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Ch.96: Magical Mark and Gryffindor
🕑 Added 2025-03-05 11:19:11 +0000 UTCDreadfort Castle
POV of Domeric Bolton
A year later.
Domeric Bolton was now 14 years old.
Last year was a peaceful one.
Lord Stark informed him that he accepted Domeric's conditions about the betrothal after he talked with his wife. He and Sansa would betroth about three years later after the old contract expired.
Other than that, he got two more level 3 blue rewards from his tattoo before he decided to upgrade the Symbol of Deathly Hallows again. This time he had to sacrifice the replenished magic of the symbol three times to upgrade it to level 4.
As for the rewards he got, his first reward was a book called ‘Magical Marks’. He got knowledge about different kinds of magical marks that could be used on humans and other living beings. There were some evil marks, such as the Dark Mark used by Voldemort to enslave his followers, or some simple marks, such as communication marks.
He already created his runic mark with this knowledge. Of course, it wasn’t an evil mark like Voldemort. His magical mark’s main feature was its ability to understand the intent and protect him from betrayals. If his followers did or thought something harmful to his interest, the mark would warn him.
He couldn’t control the people or read their minds through from the mark, but the mark could paralyze the people if they tried to harm other marked people in direct or indirect ways. With that, he could improve his and his people's safety. Of course, it has other features like communication, etc. but they were just the icing on the cake.
The only problem was he had to engrave the runes himself on the papers to make mark talismans that could be used to apply the mark to someone. So, he only applied to his inner circle and some other key people. But in the future, he wanted to apply the mark to everyone in his lands and make the mark an identification.
As for his second reward, it was the Sword of Godric Gryffindor. Or it was another version of it. It had all the features of the original Sword of Godric Gryffindor, but its appearance was a little different. It didn’t have Godric Gryffindor’s name on it and its pommel was different.
He named it Gryffindor. A name representing bravery, chivalry, and courage.
With the sword, he also got knowledge about how to use its features. And now his new sword, Gryffindor, was lying in a ritual diagram and absorbing the liquid Valyrian steel. When the ritual was done it would be his second Valyrian steel sword with extra features.
Now Domeric was waiting for his tattoo to replenish its magic to get his first level 4 red reward from it. And while waiting he continued to develop his land.
"What is the status of the roads?" he asked while sitting at the head of the table with his small council. Not that there was anything 'small' about it as there were 24 people in it.
Head of the Glassmakers, Head of Education, Head of Infrastructure and Roads, Head of Steel Industry, Head of Mining Operations, Head of the Department of Law and Justice, General Bronn, General Karsi, Admiral Muron, Head of Trading Fleet, his regent and aunt Lady Barbrey, Maester Wolkan, Spymistress Lyra, CEO Celly being just some of the many members of the small councils sitting in front of him.
"The road going down south has connected all the major villages specified by you and has finally reached Castle Hornwood. The road going North has crossed the Last River where the construction of the bridge has finally ended. The name of the bridge has yet to be decided." The Head of Infrastructure and Roads said. "The road has split up from there and the road to Northwest leading to Last Heart from there has already started. The construction of the road going Northeast to Karhold has been halted because we've yet to gain permission from Lord Karstark."
"I see. Stop the construction of the road going to Karhold. Put all the resources and manpower in building the road to Last Hearth." He said in his Lordly voice "What about the Road to the East and West."
"The Road from Dreadfort to Bolton Port has already been completed. So now we're focusing on building the roads to the nearby silver and iron mines." The man replied. "The road to West has been halted due to it reaching White Knife. A stone bridge is currently under construction. The work would continue once the bridge has been finished."
He nodded and turned to face his regent and aunt Lady Barbrey Dustin. "Auntie. The newest survey for the population of the Bolton Lands has been completed I assume."
His aunt nodded back at him, took out a folder from her purse, and started reading the information in it. "The population of Bolton Lands has shown a steady increase in the last year. The number of people living in your lands has crossed the 900,000 mark and now sits at about 921,000 people."
"40,000 of the increased population is due to the immigrants from other lands coming for work while 6,300 are the newborn children."
He hummed as she finished the rest of her report and thought about the number of people that he could arm based on the population.
Depending on the level of prosperity in his lands, he could easily create a standing army of 2% of the total population. So, a population of 900,000 should be able to give him an army of 18,000 men.
Compared to him, the other lords would hardly be able to raise an army of 0.5% of their total population due to the low level of prosperity and lack of food which resulted in the North raising an army of 25,000 men from its population of 5 million people in the last two wars.
Still, right now he only had enough training facilities to train 9,000 men. They were divided into two legions controlled by General Bronn and General Karsi. With 1000 more men being trained as horse archers by a Dothraki blood rider who chose to embrace the life of a mercenary instead of trying to avenge his Khal when his Khal died.
The problem was that he could not make such a large standing army without scaring the crap out of the other lords in the North. Which was understandable.
Despite his promise of betrothal with Lady Sansa Stark, Eddard Stark still forbade him from increasing the size of his standing army once it reached 3000 men.
The fact that Lord Stark allowed him to raise an army of 3,000 men was a big surprise in itself. But he still had to hide most of his men most of the time.
So, creating another legion at this point would be more counterproductive than anything.
Still, there was more than one way to increase the size of his army.
