophic, mind-numbingly foolish decisions Cersei Lannister would eventually make regarding the Faith Militant.
Alas. A fool who gains absolute power will eventually burn her own house down, Roman thought with a dismissive shake of his head. If I wish to survive this deadly game, I can only rely on the cold steel and the magic I control directly.
When the fleet finally docked at Harrentown, the new arrivals were treated to a staggering sight. They had expected to see a melted, cursed ruin shrouded in darkness. Instead, they saw Harrenhal reborn.
Baptized by Roman's purifying Pale Flame, the once-blackened, blood-soaked stones of the gargantuan fortress had turned a beautiful, radiant snow-white. Massive sections of the melted ruins had been expertly demolished, and the stone had been repurposed to build pristine, paved roads and bustling, modernized towns.
Compared to the eerie, haunted nightmare they had been promised, the Whent territory looked like a thriving, utopian metropolis.
Following a brief logistical council with Lady Shella and Master Jessy, Roman finalized the settlement plan. Two thousand of the most highly skilled artisans and craftsmen would be settled directly within the sprawling walls of Harrenhal to fuel the blast furnaces and armories. The remaining four thousand agricultural laborers would be provided with high-grade tools and dispatched to clear and cultivate the wild outer territories.
Due to centuries of dwindling population and stagnant agricultural technology, the highly fertile lands surrounding Harrenhal were wildly underdeveloped. The Whent borders could easily absorb hundreds of thousands of more refugees.
However, Roman knew he had to enforce strict legal boundaries from the beginning.
Standing before the massive crowd of new subjects, Roman loudly decreed that all newly reclaimed farmland remained the absolute, unalienable property of House Whent, and could never be bought or sold privately by the peasants.
Instead, the newly formed Harrenhal bureaucracy would meticulously calculate and allocate specific plots of land to each family based on hard data: family composition, physical cultivation limits, and baseline food consumption needs.
Furthermore, Roman and Lady Shella announced their new tax policy. The baseline agricultural tax would remain at four-tenths of the total harvest for the time being. However, all the other exhausting, extortionate feudal levies—such as mill usage fees, marriage taxes, and road tolls—were completely abolished.
Most importantly, farmers working the newly reclaimed outer territories would be taxed strictly based on their actual yield, and the Harrenhal treasury guaranteed heavy grain subsidies if a family faced starvation due to a poor harvest.
This revolutionary decree instantly sparked deafening, weeping cheers from the thousands of refugees. They fell to their knees, screaming praises to the benevolence of House Whent and the blessings of the Seven Gods.
Standing on the high balcony of Kingspyre Tower, right beside Roman, Fili looked down at the weeping, joyous crowd below. She could physically feel the overwhelming surge of hope and salvation radiating from the people's hearts.
She turned her head, secretly staring at Roman's sharp, stoic profile. Her small hands clenched into fists, her bright blue eyes trembling with sheer, fanatical excitement.
Lord Roman is exactly as the visions promised, Fili thought fiercely. My dream did not lie to me. He is the true Apostle of the Light!
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