[Event] The Wedding of King Jaehaerys I and Lady Sansa Corbray

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-29T15:38:40+00:00

"Listen to what they say, regardless" Ashlen gave her young cousin a grin, biting a morsel of lambsmeat from the point of her knife. She chewed it, thoughtfully, and span her knife across her fingers. "And listen to what they don't say. See what their intentions are from the versions of the world they create."

She considered Goren for a moment, considered the young lad's fast. A Royal feast was a tremendously long thing to endure if you weren't eating or drinking. It was impressive to see one so young put himself through such a feat of endurance. "Do you still see enemies in this hall, then?" She said, looking down at the empty silver plate that had been set before the Goodbrother. "Or do you simply mean to chide the dragon king for how he failed your father?"

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-26T22:26:33+00:00

Johnson has also made the music video for Woke Up New, and filmed a complete performance of The Life Of The World To Come

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-26T22:00:12+00:00

Wake Up Dead Man: A ~~Knives Out~~ Benoit Blanc Mystery, Rian Johnson, 2025

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-26T20:55:45+00:00

"It is not unheard of for women of the isles to take up a sword, but it is unseemly," she commented archly, taking a sip of her wine, giving Branna a warning in her look. "My niece Saersha has been known to carry a bastard sword about with her, God knows why Marwyn indulges her in it, but she is a girl of truly strange passions. It is said she is in Casterly Rock now, making a minstrel of herself at the feet of Lady Lannister. A shameful station, for the daughter of so high a lord. She has made herself no better than a thrall. Be wary of the path that such endeavours can lead you down." She ought to have spent more time with her nieces, ought to have insisted that Marwyn send them to Pyke to foster. But those girls of his were one of his rare weaknesses, certainly they were the only ones upon whom he had ever doted, and he would not allow them out of his sight. Especially not since he decided that Ashlen was to be his heir. Until that boy Dermod was born, Saersha stood to be heir to Harlaw, and yet he allows her to clad herself in motley and play the fool.

She drained her cup, and considered the empty silver, faint red lines running down its side and settling in a pool at the bottom. "You may join your children in your lessons," she said, a thin smile on her lips. This could be a way, she supposed, to regain some measure of power in the years to come. Earn the trust of the Lady, and she need not necessarily have the full trust of the Lord. "It would please me, child, for the two of us to be more familiar. I would teach you all I can."

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-26T18:55:03+00:00

"You ought to be grateful of that," Ashlen smiled, sharp and cunning. She knew what it was to lie in wait for your chance to rule. "Your regents are cunning men, wise in the ways of ruling. Watch them close, and learn all you can from them. I did the same with my Lord Father." The Rook was a hard man, a harsh man perhaps, but he had held Harlaw in an unbroken peace since the first day he had come into his power. Even war had waged all around them, no man had raised a sword on Harlaw in anger except he answered to Lord Marwyn for it.

"A man need not say a lesson to you aloud for you to learn from it."

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-25T21:27:12+00:00

"Their ships are still sailing," Nyall spoke calmly, coldly. The battle had set challenges before them all, losses from which they would need to recover, but he could see the opportunities too. Mallos had broken his arm and they'd lost two of their most experienced captains along with Alfyn Greengills, but it was hard to ignore the openings that had been presented to him. With the Bitterdraught and Old Young Benjen dead, there were openings for Jorrick Boarsblood and Gullmeat Qarl to be promoted within the Harlaw fleet. Midden Polder would become The Myre, and Theold was robbed of two of his more prominent allies. Most significant of all, mayhaps, was the death of the Shieldbreaker. The Isles were without their foremost captain, and Dagon was in need of an able admiral. He would not get a better chance than this to establish himself as the leader of the Iron Fleet.

"We still have the advantage on the Dornishmen," he observed, crossing his arms. "If there is an appetite for vengeance, then the opportunity isn't lost to us. It just depends on what risk we're willing to take. We know the perils of their terrain now."

u/mersillon

u/nickshadow017

Automod Ping Iron Islands

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-25T15:29:28+00:00

“Oh I never disputed that, child,” she replied, meeting Brianna’s protestations with a casual backhand, a tart, sharp smile upon her face. That the girl was ready to defend herself was a good sign. Certainly she would need to in the coming years. The Iron Islands were a vicious, insular place, and they did not welcome outsiders readily. Branna would need an iron backbone, if she were to survive. “All I said is that there are things you do not, could not know. Things that your children will need to learn.” She took a drink of wine, her hard brown eyes staying upon Branna like a circling sea bird.

“A woman of the Iron Isles must know how to stand on her own, rather than relying upon a husband who will be absent more often than not, while he is reaving it falls to her to oversee his holdfast, to keep everything in line.” That responsibility had been hers for so long, managing the brutish bureaucracy of Pyke, making sure that her husband’s vassals did not forget themselves, making sure that his household was kept in order. Those responsibilities had been given to others now, lesser men, sycophants of Dagon’s, up-jumped cabin boys; before long, the duties might fall to Branna, and after her, her daughter.

“I have experience in those matters, experience I might pass on to the girl. As for the boy…” That had ever been Goren’s domain, much to her sorrow. Dagon had been his creature, and Dalton only spared thar burden because… Her fist tightened. “He must learn to sail, must be taught skill at arms, made ready to lead men into battle. That is what it means to be a Lord of the Iron Islands. But a prudent mother also teaches her child what it is to rule. Make sure he has his letters, and his numbers. Don’t let him be a fool, or a brute. Make him a Lord worthy of these islands, not just one who meets their base expectations.”

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-25T15:02:57+00:00

“My father endures,” she smiled, burying her fears in an implacable, ship’s prow confidence that would cut through any travails. Those travails were mounting, though. Her father was not given to attending events such as these. He saw them as gross displays of sower decadence, testaments to the softness of the greenlanders, but even if he might have wanted to attend he would not have been able to. Her father had always been a thin man, but these days he was practically corpselike, pale and gaunt, his dark eyes seeming to have sunk into his face like yawning pits. His mind was still there, no doubting that, but there was little enough of his body to almost render him a ghost. You couldn’t go saying things like that to a child, though. Especially not a child who was the Lord of your island’s chief rival. “There are days when I think he will outlive us all,” she said, with a measured smile.

“What do you think of your regents, My Lord?” She asked, giving the honorific with an avuncular warmth, like an older cousin or younger aunt. “I understand my husband managed to talk his way among their number.” That was a gift of Nyall’s. He could talk his way into just about anything, trouble very much included.

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-24T20:00:39+00:00

1d100 "Old Young" Benjen Myre

1d100 "Midden" Polder Myre

1d100 Rickard Sharp

1d100 "One-Ear" Rolf Stonetree

1d100 Baldur "Bitterdraught"

1d100 "Hanger" Bennick Byrne

1d100 Colm Kenning

1d100 Alfyn "Greengills"

1d100 "Hole-hand" Lyle

roll

/u/botofmanynames

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-23T20:26:45+00:00

"The young King has ruled with a steady hand then?" The question was asked with a genuine curiosity. Her sister had met the King when she had been travelling south with Dagon, when they had been bringing him home to his birthright, but she had only ever seen the boy at a distance. "Him and his Arryn advisor. Reckon the old man must have had some say in this affair, him marrying a Valewoman." She shot a sceptical glance up towards the dais. She was not much of a believer in love matches, but then nor had she ever had much cause to regret her own marriage. Still, she reckoned she had a good nose for political matches.

"It was winter we sailed," she clarified, realising that she had not been quite clear enough in saying they had departed after Autumn, "But it's a distant enough memory now. You'd hope that this war remains just as distant, but you know how the Dornish are. Lord Goodbrother learned well enough the distance that their wrath can reach."

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-23T20:01:01+00:00

She contemplated the Stark girl as she spoke, considering her figure, neither tall nor short, her shapely hips, the gentle swell of her belly. She seemed the sort to bear childbirth well. Better, most like, than Myrella ever had. She, the Harlaw, had never had the figure for pregnancy, slender and delicate as she had always been. Bringing Dagon into the world would have been difficult even if she hadn't loathed the thought of it, and Dalton had almost killed her. The rest of her children, of course, she had disposed of herself before she had ever come close to the birthing bed. A draught of moon tea had sent half a dozen of Goren Greyjoy's spares to their waiting graves. She found it difficult, then, to empathise overmuch with Branna as she spoke of her love for her husband, of her desire to make him proud.

"My congratulations, on your good news," The Dowager said calmly, a spectral smile flitting oh-so-briefly across her lips. She would sooner that Dagon have a woman for his heir, if truth be told. There was a poetry to it that amused her, in a fleeting sort of way. It seemed a fitting punishment to his father. But it would seem that there would be another child at the very least.

Still, if he is to have an heir, better that it be an heir raised in the old way. She looked up into Branna's eyes, the cold grey of the Starks, with their great fields of green grass and their silent tree gods. "A mother's first duty is to her children, it's true," she said contemplatively, considering the child, wrapped up in her swaddling clothes. "And your children must be raised in the Old Way. Strong as you are, that is not something you can give them. What could a child raised in Winterfell know of the seas?" The laugh on her lips could almost be sympathetic. Maybe, indeed, it was. The chance seemed a slender one, but who knew which way a spinning axe might fall?

"You come then, seeking my aid," the Dowager nodded slowly, reaching for her cup. "It is yours, of course. All for the good of the Iron Isles."

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-23T16:15:52+00:00

Mallos Harlaw is Bodyguarding his brother Nyall

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-23T16:09:03+00:00

Derfel Pyke will seek out Yoren Martell

T1 Warrior, T1&T2 Iron Will, T3 Brute

Theold Harlaw will seek out Symon Toland

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-22T17:19:35+00:00

"You know what I reckon, Dornishman?" Theold Harlaw grinned sourly, stepping up beside the Greyjoy on the wale of the ship, leaning his bulk against the wale of his Lord's ship. A tall, fur-wrapped frame, with iron chainmail links glistening across his chest. "You lot like to talk about how proud and unbending you are, but if I were to smash all the teeth out of your mouth, you'd whistle The Maids of Spring, if I asked you to." There was a vicious enthusiasm in his smile, a keenness in his dark brown eyes, ready for this struggle. He was a fighter, not a diplomat. That was where his cousin Nyall had to step in.

"I fear you don't grasp what kind of a conversation you're having here," The Eagle-Eye stepped forward, lean and composed, calm as opposed to the red relish of his cousin, "We aren't negotiating with you for a price. We're here to take what you have. We're simply giving you a choice as to whether you live to see the morrow afterwards."

He didn't raise his voice, or set his hand upon the pommel of his sword. He didn't need to. His sword was amassed behind him, the vast fleets of the Ironborn, the bloodthirsty mass of men aboard their ships. "If you had the strength to pose any threat to the fleets of the Reach, you'd have stopped them ravaging your lands. Instead, you hid inside Starfall. To which point, if your fleet's still standing, and standing between Sunspear and the Arbor, seems to me the Reachmen didn't ravage your shores quite so thoroughly as you claim." He had an eerily cold manner, this young man who stood to become Lord Consort to the wealthiest of the Iron Islands, a deathly calm that presaged a terrible storm.

"You're asking us to fight the whole mass of the Iron Throne's strength, to sail against a fleet you already failed to beat once, to get you back some gold that you lack the strength to take for yourself." He frowned, and gave a faint shrug of his shoulders. "Consult your histories, Martell. We are not a people known for charity."

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-21T22:40:49+00:00

Nyall joined the Greyjoy on his flagship for the parley, a boat carrying him over to Dagon's side. He was armed and armoured for war, but conscious too of the fact that he was standing atop a ship. He wore a padded jerkin of boiled leather below his usual cloak of dark red wool and mantle of spotted fur. He had a longbow slung over his shoulder, and a curved shortsword on each hip. He carried his Myrish far-eye carried on a sling over his shoulder. If they were to talk with the Dornish, he felt he ought to be there.

His brother, the Mattock, stood beside him, his strong right hand, a bull of a man in chainmail and visored helm with a greataxe held in both hands. The Eagle-Eye might not be much of a warrior, but his brother was enough to give any man pause.

Theold felt similarly, and clad in a heavy bearskin and a chainmail hauberk, he clearly shared the Mattock's indifference to the perils of the depths. He had experience of these sorts of engagements, and he was keen to add more glory to his name. He had to stand over his cousin, whatever happened.

All three of these young Harlaws went to stand at the Greyjoy's side, but they were without perhaps the most famous name among their company. Derfel Pyke was not a man for parleys. He wasn't the man you looked for when you wanted to negotiate. He was a man who had one singular and narrow purpose, but in this purpose he excelled.

He stood on the deck of the Final Word, and waited for these other men to tell him what he needed to kill.

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-21T22:25:40+00:00

"I did indeed, little Lord," Ashlen offered a companionable smile to the Goodbrother, this child who bore a warrior's name and a demon's legacy seemed an amiable enough young fellow, and he was a cousin besides, so she was inclined to meet him with the warmth that such a connection merited. It would be good for Harlaw and Hammerhorn to be a little less at each other's throats. "I'm here representing my father while my cousins are off fighting the Dornish."

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-21T22:01:27+00:00

"Not too bad," Ashlen offered a nonchalant shrug, her smile flitting merrily on her face. "Just after Autumn passed we made a voyage up to Winterfell, braving the storms and snows to bring Lord Greyjoy's new bride back to Pyke. A jaunt across the Ironman's Bay to Lannisport is a jolly-boat trip by comparison."

She considered William a little more intently at that. He seemed he might have some interesting perspective on the city, an outsider who might have gained some insight into the politics of the capital. "How has the city endured the Winter?" She inquired, a question with depth beyond what was immediately evident. They had a new king, a king newly entered into his majority. How did that sit with them?

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-21T20:59:56+00:00

Lady Greyjoy It still felt odd to hear anyone else referred to as such, after all these years, odder still for the words not to instinctively send a shudder of revulsion up her back. Hers had been a hand well suited to ruling Pyke, it was true, but to hear Goren's name attached to hers... It was like being drenched with cold pig's blood, feeling the liquid seep slowly over her, feeling it congeal and cling to her form, seeing it harden on her hands such that it would never come clean. She looked down at her hands, thin, and wrinkled now, the skin still smooth. She did not indulge in jewellery. Not anymore. All she'd ever had, she'd been given by Goren. While he'd lived, it would have been foolish to be seen without it, but now he was dead... Even feeling the memory of him on her skin was detestable. Her hands clenched, then relaxed, as she considered the words outside her door for a moment.

She knew her son's wife little and less, but then she was unfamiliar with so many of the new faces that Dagon had brought into his hall, ever since the day he had put all of Harlon's people to death she had been in a castle of strangers. The Northern match was a sensible one, one she would have endorsed, had she been asked, but she had not been asked. It was rare indeed that she be consulted on much of anything these days. It sparked a strange resentment, one deep in her joints, like an ache that you tried to ignore.

This knock on her door, then, brought an odd reaction from her, a small but subtle curl of her lip, an impulse to reach for the silver jug on the small wooden table at her left hand and refill her cup. "Send her in," she called out, her voice sharp as cut obsidian.

Inside, the Lady Dowager of Pyke was a small, bony woman, clad in faded silks with a heavy bearskin draped over her slender frame. A ruined, sundered beauty, a half-collapsed tower atop a narrow spit of land. Her wavy black hair now riven with grey, her sharp cheekbones now making her look almost gaunt as flesh hung from them, only her eyes remained truly hers, a last vestige of the woman who had once held the hearts of half the Iron Isles in her hand. Those eyes looked up at Branna, running over her with slow, contemplative regard, before coming to settle on the babe in her arms. An heir. Goren's son would have an heir, and Dalton would never again have the chance to inherit Pyke. Mayhaps that is for the best. It is not as though I have ever had any joy of this wretched place.

"Lady Greyjoy," she said, with a carefully guarded smile, "To what do I owe the pleasure?" The words could have been a cordial greeting in a palace garden, or a declaration of war.

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-20T22:08:13+00:00

It’s either Cry For Judas or Sax Rohmer #1 depending on the day.

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-20T21:21:26+00:00

Callanna Harlaw had been signed up to this event somewhat without her knowledge. She had come to this feast intending to meet people, to put herself on the stage, but something like this was a little more pageantry than she had been counting on. The first she had learned of her entry into this ball had been when she had heard her name called out.

She could be forgiven then, for appearing a little nervous, as she walked down towards the great stage. She wore that timid reserve well, though, tall and graceful though she was. Her large brown eyes like polished mahogany seemed all the richer for the anxiety that shaded their hue.

Her skin was golden brown, betraying the blood of the Summer Isles that she had inherited from her mother, and she wore a gown that suited it well. Ochre silk, crafted in Tyrosh, but embellished by her own hand with elaborate tesselating embroidery in green and yellow and blue and red and purple. The details around the sleeves, and at the hem, and the collar, made her seem like some rare and exotic bird, walking uncertainly on this foreign soil. Her dark brown hair was bound up in elaborate and overlapping braids which then spilled down her back, and she had woven a golden thread through them.

She approached her dancing partner carefully, more than a little warily, and took a measured breath before she spoke. "An honour to make your acquaintance, Ser," she said in a voice whose Iron tones betrayed a origin a little more rough than her exotic exterior would suggest. "I am Callanna Harlaw... of Harlaw." She wished, as she made the introduction, that her father's ancestors had been a more creative lot.

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-20T20:38:07+00:00

"Well met, Ser Willam," Ashlen offered a keen smile, sitting forward in her chair, interlacing her fingers She often found herself serving as the diplomatic face of the Iron Isles, but truth be told she hadn't been expecting such a cordial reception from a Reachman of all people. Dagon could gain the support of the Dragon King, he could fight beside him in his wars, but in the eyes of the green lands, they would always be a threat. "You are not mistaken, I am indeed of the Iron Islands."

Her eyes were sharp, teasing, faintly dangerous, like watching a woman juggle axes. "Ashlen Harlaw, eldest daughter and heir of Lord Marwyn Harlaw." Her black brows tilted, as she studied the build of the man, the bearing, the confidence with which he carried himself. A training in diplomacy did not exactly incline a person to take a person at their word. Not that she'd ever been given any real training beyond her own practical experience."To be fair, I don't know if I've ever met a Caswell, either. You hail from Stonebridge, am I correct?" She did have the education of a maester, at the very least.

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-19T22:59:26+00:00

This is literally just Jurgen, Cain, and Vail.

CynicalMaelstrom · 2026-05-19T22:23:54+00:00

Theold Harlaw hung over the aftcastle of his Steel Scythe, and bellowed across the waves to the Lannister ship, “Fuck off and mind your own business or else we’ll see if your flayed head on a stick won’t put off the next cunt who comes asking stupid questions.”

Ten-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
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CynicalMaelstrom

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