Dagon Pyke

The Bastard of Blacktyde

**Dagon Pyke**, called the Bastard of Blacktyde, is the natural son of second son Roderick Blacktyde and unbeknownst to most, the princess-septa Naerys, and a grandson to Blacktyde's ruling lord, Dagmer.

## Early Years

Born in secret to the second son of Lord Dagmer and a princess of House Targaryen who had taken a septa's vows, Dagon was separated from his mother almost immediately after birth one year by his father to accompany him and his fleet on their reaving.

The Septa Naerys, daughter of Aenar, had boarded a Pentoshi cog bound for King's Landing out of Gulltown. Not half a day into the Narrow Sea, black sails darkened the sky. The reavers struck at night, taking the ship's crew unawares in a quick boarding action. The former Princess was able to throw all evidence of her royal birth overboard before the fierce Ironborn seized her.

Claimed by the longship's dashing captain as a prize, she was kept out of the crew's grasping hands in his personal cabin. Always struck with a curious fascination for the Greenlander faiths, Roderick Blacktyde supposedly traded his captive's virtue intact for lessons in the Seven.

Spending more time on the rocking deck of his father's longship than on solid ground, the young bastard grew up amongst hard men and harder environs. He learned to read and do sums on ship's logs and ledgers; his dancing lessons were the nightly exercise of dodging the besotted haymakers of drunken shipmates.

But in spite of the violence of his rearing, young Dagon came to love the adventure and freedom of the high seas. Discovering an unnatural affinity for violence, he learned the dance of steel from the knights and cutthroats in his father's crew. At the age of eight, he killed his first man, guarding the ships while his father's men were reaving the Summer Isles. By thirteen, he rivaled boys a head and five years his senior with sword and bow, and possessed cunning enough to overcome a rapidly shrinking size disadvantage.

Quickly growing to embrace the taboo of his birth, Dagon quickly grew to embrace the taboo of his birth, and embody the epithet of "bastard". Of a quick wrist, and a quicker mind, Dagon grew into his own, establishing a name for himself as a vicious killer unsurpassed in skill or savagery. Involved in all his father's counsel under the guise of a cupbearer, he watched on as the best captains of the elder generation planned the most audacious raids to plague the Fourteen Seas since the Crow's Eye.

Yet even the best dysfunctional childhoods must come to an end. Word came from the islands that Lord Blacktyde himself was not well, and Roderick, the dutiful son for once in his life, ordered his helmsman to set course for Blacktyde.

## The Return

It was not the first time the *Maidensbane* had returned to the Isles. Indeed, Roderick Blacktyde's longship had returned countless times, heavy laden, to sell the bounty of plunder of fourteen seas. But while her captain would put into Lordsport to sell to the merchants and drink with the Botleys, or call at Ten Towers to visit with friends and cousins, he had always given the island of Blacktyde a wide berth.

So it was with a curious detachment that fourteen-year old Dagon Pyke watched his return to the shores of a home he'd never known.

He watched, as the *Maidensbane* warped into the harbor, and his tall father and his raven-black hair leapt onto the wharf to be embraced by an older man whose locks were jet tinged with grey.

He watched, as the children who would be his relations swarmed to welcome this strange new brother home. Noted that only one hung back, a girl, tall for her age, and slender in leathers, watching with eyes blue as ice and a sword on her hip, tossing and catching a throwing axe, end over end over end...

## The Events Leading to 407 A.C.

It was not the first time the *Bastard* had returned to the Isles. Indeed, the infamous longship and her sleek lines had graced the horizons countless times, heavy laden with the bounty of plunder of fourteen seas. But while her captain would put into Lordsport to sell to the merchants and drink with the Botleys, or call at Ten Towers to visit with friends and cousins, he had always given the island of Blacktyde a wide berth.

So it was with a curious detachment that twenty-four year old Dagon Pyke revisited memories he'd put behind him with wine, women, and more wine.

The sound the ship*'*s timber made as it caught and went up in tendrils of orange and red.

The groan of a dying man as one of his men blundered onto a hand by accident, sight obscured by the thick turban tied about the face.

The smell of burning flesh and illness, as he and his watched the *Nightfire* embody her namesake.

The silence as they made their way to the longboat, and shoved off.

The feeling of the black boatcloth, coarse and thick, doused in lye, grating against his nose and cheeks as he pulled the mask down from his face so she could see it, properly, bathed in moonbeams and the fierce light from part of his soul burning aboard that ship.

How beautiful she looked that night, her hair falling about her, unbraided, silver in one light, spun-gold in another. A woman, grown into her own, and deadly, the flash of a collarbone, beneath eyes watching alight with rage and despair and heartbreak, a sword on her hip, tossing a throwing axe, end over end over end...

The feeling of the breeze on his hands as he opened them wide, open and out at his sides as he stared back at her.

The whirl of the axe as it coursed past his face, caught the edge of a removed hood, and thudded off a gunwhale, clattered to the longboat's floor.

The hurried voices of his crew, muddled together, telling him to get down, that he'd been hit, as he ran the heel of his hand along a cheek.

He held out the same hand, open, dark-red and dripping.

"The axe." His voice, deadly quiet, even as the Sea of Sighs in a calm.

They knew not to disobey him.

He tossed it, end over end over end, into waves black and deep, holding those eyes blue as ice unblinking.

She'd get no apology.

She knew what he was.