NOVEL NEXT Chapter 26: Duels, Art, and Ecchi
Late 276 Spring
"Northman!" a man shouted and I turned to look at him as he stood across a Sunspear road from me.
The man was of small folk origin and thin as a whip with a magnificent mustache turned up away from the corners of his mouth. His face perfectly mirrored the wrath in his tone as he pawed the hilt of an arming sword.
"Today you will pay for your transgressions against me." he declared and pulled his sword from its scabbard.
I pulled my broadsword from its sheath, a simple sword with a ring on the crossguard for greater protection of my hand considering my fondness of the parry. Essential in a sword not paired with a shield in my opinion though I considered carrying a buckler with me due to the frequency of these encounters during my two week stay here in Dorne.
"What transgressions have I made against you?" I asked him, not to make an argument against any accusations, but simply for the possible satisfaction of the reminder.
"You laid with my mother, my wife, and my daughters." He growled in a low menace before suddenly screaming, "In my own bed!"
The corners of my mouth curved upward in a similar shape as his magnificent mustache, but difficult to tell due to the magnificence of my own.
"Good times." I nodded to him, causing the man to scream and come at me.
I smacked aside his thrusting advance with the flat of my sword and delivered a left cross with my off hand that took the man off his feet. He fell heavily on the ground and I examined the wreckage of his face. He'd almost be prettier had a mace struck him.
"This man's plotline has concluded." I announced and returned to my business.
That made seven such impromptu duels I'd participated in while traveling between Planky Town and Sunspear to examine the markets available to me here in Dorne. I wanted to maximize the profitability of this route. My lumber turned a nice profit, I was right that the Stormlords hold many grudges, and do not trade their lumber down to Dorne, the Kingswood is heavily regulated and not open to commercial exploitation, and the last major forest on the west coast is held by the houses of Crackclaw Point, territorial savages.
This means my only competition in the old growth lumber game is the small woods shared by the Westerlands and the Reach, which was good as I had little else to sell to these people. While there was a domestic market for ivory, I competed more heavily with trade out of Lorath here than I had in Old Town and Lannisport, and my pelts no matter how exotic were a curio, only of real value to traders out of Essos who I could supply in Lannisport just as easily.
Dorne offered many unique products in the Seven Kingdoms, but I zeroed in on the salt prices as the biggest strategic asset for me. Between how dear my lumber sold and how cheap the salt prices are, I can easily justify the extra eight days at sea for trips to Dorne.
Personally I'll be lucky to break even on traveling to Dorne. I'd mated with over two hundred women in the last two weeks and many of them were whores. Costly, but for the first time in over a decade I felt relaxed and satisfied. The fact that Dorne was going to have to add the Northman ethnicity to their census in the future just because of my personal contributions to the local gene pool meant that not even the semi regular attempts on my life can't even shake my good mood. Seven duels and four attempted poisonings. The latter of which are where my years of crawling around naked under a giant polar bear pelt have paid off.
That's right lads, I, Jorah the Great, have mastered the incredible and foreign magic of shapeshifting. After years of effort I have succeeded in transforming into the shape of a titanic snow bear… or at least I have managed to transform a piece of me into a hybrid state between man and bear. My nose specifically. I can shift my nose into a bastardized polar bear sniffer. If I keep going at this rate I might manage to complete the transformation before I die of old age.
It's uncomfortable, and mentally taxing, and I had to add steepling my hands against the bridge of my nose to hide it growing and gaining a wet end, but it's a small price to pay for one of the most powerful senses of smell in the animal kingdom. Better yet I'm pretty sure I've got a piece of my brain transforming too, because odors that cause a disgust reaction to me as a man don't really bother me too much with a sense of smell roughly a thousand times more powerful.
Things that are 'odorless' to humans are readily apparent to me whenever I feel the need to check my food and drink, though no one who has attempted to poison me has been able to afford anything 'odorless'. Despite no one attempting to off me with a king killer, each attempt was with nasty venom or toxin, quite painful in its lethal course, and I enjoyed very much making the men who attempted it drink their own concoctions. A poet's heart beats in my chest somewhere next to my noble and righteous heart. Perhaps they are the same heart as I mostly use it for poetic justice.
Some people might find themselves anxious coming to a place where eleven men try to kill them in just two weeks, but the warmth of the welcome I've gotten in Dorne vastly outstrips my experience in Bear Island. Think about it. Since age twelve I have fought thousands of my neighbors to the death, and had to do so because they are worthless degenerate antisocial troglodytes whose ancestors for thousands of years have been nothing but worthless degenerate antisocial troglodytes. Having people try to kill me for the things I have personally done to them is so damn refreshing its like cold sangria in the summertime.
In truth, neither the trade nor the pussy was why I would return to Dorne in the future. I would return for the art. The worst thing about the North, beyond even the miserable struggle against nature and poverty is the completely desolate artistic aspirations of the people. Our stagnant creativity reflects our completely lacking interest in philosophical evolution, growth, perspective, observation, and interpretation. We're culturally closer to husks than people.
The art scene in the North is as bleak as our past. Cold and muted. We have a history of wood carving, but no great tradition of it. At best we create mid quality historical tapestries that aggrandize our forebears' victories and perhaps warn against their follies. The Bolton's decorating their fortress with the skins of their enemies and the hand bones of their servants is perhaps the greatest artistry one can find in the North outside of White Harbor, which traces its roots in southern culture.
My experience with Riverlands' art is limited, but from what I've seen at Seaguard there is a great pessimism in the creative hearts of the region, perhaps due to never reforming a solid identity after the Targaryens burnt the Ironborn out of those lands, meaning the natives never overthrew the people that inflicted such suffering during their reign in the region.
Ironborn art. Let's not kid ourselves, unless I sell them some tentacle hentai to inspire those foul creatures, they will never create anything of artistic value other than the figureheads on their ships and chances are those are something stolen from someone with greater creative capacity in the first place.
Though I liked the art in the Westerlands it was nothing I wanted in my home. I admire their use of self-conscious artifice over realistic depiction, but the effect of its bizarre, sometimes acid color, its illogical compression of space, the elongated proportions and exaggerated anatomy of figures in convoluted, serpentine poses sometimes causes anxiety in the viewer, and while certainly stylish it does not move me.
The art of the Reach tends towards strict realism, which I find quite strange for a place that otherwise seemingly reminds me of Toussaint from the Witcher, an almost storybook fantasy style architecture and gracefully bountiful locale. Get your portrait done in the Reach, and people will know what you looked like back in the day.
I'd yet to experience art from the Crownlands, or Vale, though I expect the latter to be quite disappointing. The Valemen I've met in my travels were a boring lot.
The local art in Dorne got me where my heart lives. I had to sift through all the overpriced Essosi 'masterworks', and credit where it is due, fine art from Essos is both varied and technically wondrous, but I found it lacking in spirit, almost made with a consumer in mind rather than from the emotions and creativity of the artist. You can display art from Essos in your home and it will say nothing about you other than you have deep pockets.
Working my way past all that soulless 'art' made discovering the local Dornish art scene all the more rewarding. You could tell that the artists here paint landscapes as romantically as they paint naked women in their abstract style. Ultimately, my eyes caught on a trio of landscapes, perhaps due to my inner magpie and the artist's use of brushed gold, copper, and silver in a series of paintings that made up one scenic landscape at three different times of day. Gold at noon, copper at sunset, and silver at night. The use of blue, red, and purple skies also held my attention, as well as how the rock formations interacted with the lighting and shadows.
I purchased all three from this tented barge of a gallery, and as my pieces were secured for travel I heard a woman scoffing about someone buying 'Casella's gaudy and gods awful pieces'. I felt some need to defend the beautiful paintings, but between the heat and my well emptied nuts I chose to let it slide. Truly, Jorah Mormont is a patient and tolerant man who lets it all roll off his back.
Despite the incredibleness of my chill, the shrill call of 'Northman!' got that dog in me barking.
"Dornish-woman!" I shouted back, causing the people around me to startle.
The diaphragm is a muscle and thus subject to growth and strengthening from my supernatural hormone profile, thus when I shout people listen. Sometimes they soil themselves. In this case a woman that seemed the offspring of Abella Danger and Abella Anderson toppled over in a manner that made me concerned about my likability as a protagonist. In a scene straight out of an ecchi anime targeted at middle schoolers the woman fell over in a way that made her thin yellow silk dress emphasize, bring in to prominence, and glorify the booty.
I cleared my throat and shook it off while the woman regained her feet and her composure. In this time I assured myself that the content of my character was greater than being the human equivalent of overcooked white rice that beautiful women obsess over for 'reasons'. After evaluating myself logically, emotionally, and ethically I reaffirmed the faith in me that the sight of the booty shook. And how that booty shook. God daym!
The woman rose back up and pointed at me, "I came over here to insult your taste in art."
I stared the woman down for a time, and then with great steadfastness responded, "No."
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Jorah's got mad depth.
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