#ironborn

[thewatcher0nthewall]

The Grim Lady of Pyke

[angelwingtrap]

~Tristifer Botley~

Part two of drawing Ironborn minor characters. Hagen’s daughter here <3 …did I get his goofy seal eyes down?

[awfulassassin]

[queerfics]

(Smut/Drabble) Is It Casual Now? CisF! Reader x Yara Greyjoy

Summary: Y/N, a member of Yara's crew and longtime fling, finds herself struggling to face the reality of the Ironborn serving a Targaryen tyrant, especially after Yara's confession.

Word Count: 1.4K

Warnings: ANGST ANGST ANGST! It's horny but it's sad. Oral sex, f/f, lesbianism (but that's a blessing), angsty sex, sad sex, crying

A/N: YES the title is based off of Casual by Chappell Roan. Every time I listen to it I can't help but imagine something angsty with Yara.

NO MINORS BEYOND THIS POINT

The boat crashing against the rage of the sea only slammed your hips farther onto Yara's fingers as you struggled to keep yourself upright. Her hips worked some to hold you in place on top of the crate you sat upon, but still you tethered yourself on a rope hanging from the ceiling of the steerage.

Your moans were partially washed out by the creaking of the boat and partially by the way she smothered your lips in her own, and when she groaned back into you, your hand dropped and wrapped around her neck, deepening the kiss in a clash of teeth and tongue.

This wasn't unusual for the two of you. You'd been the only female member of her crew for quite some time, and like any of the men on board, you two preferred to find solace in the arms of a woman. It had never been anything serious, and it had always been something kept mostly private. Yara loved good company, but with a member of her crew could put her authority in jeopardy.

However, there was something unusual about the way Yara's mouth wandered to your neck. There was something entirely unusual about the way that she, rather than a simple bite on the shoulder to stifle her own noises, worked a deliberate mark right at the base of your jaw. In all three years of your little secret, Yara had never made such intentions present.

This new sensation pulled little gasps from you that floated right to Yara's spine, sending a shiver down it, so she continued placing her claim at the base of your throat, in the dip of your neck, under your ear, creating bruises that eventually washed to the other side of your throat as well.

Her fingers pumped ferociously inside of you, carelessly bruising every sweet spot like it was her last moments on this earth. When you cried out against her, she cooed into your ear so sweetly that you couldn't even form the words to tell her to stop (not that you would want to).

"Are you going to cum for me, sweetheart?" She whispered into your ear, and you shuddered, letting out a breathy laugh.

"N-no," you said, knowing it was the complete opposite of the truth. It was impossible for you to not to, especially when you knew she could feel the way you pulsed around her fingers, the way you gushed into her palm with every push, and the twitch of your thighs with every gentle curl.

"I don't think so," you murmured, letting a teasing smile slip.

Yara shook her head, chuckling and digging her fingers into a particular spot that had you almost jumping out of your seat. She watched, lips parted as your head fell back against the wall of the ship and your eyes fought not to squeeze shut.

"Your cunt is telling me a different story," she growled. She pressed her hand into your lower stomach, building another toe-curling pressure inside you as she held you in place. She kissed you sweetly after you let out a small cry, then sank to her knees.

You watched as Yara turned her focus to mouth at your clit, the vulnerability in her kneeling not slipping past you. The admiration in her eyes, the intensity of her passion - these things did not go unnoticed, and you felt your eyes begin to water. Tingles worked their way up your shoulder, and your ears rang as she pulled moan after moan from you. Your fingers dug into the crate, and you looked down at her with flushed cheeks.

Your heart pounded in your chest, but every other beat pulled a painful chord in your chest, and Yara could feel the way you began to choke up. Her hand slipped down to rub your thigh affectionately, but you instinctively grabbed it, interlacing your fingers.

Your eyes began to burn and blur as salty tears slipped down your rosy cheeks, and Yara squeezed your hand, watching the way you rested your other hand over your forehead, too mixed up between the climaxing pleasure and your longing heart to stay still.

"Yara," you whimpered out, "I'm, I'm-" But you couldn't get it out. It was all too much, the banging in your chest, the way Yara's fingers opened you up as easily as two flower petals, the way she made out with your sex like it was the love of her life, the way she had made it obvious to anyone who looked at you for the next week what had happened, and how they would know exactly who did it--

-- if you made it to the end of the week.

Tensions were high in all parts of the world, and the recent alliance between the Iron Islands and Daenerys Stormborn had completed changed the basis of the Ironborn way of life, and every member of the fleet in particular was feeling the effects of it.

Being pulled so far away from home, losing friends and family members too far from the sea to even retrieve them, and now you were following the trail of the dead with Yara to meet the queen who had started all of this, who had threatened and reconstructed an ancient way of life.

"What do you mean you don't want to go?" Yara stuttered, looking at you in disbelief. "That's not your decision to make, Y/N."

You stood on the other side of the room, running your hands through your hair. Your fight had echoed through the halls of Pyke until Yara had had enough and pulled you into a private room, but even now, passerby stopped to listen in.

It wasn't that you were a particularly disobedient soldier. You had always trusted Yara with your life, obeyed every command, even if that meant returning to her drenched in blood and void of emotion. She was your Captain, your Queen, and you had promised your life to her.

"Why are you serving her?" You exclaimed, throwing your hands up. "She's not even Ironborn, and you've known her for all but a few weeks, and now you've bent the knee?"

"Y/N," Yara stepped forward cautiously, but you waved her off, stepping back. She could feel the heat radiating off of you, feel the anger ripping at the air, threatening the foundation of this offhand non-commitment commitment you had to each other.

"No, Yara!" You exclaimed, "I won't go off to die in the middle of some fucking sea-less dessert for some woman I've never met!"

"She is the Dragon Queen!" Yara argued back, slowly letting her own temper slip from her. "She is the breaker of chains! She will bring no harm to the islands - you know I would not allow that."

You turned to her, eyes burning with rage, and met her face.

"Oh, but you have so willingly sacrificed everything the Ironborn stand for and everything we are for her!" You screamed. Yara stared fiercely down at you, though she did not respond. "And for what? What do we receive in return?"

Still, Yara said nothing. This irritated you even further, so you went further, going so far as to push Yara back. She let you, still quiet.

"You cannot kill another Ironborn, so what, you've taken to dragging us far away and drowning us all in her name?" You hissed. "What has she promised you? Or are you truly just so wound up in some foreign woman's cunt you would erase everything we have worked for?"

You went to push her again, but Yara grabbed on to your wrists. She dragged you forward, bringing you until you were so close you thought she might kiss you if it weren't for the circumstances.

For a long moment, you stared at each other, rage stirring and boiling at the very sight of each other, at the implications you had grown to believe about each other during this fight.

Then, Yara opened her mouth.

Nothing came out at first, simply a few stuttered breaths, then a glance away. And though you had quite a few times before worked Yara up to the point of chosen silence, never had you rendered Yara speechless.

Then, she looked back down at you, and swallowed thickly. Her expression had changed, twisted into a much more somber one.

"If I die out there," she whispered, "I cannot die without you."

[laurellerual]

helloo xx i love your art! do you have any theon sketches?? i’d love to see him in your style :)

Unfortunately none that I like enough to post, so I did this for you. Hope you like it!

[duchess-of-oldtown]

You gotta have mad respect for Wex. The kid survives a massacre and then risks his neck to gather intel on Rickon's whereabouts (all the while avoiding Osha and Shaggydog's notice) and then using his knowledge to manipulate two major Lords in the North? The kid could have walked into the nearest village and started a new life, there's no way to tell he's Ironborn, he has no distinguishing features nor able to be betrayed by an accent. But no, this little kid says no, fuck it, "I'm staying right here and creating chaos on purpose". He learned from Theon but does it ✨successfully✨

[jedimaesteryoda]

Do you find the Ironborn an interesting part of GRRMs story and/or world building?

The Ironborn are clearly inspired by the Vikings with the revanchist Confederate sympathizers. The tradition of the kingsmoot where they elected kings is a unique development, but only lords and men with enough property (a ship) get a vote. It's a society effectively controlled by pirates. They also have slavery in the form of thralls, and yet refuse to call it slavery with an attitude of "yeah, but it's not like those people" despite it still involving kidnapping people, and forcing them into a life of unpaid, forced labor and sexual violence for women.

As someone who supports anti-colonial movements in real-life, I find them interesting. They are the westernmost kingdom with a history of using their technological advantages in the form of iron when the mainland used bronze, as well as longships, to colonize and plunder the mainland and enslave the greenlanders under a Manifest Destiny doctrine. After they lost those advantages and lost their independence, they kept the Old Way going by appealing to an imagined past. This effectively makes them the most easily despised society in Westeros with a steady mix of the worst impulses: racism, misogyny, hypermasculinity and slavery and liable to turn on each other.

The Old Way is represented by the Greyjoys, a family with systemic abuse, few real relationships with one another other than with Balon, and a lot of infighting living in a literally crumbling castle falling into the sea. Balon launches a rebellion, fails, suffering big personal losses and is then "don't worry, it'll totally work this time." He is an old man clinging to the past, brooding alone in his tower as his house figuratively and literally crumbles around him. Victarion personifies the Old Way as is: an unhappy, hypermasculine dumbass warrior with his imagination constrained by the limits of his ideology, making him a tool easily manipulated. Euron is the Old Way as it appeals to the Ironborn: appealing on the surface but a predatory monster beneath who promises an impossible dream destined for disaster. The Ironborn take it given he is offering them emotion, and Ironborn are deeply unhappy as a people. The Old Way doesn't give them the happiness it promises, but plenty of disaster when their victims inevitably fight back.

The Old Way is riddled with hypocrisy with Victarion saying the Shield Island ships fleeing battle ceased to be men when they retreated when he did the same thing at Fair Isle. Aeron disdains maesters for choosing a life of service when he did as a Drowned Man. They begrudge Robert's forces' invasion and destruction of the Iron Isles when they glorify doing the same to others.

There are however those who support a New Way like The Reader and the three Harmunds before him.

There is clearly a struggle between the Old Way and the New Way within Ironborn society going on for centuries. The three Harmunds encouraged friendly relations with the greenlands and trade as well as literacy with Harmund III trying to outlaw the Old Way. The Shrike led a rebellion against Harmund III and it resulted in an invasion of the Iron Isles and the Famine Winter after that starved, impoverished and depopulated the Iron Isles with the New Way rebuilding the Iron Isles.

Quellon Greyjoy tried similarly until he died and Balon reversed his reforms. The Reader himself is an intellectual in a society that frowns upon literacy and scholarship, yet it's what allows him to effectively challenge Euron by pulling back the curtain on his tricks. He knows the dreams of reviving the Old Way is a pipe dream.

The attempts to revive the Old Way keep ending in disaster, taking more Old Way ideologues with them. And even without that, reaving had been on decline for a while and replaced with trade with men "returning with treasures their forebears had never dreamed of." Rather than driving them forward, the Old Way holds them back and has been slowly dying.

The current generation of Greyjoys just may be the last gasp of the Old Way.

[slaymondoneeye]

Great houses of Westeros - House Greyjoy of Pyke

[warsofasoiaf]

What is your take on what the status of the Ironborn as a whole will be after the end of the War of the Five Kings and the Long Night? Will they be an utterly broken people, like Free France if they lose in HOI4 TNO?

I think that there will surely be traumatized (as will pretty much everyone), but I think GRRM is too much of a romantic to leave them just completely broken. There will be a glimmer of hope for something better, even if uncertainty looms large, for the ironborn to build something better.

Thanks for the question, Bull.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[nanshe-of-nina]

Posthumous Characters GIF Sets → Quellon Greyjoy

Near the end of Haereg’s great work you will come to Lord Quellon Greyjoy, the wisest of the men to sit the Seastone Chair since Aegon’s Conquest. A huge man, six and a half feet tall, he was said to be as strong as an ox and as quick as a cat. In his youth he earned renown as a warrior, fighting corsairs and slavers in the Summer Sea. A leal servant of the Iron Throne, he led a hundred longships around the bottom of Westeros during the War of the Ninepenny Kings and played a crucial role in the fighting around the Stepstones.

[marsconer]

the dornish are who the ironborn think they are.

[aqui-yace-noia]

el trono de piedramar está hecho con la misma piedra aceitosa que no refleja la luz de Asshai, verdad? quise representar ese efecto acá

[angelwingtrap]

~Hagen’s Daughter~

One of the Ironborn on Asha’s Black Wind. Her father, Hagen the Horn, died at Deepwood Motte. It’s unknown if she’s alive or dead. One of the nine survivors of the fight is unnamed, that survivor remained with the injured Cromm while the rest of the Ironborn left with Tycho Nestoris.

[duxbelisarius]

Euron's Götterdämmerung

Warning! Spoilers ahead for A Dance With Dragons, A Feast For Crows, and ASOIAF in general

Alternate Title: The One Where Euron Pisses Off the Volcano

Back with another analysis/theory that I happened upon while reading on break; this time our subject is Mr. Nihilism himself Euron Greyjoy, and his likely endgame in TWOW. My argument for this theory is two-fold: 1) The Iron Islands sit atop a dormant, partially submerged volcano, the caldera of which is formed by Great and Old Wyk; and 2) Euron will sound a 'kraken summoning horn,' aka The Hammer of the Waters, to pulverize Oldtown and the coast of the Sunset Sea, causing the Wyk volcano to erupt and setting the stage for a second Long Night.

A huge shout out to Company of the Cat and her video about the Iron Islands being volcanic (skip to 9:37 of the video for her explanations), which inspired me to pursue this theory. To summarize her arguments, everything about the islands from their rich ore deposits, the mythology of Nagga the Sea Dragon, the prevalence of fire in Ironborn culture and imagery despite being a sea-faring people, and the similarity of Great and Old Wyk's shape to the known volcanic islands of Marahai in the Jade Sea, point towards the islands being volcanic. A past eruption could also explain the Ironborn mythology surrounding the Drowned God's conflict with the Storm God; to Dawn Age observers, the collapse of the volcano's caldera combined with volcanic lightning within it's ash cloud (which may be referenced by the arms of House Kenning of Harlaw) could have been explained as the Storm God casting down the god of the Islands, giving rise to the legends of the Drowned God.

This brings me to my second argument; from where things stand at the end of ADWD, Euron's plan seems straightforward: Euron wants to rule the Seven Kingdoms and intends to marry Daenerys, bending her dragons to his will with the Dragon Binder horn he allegedly found in Valyria and crushing all those who stand in his way. But as anyone can attest that has read "The Forsaken," an excerpt of an Aeron Damphair POV from TWOW, these may only be a cover for his true aims:

He showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible. Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx, he sat upon a mound of blackened skulls as dwarfs capered round his feet and a forest burned behind him.

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.”

“Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!”

“Why would I want that hard black rock? Brother, look again and see where I am seated.”

Aeron Damphair looked. The mound of skulls was gone. Now it was metal underneath the Crow’s Eye: a great, tall, twisted seat of razor sharp iron, barbs and blades and broken swords, all dripping blood.

Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith … even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath.

And there, swollen and green, half-devoured by crabs, the Drowned God festered with the rest, seawater still dripping from his hair.

...

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed …

As indicated Aeron Damphair's Shade of the Evening dreams, Euron aspires not merely to kinghood but godhood. This makes sense with George building-up towards a second Long Night, as Euron makes obvious parallels to the Bloodstone Emperor who was responsible for the first Long Night in Yi Tish mythology. They both came to power by murdering their elder sibling (Balon Greyjoy, the Amethyst Empress), and have committed similar atrocities. According to TWOIAF, Bloodstone "practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky." While Euron has yet to marry a Tiger-Woman or raise the dead, on all other accounts he is emulating Bloodstone: he uses blood magic; we know from Aeron's POV that he tortures foes; he sells his captives from the Shield Isles into slavery; he forces the Qartheen warlocks he captured to eat their dead companion; and it is made abundantly clear that Euron is a godless man bent on destroying the existing organized religions.

With Euron set-up as the one who will unleash the second Long Night upon Planetos, the question remains as to how he will do this; for a concise account of how the first Long Night happened, I recommend consulting David Lightbringer's videos that I linked in my previous ASOIAF theory. Some have suggested that Euron means to sound the Horn of Winter, aka the Horn of Joramun, which may be in Sam's possession in Oldtown, but I find this very unlikely. For starters, Jon in ACOK and Sam in AFFC both describe the horn found by Ghost as being old and cracked, suggesting that repairs or magical intervention may be needed to get it to work if it is the Horn. There's also the problem of Euron being at the opposite end of the continent from the Wall; if the Horn is indeed used for lowering and raising the Wall (as suggested by Cat in her video about magical horns in ASOIAF), it would be a massive liability for it to be capable of doing so from anywhere in the world.

I believe a clue for how Euron will trigger a second Long Night is Aeron's first vision quoted above, in which Euron blows a horn and caused dragons, krakens and sphinxes to bow to him. As Company of the Cat argues in her magical horns video, a 'kraken summoning horn' most likely refers to the Hammer of the Waters and/or similar objects. We know that Krakens are drawn to bodies and blood in the waters, as mentioned in both Fire and Blood and Arianne's TWOW sample:

"It was said that the waters between the islands were so choked with corpses that krakens appeared by the hundreds, drawn by the blood." (Fire and Blood, Reign of the Dragon: The Wars of King Aegon I)

"And krakens off the Broken Arm, pulling under crippled galleys," said Valena. "The blood draws them to the surface, our maester claims. There are bodies in the water. A few have washed up on our shores." (TWOW, Arianne I)

From what TWOIAF has to say about the breaking of the Arm of Dorne, the Hammer of the Waters could also account for the dragons and sphinxes:

"And the old gods stirred, and giants awoke in the earth, and all of Westeros shook and trembled. Great cracks appeared in the earth, and hills and mountains collapsed and were swallowed up. And then the seas came rushing in, and the Arm of Dorne was broken and shattered by the force of the water, until only a few bare rocky islands remained above the waves." (TWOIAF, Dorne: The Breaking)

If we assume the sphinxes to refer to the statues that flank the gates of the Citadel, these would likely be destroyed by the earthquakes and tsunamis of the Hammer, 'bowing' at the command of Euron. High magnitude earthquakes would lead to volcanic eruptions, thus accounting for the dragons answering Euron's command. In addition to Wyk erupting, we'll likely see Dragonstone erupt as well, esp. in light of Melisandre's talk about 'waking dragons from stone.' Based on Jon and Tyrion's recollections in the eighth chapters of ADWD, an eruption at Hardhome can also be expected:

"Only the brightest stars were visible, all to the west. A dull red glow lit the sky to the northeast, the color of a blood bruise. Tyrion had never seen a bigger moon. Monstrous, swollen, it looked as if it had swallowed the sun and woken with a fever. Its twin, floating on the sea beyond the ship, shimmered red with every wave. "What hour is this?" he asked Moqorro. "That cannot be sunrise unless the east has moved. Why is the sky red?"

"The sky is always red above Valyria, Hugor Hill."" (ADWD, Tyrion VIII)

"Hardhome had been halfway toward becoming a town, the only true town north of the Wall, until the night six hundred years ago when hell had swallowed it. Its people had been carried off into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on which version of the tale you believed, their homes and halls consumed in a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the Wall far to the south had thought the sun was rising in the north. Afterward ashes rained down on haunted forest and Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year." (ADWD, Jon VIII)

The symbolism and imagery surrounding Euron strongly implies that he will use the Hammer of the Waters; as already noted, a volcanic eruption on Wyk may have inspired the mythology of the war between the Drowned God and the Storm God. Euron is heavily associated with the Storm God, starting with his murder of Balon Greyjoy:

"The Storm God cast him down," the priest announced. For a thousand thousand years sea and sky had been at war. From the sea had come the ironborn, and the fish that sustained them even in the depths of winter, but storms brought only woe and grief.

...

Better to be scorned by Balon the Brave than beloved of Euron Crow's Eye. And if age and grief had turned Balon bitter with the years, they had also made him more determined than any man alive. He was born a lord's son and died a king, murdered by a jealous god, Aeron thought, and now the storm is coming, a storm such as these isles have never known." (AFFC, The Prophet)

"Oh, and Balon was the third, but you knew that. I could not do the deed myself, but it was my hand that pushed him off the bridge." (TWOW, The Forsaken)

Euron's title is Crow's Eye, while his personal coat of arms feature ravens, further tying him to the Storm God:

He had no love of maesters. Their ravens were creatures of the Storm God, and he did not trust their healing, not since Urri. (AFFC, The Prophet)

"Crow's Eye, you call me. Well, who has a keener eye than the crow? After every battle the crows come in their hundreds and their thousands to feast upon the fallen. A crow can espy death from afar. And I say that all of Westeros is dying. Those who follow me will feast until the end of their days." (AFFC, The Drowned Man)

There's also the matter of House Goodbrother, an Ironborn house situated on Great Wyk who draw their wealth from their mines. Not only is their sigil is a warhorn while their house seat bears the interesting name of Hammerhorn, but Euron is compared to Urrathon IV Goodbrother ("Badbrother") in ADWD:

"Torgon Greyiron was the king's eldest son. But the king was old and Torgon restless, so it happened that when his father died he was raiding along the Mander from his stronghold on Greyshield. His brothers sent no word to him but instead quickly called a kingsmoot, thinking that one of them would be chosen to wear the driftwood crown. But the captains and the kings chose Urragon [Urrathon] Goodbrother to rule instead. The first thing the new king did was command that all the sons of the old king be put to death, and so they were. After that men called him Badbrother, though in truth they'd been no kin of his. He ruled for almost two years."

...

"Badbrother had proved to be as mean as he was cruel and had few friends left upon the isles. The priests denounced him, the lords rose against him, and his own captains hacked him into pieces." (ADWD, The Wayward Bride)

TWOIAF claims that Hrothgar of Pyke possessed a kraken-summoning horn during the Age of Heroes; assuming that this was the Hammer of the Waters, it's possible that the horn fell into the Ironborn's hands during their raids into the Riverlands, since we know that the Greenseers of the Children congregated at the Isle of Faces on the God's Eye lake when they called upon the Hammer to break the Arm of Dorne. It also makes sense that Euron would not reveal the Hammer, given the subtle hints George has given that Euron intends to sacrifice his fellow Ironborn in pursuit of his goals:

“Why would I want that hard black rock? Brother, look again and see where I am seated.”

...

“Your victories are hollow. You cannot hold the Shields.”

“Why should I want to hold them?” His brother’s smiling eye glittered in the lantern light, blue and bold and full of malice. “The Shields have served my purpose. I took them with one hand, and gave them away with the other. A great king is open-handed, brother. It is up to the new lords to hold them now. The glory of winning those rocks will be mine forever. When they are lost, the defeat will belong to the four fools who so eagerly accepted my gifts.”

...

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. (TWOW, The Forsaken)

Euron seated himself and gave his cloak a twitch, so it covered his private parts. "I had forgotten what a small and noisy folk they are, my ironborn. I would bring them dragons, and they shout out for grapes." (AFFC, The Reaver)

Clearly, Euron's ambitions exceed those of his fellow Ironborn, and this makes Aeron's vision of longships adrift on a boiling sea particularly ominous. At the end of "The Forsaken," Aeron Damphair, Euron's pregnant saltwife Falia Flowers, and a collection of holy men and women kidnapped by Euron are tied to the prows of his ships. With a naval battle looming between Euron's forces and the ships of the Hightower and Redwyne fleets, Euron's plan seems to be to use this naval battle in the Whispering Sound alongside his captives as the sacrifice required for the Hammer.

The evidence that Euron will sound the Hammer of the Waters is very strong IMO, as is the evidence for Wyk erupting. Firstly, we have Daenerys' visions from the House of the Undying in ACOK:

"From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . ." (ACOK, Daenerys IV)

The smoking tower most likely refers to the Hightower at Oldtown, while a 'great stone beast' that breathes 'shadow fire' sounds an awful lot like a volcano. That the beast takes wing and appears to fly can be seen as a reference to Euron's crow/raven symbolism, as well as his obsession with flying:

"When I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly," he announced. "When I woke, I couldn't . . . or so the maester said. But what if he lied?"

...

"Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower?" The wind came gusting through the window and stirred his sable cloak. There was something obscene and disturbing about his nakedness. "No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap." (AFFC, The Reaver)

We then have Melisandre's vision in ADWD:

Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths. 

...

"If it comes, that attack will be no more than a diversion. I saw towers by the sea, submerged beneath a black and bloody tide. That is where the heaviest blow will fall."

"Eastwatch?"

Was it? Melisandre had seen Eastwatch-by-the-Sea with King Stannis. That was where His Grace left Queen Selyse and their daughter Shireen when he assembled his knights for the march to Castle Black. The towers in her fire had been different, but that was oft the way with visions. (ADWD, Melisandre I)

Many of the theories I've seen about this vision identify the towers as Oldtown, and while I agree that the Hammer will devastate that city, the description doesn't quite add up. The Hightower and the Citadel are the only real towers associated with the city while House Costayne's seat of Three Towers, at the mouth of the Whispering Sound, was only briefly mentioned by Sam as the Cinnamon Wind approached Oldtown in AFFC. There's also the issue of Oldtown's location well inside the Whispering Sound and many miles from the sea. The Iron Islands fit the description quite nicely, in particular Ten Towers on Harlaw and Pyke itself:

Ten Towers had always felt like home to Asha, more so than Pyke. Not one castle, ten castles squashed together, she had thought, the first time she had seen it. She remembered breathless races up and down the steps and along wallwalks and covered bridges, fishing off the Long Stone Quay, days and nights lost amongst her uncle's wealth of books. His grandfather's grandfather had raised the castle, the newest on the isles. Lord Theomore Harlaw had lost three sons in the cradle and laid the blame upon the flooded cellars, damp stones, and festering nitre of ancient Harlaw Hall. Ten Towers was airier, more comfortable, better sited . . . but Lord Theomore was a changeable man, as any of his wives might have testified. He'd had six of those, as dissimilar as his ten towers. (AFFC, The Kraken's Daughter)

As it happens, Harlaw is situated right next to Old and Great Wyk; but the tower imagery is even more pronounced with Pyke:

The Greyjoy stronghold stood upon a broken headland, its keeps and towers built atop massive stone stacks that thrust up from the sea. Bridges knotted Pyke together; arched bridges of carved stone and swaying spans of hempen rope and wooden planks.

...

Greydon left him when the sun was up, to take the news of Balon's death to his cousins in their towers at Downdelving, Crow Spike Keep, and Corpse Lake. Aeron continued on alone, up hills and down vales along a stony track that drew wider and more traveled as he neared the sea. (AFFC, The Prophet)

The shore was all sharp rocks and glowering cliffs, and the castle seemed one with the rest, its towers and walls and bridges quarried from the same grey-black stone, wet by the same salt waves, festooned with the same spreading patches of dark green lichen, speckled by the droppings of the same seabirds. The point of land on which the Greyjoys had raised their fortress had once thrust like a sword into the bowels of the ocean, but the waves had hammered at it day and night until the land broke and shattered, thousands of years past. All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god's temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed among them.

Drear, dark, forbidding, Pyke stood atop those islands and pillars, almost a part of them, its curtain wall closing off the headland around the foot of the great stone bridge that leapt from the clifftop to the largest islet, dominated by the massive bulk of the Great Keep. Farther out were the Kitchen Keep and the Bloody Keep, each on its own island. Towers and outbuildings clung to the stacks beyond, linked to each other by covered archways when the pillars stood close, by long swaying walks of wood and rope when they did not. (ACOK, Theon I)

What became of Valyria is well-known, and in the Iron Islands, the castle of Pyke sits on stacks of stone that were once part of the greater island before segments of it crumbled into the sea. (TWOIAF, Ancient History: The Coming of the First Men)

What remains of Pyke today is a complex of towers and keeps scattered across half a dozen islets and sea stacks above the booming waves. A section of curtain wall, with a great gatehouse and defensive towers, stretches across the headland, the only access to the castle, and is all that remains of the original fortress. A stone bridge from the headland leads to the first and largest islets and Great Keep of Pyke.

Beyond that, rope bridges connect the towers one to the other.... Beneath the castle walls, the waves still smash against the remaining rock stacks day and night, and one day those too will doubtless crash into the sea. (TWOIAF, The Iron Islands: Pyke)

Earthquakes, tsunamis and a volcanic eruption would more than suffice to submerge Pyke beneath the waves. Such a cataclysm striking the Iron Islands would also fit with Aeron's vision of Ironborn longships adrift on a bloody, boiling sea; while this could refer to Victarion's Iron Fleet and it's close proximity to Valyria and the Smoking Sea, we know that the ships of the Iron Fleet are larger than the normal longships of the Ironborn, and I believe it further points towards a disaster befalling the Ironborn as a result of Euron's schemes.

The final and most blatant evidence for Wyk erupting comes from Victarion, who offers this account of the Doom of Valyria while stopped at the Isle of Cedars near Slavers Bay:

On the day the Doom came to Valyria, it was said, a wall of water three hundred feet high had descended on the island, drowning hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, leaving none to tell the tale but some fisherfolk who had been at sea and a handful of Velosi spearmen posted in a stout stone tower on the island's highest hill, who had seen the hills and valleys beneath them turn into a raging sea. Fair Velos with its palaces of cedar and pink marble had vanished in a heartbeat. On the north end of the island, the ancient brick walls and stepped pyramids of the slaver port Ghozai had suffered the same fate.

So many drowned men, the Drowned God will be strong there, Victarion had thought when he chose the island for the three parts of his fleet to join up again. He was no priest, though. What if he had gotten it backwards? Perhaps the Drowned God had destroyed the island in his wroth. His brother Aeron might have known, but the Damphair was back on the Iron Islands, preaching against the Crow's Eye and his rule. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair. Yet the captains and kings had cried for Euron at the kingsmoot, choosing him above Victarion and other godly men. (ADWD, The Iron Suitor)

This passage is what sold me on this theory being more than just tin foil, as the elements it employs fit a Wyk eruption scenario perfectly. We have a massive volcanic eruption accompanied by tsunamis, along with Victarion's musing on whether the disaster was a punishment from the Drowned God. This fits perfectly with the idea of the Drowned God being a submerged volcano, as it's subsequent eruption could be seen as divine punishment for placing a 'godless man' upon the Seastone Chair.

Even more suggestive is the description of the wave's height, and how some Velosi spearmen survived due to being in a stone tower atop a hill. The Hightower of Oldtown is said to be as tall as the Wall or over 700 feet tall, with it's base being constructed from fused black stone similar to the Valyrian roads. Even more telling, the island on which the Hightower sits is called Battle Isle, which is similar to another name for the Isle of Cedars:

The girlish maester Euron had inflicted upon him back in Westeros claimed this place had once been called 'the Isle of a Hundred Battles,' but the men who had fought those battles had all gone to dust centuries ago. (ADWD, The Iron Suitor)

In the event that Euron attacks Oldtown, I expect him to make a bee-line for the top of the Hightower, and not so he can see the Wall and bring it down with the Horn of Joramun. Rather, it's because the top of the Hightower might be the only relatively safe place for miles when he sounds the Hammer of the Waters and unleashes a 'black and bloody tide.'

[queerfics]

too sweet (slightly nsfw drabble) - yara greyjoy x f! reader

Summary: a lyric-inspired drabble about being Yara's crewmate and lover <3

Word Counting: 952

Warnings: slight nsfw

You know you're bright as the morning,

On mornings like this one, Yara loves being on land.

If you had been on a boat and not in her chambers, Yara would've woken hours before this, planning and preparing and delegating for the day to come. She would've missed the warmth of the sunshine wrapping your embraced bodies even closer, and she wouldn't have been able to crawl back into your arms.

Although the sea is her home, she is always happy to retire within your presence, relieving herself of her duties for just a morning or so.

As soft as the rain,

You're Ironborn, just as Yara is, yet she wishes you weren't.

Your recklessness kills her inside just as much as it turns her on. The way you dive head first into danger leaves her heart and her core throbbing, face growing hot for mixed reasons.

You've always been competent in battle, and you've taken down just as many (if not more) men than her. You've always followed closely behind her, watching her back and being the difference between her seeing the sun or not many more times than she could count.

Yara tries not to let herself get too comfortable with your capability, as every time she does, you return to her in shambles, coughing up your own blood with the remains of another person on your hands and sword. Every time, she shakes you, screams at you, curses you and herself, and she's reminded of the anchor she's dropped in you and how vulnerable it makes her.

Despite this, despite the way she slaps you and yells and acts as if she herself is dying, you always laugh up at her through pained winces. You let her carry you back to safety, let her stitch you up yourself and frighten away anyone with actual training, let her soothe her storm through you.

Pretty as a vine,

You stomp around the Black Wind like you were born to take on the water. You look just as roughed up, just as dirty and just as unkempt as any other crewmate on board, but Yara can't help but find the way you wear it particularly easy on the eye.

To any man, the dirty beneath your fingernails is disgusting, but Yara saw the way you lifted barrels over your shoulder like they were nothing. Your hair is unwashed now, but Yara knows what you look like when it's just the two of you naked in a sparkling lake. Your hands are rough, but Yara has seen you scale entire masts without any support, and gods does that stir something within her.

As sweet as a grape.

Yara's never been a huge fan of wine. She'd much rather prefer a bitter or hearty drink, but your dripping cunt is an exception.

It's a delicacy she'd greedily swallow, taking every drop you'd give her until your thighs are shaking around her head and you're clawing at her back and begging for relief.

If you can sit in a barrel, maybe I'll wait until that day.

And gods below, if you could just wait long enough for her to claim that throne, long enough for her to make things right and make things possible, Yara would marry you in a heartbeat, forsake every other lover in the entire world for you if you would take her as your own.

Not as any salt wife, either, but as a rock wife, binding herself to you for the rest of her days.

She'd hammer some iron into a ring for you herself and wear a matching one around her neck. She'd carve your name into the hilt of her sword, carry a lock of your hair inside her armor, have you braid her hair before a reaving only for her to return with the updo still in place.

If you could wait, she would carry you with her until the rest of her days.

I take my whiskey neat,

You've never complained to her about the way she eyes other women when she's drunk. It's never been in your nature to say anything, but she can always feel your cold stare. If it weren't for the booze, it would eat her alive, the way she can feel your territorial nature radiating from across entire buildings and ships, so she drowns herself in liquor and cider until she's free from the burden of attachment, until she's too fucked out of it to remember her own name. All the while, you never say a word.

You sip your ale, watching her from across the room with narrowed eyes, letting her flirt and fondle and fuck to her heart's desire. And at the end of the night, when Yara's had her fill, when she's washed out the suffocation of having feelings, you guide her back to her quarter's and wait for sobriety to revive her of empathy.

My coffee black and my bed at three,

It's almost routine at this point, the way you slide next to her on the deck and hand her a cup of something invigorating. Your watches are always immediately after hers, yet you have always sat with her throughout her entire shift, and you never complain when she retires early before a long day.

Yara always accepts the cup gratefully, sipping on it and sighing. She would pinch the bridge of her nose and you would wrap your arm around her, letting her head fall to your shoulder. At this time of night, all of the men are asleep, and in between your exhausted banter, the waves and gentle rocking of the boat lure you two into your peaceful rhythm.

You're too sweet for me.

[racefortheironthrone]

I'm afraid the Ironborn economy confuses me. They spit on those who buy things, but they don't buy, how do they get anything? They can't raid that much to support (I think) a million and a half people, they don't produce much food (Theon says the farmers have the hardest life). What, exactly, keeps these islands going?

The way to understand the Ironborn economy is to understand that it functions under massive cognitive dissonance: the vast majority of the population actually works for a living, they're fishermen and farmers and miners and merchants and craftsmen, etc. The Iron Islands aren't the richest of the Seven Kingdoms - as I've said before, they're likely the poorest - but they have industry and trade and fishing and some farming.

The issue is that they have this lunatic ruling class that insists that Ironborn absolutely should not be doing any of the productive activity that actually makes the Iron Islands' economy function, and that ruling class has this whole ideology (the Old Way) that gets into the heads of even a bunch of the people who aren't part of the ruling class, such that you have a whole bunch of fishermen who show up to the Kingsmoot and chant along with the rest, because owning a fishing boat means you're a reaver at heart and certainly not some New Way member of the working class.