Chapter 22.3- The Seadragon's Roar

Westeros was the first choice. Not Driftmark, no. Maybe the Reach. They had a shit ton of small folk. But then again those smallfolk were needed to cater to vast acres of farmland. They had been farmers all their lives. The Stepstones were famously barren. I wasn’t going to bring farmers here only to tell them they could do anything but farm. Of course, I’d try out farming by myself to test if the famous knowledge was truth. Just because everyone knew something didn’t make it true— oftentimes it meant the exact opposite, but this was a bit of inherited wisdom that there wasn’t a lot of chance of making headway in proving wrong. The pirates would most definitely have tried in the past. And if they had succeeded in a massive scale, they probably would have turned from piracy with time. It was just how things worked.

Only insane people like the Ironborn would keep engaging in piracy and risking their lives, making them outlaws in every port and sea, all to make gold to buy food when the option of growing food and just selling it for gold existed. Only a religion could enforce and cement that level of foolishness. If the pirates found a way to grow food on these islands, they would have settled more truly. They would have built larger villages, turned those into towns, and maybe one day even into cities. They would have leveraged their position to sell food to both sides of the narrow sea. King’s Landing would be overjoyed at another source of food— one not in danger of drying up if whoever was King happened to piss off the Reach houses.

The Free Cities were practically insatiable with their need for food. The Disputed Lands were being shared by the Triarchy now but still failed to produce enough food to sate their appetites. So the fact that no such Pirate Kingdom built on agriculture had been born was probably a strong indicator of the viability of these lands for farming.

Beyond the Reach, every other Kingdom, bar the North had some sort of overpopulation. Not in egregious amounts, but there were those who struggled to feed themselves,, who their Lords would not or could not care for and support. Those people migrating to the Stepstones could be possible, but how would I get them here, and how would I do it without pissing the Lords off enough to go reporting me to Viserys? Too many other concerns. The only other choice was across the Narrow Sea. I could pull a Danaerys, except instead of buying slaves for an army, I’d buy them for a population. That would cost a lot of gold though.

Unlike the Stormborn, I didn’t particularly want to build a reputation for not paying my debts and being generally unreliable in business. That would be a terrible way to start off a civilization where trade would be the backbone.