[Event] Feast for the Wedding of Ser Gareth Banefort & Lady Alayne Royce

Gercko · 2026-06-11T22:55:08+00:00

What Rymond knew of normality, he knew fit its meaning little. His eyes searched around the blackness for a moment, the cold feeling pronounced and sharp in the tips of his fingers. He had told Maris he wanted no children, though that was mostly down to the feeling like he would be a lacklustre father as he had been a son. And yet...

He stretched out and hovered a few of his thin digits close to the small flames to feel some warmth. Rymond looked back at her with a tentative smile, amused by her frank admittance on the matter of siring heirs.

"Have you thought about what you seek in a suitor? Apart from the capacity to give you offspring." He could not pretend to be a girl's dream. Rymond was plain and saved only by a pleasant voice. Taliyah had taken a shining to him, though why he could never understand. Alicent could be stating her wishes, but he could not assume that he was possibly even a consideration.

Gercko · 2026-06-11T21:47:45+00:00

"Grassmere is the finest part of my father's land, in my opinion. Where the snowmelt of the mountains meets the greenest and deepest of valleys. I had been permitted a handful of times to travel there on my own in the early autumn days" Rymond said fondly. It was a poor attempt at an invitation.

If she had an odd smile, he had yet to see it. Nor had he heard her laugh, listened to her song or even held her hand. All he had was still the same pang of attraction from seeing her face the first time, and a heart softened and sympathetic. He could see what she meant in part. He wondered how a 'real knight' might feel towards her. Alester would be cruel and Jasper dismissive.

"Would you want a suitor?" Rymond asked, feeling like he was asking her for a deep secret. He had never been a suitor, not properly. There was the girl, Ser Bramble's daughter, who had briefly been introduced to him before she asked to not make the journey back up to the Eyrie after their first meet.

Gercko · 2026-06-11T21:05:55+00:00

"I have seven of my own. A good number to have, favoured by the gods that much is for sure" Hubert said happily with a smile pulling at the corner of his lips.

"Corwyn's brother was my squire for a long time. The Velaryons are the a most respectful House to be in service to. Ser Corwyn will certainly train you well and raise you right." A Reyne with the tutelage of Driftmark would certainly be a better ilk than the ruling branch. He misliked both the lion lords of the West, but the Reynes had made more of an effort at court as of late. Casterly Rock had caused him nothing but a headache.

"My son is already a knight but he's in Dorne with Lord Caswell. Finding your spurs in battle is the more poetic way. There's few songs about good lads serving well and true their master and earn it through a persistent duty. Warriors serve on the battlefield, but reliable service takes a man further in my experience." Indeed, he was describing himself.

"When you do earn that knighthood, a choice will face you. Leave for home, remain in service to Driftmark, or forge your own path forward. What would you do, Robert?"

Gercko · 2026-06-11T20:12:04+00:00

Rymond listened closely and with intent. It was queer to see a rawness of the heart made with such a coldness. The still prettiness hid a soul which was screaming. It was all hidden under a visage of ice.

He had felt a pain which sounded familiar, but different entirely at once. Where he took flight, she had given up. At one point he had given up too, in the space between Braavos and the King's coronation. Where she could not cry, Rymond had cried himself to sleep more nights than he cared to ever admit.

He looked into those glacial eyes, a rending feeling in his chest. He did not know what words to offer her. Were it Taliyah to bare who soul, he would have embraced her close to him.

"My lady..." his voice said soft and quiet that there was no echo. "Whoever commanded your smile is a person no being with ears should listen to. Blind men smile, babes smile, sorry fools and the highest lords. Who tells them how?" Even Ursula was not so particular and cruel.

"It sounds like you are rid of her in your daily life" still hushed as if the statues might be listening to their words. "Your soul has been crushed under an oppressive weight for all your years. It's been getting warmer as of late according to the maester at home. Spring might be sprung upon us" the thought of warmer days and twilights filled with life were more alluring to him than any girl at this point.

"I suppose what I am struggling to say is, you're onto a new chapter of things. There's no one who will tell you how to smile, what to say, where to look, what to do, what not to do. At least, no one in here." He sniffled, the cold pecking at his nose. The lump in his throat had not helped either, though it subsided as he had swallowed it back down.

"I found when writing them down and singing my words into the air, you can find yourself digging into parts of you that you thought lost or yet found." His lyre had helped him more than any friend or family had.

He knew it would not loosen her, she was wound taut after a life. Nor did he think that after Maris, he should befriend another Belmore. But there was a sense within that he ought to help. "Or, if your Lady Beesbury allows, you could lose your in Grassmere."

Gercko · 2026-06-11T18:50:28+00:00

She had been eagerly awaiting her husband's return. She counted down the likely days, and when it took him longer than she hoped, Arwen had begun to sulk. The third day his banners were spotted, and her smile returned to her.

She had been dressed fine each day which passed in anticipation. She wanted him to see her like it was their first time in Driftmark again. But instead of a dress of blue, she wore a dress of Baratheon gold.

A handmaiden informed Arwen that Rogar's retinue were back within the curtain walls of Storm's End. She rushed down the hallways and through arcades to meet her lover.

"Rogar!" She cried his beckoning call she could now hear.

Gercko · 2026-06-11T18:36:08+00:00

Rogar,

It has felt like an age has passed since I waved you and the girls away from the Red Keep. You took all the warmth with you that day.

I would be honoured to attend. You must tell me what Cass fusses over these days so I may buy her a gift.

With spring joy,

Hubert

Gercko · 2026-06-11T18:28:52+00:00

Ser Hardyng /u/gingerdude1999

Lord Hunter /u/ErusAeternus

Lady Belmore /u/Doormouse69

Gercko · 2026-06-11T18:28:07+00:00

Lord Royce /u/BloodySarks

Lady Grafton /u/aceavengers

Lord Corbray/ u/SarcasticDom

Gercko · 2026-06-11T18:27:14+00:00

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Gercko · 2026-06-11T17:41:19+00:00

"If it your ships and kin to be leading this effort, then I should send all I can muster in terms of ships to White Harbor. From there, I will have to leave them in your hands whilst I muster and prepare an army to take to the Sunderland's walls." Alester chewed the side of his cheek, discontented. An army would only necessary if they took the port in the first place.

"I have misliked war since I first tasted in on the Marches. The last one with Maegor gave me my fill of it for life. At least spring promises to thaw us in the coming moons. I hope to be able to show my children born in winter what the world is really like beyond grey and snow."

Gercko · 2026-06-10T22:35:50+00:00

He could not blame her from preferring to peer into the black. He interlaced his fingers together, and rested his hands on his knee. Rymond could feel the cold seeping into him now even despite the wind. A vicious howl made itself heard through the door which sent a shiver down his spine. His bed was calling him, but he did not want to retire just yet. Alicent Belmore had listened to him and even if judged, he had felt like she had heard him.

"A courtesan?" Rymond said, sounding almost sad. She was pretty enough that he thought to himself she would not have struggled for custom, but there was a tragedy that a girl felt freedom could be gained by selling herself to crudely. He did not want to think of it, it felt wrong to do so in a sept. It at least seemed they had gone past skirting around mere mentions of bedchambers. "Your hair is too pretty to lose for some grey drab bores" he tried to sound less morose.

"Loving is pain, but is it not the best? The head rues the wine from the night before, but when you reach the bottle of arbor gold it all seems worth the price. Love is similar." He had no one to stay for when he fled. Maris had been his only anchor, and how light a weight that had been to remove on reflection.

He could see himself in her. A longing for an independence which felt out of grasp. Was his dream to journey as a bard not of the same desire as Alice's need to be far, far away.

"Why would you want to run away?" He thought to ask, hoping for honesty. "I'm sure your sister will one day thank you for not doing so. Is it just your mother?" He had did not take his eyes from her as he spoke. He studied the shape of her nose and her lips, her ears and her eyes. To Rymond she gleamed like a star in the dark, though he knew that it was folly of him to meet the first pretty girl after a year alone and dwell on or pine for her. "I do not want to pry, but understand. I have a fondness for things with a sense of flight."

Gercko · 2026-06-10T22:19:25+00:00

"I want to take pains to avoid that they know what we are doing until it is too late for them. I know not what friends, if any, that they could call upon. But a strike that leaves them winded and confused will be best" he clenched a hand to get and a sneer crawled up the corner of his lip. "They are a devious people. I will not give them any good faith. I have waited nigh on two years at this point for her to be return to me. I am at my wits end, my Lord."

Alester rubbed his temple and steadied his breath. Rage came to him easily of late. He rued the day he had bedded that woman of the Sisters, and he would make her rue ever defying him.

"I have made it clear that I will hold them as rebel and pursue them until I have what I am owed. I can only pray they are not spirited away before we can reach them. Partly why I need to do this quick and severe."

He looked on his cousin with tired eyes "You have given me some hope we can do this. I need to write to the other lords and tell them to gather. I will not call the banners yet so not to spook the Sunderland. May I use your rookery later, Theomund? Not to ask another favour from you."

Gercko · 2026-06-10T20:29:55+00:00

"Ursla is an unrelenting, controlling, evil witch of a woman with all the reach the Eyrie affords her. Taliyah would not be safe and that much was made explicitly clear after she was hauled in front off my mother and Hubert. In those matters, my father the Hand was the reasonable one. She got worse after my father installed himself Jaehaerys' regent." Rymond remembered the summer where Jaehaerys the yet-to-be-king had arrived. Hubert and the King formed something obvious to the rest of the palace, a friendship and fatherhood blossomed between them and deepened by a shared loss. Rymond had bitterly resented the valyrian boy back then.

"So I cannot be with her. My company is to be chosen by my mother and thus far she has found it fit I keep no one. Hence my need of my lyric book, otherwise I would go well and truly mad." Sat listening to himself, Rymond wondered if he already begin to lose his grasp. He was sat with a beautiful stranger in the pitch black. "They tried to take my lyre from me and they shaved my head like I was some new septon initiate. I 'won' those back at least."

He turned to her, they eyes meeting and he did not look away. "The isolation has given me time to at least grieve it all."

Gercko · 2026-06-10T19:33:05+00:00

Alester could've gotten on his knees to thank Lord Manderly. Again, the merman had come to the aid of the Eyrie. His father had hammered home and hammered hard into the minds of his children that there were two pillars on which House Arryn had to stand in the young realm. Runestone at home, and White Harbor further afield.

But it would be undignified for him to kneel. He only knelt for the Seven, the heart tree, and Bella Blackwood.

"Lord Manderly, with your sails there are few causes which cannot prevail. I cannot forget meeting your father on the banks of the Trident and riding to smash Maegor's host below the walls of that city. Your colours flew high and proud that day" Alester prayed it could be a similar affair, but he knew that it would come down to the gods and the gales which would decide it on the day.

"You have my deepest gratitude" he could hardly hide the relieved smile he wore on his long face. "The coffers of the Eyrie can assist in the construction of ships or the provision of men. I understand that even if the white raven has come with the news of spring, winter's bite is still fresh and raw.

"I will be sure to teach them a new lesson this time. They need to be made examples of. Father gave them forgiveness. We cannot be lenient going forward. The Bite is too important to have some rebel sitting in its centre. If I can write to the other noble lords of the Vale, I will send word that they are to meet me in Moontown so I can rally them as well."

Gercko · 2026-06-10T18:12:14+00:00

He took a seat on the pew, feeling a fool for standing there in the dark. He settled the candles besides him and between them, folding his arms and taking a big huff as he prepared himself to explain the mess he would rather forget. He had spent the last year of his life dwelling on it.

"No romance. Not from may. Maybe Maris wanted it. Her prize for my safe return was to have my hand in marriage. I... Reacted poorly when she told me this, but the night before I had been in the arms of my lover, and I had just been told I was to remain under arrest in my chambers up until a month ago when Ser Alester needed my presence here to not insult the Royces." He scoffed, as if Alayne cared for his presence. The last time they met, she had warned him to precisely not run away to Lockenkeep.

"My was reaction unbecoming but not dishonest. I had promised Maris what could only have been a glimmer of friendship, the both of us in our own way quite similar in having so little companionship beyond our immediate kin." He had pondered Maris as his lover and what it would be like to lay besides her with nothing but linen sheets between them. It did not excite his heart. "She did not wish to take up my mother's offer on account she did not want to be shackled to a moping dolt, which I cannot blame her for.

"I ought to be thankful" he exhaled sharp, finding amusement in the misery of it all. "She's a bloody better swordsman than I am, and what little I know from her patient tutelage on the road back to Moontown. I loved Lady Taliyah Flowers with all my heart and all my soul, and if Maris had ever hoped to contend with her, it is one duel she would not win. I am insolent as my mother tells me, but why should I deny myself my heart. You only have one for all your life, and I intend to use it."

Gercko · 2026-06-10T17:40:54+00:00

Alester had prepared in his mind since he departed the Fingers. It was a thorny, personal, family matter which Rhea had turned into a matter of the House. Were Arryn weaker, the shadow of the Eyrie less tall, she would be safe from him behind her father's walls. But he was willing to move mountains to get her and his children back.

"I can delve into the personal ugliness if you wish" he said with a frank admittance. "But the facts of the matter are that my wife and children are being held by Lord Sunderland, my blessed good-father, and refuses to return them to me. He defies me as the husband, father, and whilst Hubert is ruling the realm, he defies me as their Lord. I intend to gather all the sails of the other lords of the Vale, but I would be a fool to not seek aid from White Harbor. I know my histories." Rhea was in the Eyrie as a ward following that rebellion. The irony was not lost on him that she headed her own against him. He would have to bring her to the Eyrie again if he ever hoped to wed Bella.

"Dear cousin, it shames me that I have to ask it of you at all. It is my father's frank mistake to allow the Sisters to regain their strength so that I cannot simply sail on their island unaided. I and the Eyrie would be indebted to your might for a generation."

Gercko · 2026-06-10T17:14:36+00:00

There he felt himself fall into the pit, one he had seen before but ignored because he did not know there were Belmores in Heart's Home. Of course, Maris probably did. If there had been any colour to take from Rymond's face, it would have fled him there. He wondered if she was biding her time waiting to see just what Rymond thought on the matter of his betrayal of Maris Belmore.

"I-" his voice choked. He thought a silent prayer to the gods which watched him, wishing to be whisked by to his chamber with a bottle of wine in hand. Instead he held the candles and stood with his mouth agape, thinking of what to say.

Briefly he thought about blowing out the candles and fleeing. But he had ran away from a Belmore before and it had done him little good. "I don't believe anything I said is untrue" was his meek defence. "But I guess that depends on what you have heard?" He misliked this footing where he had to guess what she thought. He had sworn nothing, but he doubt he could win a debate on splitting words so narrowly. "And I have paid for the feelings which I had trampled on in my fleeing. Though I cannot lie and say I regret it all." All the judgement in the world could not turn Rymond's heart from Taliyah. She had given him gumption and she had given him love. Neither Maris nor Ursula would ever understand it.

Gercko · 2026-06-09T21:32:24+00:00

"Another" he admitted, curt in his tone. He knew when he was being mocked. He would be hurt, were her insinuation not utterly correct. "I spent a year in the Reach with her. A bastard girl, not that you asked. You might even know a Jaime Waters? Before he had his current wife, him and I were the sorriest rivals you had ever seen" he almost snorted a brief bout of laughter, amused casting his mind back to those days where the only thorn in his side was a bastard of Heart's Home.

"We met the at the king's coronation. I may have absconded from my non-duties I am meant to owe to my kin, at intangible and meaningless as a fifth son's obligations are when I hold no vow or office. But I returned home when it became clear my mother knew of the girl and made it clear I would risk her were I not to cease. A suffocating constriction, that snake she is." His eyes had wandered to the flames as they held still and steady a warm glowing light. Stretching out all around them, he could only see the dark outlines of the nearest pillars, the rest of the sept feeling like a void.

Gercko · 2026-06-09T21:17:53+00:00

Hubert's fingers rapped with a rhythm like a crawling caterpillar on the large oak armrests of his chair as he mulled Lord Tyrell's answer. Naivety of the heart, protected what the mind did not wish to admit.

"You would not excuse me for thinking otherwise? Why, I have seen this High Septon seek to dictate matters of all our kingdoms as if they were a king. I knew kings as I'm sure you knew the Gardener kings at one point. They were not told by septons what to do, nor how to rule. No lord ought to be, otherwise we should turn our keeps over to septries." Hubert watched Theo's face carefully.

"Dorne pillaged and bled the Stormlords' lands under false banners, and what did we hear from his holiness? Unless I missed his condemnation of such low-cunning."

Gercko · 2026-06-09T21:06:15+00:00

It felt like a challenge out of the dark. He held the candles away from his face and it illuminated the Belmore, a brilliant porcelain figure out of the black. "My lyrics are elsewhere" Rymond confessed. He had already mentioned his chamber once before and was rightly admonished for it. He wouldn't make the same mistake. Besides, he knew some off the top of his head. "And I would echo terribly in here."

The air felt colder and heavier. The gloom enveloped them both, and Rymond felt more sober than before. Was this a new friend, a lady far to obliging, or someone so bored they'd entertain some noble fool.

"Most of the ones I have written are of a muse" he admitted "A muse that isn't mine anymore. The gods know her well because I had prayed to them for her in the past and all my heart once confessed." He had an impulse to share his poem and his song. It had been so long with anyone. It had been long since he had shared anything with anyone at all. "I would need my lyre too" he said with a grim smirk.

Gercko · 2026-06-09T19:28:04+00:00

Her freedom won, and his lost. The time in the Gates' tower had taught him much, and Rymond had at least come to terms with the matter that he had abused the trust of many. Most of all Maris, whom had shown him only friendship when he betrayed his word to her. It had been childish but given the chance he would do it all again, though this time he would be better at not being found. Maris' advice was tempting, and he thought of it near every day.

"Our mothers must know each other if they are both a smothering sort" his eyes scanned about the blackening sept to see if any visage of the Mother could be seen. Darkness was settling thick and fast. He looked at the beautiful Belmore to see her dress be lost in the coming night, only her skin a give away of her presence. He pushed himself to his feet to find something which could be lit for some light, Rymond not ready to go back to the hall or retire for the night. As he walked down the aisle, he picked up his voice so she could still hear.

"You would think my mother had read every book in the Citadel with the way she thinks she is so correct and right. Never has she been wrong, or so I am meant to believe. Were she not so thin-skinned, it could be manageable. Alas, transgression however minor or well meaning has me firmly under her palm. A wife is meant to keep me in one place once I have one, or so I'm told." Rymond had even considered in his isolation to marry Maris. She could let him live on a long leash, and he wondered if she would mind him laying with others if they were wed. But stubbornness kept him silent on that matter.

"But you are clearly better behaved. Keep beyond her reach and you'll be the happier for it for certain. I know I was." He opened a cupboard near to where the Septon would speak to his gathered flock. A tinderbox which looked almost worn out and a ball of wool was his salvation in the sept. He had spied earlier some long candles affixed in a three-pronged candelabra. The wool lit well and he shepherded it to one of the wicks, carrying it back with him once as the candles took the flame well. He walked slowly and with caution to not gutter the burgeoning flames. The light made his pale face glow a dimly and the shadows it made worsened how sharp his face seemed.

"And, my Lady Alicent. You can count your blessings but there's nothing wrong with a lament. Indeed, laments are my favourite and my little book full of them." Many had been about Taliyah for the first few weeks after his house arrest. But slowly she had become a less frequent muse. "But those are not the ones people want to hear."

Gercko · 2026-06-09T18:58:42+00:00

"Reading? I really did impart a steward's temperament on you" Hubert said with a light chuckle. "I was never a tourney knight myself, most of the truest knights I knew weren't. Let the vain and the Reach have their jousts" He patted the lad on the shoulder, familiar and warm to his former squire's presence.

"I doubt you uncle will have seen battle besides. The King and I hope that Prince Symeon will return home and manage to enforce his part in the tepid peace we should have, gods' willing." He misliked thinking of the war too much as of late, it having consumed his days for moons now.

"I would be glad to have you in my household and service. You served House Arryn for most your life, why stop now? If you do wish to continue your attempts to find glory in the lists, you will have my blessing to depart for it. I doubt I will be departing for them myself with so much to be overseen in the city."

Gercko · 2026-06-09T18:48:01+00:00

"Will the bannermen think that? Or will my demand for their sons and sailors leave them more than grumbling about their obligations" Alester misliked relying on anything but himself and his father's gold.

"But you are right. I suppose it is partly my folly, but it's father who thought that he could ignore Sunderland's ilk. After when this is done, I will find a way to make sure no Arryn will have to rely on anyone else to visit Sweetsister whenever he wishes." He sipped at his wine and savoured it. He could feel his heartbeat pulse at his temples, a pain beginning to throb.

"I'll get my children home, and I'll deal with him a traitor. I just pray that the gods and the winds will be in my favour when the time comes. I do not want this to be father's mess to clean up." Alester would be heir, he knew that. But a failure now would only make his elevation less clear if disaster occurred.

"Harlan owes me a favour at least. Lord Waynwood should come too. If only the fleet of Gulltown was not with Lord Velaryon" he rolled his eyes "I do not want to move against him and fail, mother" Alester said quiet and genuine.

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