Aeron Harlaw

Lawspeaker of the Kingdom of the Iron Isles

Joanna Hill

Aemma

Emphyria Serry

Valyna of Pentos

Uria Pyke

Alannys Harlaw

Lucas Harlaw

Beron Harlaw

Tristifer Pyke

Gysella Harlaw

Kenned Pyke

Dunstan Harlaw

Qarl Harlaw

Ygon Pyke

Asha Orkmont

Aeron Harlaw is the lord of Harlaw Hall, patriarch of House Harlaw, and one of the most powerful and influential lords of the Kingdom of the Iron Islands. The second son of the late Lord Andrik Harlaw, Aeron’s rise to prominence came as a result of his actions during the War of the Seadragon Throne. After beginning the civil war as a supporter of his father, and by extension Iron King Torgon Greyjoy, Aeron formed an alliance with House Drumm, bringing dozens of Harlaw ships and thousands of warriors to the rebels’ side in exchange for their support in overthrowing his father and brother as the lords of Harlaw Hall.

## Appearance and Character

Aeron is of middling height and stocky build, with powerful limbs and a broad chest, a bull neck, and a heavy jaw. His face and skin are pock-marked by scars and tanned to the consistency of old leather by years on the seas. Aeron wears his dark hair long, though with age it has begun to thin at the temples. His beard is thick and short, of a similar colour, though shot-through with grey. Beneath heavy brows, perpetually furrowed, his blue grey eyes seem almost bone-white.

Foul-tempered but slow to rouse, and soft-spoken in his rage, Aeron is a man to be most feared when he grows quiet. Proud, wrathful, and ambitious, he is a staunch believer in the oldest Ironborn traditions: reaving, thrall-taking, salt-wives, the Kingsmoot, and the worship of the Drowned God. Aeron sees the Greenlanders and their holdings as weak, fit only to serve as fodder for Ironborn blades and plunder for Ironborn vaults. An opportunist first and foremost, Aeron lacks subtlety but is not without cunning: after all, an axe-blow is most effective if made at the right time and aimed at a vital point.

## Biography

### Early Life

Aeron was born the second son to Lord Andrik Harlaw in 53 AC. When still a boy, Aeron watched his father help elect Victarion Greyjoy - Aeron’s uncle by marriage - as the first Iron King of the newly-independent kingdom, at the first Kingsmoot in nearly 5,000 years. His youth was filled with stories of the great Ironborn heroes of ages past, who did not sow but reaped the yields of others - those too weak or too cowardly to defend what they had. A deep-seeded and pathological disdain for the Greenlanders was fostered in the boy, which would in time come to put him at odds with his father.

From his youth Aeron was a mischievous and rowdy child, his wildness interrupted by prolonged periods of dour brooding, and what could only be described as a youthful attempt at plotting. Though his schemes often lacked imagination, they were expertly timed: horse dung packed into a captain’s boots the morning before he was to stand before his men and demand their respect, or an axe’s pommel smeared with grease and fat just before it was to be used for a Finger Dance. After his complicity in such a scheme was discovered, Aeron would inevitably be found by the strand, listening intently to the sermons of the Drowned Priests, and ever-volunteering to wade into the water first, and thus be absolved and reborn.

By the time he became a young man, Aeron’s pursuits had changed. At fourteen, he participated in his first raid. Four years later, he led a raid of his own, claiming the gold, silver, pride, and maiden daughter of Lord Westerling as plunder. Successive years brought ever-greater conquests to the ambitious young captain, who tested his blade and his ship from Bear Island to the Stepstones, and near-everywhere between.

### War of the Seadragon Throne

With time, differences of temperament and ideology had crystallized between Aeron and his father and brother. Where Lord Andrik and his heir, Otto, were of Iron King Torgon Greyjoy’s mind - that is, sympathetic and open towards their ancient Greenlander foes - Aeron felt nothing but disgust at what he perceived as the weakness and indolence of the lords who knelt before the dragons of House Targaryen. The Ironborn had endured the long millennia since the Age of Heroes because they placed their faith in their traditions, he maintained: the Drowned God, the Kingsmoot, the Iron Price - it was only when the Ironborn abandoned these cornerstones that they had allowed themselves to be made thralls by the Targaryens. Now, the Greyjoys threatened to drag the Ironborn back into the arms of the Greenlanders, and undo half a century of progress.

Nevertheless, Aeron respected tradition far too much to express his doubts in public, before his father’s subjects, let alone his peers. So he bit his tongue and bided his time, as storm clouds gathered on the horizon. When reavers of House Drumm and House Goodbrother attacked the ship bringing Iron King Torgon’s Greenlander bride and her dowry to Pyke, Aeron applauded their audacity and conviction in silence, even as he armed himself to go to war against them. House Harlaw declared their loyalty to the Greyjoys, and soon civil war engulfed the Isles.

Harlaw’s forces comprised the bulk of those loyal to Iron King Torgon, and in the months that followed Aeron would lead the ships and warriors of Harlaw Hall, the Tower of Glimmering, Grey Garden, Harlaw Hall, Harridan Hill, Volmark, Stonetree, Myre, and Kenning against the rebels. He fought in numerous small battles across the archipelago, killing Drennan Goodbrother in one, Lorren Merlyn in another, and crossing blades with Lodos Drumm in a third.

As the war drew on and the fighting grew increasingly desperate for both sides, cracks began to show in the facade of cooperation and fraternity between the lords of Harlaw Hall. Against the orders of his father, Aeron released dozens of Drumm and Goodbrother prisoners taken after one particularly bloody battle. In another, he broke the jaw Lord Jorl Harlaw of Harlaw Hall, when the lord tried to force himself on Lord Drumm’s daughter Esgred. Aeron proceeded to claim the girl for himself, only to return her to House Drumm personally.

In this errand he did not go alone, however: he took with him some twenty ships loyal to him before his father and brother, and sought out lords Drumm and Goodbrother personally. To them he made a simple offer: he would bring them Harlaw ships and fighting men at the expense of the loyalists; he would provide them with information about when and where loyalist patrols sailed; he would show them safe anchorages on Harlaw from whence the rebels’ ships could strike; last of all, he pledged his support for the legitimate kingship of Lodos Drumm.

In exchange for these boons, Aeron was granted the hand of Lord Drumm’s eldest daughter as his rock wife, the right to keep the plunder he had taken from rebel ships and holds, exoneration from blood feuds accrued by his combating of the rebels, and most importantly, lordship of Harlaw Hall once Iron King Torgon and his loyalist followers were deposed. To this last, Aeron amended that he wished for his father and brother to be spared - allowed to go into exile, take the Black, or enter the ranks of the Drowned Priests. In so doing, he saved his reputation from the stain of the kinslayer, and heavily tipped the scales in favor of the rebels.

At the final battle of the war, Aeron fought alongside Drumm, Goodbrother, and Blacktyde warriors against those of Greyjoy and Harlaw. When the battle was done, he made good his promise and supported Iron King Lodos’ coronation, and saw to it that Cromm Wavewalker personally legitimized his lordship of Harlaw Hall and Harlaw in the wake of the “traitors’” deposition.

### Lordship of Harlaw

In the years following the war, Aeron worked diligently to mend the wounds the conflict had wrought on Harlaw and the kingdom as a whole. He regularly attended religious ceremonies with Cromm Wavewalker, and solidified his right-to-rule and his allegiance to House Drumm by marrying Iron King Lodos’ daughter, Esgred: the same woman he had saved from Jorl Harlaw and returned to her family during the war. Yet Aeron’s spirit was unchanged, even if his position was: for the next twenty years, scarcely a moon’s turn would pass without Harlaw ships sailing forth to reave and raid under Aeron’s command. This was only right and proper, as Aeron saw it: such was the Ironborn way - the same way they had just fought a bloody and costly war to preserve. Now that the war was over, the costs it had accrued had to be made up - and as every Ironborn child knew, the men of the Isles did not sow.

### Recent Events

Aeron saw combat in the debacle known as Urragon's Folly, seeing many good men into the depths of the Drowned God at the hands of the royal fleet. When the Iron Islands were restored to House Greyjoy, Aeron chafed against the ruling and subsequently threw his lot behind the ascendant Sigrun Blacktyde. Though he held misgivings regarding a Queen as opposed to a king, Aeron fought alongside House Blacktyde at Nagga's Hill when the moot was assailed by Florian Greyjoy.

Following the Redwyne attack on the Iron Isles, Aeron was notably displeased by the vassalisation rather than annihilation of House Redwyne.

## Family and Household

* ~~Lord Andrik Harlaw (29 - 96 AC)~~
* ~~m. Eldiss Harlaw née Myre (33 - 67 AC)~~
	+ Otto Harlaw (b. 50 AC)
	+ **Lord Aeron Harlaw (b. 53 AC)**
	+ m. Syella Harlaw née Drumm (b. 61 AC)
		- ~~Qhorwyn Pyke (72 - 95 AC)~~
		- Selyse Pyke (b. 73 AC)
		- Uria Pyke (b. 74 AC)
		- ~~Urrek Pyke (b/d. 75 AC)~~
		- ~~Balon Pyke (75 - 90 AC)~~
		- Lomas Pyke (b. 76 AC)
		- Alannys Harlaw (b. 78 AC)
		- **Lucas Harlaw (b. 80 AC)**
		- Beron Harlaw (b. 83 AC)
		- Rohanne Pyke (b. 83 AC)
		- Tristifer Pyke (b. 83 AC)
		- Gysella Harlaw (b. 85 AC)
		- Tanna Pyke (b. 86 AC)
		- Lorimas Harlaw (b. 87 AC)
		- Rodrik Pyke (b. 87 AC)
		- Lyanna Pyke (b. 88 AC)
		- Kenned Pyke (b. 90 AC)
		- Dunstan Harlaw (b. 91 AC)
		- ~~Qarl Harlaw (93 - 96 AC)~~
		- Ygon Pyke (b. 96 AC)
	+ Alys Botley née Harlaw (b. 57 AC)
	+ Asha Volmark née Harlaw (b. 59 AC)
* ~~Iron Queen Helya Greyjoy née Harlaw (42 - 72 AC)~~
* ~~m. Iron King Victarion Greyjoy (d. 73 AC)~~