Chapter 1: The Unscented City

Chapter 1: The Unscented City

262 AC, Month of the Turning Leaf

The stench was the first thing that truly assaulted him, a physical blow that had him reeling the moment he stepped off the cog that had ferried him from the squalid little port of Duskendale. He had read about it, of course, in the leather-bound tomes of his former life, the dry, academic descriptions of medieval cities. But reading about a miasma of unwashed bodies, animal waste, rotting garbage, and the cloying perfume of the wealthy desperately trying to mask the underlying decay was a world away from the gut-wrenching reality of it. King's Landing, the heart of the Seven Kingdoms, was a city that stank to the high heavens, a festering sore on the arse of Westeros. And for him, a man who had once commanded boardrooms that smelled of nothing more offensive than expensive cologne and quiet ambition, it was both a trial and an opportunity.

His name, in this life, was Damon. A simple, unassuming name, much like the persona he had meticulously crafted. He was no longer the titan of industry, the predator in a bespoke suit who had crushed competitors with a whisper and a well-placed rumour. Here, he was just another face in the crowd, a man of middling years with eyes that saw far too much and a past that was a fabrication of convenience. He'd told the ship's captain he was a merchant from a minor branch of a lesser house in the Vale, seeking new markets. It was a story plausible enough to deflect idle curiosity, yet vague enough to avoid any real scrutiny. In truth, his origins were far more fantastical, a tale of death and rebirth that would have seen him branded a madman or a heretic.

He had died in his world, a world of gleaming skyscrapers and instantaneous communication, at the pinnacle of his power. A sudden, unexpected heart attack had claimed him in his sleep, a mundane end for a man who had lived a life of calculated ruthlessness. And then, he had awoken here. Not in some ethereal afterlife, but in the body of a twenty-year-old man, shivering and disoriented in a back alley of this very city. The memories of the body's former inhabitant were a faded tapestry, whispers of a short, brutal life as a common labourer, ended by a tavern brawl. His own memories, sharp and cold as ever, had quickly asserted dominance. And with them, an impossible, burgeoning power that hummed beneath his skin, a gift from a god he didn't believe in, or perhaps a devil he was all too familiar with. Jean Grey's X-gene. A cheat, a tool, and a secret he would guard more closely than any vault of gold.

For now, the power was a subtle thing, a faint whisper at the edge of his senses. He could sometimes feel the raw, unfiltered emotions of those around him, a chaotic storm of lust, greed, fear, and despair. It was overwhelming at first, a cacophony that threatened to drown his own thoughts. But Damon was a man of immense self-control. He had learned to build mental walls, to filter the noise into a low thrum that he could analyse and exploit. Telekinesis was a far more frustrating affair. He could, with intense concentration, make a loose cobblestone tremble, or a feather drift in an unnatural direction. It was a pittance, a parlour trick, but the potential was there, a sleeping giant he would patiently awaken.

His immediate concern, however, was not the mastery of his nascent abilities, but survival. And for a man like Damon, survival meant thriving. It meant power, and in this world, power flowed from two sources: swords and coin. He was no warrior, but he understood the intricate dance of commerce better than any knight understood the tourney field.

He had spent the first few weeks in a state of feverish observation, a wraith haunting the grimy streets of King's Landing. He learned the city's rhythms, the flow of its people, the reek of its commerce. He saw the opulence of the wealthy, their fine silks and glittering jewels a stark contrast to the squalor of the masses. And in that contrast, he saw his opening.

The people of King's Landing, rich and poor, were dirty. The concept of personal hygiene was rudimentary at best. The wealthy doused themselves in pungent oils and perfumes to mask their body odour, while the poor simply lived with the filth. Soap, what little of it existed, was a luxury item, a coarse, lye-heavy block that was more likely to strip the skin than cleanse it. It was a product with a vast, untapped market. And Damon, with his twenty-first-century knowledge of chemistry and marketing, was uniquely positioned to exploit it.

His first base of operations was a rented room in a rundown boarding house in the heart of Flea Bottom. The irony was not lost on him. The man who had once owned a penthouse overlooking a city of millions now resided in a hovel where the rats were as numerous as the residents. But it was cheap, and it was anonymous. He had a small stash of silver stags, pilfered from the pockets of his body's former companions after the fatal brawl – a ruthless act that had been second nature to him. It was a pittance, but it was seed money.

His first challenge was sourcing the raw materials. He needed fat and lye. The fat was easy enough to come by. He struck a deal with a grizzled butcher in the Street of Steel, a man whose hands were permanently stained with blood and whose eyes held the weary cynicism of his trade. For a few coppers a day, Damon was allowed to collect the rendered animal fat that the butcher would have otherwise thrown into the street for the dogs.

The lye was more difficult. He knew the traditional method of making it from wood ash and water, a slow and laborious process. He spent days in the cramped confines of his room, experimenting with different types of wood ash, carefully leaching the lye with rainwater he collected in a bucket. It was a far cry from the pristine laboratories he was accustomed to, but the basic principles of chemistry were the same in any world. He remembered enough from his high school classes, supplemented by the vast repository of knowledge he had once accessed with a few keystrokes, to produce a consistent, potent lye solution.

The soap-making itself was a process of trial and error. His first few batches were a disaster, either too caustic and crumbling to the touch, or a greasy, useless mess. But Damon was nothing if not persistent. He meticulously recorded his measurements, adjusted his ratios, and slowly, painstakingly, perfected his recipe. He learned to render the fat multiple times to purify it, to control the temperature of the reaction with a practiced eye.

His first successful batch of soap was a revelation. It was a pale, creamy white, with a smooth texture that was a world away from the gritty, abrasive soaps of the city. It lathered well and, most importantly, it cleaned without leaving the skin raw and irritated. But it lacked something crucial: a scent. The unscented soap was effective, but it wouldn't capture the imagination, or the purses, of the city's elite.

He began to experiment with fragrances. He bought cheap, fragrant herbs from the market stalls – lavender, rosemary, mint. He infused them in oil, a technique he had read about in a historical novel once, and then added the scented oil to his soap base. The results were astounding. He created soaps that smelled of a summer meadow, of a cool forest breeze, of the sharp, clean scent of citrus. He even managed to create a passable imitation of a rose-scented soap, a fragrance that he knew was highly prized by the ladies of the court.

With a small but growing stock of his superior soap, Damon was ready to enter the market. But he had no intention of setting up a humble stall in the crowded marketplace and haggling with fishwives over a few coppers. His strategy was far more insidious, and far more profitable.

His target was not the common folk, not yet. They had no coin to spare for luxuries. His target was the nexus of gossip, secrets, and disposable income: the brothels of King's Landing.

He chose his first mark carefully. It was a mid-tier establishment on the Street of Silk, a place known for its clean, if not exactly chaste, girls and its discreet clientele. He didn't approach the formidable madam who ran the place, a woman with a face like a bulldog and a reputation for being as sharp as a Valyrian steel dagger. Instead, he sought out one of the senior girls, a woman named Elara who had been in the trade for over a decade and whose weary eyes held a glimmer of intelligence.

He found her in a quiet corner of a nearby tavern, nursing a cup of watered-down wine. He approached her not as a potential client, but as a fellow purveyor of a certain kind of service.

"A woman of your… standing," he began, his voice low and conspiratorial, "must understand the importance of presentation."

Elara looked him up and down, her expression a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. "And what would a man like you know about my standing?"

Damon smiled, a cold, calculating expression that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I know that a clean girl is a profitable girl. I know that a girl who smells of roses instead of sweat and cheap wine can command a higher price."

He placed a small, cloth-wrapped package on the table between them. "A gift," he said. "For your personal use. No strings attached."

Inside the package were two small bars of his finest rose-scented soap. Elara unwrapped it, her eyes widening at the smooth, creamy texture and the delicate fragrance. She had never seen, or smelled, anything like it.

"What is this?" she asked, her voice a hushed whisper.

"The future of your trade," Damon replied. "A way to make your clients feel like they are bedding a lady of the court, not a common street walker. A way for you to earn more coin than you ever dreamed of."

He explained his proposal. He would provide her with a regular supply of his soap at a discounted price. She, in turn, would use it and encourage the other girls to do the same. And when their clients inevitably remarked on the pleasant change, she would know what to say.

It was a brilliant piece of marketing, a multi-level scheme wrapped in the guise of a simple transaction. The girls would become his unwitting sales force, their bodies the showroom for his product. The men who frequented the brothels, many of them wealthy merchants and minor lords, would be his true targets. They would experience the luxury of his soap firsthand, in a setting designed to heighten their senses and loosen their purse strings.

Elara was no fool. She saw the potential immediately. A few days later, a message reached Damon through a network of street urchins he had begun to cultivate. The madam of the brothel, a formidable woman named Shae, wished to speak with him.

The meeting took place in Shae's private chambers, a surprisingly opulent room filled with plush cushions and a lingering scent of incense. Shae was a woman who had clawed her way up from the gutter, and her eyes held the hardened glint of a survivor.

"The girls are pleased with your… product," she said, her voice a low rumble. "And so are their clients. They are asking where they can acquire it."

Damon's moment had arrived. He feigned reluctance, speaking of the difficulty in sourcing his materials, the secret nature of his recipe. He created an aura of exclusivity around his soap, making it seem like a rare and precious commodity. He was not just selling soap; he was selling a story, a lifestyle.

He proposed a deal. He would supply her brothel exclusively with his soap, a variety of scents to cater to different tastes. In return, the brothel would become his unofficial storefront. When a client inquired about the soap, they would be directed to a discreet location, a small, unassuming shop he had rented in a respectable, but not ostentatious, part of the city. He would sell his soap at a high price, a price that reflected its quality and the story he had so carefully crafted. And for every client she sent his way who made a purchase, Shae would receive a generous commission.

Shae, a shrewd businesswoman in her own right, saw the genius of the plan. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement that would enrich them both. The deal was struck.

And so, "The Gilded Lily," a small, elegant shop with a single, beautifully carved bar of soap displayed in the window, opened its doors. The name itself was a stroke of genius, a subtle nod to the idea of beautifying something that was already desirable.

The first few weeks were slow. But then, the whispers started. Men of wealth and influence, after a night on the Street of Silk, began to speak of a new, miraculous soap that left the skin feeling clean and smelling of a summer garden. Their wives, intrigued and perhaps a little jealous, began to inquire.

Damon's business began to grow, slowly at first, then with gathering momentum. He hired a small staff, a young, impressionable boy to run the shop and a handful of urchins to act as his eyes and ears on the street. He expanded his product line, introducing scented oils, bath salts, and even a rudimentary form of shampoo. He sourced finer ingredients, importing exotic fragrances from the Free Cities through a network of smugglers he had carefully cultivated.

But the soap was just the beginning. It was the foundation upon which he would build his true empire. The brothels were not just a distribution network for his products; they were a goldmine of information. Men, in their moments of weakness and indulgence, were prone to talk. They spoke of business deals, of political intrigues, of secrets they would never share in the cold light of day. And the girls, at Damon's subtle prompting, learned to listen.

This was where his nascent telepathy became a true weapon. He didn't need to read minds directly, a feat that was still beyond his grasp. He simply needed to be in proximity, to feel the emotional undercurrents of a conversation, to sense the lies and the half-truths. He would meet with Shae and his other contacts in the brothels, ostensibly to discuss business. But while they spoke of profits and logistics, he would be listening to the silent symphony of secrets that flowed through the walls.

He learned of a merchant who was planning to corner the market on Lysene silks, and he quietly invested his own growing fortune to preempt him. He learned of a minor lord who was deeply in debt to the Iron Bank, a piece of information that would undoubtedly be useful in the future. He learned of the whispers of discontent in the court of the Mad King, the growing fear of his paranoia and cruelty.

He was building a web, a network of spies and informants who didn't even know they were working for him. The girls in the brothels, the urchins in the streets, the smugglers in the port – they were all threads in his tapestry, and he was the weaver, hidden in the shadows, his identity a closely guarded secret.

To the world, he was Damon, the quiet, unassuming owner of a small, but successful, luxury goods shop. A man of no particular importance. But in the secret, scented world he was creating, he was becoming something far more powerful. He was becoming a broker of secrets, a purveyor of desires, a silent king in a city of fools and schemers.

He stood on the balcony of his new, more spacious apartment, overlooking the sprawling, stinking city. The sun was setting, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple, a beautiful lie that masked the ugliness below. He could feel the city now, not just smell it. He could feel its heartbeat, the thrum of its desires, the whispers of its secrets. It was a living, breathing entity, and he was learning to speak its language.

The power within him stirred, a faint, telekinetic tremor that caused the wine in his goblet to ripple. He smiled, a genuine, predatory smile this time. King's Landing was a game, a far more complex and brutal game than any he had played in his previous life. But he had the cheat codes. He had the knowledge of the future, the cunning of a master manipulator, and a power that would one day make him a god among men.

The game had just begun, and Damon was playing to win. And in the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. He had already died once. He had no intention of repeating the experience.