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Ch.84: Roads, Newspapers and Owls
🕑 Added 2025-03-01 06:00:47 +0000 UTCBolton Lands
POV of Eddard Stark
Eddard Stark and his men traveled on their horses for another day and saw the true extent of riches within the Bolton lands which was how well the smallfolk within his lands were living.
So far, Eddard Stark had yet to see a single child living in the cold and sleeping with an empty stomach.
No wonder the smallfolk from the other lands were pouring into the Bolton lands, hoping for a better future.
And it was on the third day within Bolton Lands, that they finally came across a sight that Eddard had wanted to see for some time.
Right in front of him, there were hundreds, if not thousands of men and women working together to build the road that he'd heard Lord Bolton had been pouring so much of his gold on.
And truly, it was a sight.
The road itself was large enough for four carriages to walk side by side with enough space left for another carriage to pass by without much problem.
These roads were different from any dirt road he had ever seen before. He had heard about roads like these built by the Valyrian Empire in the past with large rocks.
But now that the construction work was going in front of him, he was clearly able to see that the road was not made up of large rocks which was the case with the Valyrian roads but with a molten black material that became solid once it cooled down as people moved huge stone roller on top of the molten black material to make it plain.
He didn't even have to crane his neck to see the procession of people who were bringing raw material from Dreadfort in carts led by strong horses to build these roads.
And this was just one of the roads being built by Lord Bolton. From what the Policeman told him, three other roads were being built by the people working under Lord Bolton to the East, North, and South as well.
And after seeing the work being done by these hard-working smallfolk, he realized that he had been wrong. He could not even begin to fully comprehend Lord Bolton's wealth, for he was sure that building even a single such road would cause the Starks to lose all their profits from taxes. Let alone four of them.
From what the Policeman told him, after the construction of the four main roads, Lord Bolton planned to build a vast array of roads within his domain that would lead the way to all the major keeps and holdings within his domain and make travel from one place to another much faster.
So, as he lay in his room inside a newly built inn, once again sponsored by Lord Bolton, and thought about the future, he wondered what other surprises were held for him and his children when they eventually reached Dreadfort.
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Dragonstone
POV of Domeric Bolton
“How are the preparations going Lyra?” Domeric asked while looking at Lyra, his spy mistress, from his magical mirror.
“Everything going according to schedule, my lord. But are you sure about using owls for this? I am afraid that some people will try to steal them.”
“Don’t worry about it. I already took some precautions for that. Also, we won’t use owls at the beginning. Wait for three months after the first release, then we will use Owls, a luxury delivery option for newspapers until everyone gets used to seeing owls flying around. We will start from our city and port town. Bookstores will be the main distributor and sale point for newspapers. Six months later we will start selling newspapers at our other bookstores in the South and Essos.”
This was Domeric’s latest project, Newspapers. He knew that there were very few smallfolk that could read in his lands but at least castle folk, merchants, most of his soldiers and some smallfolk still could read. And that was enough for him to start a newspaper project.
His main purpose in this project wasn’t to start a business that could bring him more money. He wanted to control information flow, first in his lands and later in the South and Essos.
He already had bookstores in all important cities and towns at Westeros and Essos and these bookstores also were his spies’ headquarters. With the help of magical mirrors, he could send information from one bookstore to another instantly and publish this info in his next morning’s newspaper, in any way he wanted.
Of course, every city’s and town’s newspaper would be slightly different. They would look like they were printed in these settlement’s bookstores but in reality, they would be printed in his printing workshop at Dreadfort and sent to other bookstores via transport cabins.
These cabins were like vanishing cabins from his past life, but transport cabins could only transport non-living beings. He created them not long ago with the knowledge he got from the book called ‘Conqueror of Space’.
He also wanted to start his messenger owl business for a while but didn’t have a good opportunity. But with this newspaper project, he got the perfect one. He was sure that in a few years, all the nobility in Westeros and Essos would use owls instead of ravens. And these owls would carry Domeric’s newspapers to castles and keeps every morning.
And then he could totally control the information of these realms.
“I will arrange everything as you wish, my lord,” Lyra said.
“Good. Then I will continue my search. As always, contact me if anything important happens.”
“Yes, my lord. I will.”
“Bye then. Mirror off.” Domeric said and Lyra’s face disappeared from the mirror. He put his mirror back into his bottomless pouch and continued his search for dragon eggs.
He wanted to have a real dragon but for that, he had to find some dragon eggs first and then a way to hatch them. But he was sure he would get there eventually.
One day he would definitely ride a dragon in the sky.
