"You've only just met me," Ned replies with a twinge of sarcastic humor. "Give it time, and perhaps you'll come to know just what I mean." He'd been known as the Quiet Wolf, in his previous life - the Starks were rumored to be as bleak and dreary as the Northern climate they inhabited. And, perhaps, there had been some truth to it. Living in Winterfell, even during an abnormally long summer, required a certain thickness of skin, a certain sobriety that those further south did not seem to possess. But Ned knows no other life; he is a Stark, a man of the North - and will be, until the day he dies. Again.

"That's kind of you to say; I will not actively attempt to increase my ranking, but you cannot say I did not give you fair warning if I do."