Game of Thrones: The Road to Pirate King

In Westeros, winter is not a season, but a slow and precise divine punishment that descends upon the entire civilization.

Its arrival was not a sudden freeze, but a gradually tightening noose, starting from the first unmelted frost flower and ending with the last sigh swallowed by the wind and snow.

For most people, winter means life is reduced to its most primitive and ugly form.

They huddled in low thatched huts like cave creatures, sleeping alongside pigs, sheep, chickens, and dogs, relying on the body heat of the livestock and the meager warmth generated by fermenting manure to combat the bitter cold that could crack rocks.

Their activity range was confined to the short path from their bed to the cellar. Daily rations became a cruel ritual: a bowl of thin oatmeal porridge so runny you could see the bottom, or a piece of dark bread that needed to be softened with saliva for half a day before it could be bitten. Salt was no longer a seasoning, but a sacred substance for sustaining life; it sealed the few pieces of meat and fish they had, and was the only saltiness for the long months.

Under such desperate rationing, humanity is forced to make the darkest choices. The elderly, the former pillars of their families and treasure troves of wisdom, will silently, almost tacitly, "voluntarily" reduce their food rations, leaving the last grains of life for their grandchildren.

In the North, this tradition is given a poignant yet terrifying name—"The Mercy of the North" or "The Last Hunt." When the firewood is nearly gone and the food bins are empty, the elder of the family will don his most tattered fur, declare that he is going out to hunt for the family, and then resolutely walk into the boundless white expanse, never to return. They exchange self-exile and death for a few more hours of warmth burning by the fireplace and a few more days of rations.

In the deepest despair, whispers spread like a plague through the frozen villages—the legend of the "rat chef" resurfaces, no longer just a horror in a bedtime story, but a chilling, unspeakable shiver that arises when one glances at a neighbor or family member while starving.

Even a stone castle is only a slightly larger refuge in the face of winter.

The gates slammed shut, shutting the world out.

Good lords, like the Starks of Winterfell, understand their covenant with the land and the people. They will set up soup kitchens, but the soup will be thinner than what commoners eat in their homes, meant only to keep them alive, not to fill their stomachs.

The banquets inside the castle continued, but the dishes had changed from roasted whole pig to stewed salted meat and root vegetables, and the musicians' music could not dispel the anxiety permeating the air. The core activity of the nobles became meticulous calculations: how many days would the grain in the cellars last? How many more nights would the woodpile burn? Every distribution of food was a gamble, a gamble on how quickly spring would arrive.

Winter is also the season when the castle’s population increases, not out of joy, but out of cold pragmatism—in the long, dark nights of idleness, procreation becomes a necessary “task” to continue the family and the workforce, hoping that new labor will arrive when the ice and snow melt to fill the void of life that the cold winter will inevitably take away.

If Westeros is experiencing winter, then the Wall is facing winter itself.

This massive ice wall will become the true frontier of hell. The passageway is completely sealed off by several meters of blue ice, and the towers resemble frozen tombstones.

The Night's Watch brothers huddled in the cold castle, chewing on black bread and salted meat as hard as stone as they had been centuries before. Their only drink was watered-down sour beer. Standing guard had become a punishment worse than death; the sentries had to watch over a desolate, blizzard-shrouded ghost forest in the freezing cold that could freeze off their fingers.

Despair and cold were more destructive to the will than the White Walkers. Every winter, brothers in black would choose to shed their black robes and flee to the vast snowfields of the south, even though they knew it was a dead end. They were not betraying their oaths, but the unbearable, endless cold and loneliness.

Roads became legends beneath the ice and snow, the Narrow Sea a roaring graveyard, and the pulse of trade ceased entirely. Golden dragons and silver deer lost their meaning; a small bag of salt or a bundle of firewood was worth far more than a bag of gold coins. Society regressed to a primitive state of barter.

In response to the disaster, a frenzied, nature-defying plundering was waged throughout the summer and autumn. Granaries were built to their maximum capacity, overflowing with grains, beans, and barrels of salted fish. Taxes were collected almost entirely in kind. Every cellar was stuffed with pumpkins, onions, dried mushrooms, and any food that could be stored.

Housewives toil like warriors, pickling mountains of cabbage and brewing mead and beer to provide brief numbness and a meager warmth. The final moments of autumn are a race against time; people rush into the fields to harvest all the unripe crops, even the smallest and most unripe ones. Forests are felled on a massive scale, not for expansion, but simply for survival; massive stacks of firewood provide a more reassuring barrier than city walls.

The most heartbreaking time is slaughter season, when livestock—cattle, sheep, and pigs that grazed leisurely on the grasslands in the summer—are slaughtered in droves because they cannot survive the winter without fodder. The air is thick with the stench of blood and smoke as their meat is transformed by salt and smoke into bacon, ham, and hard, woody salted meat, becoming the protein building blocks that sustain them through the long, harsh winter.

Each long winter is a brutal harvest of Westeros's population and the foundations of its civilization, with countless lives lost to hunger, cold, and the ensuing plagues (such as the horrific "Winter Flu"). This is the cruel truth behind the cyclical fluctuations in the population of this land.

In the Iron Islands, this battle for survival carries a unique, harsh flavor of sea salt. The Greyjoy family's dominance will face its most direct test this winter.

The people of Tie have been skilled at using salt since ancient times.

Throughout the autumn, the workshops in Salt Harbour worked day and night, shrouded in smoke. The caught fish were not sold, but gutted and piled high in salt heaps to make salted fish that could last a whole year. Seal, walrus, and even shark meat were processed in the same way. Seaweed was harvested, dried, and used as a food supplement and fuel.

The "Ancient Road" became unsustainable in winter, but the role of the Ice and Fire Merchant Guild became paramount. Under Euron's planning and with the strong support of King Coron, the Iron Islands' longship fleet transformed into a trading fleet throughout the summer and autumn, frantically trading iron ore, plundered goods (during the last few raids when the weather was still favorable), and their unique sea salt with the Free City of Essos and the Narrow Sea coast for the most crucial resources: grain, timber, furs, and medicine.

The cellars and warehouses of Pike City were filled with supplies from all over the world, perhaps even more abundant than some families in Highgarden. This was another form of "iron money."

King Coron knew all too well that if the commoners perished, who would row the boats? Who would forge the steel? Who would fight? He might not have been as sentimental as the Starks, but he was certainly pragmatic. He would order the island lords to ensure the survival of the fishermen, to allocate food supplies prudently, and to gather the Iron Islands' artisans indoors to hasten the production of weapons and the repair of ships, in preparation for possible actions in the spring and even the following summer.

Idle iron is dangerous; it must be kept occupied with work.

The priests of the Temple of Poseidon would be even busier, chanting ancient prayers in hoarse voices to soothe the fear of the drowning god and proclaim that sacrifice and patience were the ways to gain the favor of the Water Palace.

The stories of "The Mercy of the North" have a different version in the Iron Islands—perhaps about an old sailor who sails alone in a small boat into a winter storm to find the legendary warm fishing grounds for his people.

Winter was equally harsh on the Iron Islands; the damp chill of the sea winds seeped into their bones, and storms severed the islands from each other. But relying on the bounty of the sea, their strict discipline, the wealth accumulated through trade, and their innate resilience to hardship, they struggled to survive this slow erosion of civilization, waiting for the moment when the ice would break and they could redefine the rules of the world once more with iron and fire.

Fortunately, Euron arrived before this harsh winter. The white gold sands he created a year earlier had accumulated vast amounts of gold and silver for the Iron Islands, now bringing hope for survival to countless people.