"Ding!" A notification sounded in Ethan's mind, waking him from a deep sleep.
He raised his head and looked around in surprise.
This was a somewhat old inn room. The rickety bed, the wooden table darkened by grime, and the curtains that hadn't been cleaned in ages all made the place look cheap.
There was a slight drizzle outside the window, which brought no coolness only made the weather more humid and oppressive.
Ethan felt sticky and uncomfortable all over. He gently lifted the quilt and found his entire body soaked with sweat.
For some reason, Ethan's brain suddenly twitched, and he bit his forearm hard. Only when the sharp pain shot through to his brain did he release his grip, glancing at the teeth marks on his arm with a wry smile.
This feels too real.
Although the organizers were well known in the industry, he had never doubted their ability.
But actually appearing in another world, in another body it still felt like a dream.
After sitting for a few minutes, Ethan tried to calm down.
At that moment, he noticed that there were indeed some new memories in his mind. Though there were no specific people or places, there was a coherent storyline with the same background.
The clearest among them were some intellectual details: the stories of minor nobles in the Vale that Ethan hadn't written in his previous life (let's call it his previous life before entering the game, since all the content of this book takes place in the world of Ice and Fire), heraldry, the full vigil process of Andal knights in the sept, and a few practical lessons on horseback riding and swordsmanship.
As the auxiliary Annie had mentioned, having these memories would greatly help in pretending to be a real mercenary knight.
Hedge knights, also called hedge knights, owned nothing but their gear and horses. They were named so because they often had to sleep beneath hedges in the wild.
Of course, a hedge knight selected as a player character wouldn't be that destitute otherwise Ethan wouldn't have chosen him.
Taking a deep breath, Ethan climbed out of bed and walked to the window.
The sky outside was gloomy, and the thick, gray glass reflected Ethan's beautiful blond hair. He opened the window quickly, and a majestic tower came into view. Amid the nearby tall castles, the towering black structure stood out like a sore thumb.
However, the tower's peak once pointing directly to the sky was now slanted to one side due to melting and deformation, resembling a massive, half melted black candle.
"Is that melted stone? A masterpiece of dragonflame? Is this Harrenhal?" The scene before him overlapped with the memories in Ethan's head. He licked his chapped lips, suddenly feeling parched.
Ethan turned and walked to the table, picked up a water bottle, and poured it into his mouth. At once, a faint spicy and malty aroma spread across his tongue.
Mudd! Just my luck!
Though he'd made the right choice to start in the Riverlands, the Riverlands were vast why did he have to start in Harrenhal?
Harrenhal was the largest fortress in Westeros, built by Harren the Black, the last king of the Iron Islands and the Riverlands. He had spent 40 years and exhausted the region's financial and material resources building it on the shores of the God's Eye.
The walls here were thicker than those at Storm's End, and its gate rivaled the size of Highgarden's main castle. Harren Blackheart had once called it an "unbreakable fortress."
But just as unbreakable alliances can crumble, the walls and towers of Harrenhal did not fall to ground sieges they were destroyed from the skies by the dragon Balerion the Black Dread, ridden by Aegon the Conqueror, who rained down fire.
The black hearted Harren was ultimately burned alive in the tallest tower, along with all his children. That half melted black candle Ethan saw had been named the "Kingspyre Tower" or "King Burning Tower" since.
From then on, Harrenhal was cursed. Not only did every family granted the castle lose their heirs, but anyone who ever occupied it in any form had met a miserable end.
"What bad luck," Ethan muttered, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. Then he asked mentally, "By the way, when do we start?"
"Hand of the King Jon Arryn has just died. King Robert Baratheon is preparing for the funeral. Afterward, he plans to travel to Winterfell to invite Eddard Stark to become the new Hand," Annie replied.
Ethan nodded in understanding.
In the original story of A Song of Ice and Fire, King Robert was already nearing Winterfell. But now, he was still in King's Landing and hadn't set out yet.
The overland distance from King's Landing to Winterfell is about 2,300 kilometers [Note 1]. Considering Robert's royal procession would travel the King's Road, it would likely take them about two months to arrive.
In other words, the current time was roughly three months before the start of the original story around the end of Aegon's calendar year 297.
That left more than a year before the War of the Five Kings would break out.
In other words, Westeros was still at peace for over a year.
This made Ethan doubtful again. When he had signed up, the organizers promised that all game mechanics were preset before the players time traveled. Once the game officially started, the organizers would no longer intervene not even to fix bugs.
So what kind of mechanism had the designers pre installed to tempt players into abandoning peaceful development and start competing with each other during peacetime?
After all, in a game like this, there was no room for early mistakes. If you died, you lost everything so players generally wouldn't risk open conflict early on.
"Alright, Annie, tell me the detailed mechanics of this game," Ethan asked the auxiliary Annie with suspicion.
"There are three main mechanics in this game," Annie began to explain directly.
"The first is the killing mechanism: For every player you kill, you gain 4 points and inherit all of the killed player's unused system resources (including points, attribute points, skill points, and system items). The system will also grant you extra rewards based on that player's development progress.
"If the player kills the target directly, they gain the full reward. If the player's subordinate or hired personnel kill the target, the player only receives 50% of the kill reward."
Note: Based on the original book's reference to "100 leagues (480 kilometers) of the Wall" and the official map, some experts estimate Westeros's mapped area at around nine million square kilometers.
Here are two data points to help you understand the size of the world of Ice and Fire:
:The land distance from Winterfell to King's Landing is about 2,300 kilometers (roughly 1,430 miles) — that's approximately the distance from New York City to Miami, Florida.
:The land distance from Winterfell to Castle Black is about 1,100 kilometers (roughly 680 miles) — which is similar to the distance from Chicago to New York City.