#pro.intro
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𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐃 𝐀𝐒 𝐀 𝐖𝐎𝐎𝐃-𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄, 𝐅𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐀𝐒 𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐄,
serana gardener , as written by taryn . she/her pronouns , pst .
application. — connections. — pinterest.
an abbreviated history.
from the start, fate marks her as a difficult child: her birth occurs unexpectedly, over a moon-turn earlier than expected, in the middle of a festival hosted by house gardener. guests are rushed out as the queen of the reach births her fourth child amid the grass of their expansive garden, one knee pointing to a collection of windflowers, the other at an abandoned maypole.
in childhood she’s party butterfly, party tempest, constantly flitting to and fro at unruly speed between points of interest. a voracious and exuberant child, she both amuses and exasperates adults with her cleverness, arguing her way out of lessons and popping into conversations not meant for children. her free hours are always spent in the garden, bare-foot and half-wild. seeing much of himself in his middle daughter, the king finds serana especially amusing, and allows her behaviour to go unchecked.
adolescence, predictably, is no easier: left unchecked by the king, the childhood traits she carried exaggerate as she moves into womanhood like a shadow under high sun. she’s vivacious and charming but simultaneously irreverent to the point of insolence, with no crown or guard that can temper her whims when she sets to them. she earns the nickname of the wildflower in courtly gossip, and her reputation carries throughout the kingdoms.
the passing of her eldest brother leaves her at her worst. unable to handle her own grief, her forays into misadventure; things once lacking any intention other than the experience of freedom turn darker and more harmful, and she lashes out at anyone attempting to pull her back. it takes time before serana is well enough to recognize the inherently selfish nature of her actions, and for a time she comparatively cleans up her act -- recognizing her duty as a daughter of the reach is to provide for it with a good marriage.
the king’s decision to rebuff offers of marriage for his daughters is more than serana could have hoped for: she fixates on the notion of spending the remainder of her life in highgarden unencumbered by marriage, aiding the house of her forefathers through counse -- until some time later when her life of leisure begins to lose appeal. after an encounter with a one-eyed harridan in the local market who forecasts her eternal unhappiness unless she become queen, serana comes to acknowledge that what she had once longed for is no longer enough -- and nor can she allow her home to falter under the rule of one outside the house of gardener.
it’s been several years since that moment, which is where we get her now. to the surprise of those around her, serana’s desire and commitment to ascend the throne (and to do so alone, it should be said; unfettered by marriage) has not wavered. no longer as feral as she once was, but will still cause a scene for attention or argue something useless for hours on end<3 just middle child things
misc.
once punched a visiting nobleman’s son as a young girl for insulting her sister. he left with a black eye despite her inability to make a proper fist -- so pip taught her how to make one immediately after.
the most famous story about the reach’s wildflower is that she rode through highgarden in the nude upon her dornish steed, covered only by her long hair (lady godiva who?). it’s been greatly exaggerated, but there is some truth to it: she rode in a nearly translucent slip across the lawns of the gardener castle after losing a bet to her sisters, meaning far few people saw her than on the crowded streets of a capitol city. still, she’s never done anything to discredit the story because she loves it :/
an incredible equestrian, surpassing her siblings and any visiting nobility (and if she’d been allowed to participate in tournaments, she’d have bested them too -- but hold on for another incoming headcanon heheh). a certified Horse Girl overall, down to memorizing the bloodlines of famous dornish sand steeds.
has a trained falcon she decided to name after her brother pip for the humour of going “no not you, bird-pip.” bird-pip is with her here in the vale, as always.
a v lovely singing voice, which is for the best given she was never studious enough to achieve the prowess over instruments that her sisters did
once entered a tournament jointedly with her brother. he performed the feats of archery while she donned his armour to participate in the equestrian events - including the joust. the original intention was for her to remain masked by his helmet for the entirety, but her ego got the better of her after winning the latter. she removed the helmet in accepting a flower from a pretty maiden... and promptly received the worst verbal lashing of her life from dear old ma and pa standing right next to pip <3
#pro.intro#fun fact tumblr merked my first attempt at a blog for serana <3 straight up terminated#they knew she was too powerful#❛ 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 ⸺ A THOUSAND BLOOMS AT ONCE .
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𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐘, 𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐀 𝐃𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑.
vaelena velaryon , as written by taryn . she/her pronouns , pst .
application. — connections. — pinterest.
an abbreviated history.
trigger warnings: death, child neglect, violence, emotional & physical abuse, disease, poisoning.
her birth is blood and secret. complaining of a night’s ill rest, the ruling lady velaryon retires to her quarters in the uppermost tower of castle driftmark on a grey morning, dismissing her attendants while she rests. some hours later when she has not risen, her son vyros climbs the steps to retrieve his mother. what he finds is a pale, silent woman and a bloody, screaming babe: in her entrance into the world, vaelena has torn apart her mother.
her girlhood is marked by the same attributes. with over a decade between herself and her only brother, vyros is marked as a man by the time vaelena is old enough to retain any memory (therefore taken out to sea to prove his salt), and the ruling lord visyron holds little paternal interest. as such she’s raised more by the tides and cold stone walls than any one man, left to wander castle driftmark alone as little more than a pale slip of a child. it’s only in vyros’s returns to the isle that she experiences any tenderness or familial connection, walking the beach by his side to collect shells and chase gulls.
when she sprouts enough to take on a passing image of the late lady of the castle, her father finally takes interest. though his attention occasionally swings back to extreme apathy, largely he is locked into a possessive obsession, often forbidding his daughter from leaving the family halls or enclosure of beach nearby. she’s hoarded as equal parts a treasure and a monstrosity, kept away from outside eyes.
the realms know little of the velaryon girl until suddenly they clamour to know it all. upon word of a visiting stormland noble declares her the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, rumour and interest froth and multiply -- a calculated bid for freedom from vaelena herself, having seduced the noblemen with such an intent. tall and slender with an eerie ethereality and the markings of a proper velaryon, an influx of curious wanderers make excuse to dock on driftmark’s beaches, coming from a glimpse of the hidden pearl.
she becomes known as the white lady for her pale and distressing loveliness, declared routinely as the most beautiful woman in the seven kingdoms. as is often the case with beautiful and unusual women, rumour is not kind to her (though perhaps not necessarily untrue, either): gossip spreads that the lady velaryon practices dark arts, that her multitude of suitors come by their bone-twisting adoration by way of magick, that her beauty is preserved by blood. to vaelena, borne of no real magick but a woman’s will and a talent with herbs, the reputation an amusement. let them call me a witch. what is a witch but a woman that man cannot quiet?
the velaryon patriarch succumbs slowly to a long-waiting disease, rending him paranoid and erratic. he accuses solid allies of treason and makes scattered attempts at political violences, causing a period disquiet. then, suddenly -- it seems to end and return to deep, still waters. having grown tired of their aged, ruinous father, the velaryon children do what they must: they preserve the house by whatever means necessary. vaelena slips basilisk blood into his goblet within the same fortnight that vyros exacts violent revenge, rending him limp, muted and malleable - a state through which the siblings are able to puppeteer. there are rumours that one velaryon sibling or the other rule through their weak father, but they are just that - whispers.
misc.
incredibly inspired by shiera seastar, don’t @ me
the siblings have a dragon egg each, and they found them in a way similarly joined - as a boy, vyros dragged a waterlogged trunk up from the sea. unable to open it, it was left abandoned in the treasury. some decade later and after weeks of inner disquiet, vae dreams of the trunk and a silver key in her father’s drawer. it’s she who opens it, finding a pair of gleaming eggs; she takes the pearlescent egg for herself and leaves its darker twin swathed in velvet in her brother’s chambers.
has a white borzoi dog that’s surprisingly well behaved. always at vae’s side and rarely makes any noise
might not have genuine magic but you best believe she’s got a lil trunk of witchy potions with her at all times <3
doesn’t have any genuine interest in being the head of house, nor even a queen - vae finds the duties of rulership monotonous. she’d much rather stand as her brother’s advisor on driftmark and make mischief on her own time. she’d rather have raw power than something strained into a specific title
if you couldn’t guess, incredibly committed to the The Aesthetic. all her gowns tend to be white, silver, or an icy blue, her jewelry cool diamonds or sea-borne pearls.
both she and vyros bare the same birthmark upon their right shoulder blade
due to the forced isolation in castle driftmark during her teen years, vaelena came to know every inch of the place by heart -- including its innermost workings. at fifteen she discovered hidden passages among the halls, one of which lead directly behind the room where her father held political congress. she spent years observing his meetings.
her ability to use hidden passages is duly why some of the visitors to driftmark believed her to be practiced in magicks - she certainly wasn’t above spying on guest rooms and using gleamed knowledge to come across like she had looked into their soul.
very deeply (and unusually) attached to her dragon egg. partially symptomatic of the isolation and neglect she endured as a young woman, any remaining tenderness or affection not taken by her brother was projected onto the egg. takes it with her if ever making a trip outside driftmark
unhinged woman<3 might bed then stab you
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♔ → westeros presents meda stark, the princess of winterfell / the north a raven sent word that she bears the resemblance to adelaide kane. the twenty eight year old cis woman was astute & compassionate before the dawn of winter, but have now become proud & hot-tempered. when songs are sung, their verses speak of the regal tilt of a head born for glory; a long wooden map table strewn with sigils and banners; a she-wolf circling her pack, baring her teeth at intruders. whispers throughout the seven kingdoms claim that their allegiance lies with house stark / the north, where they conspire to end the war of the northern kingdom and unite the north under stark rule, and secure the safety and prosperity of the subjects of the northern kingdom but in the end, fealty means little when you play the game of thrones. ( hayley, 21, cst, she/her. )
She is born just before the worst winter in recent memory, and that is how they know she will have to be strong. She cries coming out of the womb, as all babes do, but soon quiets down, as if she already knows she is a princess and must present the proper decorum. From the moment she comes into the world, she is loved and doted on, as only the single daughter in a family of boys can be, and she wants for little in their close-knit little pack, but she is always reminded of what it means to be a Stark: honor, loyalty, duty; these above all else.
She takes it to heart, and learns her lessons well. Not just the lessons of how to be a lady, though she watches her mother closely and tries her best to emulate the older woman’s grace, but also the intricacies of running a kingdom, the nuances between the ruling houses and their vassels, and the needs of the people who are by right partly gets to protect. She will never be a Queen, unless (gods forbid) they send her South to marry, but she can do her duty to her people all the same, by learning enough to know how much grain will need to be stored for each upcoming winter, how much will need to be planted and harvested in the spring and summer, and how to distribute it all so that it benefits the largest number of people. They are hard decisions, but they need to be made, and she learns how to do so.
The truth is, the lesson she learns best is how to play the game. Though she doesn’t meet many outsiders, with the Stark-held North being cut off by the rebel Red Kings from most of Westeros, she practices on her family’s sworn Houses. She learns who resents whom over a trade dispute, or an inheritance claim, or an old slight that happened so many years ago that everyone has all but forgotten how it started. She learns which young lords and ladies have been betrothed, and which old ones must settle their affairs soon before they die. She learns how to show she cares, listening to the small folk who come to Winterfell to petition the King, or inquiring after an aging lord’s grandchildren by name. It’s important that others feel important, and Meda learns how to make them feel like the only person in the world.
She learns other lessons too, lessons of laughter and love and happiness. She learns of loss and grief and war, though these lessons she would rather forget. She learns how to climb trees and wield a sword and a bow, though she’s not nearly as sharp with those as she is with her mind. There are good and bad times, lightness and darkness, sorrow and joy.
There is light and dark in her too, though she’d be loath to admit it. She’s far too proud for her own good, rarely able to own up to her own faults and mistakes. She takes slights to herself or her family extremely seriously, and she’s quick to anger and slow to forgive. She believe in her perceived duty so much that she’s never bothered to ask if her goals are what’s best for the people she wants to see thrive, if a war to establish Stark control of the North is worth the amount of bloodshed it has cost. She knows the Stark’s to be the rightful rulers, just as she knows the sky is blue and the snow cold. She may very well be right, but the fact that she’s never bothered to even wonder is troubling.
She also may be too ambitious for her own good. While most of the North distrusts Southerner’s, and she does too to a certain extent, she’s eager to fashion alliances that she feels will benefit their people. She doesn’t want the North just to survive, she wants it to thrive, and she thinks she can play the game well enough to juggle the politics of all the other kingdoms in order to secure the North’s best interests. Perhaps she can, but it seems an awful lot to put on one mind, no matter how sharp it is. Learning to ask for help is the one lesson she never quite mastered.
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𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐄 '𝐏𝐈𝐏' 𝐆𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑. — crown prince of the reach. wine spilling from an open, laughing mouth, the teeth and tongue stained burgundy; the kiss of an arrow to the cheek, and the drip of blood left behind; too many rings scraping against a goblet, afternoon light cleaving through the gems like stains on the table wood.
doc. pinterest. connections.
𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐇 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐘𝐑. — red priestess of the dreadfort. a dark hand passing through flame, uncharred; hills of rolling green and frosted white, shot through with crimson cloaks catching in the winter’s wind; whispers in dark corners, gathering like shadows between the lamplight.
doc. pinterest. connections.
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— 𝐘𝐀𝐆𝐃𝐀𝐑 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐊, 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐖𝐎𝐋𝐅'𝐒 𝐃𝐄𝐍 // the menacing scrape of a great axe on the ice; howling winds through desolate guard towers; frostbitten earth crunching beneath ragged paws; a shame of ancient trespass staining his mantle the red of betrayer; recoiling from the spread of dense and blinding shadows as they overtake what he once fiercely loved; a hound’s teeth and wolf’s blood; the ache of winter deep in his bones that turns all softness to verglas; trees in the godswood calling his name.
( ᴀꜱ ᴡʀɪᴛᴛᴇɴ ʙʏ ɢʀᴇʏ / 21+ / ꜱʜᴇ & ʜᴇʀ / ᴄꜱᴛ. )
application ( also below ) — pinterest — playlist.
𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 //
♔ → westeros presents yadgar, ruling lord of house greystark. a raven sent word that he bears the resemblance to cengiz coşkun. the thirty five year old cis man was steadfast & resolute before the dawn of winter, but has now become intransigent & bellicose. when songs are sung, their verses speak of the menacing scrape of a great axe on the ice; howling winds through desolate guard towers; frostbitten earth crunching beneath ragged paws; a shame of ancient trespass staining his mantle the red of betrayer; recoiling from the spread of dense and blinding shadows as they overtake what he once fiercely loved; a hound’s teeth and wolf’s blood; the ache of winter deep in his bones that turns all softness to verglas; trees in the godswood calling his name. whispers throughout the seven kingdoms claim that their allegiance lies with house greystark, house bolton (tentatively), and the north, where he conspires to see king rogar restored from his shadowy plague and house greystark well-seated in a unified north. but in the end, fealty means little when you play the game of thrones.
𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘 // tw: death, death by fire, murder premeditation
When your dreams begin to lift you from your body, you are 9. You find yourself low to the ground and permeated by the scent of infertile earth, the musk of moss and rot, the ripple along your spine as hackles rise, and sonic waves weave a landscape even in the dark. You become a hound’s panting lungs, the spring of her bent haunches, and the twitch of a long, black nose. It is Randar Bolton who names you a Warg and gifts you Thora, a female hound from his brood. She is your dearest familiar for 12 years.
Your youth is spent loving the frozen womb whence you came — for you are built for the tundra, brutalized and carved into stone, a hearth burning bright and all on your own — ever followed by whispers of “giant’s blood” and “alp.” Heavy footfalls that ask no forgiveness of trespass cover the far reaches of a wintry realm, along the wall, then stretch low into the pregnant belly of the south. Though it is the bitter cold that warms you, the south is more welcoming of your arrival. They do not whisper “traitor!” in your wake. They do not brand you with the burn of not belonging.
Swords are like twigs in your hand, daggers like kindling. Bows bend at your monstrous pull and nothing balances your gait like an axe. You carry it like other men carry a sword, with all the same gallant control and precision. Your swing may be slower, but your blows are doubly devastating when landed. It is your father who commissions Godfeller for you, dropping its weight into your bitten hands at the age of 14. It has known no master since, nor even a man who can lift it.
Wolves to wolves, but you are a hound. It is a truth like spoiled mead that uproots the contents of your gut whenever you repeat the words of your House, a nightmare whisper that keeps you from restful sleep within the walls of Wolf’s Den. What splintered darkness had split the north lives on in your name and it burns like bile on your tongue when you speak it — for it means you are a traitor to your brethren, a diseased off-shoot of the North’s true design, the crack in the formidable ice. A weak spot. A blemish.
It does not displace your love of your cousin, the Red King, whose mad father eventually renders Greystark blood but ash delivered from flame. No, he was once more a brother, though softer, quieter, more reserved and calculating than you could ever be — he, who once drew playful shadows into his palm to delight those in poor spirits, whose nature allowed you to unfurl and tower unapologetically, but who now threatens to unleash frothing darkness upon it all. You look across your tundral home, from the maw of Wolf’s Den, and you wonder if it weren’t for a Greystark’s treason, would the North remain undivided? Would Maesters write of your House as the one instrumental in the vicious sundering of the North?
When a raven delivers Rogar’s word that his mother, your Aunt Zehra, is condemned to a flame-death, vitriol overshadows reason. The fires that took her spread to the frozen tributaries of your veins — though you had witnessed the brutality Randar Bolton’s rage against son and wife, traversed the horrific expanse of his perversions as they festered on foe and family alike, it is this crack is his vizard of madness that marks the Beginning and the End of your already too forgiving tolerance. It is impossible to be patient, against your breeding to show restraint, but you offer yourself up to the long corridors of Rogar’s patricidal conspiracy. However, it is the means by which the tyrant is ended that you cannot abide.
All that comes next is chaos: you see your once brother, red-crowned upon the abyssal remnants of his father, and suddenly torn from you down a bewitched path — swathed in the prophetic whispers spun by your long-dead aunt and strung in the trees of the Godswood. He is now cradled by destruction’s sweet lullaby, lured by a wildling every downward, and you are but the lord of betrayal — who would listen to your plea? Who will hear you without suspicion? And if you stay silent: what will Rogar take with him when his penumbral collective caves in on him like a dying star? What of the North can remain if your dearest cousin paints it in shades of the blackest pitch?
The reservations that were born in you begin to lift their head — sleeping dogs that cannot lie — and you peer toward the most northern House of Stark, toward a light in the dark. Will you be heard? Is there hope? Perhaps it is time the wolves return to their den.
𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐒 //
After Thora dies, Yadgar is gifted another hound by the Boltons — a black male, sleek and speckled with red and gray. Named Demir for the appearance of rusted iron, he has been a faithful companion and familiar ever since.
As Rogar begins to lose his shape in voluminous dark, Yadgar grows suspicious of those who have his ear. A protectiveness instilled in him since they were young proves a difficult beast to tame. What is worse is the creeping feeling that Rogar is already lost to him — leering, now a King, but only the vestige of the young man he once was. Too long was the prophecy sung to him in his youth that now he can manifest no other way. Yadgar has sworn to himself that he will fight this with everything he has, even if it means betraying House Bolton — what is a betrayer to do but betray? If he must be the villain once more to save his lifelong friend, he will don the bloodstained mantle one again.
As a boy, Yadgar longs to see beyond the Wall, to see the farthest reaches of Winter, to verify his Maester’s stories. When his father promises to take him if he trains hard, he pushes himself to exhaustion regularly. Falling over in the training yard, limbs mottled from frostbite, body weak from dehydration. His father never takes him.
Ruling Wolf’s Den comes naturally to him, but now that he’s at such a crossroads, he questions if he has the constitution. Because he and those of House Greystark are treated with suspicion at all sides, there is nowhere for him to turn. He feels paralyzed. To confront Rogar about his actions may resound as an act of treason. To approach House Stark with such concerns: a weakness, a ploy for sympathy — or worse, an act of self-service. Yadgar feels that he is drowning and can scarcely sleep through the night. Though he’s often looked North when taking a knee and praying to the Old Gods, he now bows his head low in defeat.
Lately, he spends a lot of time warging — somehow wishing to meld with his bestial companion and leave behind the woes of his lordship within a divided kingdom. The thrill of the hunt, the separation from the complexities of politics, the relief in simplifying his plight to survival and nothing more. A fervent wish, but a wish, nonetheless.
Despite considering himself a true son of winter and the Old Gods, he struggles to find a place of belonging in his snowy Eden. This drives him south where the sun pricks his skin, where his fur cloak is sweltering, yet he cannot bring himself to turn his back on his homeland.
The pain of his Aunt Zehra’s death finds him when he least expects it — the burning out of a candle, a spark from the cruel edge of Godfeller. He blames himself for not ridding the world of Randar sooner, but perhaps that is the fate of a Greystark. With such a hand in past atrocities, it is a fitting punishment to observe as everything is unmade into ruin around you with nary a decent compass to find your way out.
He wears an old pendant passed down from his great-grandfather on his lapel. It is the bust of a gnashing wolf, its eyes gleaming amber.
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— 𝐋𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐕𝐲𝐫𝐨𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐕𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧 // master of ships for the blackwater peninsula: the sting of salt in a weeping wound; a seafarer’s tragic trade of infinite horizons for duty’s stagnant shore; a lonesome tower, an island damned; palms torn raw by heavy rope; the roar of the insurgent sea at the hulls of a masterful fleet; a siren’s eerie whisper ever curling at his ear.
( ᴀꜱ ᴡʀɪᴛᴛᴇɴ ʙʏ ɢʀᴇʏ / 21+ / ꜱʜᴇ & ʜᴇʀ / ᴄꜱᴛ. )
application ( also below ) — pinterest — playlist.
𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 //
♔ → westeros presents vyros, lord of house velaryon. a raven sent word that he bears the resemblance to henry cavill. the thirty-seven year old cis man was ardent & intuitive before the dawn of winter, but has now become aloof & disillusioned. when songs are sung, their verses speak of the sting of salt in a weeping wound; a seafarer’s tragic trade of infinite horizons for duty’s stagnant shore; a lonesome tower, an island damned; palms torn raw by heavy rope; the roar of the insurgent sea at the hulls of a masterful fleet; a siren’s eerie whisper ever curling at his ear. whispers throughout the seven kingdoms claim that their allegiance lies ( almost begrudgingly ) with house velaryon, where he conspires to see his younger sister rule in the stead of their diminished father so that he can remain active at sea. but in the end, fealty means little when you play the game of thrones.
𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘 // tw: death, blood, neglect, abuse, violence
The curse of the first-born cannot befall the son of an immortal man.
To his mother, he was a prince crowned by a wreath of silvery hair — a veritable fountain of limitless ichor, where all her unborn dreams might gestate. To his father, he was a threat: the herald of an age’s end, as indiscriminate and onward-marching as Death itself. To his father, who peered into his looking glass and saw an undying reflection, his first-born son was simply another pawn, a coin to be played or cast off in The Great Game.
In his youth, Vyros endured worship and neglect in equal measure and discovered, too late, that no one could bear such polarization. Detachment became a survival technique, a shimmering sword with which he might hack at the tiresome fawning of a displaced and lonesome mother, a vicious blade to sever the inky tar oozing from his father’s indifference. Respite could not be found in a Maester’s drones nor the cold, black stone of Castle Driftmark, so, the boy was drawn to the sea’s edge. The incessant longing in his heart was eased by the crash of an unsettled tide, but it would not be resolved until his thirteenth year.
Young Lord Vyros lived his life like a ghost, existing at the edges of the castle’s cavalcade of moments, his hunger to be seen at war with his wish to fade away. He surveyed his father’s poise at the helm of Driftmark’s great hall from behind a stone pillar, feeling the boom of Lord Velaryon’s stentorian voice like an arrow lodged in his chest. How could his father passionately address a room of so many nameless faces and not spare a word for his son? As his mother gathered with ladies to sew, to pray, to whisper, twittering like little birds in a stone bath, he lingered behind the frail island blooms to watch. She cried on the stairs, but here among her collective, she shone like a second sun.
A heavy realization for such a young boy, to know he did not belong. He carried that truth with him like tesserae in his pocket. It wasn’t until he witnessed the Velaryon fleet coming in on the horizon that he loosed those dark seeds into the ocean. His feet had never moved so quickly beneath him than when he ran to meet them at the shore — down the spiraling staircase of the tower, along the winding path to the beach, nary a nimble footfall misplaced.
At age seven, Vyros was reborn, unnamed, unburdened, set free, and welcomed among the seafarer’s of the royal fleet. Though they were amused (and sometimes annoyed) by his precocious curiosity — too often finding him in the way or at the brink of causing disaster and disorder — his determination and willingness to prove himself as a worthy member of the crew, the nickname of “Fearless” evolved from a playful jab to a term of endearment among the ships’ captains and crew. He was found to be a promising and able spirit, a departure from his father who had retained the protected title of Master of Ships even though he never set foot on deck. (In fact, Lord Velaryon was often referred to as “Harwyn Hoare” or just “Hoare” for this reason.)
Vyros’ gleaning of knowledge from ship commanders, his prowess with sword, the constant grafting of love for the sea and his island home’s wilderness, his solid devotion to his fellowship among captains, commoners, traders, and pirates alike, his inevitable shaping into a man, brave and true — each measure of growth proved a deep etching in his father’s gilded pride, a calculated strike against Visyron’s rule of Driftmark.
Each step outside of his father’s shadow was met with violence henceforth, but Vyros stood as the craggy cliffs against the sea’s constant assault: immovable against a transient and petty tyrant.
In light of Visyron’s abuse, Lady Thaeya Velaryon’s kindness receded like a shadow on the cold moon, her nature too delicate to persevere in such darkness. She became more of a ghost in Driftmark’s halls than Vyros had ever been, and when she spoke, it was lyrical madness, her hands ever-weakening in the ends of her son’s salt-knotted hair. Even as her belly swelled with child — thirteen years after Vyros — it was a task for her to smile, to draw herself up from her pelts, to speak with more conviction than a fluttering whisper. She never said it aloud, but her sorrowful eyes pleaded for her son’s forgiveness: I will die soon, and I’m happy to go.
Vyros found her, milk-white and still, her legs painted with womb’s vermillion. As familiar as her bedchambers had been to him in his youth, they were uncharted land to him now. A distant world, liminal and cold, where feral, unrelenting life screamed out in defiance of vacant death. He lingered at her bedside for a long moment, a place he had once received her affections (plaiting his hair, righting the buttons of his doublet, knocking the sand from his cheeks) as she listened to the tales of his minor adventures. Now, she was out of his reach, leaving a gentle, “Mother?” unanswered. He swallowed screams and bit back bitter tears as he wrestled, in the reserved consternation of a little lord, against the weight of his grief, the illogical need to blame — as he unraveling the fear of a future without his mother’s softness and made room for unshakeable devotion to his sister.
He knew immediately that he loved her as he’d never loved anyone else — pulling the babe, bloody and howling, from their mother’s grave and to his chest. It must have been hours that he sat there, his dead mother’s hand in his own, staring at the infant swaddled in matted deer skin upon his lap. How could someone so small fill an abyss so infinite?
Vyros learned to split his time between his sister and the sea, burying the guilt of leaving her behind beneath the warm memories they would share upon his return. Over time, it was not lost on Vyros that his father’s twisted mind had built a cage around his daughter, just as it had Thaeya, but it didn’t weaken Vaelena as intended. She grew within it and around it, through it, beneath it, above and away from it — she took that patriarchal darkness as it was given and made it her own. So, too, was Visyron’s violence toward his son weaponized against him in turn — for beating after savage beating eventually left him the frail, murmuring shell he was always destined to become. How vicious the ouroboros of his hatred that he was now the ghost in Driftmark’s halls.
As Master of Ships, Vyros is happy. To remain as such, he is angling his sister to rule over House Velaryon at their father’s imminent passing, and he is unwilling to recognize the selfishness of such an action. For now, the two siblings are enjoying the freedom allowed them by sharing the responsibility of House Velaryon — operating behind the curtain of the father’s mad frothing and querulous mewlings.
𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐒 //
Vyros’ lonely childhood was spent combing the shoreline for treasures — a magpie of what the sea had forgotten. Over time, he acquired quite a collection, utilizing an un-spoke corner of the treasury for his own. Among these spoils was a waterlogged trunk. No matter the prying effort of a vigilant 9 year old, there was no getting inside. It wasn’t until years later that his clever sister solved the mystery he’d drug up from the shallows of their island: two dragon eggs. She kept one for herself and left the other for him, cosetted by velvet upon his bed. Its scales are the blackest of purple, fading into gold.
The two Velaryon siblings are twins born over a decade apart, both sharing striking Valyrian features as well as a matching birthmark on their right shoulder-blades. Their connection is almost palpable, and Vyros regards her opinion and judgement above all else.
Vyros’ eyes are violet, but around the iris is a burst of sapphire. His mother often called this the curse of the siren, or the seafarer’s mark. To him, it was verification of his draw to the sea.
He is a poor reader and writer, due to lack of a consistent tutor, but he manages by dictating most of his letters out of Driftmark to his trusted sister.
At age eleven, he had a brush with death when he fell from the edge of a ship and onto sharp rocks in the shallows. The impact knocked the air from his lungs and left him disoriented, unable to fight a strong current dragging him under. When he was recovered from the reef by the ship’s commander, it took nearly half an hour for them to coax the water from his lungs. The bruising on his spine and across his ribs left him bed-ridden for months, but he healed quickly. He has a spackling of scars on his back from hitting the sharp rocks.
Another product of his empty childhood was his friendship with ravens, gulls, hawks — whatever avian visited the towers of Driftmark castle, he named them and fed them all. This was a relief to the Maester who hated the long march up the stairs to retrieve messages, as for a brief time in Vyros’ youth, he took over the job. He is good with birds, always keeping one as a familiar. The current is a female crow he’s named Vehlya. Heartbroken when her nest was robbed of its eggs, she had plucked out most of her plumage and lost the will to live. When Vyros found her, she was half-buried in the quicksand of low tide.
He is still called “Fearless” among those of his fleet that are closest to him.
A master sailor, he could handle any post onboard a ship — including maintenance and repair. He is also an avid swimmer, able to hold his breath for nearly 3 minutes underwater and the first one to jump overboard for a drowning man or a dropped valuable.
While sailing a minor trade route at age 23, a small fleet of his was overtaken by pirates quite unexpectedly. The lionshare of the goods and two merchants were lost — more painfully for Vyros, so were a great number of his very select crew. The fight was brutal, leaving him with a nasty gut wound and the trail of a mean blade from his lower abdomen, down below his pelvic bone, and around his right hip/upper thigh. After a long recovery cut short by his stubbornness, he spent months trying to recover the bodies of those he’d lost to now avail. Nightmares of their mottled, bloated bodies still haunt him..
Though he is proficient with a sword, his greatest skill is with a bow. He is also naturally gifted with strategy despite his lack of a dedicated tutor.
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as written by maddy ( she / her , twenty three , est ) for proeliarp
ELAYNA MARTELL — ; golden jewelry decorating skin kissed by years of sunlight, an unwavering opinion strong enough to lower palace walls, the bat of an eye accompanied by a knowing smile to get heart’s current desire.
introduction. · connections. · playlist.
THALIA BUTTERWELL — ; a silken sheet of auburn hair that she was gifted from her mother, whimsical dreams of a life full of adventure, an ever mending broken heart as she tries to make up for lost time.
introduction. · connections. · playlist.
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𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐍 𝐃𝐑𝐔𝐌𝐌 . lord of old wyk, heir of the bone hand, and second in command of the iron fleet. faithful servant of the drowned god. when songs are sung, their verses speak of boy in a grip, like cataleptic rigidity, the fatal hold of ancestral ghost stories and paternal devotion, swirling in the water below like an eddy that threatens to pull everything under ; blood spilled in the water, life is gifted to the waves and is granted in return ; iron skeleton braves any storm with confidence, for death has come and his price already paid ; divinity is in his bones and he will not squander it. / intelligent & assured, morbid & zealous / information .
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⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐐𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃, red priest and sworn sword of the dreadfort
wide brown eyes lit red with the reflection of the flames from which they draw life and loyalty ; sparks flying from the clash of two blades clenched together in brutal warfare ; a sheet of inky dark hair being unwound from it’s tight braid over shoulders knotted with scars of flames long put out; a frozen river cracking as the sun moves higher into the sky as a sign from the lord of light ; hoof-beats muffled on fresh snowfall stealing away in the dead of the night ; prayers whispered in private with the lick of a dornish accent taught by a mother’s voice no longer heard.
INTRO • VISAGE • MUSINGS • INTERACTIONS
⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐆𝐖𝐘𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐘𝐉𝐎𝐘, driftwood queen of the iron islands
a pitcher too full with ale spilling as it’s lifted to laughing lips ; a prayer whispered to the drowned god under the cover of the surface asking for a sign that the driftwood crown rests on the right furrowed brow ; the triumphant crest of the waves against the prow of a longship bearing kraken sails ; a whip sharp smile and a curse falling from the same set of lips ; the hiss of the wind rushing along the walls of a stone keep and a persistent candle-flame burning long into the night ; a clear voice calling like a gull to the people of the isles ; her people, for whom she would do any and all things.
INTRO • VISAGE • MUSINGS • INTERACTIONS
⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐑𝐎𝐁𝐘𝐍 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐊, prince in the north
a dream interlaced with the inner workings of a birds’ mind as it wings over the forests of the northern kingdom ; a loud laugh bubbling over the noise of a great hall packed with fur-clad warriors ; the hoofbeats of a black horse stealing away from winterfell with all intention to return with the stories of an adventure well-had ; a fur cloak discarded messily on the stone floors of winterfell ; calloused hands from the sword hilt and calloused fingers from the strings of a lyre ; a hawk’s feather floating with the snowfall to the ground ; the sound of hoofbeats in the snow and the quiet panting of the sable direwolf which follows.
INTRO • VISAGE • MUSINGS • INTERACTIONS
#pro.intro#❪ ⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐐𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃. ┊❛ interaction ❜ ❫#❪ ⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐆𝐖𝐘𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐘𝐉𝐎𝐘. ┊❛ interaction ❜ ❫#❪ ⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐆𝐖𝐘𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐘𝐉𝐎𝐘. ┊❛ ask meme ❜ ❫#❪ ⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐐𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃. ┊❛ ask memes ❜ ❫#❪ ⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐐𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃. ┊❛ musings ❜ ❫#❪ ⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐆𝐖𝐘𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐘𝐉𝐎𝐘. ┊❛ musings ❜ ❫#❪ ⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐆𝐖𝐘𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐘𝐉𝐎𝐘. ┊❛ visage ❜ ❫#❪ ⋅ ◆ ⋆ — 𝐐𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃. ┊❛ visage ❜ ❫
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( queen freyja of house stark ) the north’s heart. thirty - two years old.
a wolf not born , but adopted to the pack . a heart locked behind a steeled cage for only few to see , for it beats too passionately and compassionately for common view - it is far too precious . fire hidden behind a collected gaze - reflecting a passion to guide ; to lead . blue roses woven into dark locks replacing a crown . a cloak swept against the snow - she wolf . queen in the north .
dependent oc for proeliarp , as written by kay ( she / her , est , 24 )
DOC ( WIP )
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app . playlist . pinterest .
🗡 𝐣𝐨𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐬𝐧𝐨𝐰 / bastard greenseer of greywater watch : the eyes, a gateway to the soul : murky viridian fog giving way to vestiges of what once was, what is, what will be — do we call this prophecy or curse? has there ever been a distinction? ; see the image of a wolf? throw it away. there is no wolf, there is no baring of teeth, no snarl and bite and snap. there is thick flood and lichen and a whisper of winter above. there is a snake, unassuming, venom lying in wait ‘neath its tongue for when it is hurt. the line between predator and victim is always too thin. ; this ancient, terrible thing inside grows teeth and gnaws on marrow and it looks like a mirror image of herself. there can be love in letting yourself be devoured.
— as dreamt by neve .
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