Yara Pyke

## Captain of the Hardhand

Sabotage

**Yara Pyke** is the captain of the war galley *Hardhand*, a pirate vessel based in the Stepstones.

## Appearance

Yara possesses the sturdy build of most Ironborn women, coupled with a subtle finesse gifted from her mother, a salt wife taken from beyond the Narrow Sea. Sharp features are surmounted by eyes as dark as blue as the Summer Sea and just as unpredictable, and tempestuous locks of hair seem to lack any luster until revealed to the sun, under which they are reflected a deep auburn.

A handful of white pearls are woven into slender braids, though the multitude of her hair is left down. At a height of five feet and four inches, she is not as imposing a figure as some but the lack of presence is made up for with a harsh countenance and the overabundance of muscles strengthened from years aboard the decks of various ships.

The pirate captain has never worn a gown in her life, preferring leathers and thick wool to the opulence worn by most vagabonds in the Stepstones, and is never seen without her ever-present patched and re-patched hat.

## History

Urrigon Farwynd was the type of man to have many bastards and little love for any of them, much less for the salt wives whose bodies were naught more than objects of pleasure for the Ironborn captain. A harsh man, with cruel eyes grey as iron and an unforgiving edge as sharp as the winter sea.

It was little wonder to his last wife, a woman he had chanced to take from the pleasure houses of Lys, that Urrigon did not even visit to witness the birth of his fourth daughter. She would not wonder long, as two days of strenuous labor would see her heart stilled and her body given to the waves.

Infants were little use in a household, but at the age of two each of the Farwynd's children - trueborn or not - were tossed into the sea and made to learn how to swim. Salt water ran as swiftly as blood through
their veins, or so they were often told. Not three years later, Yara Pyke would earn her first true taste of the sea aboard the deck of her father's ship, the *Sea Bitch*.

From her fifth year of life onward, the girl spent each day rising well before the sun to race down rocky slopes to the wharf, where the men of Lonely Light tutored her in **sailing**, knot-making and sail-stitching. The wooden timbers of a ships' deck served as a bed many a night, the stars her shimmering blanket.

The journey down to turbulent grey waters became easier each year as legs lengthened and feet became accustomed to the path, though she never quite reached the height of any of her siblings. Through years of effort and countless voyages in and around the isles, slender arms soon became strong enough to wield a **sword**. She favored a sensible weapon in a scrap unlike her father, who relied on his bare, heavy fists.

The year 355 saw the passing of a fifteenth name day, and a raid which would forever incite in the young woman a hunger for spoils and a sense of **leadership**. The six bastards of the Hardhand
commandeered a longship, which was promptly sailed North. The crew ransacked a coastal fishing village, and though few valuables were discovered Yara was elated at the prospect of bounty so easily won.

Urrigon beat every single youth who had taken part in the reaving until all were bloodied and bruised, but for Yara the consequences held little meaning. Three years later, she would steal another longship from
 her father's flotilla along with the help of her longtime friend and fellow bastard Cragorn. It was a vessel bordering on near-derelict, and the pair nearly lost their lives in the face of a storm as they fled
south, rounding the tip of Westeros and navigating to the Stepstones by sunlight and starlight.

For the next half a decade, the two young Iron Islanders would find a place amongst the pirates who called the broken Arm of Dorne their home, and they would school her in the shaded arts of **sabotage**. It was through clever deception and no small amount of bravery that Yara managed to capture the Volantene galley *Divine Wind*, renaming it the *Hardhand* in spiteful memory of Urrigon.

The past eight years have seen the bastard woman grow into a pirate
and sellsail of some renown, well-liked amongst the brigands and thieves who inhabit the bowels of Torturer's Deep, and feared by merchant vessels who should ever fall within sight of the crowned skull and black sails of her war galley. During countless exploits and adventures, Yara managed to amass a crew of strikingly different backgrounds, each of them vowing to prove their loyalties to the bitter end.

## Important Events

* **340 AC:** Yara is born to Urrigon Farwynd and a Lyseni salt wife called Marei.
* **342 AC:** Yara learns to swim, the Ironborn way. This also serves as a sort of baptism, though she never expressed interest in a religion.

* **345 AC:** Yara has her first trip aboard a ship, and from this point onward she learns to sail.
* **350 AC:** Yara takes up the sword, and she is instructed by her father's men.
* **355 AC:** Yara and her bastard brothers and sisters go "reaving." Urrigon punishes them harshly.
* **358 AC:** Yara and her friend Cragorn Pyke steal a ship, running away to the Stepstones.
* **359 AC:** Yara and Cragorn are taught how to raid ships and the coastlines by pirates.
* **363 AC:** Yara assumes control of her very own ship, a Volantene war galley. She becomes more independent of the Stepstone pirates and begins gathering a crew of her own from various ports and places.

## Family

* Urrigon Farwynd of Lonely Light, The “Hardhand” - Father (b. 315)
* Marei, a pleasure slave from Lys - Mother (d. 340)

## Household Members (Crew)

* Wryn - First Mate of the *Hardhand* (34)
	+ Gift - Administrator

A brigand from the bowels of Torturer’s Deep, Wryn knows the Narrow Sea and the oceans beyond as well as the back of his own hand, and has never lost a prize.

* Shiera - Coin Keeper of the *Hardhand* (27)
	+ Gift - Sums

The bastard daughter of a Pentoshi magistrate, Shiera found herself
working in several pillow houses before she was recruited by Yara, not as a whore but as a counter of coin.

* Cragorn “Black Fist” - Bosun of the *Hardhand* (32)
	+ Gift - Strong

The child of a salt wife like his captain, Cragorn Pyke was a
constant presence in Yara’s life as a child and his severe demeanor and brutish strength make him an excellent bosun.

* Ashur - Boatswain and Carpenter (29)
	+ Gift - Ambidextrous

A former servant to the Glorious Master of New Ghis, Ashur built ships during his days as a slave and was rescued from the wreckage of a cog during a storm in the Gulf of Grief.

* Sūn Wu Xiáng - Quartermaster and Navigator (38)
	+ Gift - Martially Adept

Born in the far reaches of the known world in Yi Ti, Xiáng was a soldier in the imperial navy of Jinqi before joining Yara’s crew, his skill in combat unmatched by any western man.

* Dake - Ship’s Boy (14)
	+ Gift - Voice

A "boy" found pickpocketing and singing around the wharves at the Ragman’s Harbor in Braavos, he was abandoned by his previous mates who sailed aboard a Westerosi ship.

## The Hardhand

The war galley is some one hundred and seventy-five feet in length, forty feet wide, and is powered by both rowers and sails. A ram cased in bronze sits partially submerged beneath the water at the fore of the ship, just beneath a figurehead in the likeness of a skull wearing a tri-pointed crown. Three rows of oar holes are drilled in either side, and two masts support sails of silk as black as night as well as a triangular foresail which can be unfurled in front. Decorative gable runs along the outer edges, painted crimson and carved with Valyrian glyphs, and the wood is stained dark in places by innumerable patchings with sap and tar. The ship was originally known by its Volantene masters as the *Divine Wind* but was renamed as a spite to Yara’s father.