Tormod Blacktyde

## History

Tormod Blacktyde was born to Lord Harren and Lady Esgred Blacktyde née Kenning during
a night of the fifth full moon of the three-hundred thirty-eighth year
following Aegon’s Conquest. He was a strong and hefty child. Tormod’s birth was
his maidenly mother’s first pregnancy. It was expedient, successful, and would
prove to be the only one of the sort.

Tormod’s grand-sire, Baelor Blacktyde, was a greenlander hostage warded in Oldtown
following the Greyjoy Rebellion. He returned a man faithful to the Seven and
opposed Euron Greyjoy’s ascent to the Seastone Chair. For this, King Euron had
Baelor divided into seven pieces, all equally as devout as the next.

His father’s ship *Nightflyer* seized, and sable
cloak draped over King Euron’s shoulders, young Harren Blacktyde saw fit to
keep the disgraced Lord Blacktyde’s memory from further damaging the House. He
surrounded himself with Drowned Priests and old reavers, and aimed to keep the
Old Way as much as treaties and pacts would allow.

Before
his tenth nameday, Lord Harren commissioned a vessel to gift his heir; a long
and formidable war galley with the beamwidth, deckhouses, and cargo holds of a
trading cog. Asked what name to bless the vessel with, young Tormod coined it *The Seven Pieces*. When he was of
adequate age and ability, he would be allowed to captain it.

Tormod,
the eldest son of Blacktyde and only healthy offspring for the majority of his
childhood, received countless lessons in navigating and seafaring violence from
Harren and his men. *The gold and silver*
price we pay for eyes to witness*, Harren would tell him,* but the iron price we pay when darkness and
stealth allow. *The lessons being primarily how to board a moving ship*
cloaked by nightfall and leather hoods armed with axe and cudgel, and then
empty a hold with a soft foot and swift taking of another captain’s helm.

Not
a year a later, Lady Esgred Blacktyde would give birth to a healthy child,
Joron, for only the second time. It cost her life in the end. And though the
result was a quieter and more somber household, Lord Harren turned his
attentions enthusiastically to his second son.

In
354, at the age of six and ten, under little supervision and now captaining his
vessel, Tormod attempted to join the raiding lords in assaulting the northern
coast. He sailed without colors or sigil, but hesitation grew as he approached
the shores and pondered what his father would have wished for. He let the air
out of his sails and turned for home. When he returned to Blacktyde, he
confessed the attempt to his Lord father who responded with an admiration and a
wish of his own to raid the Wolf’s shores. Lord Harren offered a confession of
his own to Tormod, that he had helped supply House Tawney’s fleet knowing their
intent to raid the Westerlands.

In
361 AC, while battling illness, Lord Harren drowns in the waters off Blacktyde
Isle. Now Lord, Tormod sets his efforts to establishing a portion of House
Blacktyde’s fleet as traders with the Free Cities. He led the routes himself
allowing his brother Joron to learn of running a household.

## Recent Events

In
the 370 AC, when the Wolf King and Lord Paramount rushed off to celebrate what
they called ‘*peace*’, Lord Tormod was
at sea between Lys and the Stepstones, returning with half-loaded holds paid in
gold and silver and the intent to fill the remainder by other means.