[OOC: This is just a thread to establish my Karstarks. Only Northern players would really benefit from reading it as non northern players can just RP as having never met the Karstarks in person before.]

"The Night's Watch." he said sullenly, with dislike plain in his weathered voice.

"Why?" the young Lord asked quizzically. The Night's Watch was well regarded in the North by all, surely?

"They are tasked with watching the Wall, with keeping the Wildling raiding parties out, and they failed. They failed so often your father would campaign in the Gift regularly." he replied.

"So it was the Wildlings' fault, then." reasoned the Lord, "It was they who slew him, not the Watch. The Watch were on-"

"What do the Watch use the Gifts for, young Lord?" he spat, anger now in his voice, "Nothing! How many of their nineteen castles do they man? Three! What did most of the Black Brothers do before their time on the Wall? They were criminals! The Watch is a failed and forgotten institution, manned by the dregs of the south and the surplus children of the North."

"It's a noble service!" protested the young Lord, "There is honour in giving one's life to the Watch."

"HA! Honour, you say?!" he roared back in return, "Giving up your life, your line, and every earthly comfort, and for what?! Tell me young Lord, why do the Wildlings raid?"

This question caught him off-guard. They raided because they were a savage, uncivilised people who sought to take whatever they could get their hands on.

"Because," he stammered out, stalling for time, "Because, they..."

"Because they do not have enough beyond the Wall, Thoren." he said decisively, "Food barely grows there and the forest provides only so much. When they built the Wall, all those years ago, they built it to protect arable land: even the Gift can be farmed, and though the bounties are poor when compared to the South, they're sufficient for living. The Ironborn reave for the same reason: I know, I've been to those Isles, they're piss poor and the soil is worthless, all they have are some iron deposits and whatever their ships bring back."

"They defy our custom, though!" he protested, "They call themselves the free folk, they take pride in rejecting civilisation. Pity them you might, uncle, but they attack us nonetheless."

"Yes." Edwin chuckled, "They have the haughty notion that because they call their Lords "chieftain" they're more free than the people of the North are. Do the members of the Clan not fight for their chief as those sworn to Karhold do for us? Do not some of the wildlings have hereditary rulers, notably the Thenn?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"If you allowed those who wished it to pass the Wall, if you allowed any Clan to have part of the Gift for themselves, allowed them to keep their own chieftains, I wager some would come. There are tens of thousands of them beyond the wall, in hundreds of clans. Not all of them hate us, not all of them reject the concept of a nobility, and not all of them will put that principle above having land that will grow food, a Lord with an army who will come to their aid, and a climate that doesn't kill one infant for every two born."

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