What if Rickard Stark raised Ned to be like Theon the Hungry Wolf? Part 4

House Stark Whatifs:    • House Stark   House Targaryen Whatifs:    • House Targaryen   House Baratheon Whatifs:    • House Baratheon   -Our Website: www.theblackdread.com What if Rickard Stark raised Ned to be like Theon the Hungry Wolf? Part 4 Arya: "What is this place?" Vaelara: "This is Vaeloros, child. The last kingdom of the dragonlords. And you are the first soul from across the Sunset Sea to set foot on our shores in over four hundred years." What if the Starks ruled with fear like the Old Kings of Winter? Part 4. Let's explore this alternate timeline together, in the video. The years after the Second Conquest are quiet ones. The realm bends. The lords pay tribute. The Faith preaches obedience. The name Hightower is not spoken aloud in any court from the Wall to Dorne. Ned Stark sits in Winterfell and watches his grandchildren play in the courtyard, and for a time, it seems as though the old wolf might actually find peace in his final years. But Ned Stark has never been a man who rests. Even now, with his beard white and his hands shaking when he grips the arms of his chair, his mind is working. It is always working. And in the last months of his life, his mind turns to the one question that no Stark has ever answered. What lies west of Westeros? The maps end at the Sunset Sea. Every maester in the Citadel, every captain in the Manderly fleet, every sailor who has ever crewed a ship out of Lannisport or Oldtown, will tell you the same thing. The sea goes on forever. There is nothing out there but water and wind and death. But Ned does not believe that. He has read the old chronicles, the ones his men took from the Citadel during the sack of Oldtown, and in those ancient texts he has found references that trouble him. Valyrian records that speak of expeditions west. Ships that sailed beyond the horizon and never returned. And one account, written in High Valyrian so old that even the maesters struggled to translate it, that speaks of a dragonlord family that did not flee east to Dragonstone when they foresaw the Doom. A family that flew the other way. The entry is fragmentary. It names no house. It gives no destination. It simply says that the eldest of the forty families saw the fire coming before any other and chose a path that none would follow. They took their dragons, their scrolls, their blood, and they flew into the setting sun. The account ends with a single line that Ned has read a hundred times. "They did not fall. They simply vanished from the world we knew." Ned sits with this knowledge for weeks. He tells no one. He reads the passage again and again, running his fingers over the ancient Valyrian script, and he thinks about what it would mean if it were true. A dragonlord family, older and more powerful than the Targaryens, surviving somewhere beyond the edge of every map. A civilization built on Valyrian blood and Valyrian fire, growing in the dark while Westeros tore itself apart over a chair made of swords.