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Nine questions · Eight links · Unofficial fan tribute
Which Maester's Link Would You Forge First?
A maester's chain is not a rank, it is a reading list you can wear. One link per subject mastered, and the order you forge them in is a confession about what you actually find interesting. Nine questions, and the metal you would reach for first.
Heating the forge…
How it works
Nine questions, four answers each, drawn from a larger bank so no two runs are the same paper. They are not knowledge questions — there is nothing to get right. They ask what you would read for six years without being made to, what kind of not-knowing bothers you, and which of four genuinely interesting problems you would abandon the other three for.
Everything happens in the page and stays there: no account, no request, no storage, no delay. The questions were delivered with the file, which is why it works offline and why there is no spinner.
The eight links
- Copper — history — the study of how the same mistake keeps being made by people who had not read about it.
- Iron — warcraft — supply, ground, morale and the unglamorous arithmetic of how battles are actually decided.
- Silver — healing — the one subject on the list where being wrong has a face.
- Gold — sums and accounts — money, and therefore what a household or a kingdom is really doing.
- Black iron — ravenry — messages, distance, and the fact that all power runs on information arriving in time.
- Bronze — astronomy — the sky, the seasons and the only clock everybody shares.
- Lead — poisons — the study nobody admits to enjoying and everybody wants nearby.
- Valyrian steel — the higher mysteries — the questions with no method, taken seriously anyway.
Why the first link is the honest one
By the time somebody has a full chain you cannot tell anything from it — a complete education is a complete education. The first link is different, because forging it means choosing to spend years on one subject before anybody has told you which subjects matter, and that choice is made out of appetite rather than strategy. A person who reaches for the copper is not the same person as one who reaches for the lead, and the difference is not intelligence. It is what kind of ignorance they find intolerable.
Keeping the result
The link you land on goes into the page address, so the copied URL opens on the same card for whoever receives it and asks nothing of them. A downloadable image of the card is drawn in the page for the places that would rather have a picture.
This is fan-made, and unofficial
This quiz is about the order of scholars in a fictional world. It is a free, unofficial fan quiz — an unofficial fan tribute, made for fun. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to George R. R. Martin, HBO, or any official Game of Thrones property.
Every question, link description and verdict was written for this page; nothing is taken from any book or television series. Iron Realms — the strategy game the rest of this site is about — is an original fantasy world with its own map, its own houses and its own art, and has no connection to Westeros. This corner is kept separate on purpose, and nothing in it should be read as suggesting otherwise.
Where the rest of them are
If you would rather swear a vow than study one, the sworn orders quiz is the one to take next. The Westeros — ASOIAF & Game of Thrones section lists every quiz and tool in this wing, and the fan tributes hub has the rest of the corner. If you would rather play something than answer questions, Iron Realms is free and runs in a browser tab.