Main Quest One

The five great cities of Westeros were King's Landing, Oldtown, Lannisport, Gulltown, and White Harbor. They were five port cities that paid taxes directly to the Iron Throne, and also the most densely populated regions in Westeros.

Whenever a tournament was held in one of these cities, knights and mercenaries flocked in from every direction, including quite a few great nobles.

The Jousting Tournament, in particular, was the quintessential noble game. Anyone who could win a tournament in one of these cities—even Gulltown, the second smallest of them all (White Harbor, the smallest, lay in The North and held no jousting events)—had to be among the finest, and wealthiest, knights around.

To put it bluntly, did a player who had just started even deserve to enter a proper Jousting Tournament?

Leaving aside whether his strength met the standard, the Tournament Armor and Tournament Horse alone were beyond what a knight player could afford right now.

Tournament plate armor was usually over four millimeters thick, making it far more expensive than Battle Plate Armor, which was only a little over two millimeters thick. Tournament horses were top-class purebred warhorses, typically costing several times as much as ordinary warhorses.

And what did a Sellsword Knight player have? A suit of old chainmail and an ordinary Trained Horse.

Of course, anyone skilled and bold enough could still sign up, but Ian did not think he was reckless enough for that.

In his plans, at most he would take part in some low-grade Melee Tournaments held at the castles of minor nobles or in small towns.

"So what does changing mean?" Ian asked inwardly.

"We have designed at least three quest lines for every class available to players. After viewing all options, players may choose which quest line to complete. Once accepted, it cannot be changed."

Hearing that, Ian clicked Change and silently prayed that the next quest would be more reliable.

Main Quest One: Path of the Bandit

Quest Description: People often say that sellsword knights and bandit knights are two sides of the same coin. Even if you have never been a bandit yourself, you are still affected by the foul reputation of your peers. Since that is the case, perhaps casting aside meaningless honor would be a better choice?

Quest Objective: Raid the castle or manor of a landed knight and plunder wealth worth more than 100 Gold Dragons in total.

Quest Reward: 5 points, 3 Attribute Points, 3 Skill Points

Accept Change

"Raid the castle of a landed knight? And plunder wealth worth more than 100 Gold Dragons?" Ian let out a breath, his face completely collapsing.

All he felt was an aura of despair rushing straight at him.

Take the castle of the poorest knight as an example. To raid such a castle, Ian would at least have to face one knight and one squire.

Winning under those circumstances was not impossible, but in a knight's castle so poor that he could not even afford a single guard—assuming it could even be called a castle—the total loot was probably worth less than the knight's armor and horse.

To plunder 100 Gold Dragons, Ian did not dare imagine how many jobs he would need to pull.

What did 100 Gold Dragons mean?

In the original novel, after King Robert was poisoned to death at the Purple Wedding, Ser Adam Marbrand offered a reward of only that much for information leading to the capture of Sansa Stark, who was suspected of conspiring with the Imp to murder the king!

Even at the highest end of knightly equipment, a full suit of High-quality Plate Armor, a fine longsword and morningstar, one warhorse, and two Riding Horses only cost around 30 Gold Dragons in total.

Yet in all of Westeros, only wealthy knights in The Reach who owned manors and vast fields, or knights in The Westerlands whose families owned mines, could afford such equipment. Even they would live tightly after paying for a set like that.

Elsewhere, landed knights in Vale mostly wore plate-and-chain armor, those in The Stormlands mostly wore Coat of Plates, while knights in The Riverlands simply continued using chainmail as their primary equipment, just as they had centuries ago.

So this quest was actually designed for Faith of the Seven, wasn't it? All he needed to do was cut down six Kingsguard and strip off their armor, and the quest would be complete. The absurd thought suddenly crossed Ian's mind.

Forcing himself to calm down, Ian clicked Change with his last shred of hope.

Main Quest One: Path of Gold

Quest Description: The first time you raised your sword for money rather than justice or your liege lord, you came to understand the truth of this world: gold is the only true god, and all else is illusion.

Quest Objective: Earn 1,000 Gold Dragons.

Quest Reward: 5 points, 3 Attribute Points, 3 Skill Points

Accept Change

"..." This time, Ian felt completely numb.

A hundred Gold Dragons had already been an absurd figure, and now it had become one thousand.

Although there were no restrictions on how the 1,000 Gold Dragons had to be earned, it was still 1,000 Gold Dragons!

During the War of the Five Kings, Catelyn Tully secretly released Jaime, who had been captured by the allied army, and demanded that he return her two daughters after reaching King's Landing. This undoubtedly put the allied forces of The North and The Riverlands in a deeply disadvantageous position.

Under those circumstances, Lord Edmure Tully of the Riverlands, the liege lord of The Riverlands, issued a warrant for Jaime with a reward of 1,000 Gold Dragons. It was also the highest bounty ever seen in Ice and Fire.

At the time, Jaime was the commander of the Royal Army, captain of the Kingsguard, one of the strongest knights in Westeros, heir to House Lannister—the richest family in Westeros—and King Robert's father—scratch that. He was worth only 1,000 Gold Dragons.

Perhaps many people saw Robert offer 40,000 Gold Dragons to the champion knight of a grand tournament in King's Landing and assumed Gold Dragons were worthless.

But it should be remembered that the first volume of Ice and Fire was published in the last century. A common view was that this was a bug caused by George R. R. Martin not having thought things through in the early days of writing.

In fact, after Robert died, when Littlefinger approached Eddard Stark, he mentioned that 6,000 Gold Dragons was enough to buy off the entire City Watch, and Eddard considered that figure reasonable.

In other words, 1,000 Gold Dragons was enough to buy one-sixth of the City Watch.

Asking an early-game player to earn that money from nothing was basically nonsense.

Suddenly, a terrifying thought occurred to Ian. Had the designers created these quests because they never intended for players to complete them at all?

Note: The currency exchange rate in the world of Ice and Fire is: 1 Gold Dragon = 30 Silver Moons = 210 Silver Stags; 1 Silver Stag = 49 Copper Stars; 1 Copper Star = 8 Copper Pennies.

Additionally, based on certain data, the author estimated that a Gold Dragon was a medium gold coin weighing 7.56 grams.

Important: This data exists solely for the setting of this book (!!!) and serves only the later plot. It is not intended as research into the original work or history, so please do not scrutinize it too closely—especially do not use current gold prices to calculate purchasing power.