Waltyr Storm

## Personality

### Personality Description

Waltyr Storm is at first glance a crude, brutish man with little respect for the customs of his Kingdom. By virtue of his strength and his upbringing, Waltyr is somewhat of a bully, strong-arming those less physically adept into doing as he likes, and has little in the way of true morals to keep him from doing so. Physicality is just about his only strength, so he leverages it all he can, to varying levels of effectiveness. Waltyr is a mercurial individual, who can be quick to anger and implacable one day, and drowsy and placid another, happy to laugh and drink with the men of ‘his’ castle. He is a greedy eater, and a great enjoyer of food, especially pork, as well as beef stew, and will not eat leaks; he further partakes in copious amounts of alcohol when it is available.

Even still, Waltyr does have a few good qualities: despite what people will tell you, Waltyr is capable of some crude sense of fairness and mercy - he does not rule by any laws, merely how he is feeling at a given time, so with a “sufficiently heartfelt apology,” one might get away with crimes unscathed and untouched by the hands of justice. He is further very open-handed with his men, not caring much for plunder or jewelery, but tends to hoard food, especially fresh meats, from his men. Waltyr further enjoys the presence of birds, feeding Blackhaven’s ravens himself, and keeping all manor of falcons (of questionable stock). He names each and every one of them, but cannot tell them apart, and often forgets their names, given that he is not particularly intelligent. Waltyr is not particularly ambitious, but wants to live in comfort - his capture of Blackhaven was largely an act of revenge, rather than an actual desire to be lord of the castle.

### Goals and Motivation

* Remain in control of Blackhaven
* Prevent brother from reclaiming Blackhaven at all costs (uphold his sentence to the Night’s Watch)
	+ Failing this, avoid execution, and receive a stout keep in which to live comfortably, and tend ravens.

## Backstory

Waltyr Storm is the second born child of Lord Harrold Dondarrion, a bastard sired upon his wife’s maidservant, Lorea, which Harrold referred to as “passion” (the truth of this statement was largely up for interpretation, Lorea left Blackhaven soon after the birth of her son.) Waltyr was an exceedingly robust young boy - Lorea became so engrossed with child that there was talk that Waltyr might need to be cut from her belly. When he was finally born, he came out twisted and deformed, with two fat heads where there should only have been one, and heavier than any newborn had any right to be. He was born around 3 months after his older brother, Walton Dondarrion, their father’s trueborn son and heir to Blackhaven, so the two (or rather three) grew up in close proximity.

Waltyr was quicker to grow than his older brother, and on account of his size, excelled more than him in matters of battle and arms, though was slower in education, and quickly grew frustrated with the schooling of Maester Sigismund, never properly learning how to read. He was an implacable and hugely violent child, even as young as two or three, with little in the matter of patience, and came to be a bully upon the yard and in the halls of the castle, resenting bastardry as soon as he could understand what it was, not because it precluded him from due inheritance, as the second-born he would have missed out on it anyway. Instead, Waltyr resented his status because it precluded him from family - his brother and father looked down upon him as a misshapen wretch and a monster, and his step-mother ignored him entirely.

Walton and Waltyr squired jointly for their father from the age of eight, Lord Harrold Dondarrion putting into place some messy plan to unite his two sons, given their animosity. This plan, safe to say, did not work. They butted heads at every turn, Waltyr taking great pleasure in beating his brother when they sparred, and Walton in turn took pleasure in insulting his brother’s intelligence, and generally making him miserable at social affairs, chastising him for his bastardry and his deformity. The two hated each, so when they began a fight which prematurely ended a efast at Storm’s End when each of them were thirteen. Waltyr ended up seated away from the rest of his family, so when Walton came to gloat, a scuffle broke out, and Waltyr tossed his brother upon the Lord’s Dais, already huge and strong.

Instead, Waltyr squired for one of Harrold’s knights retainer, Ser Raynard of the Red Watch, called Ray the Red, and Walton remained at his father’s side. Raynard was an upjumped commoner, a hedge knight of little money and modest renown, a less than savoury type kept about only for the dirty jobs that needed doing. Waltyr distinguished himself here as an excellent warrior, spending most of his time fighting and interrogating smugglers, poachers and bandits operating along the Slayne River and the Rainwood, and in this time he fell in with some… less than scrupulous individuals, and amassed a reasonable amount of pocket-change taking bribes from smugglers and keeping handfuls of stolen goods. Waltyr was knighted at the age of six-and-ten, where he continued this small duty on behalf of his father, and became known as (somewhat comically, on account of his vestigial twin) The Two Storms.

At the age of twenty-three, it was decided that Waltyr had been unmarried for too long - he was not a desirable match, ugly, deformed, and with a troubled reputation, but even still, some poor vassal or retainer might think himself low enough to marry the two-headed man. He was eventually promised to the homely niece of the Knight of Brownhill, portly, and four years his senior. Waltyr was merely happy to have received some sort of prospect, and (likely for the first time in his life) gave a thankyou to his father that was more than just dutiful. Though she was no great beauty, nor any kind of beauty, Gretchel Brownhill was kind, and Waltyr liked her well enough, and she helped him tend the ravens. The two produced no sons, only a series of unfortunate miscarriages, and a sickly daughter who died in infancy, born with twisted limbs.

When elderly the Master-at-arms of Blackhaven died, Waltyr was the obvious successor, the strongest and most skilled knight in the castle’s entire garrison, as well as kin to House Dondarrion. Walton, who had succeeded his father when he and his brother were five-and-twenty, refused, on account of their difficult history, and cited Waltyr’s appearance, and the Stormlands opinions of him, and Waltyr took it personally, an argument breaking out between the two brothers. Walton received a broken nose, and left the solar with a scowl and an insult. That night, Waltyr found his brother in bed with his wife - this was another slight, he assumed - Walton was an attractive fellow, a knight, and the lord of a castle. There were far more beautiful maidens in the castle, and all of them more willing than Gretchel besides. Walton claimed she had wanted him, yet Gretchel claimed to have been raped.

Waltyr left the castle with his wife in tow the following morning, sitting on the back of a hay cart. He felt slighted. Indignant. Enraged. He gathered what friends he had, largely bandits and smugglers, and took out a few impromptu loans with some of his more criminal friends and acquaintances. Eventually he amassed close to eighty men, sellswords mostly, or otherwise people he had convinced to sell their sword, and he scaled the castle walls under cover of night. By the morning, Ser Waltyr Storm was calling himself the “Lord of Blackhaven” and had sent his older brother to the Wall, not wanting his bones buried anywhere near his new castle. The whole ordeal took many months to orchestrate, and Gretchel Brownhill would eventually give birth to a healthy son, Sam, before dying from complications associated with childbirth.

Instead of heading to the wall, Walton headed to his liege lord’s castle, Summerhall, in search of support.