The wooden shovel, wet in his hands from the steady drizzle, chafed the man’s hands as he worked at the damp earth. Taking a deep breath, he hauled himself out the hole to sit on the edge, cool dampness pressing against his skin through light trousers. Yes, he decided, the hole was definitely deep enough now. A look of sadness on his face, he pushed to his feet and walked the few short feet to the tree where the old man’s body lay stretched out beneath it.
He wasn’t a big man by any means; even in the old man’s wasted state, it took him some effort to lift the body. Even for his old age – closer to sixty, than fifty, the man figured – the deceased knight was still heavy. He’d lived a long life, the man decided, and how many men can say that? Still, the man frowned as he lowered the body of his mentor into the grave.
The man stood over the hole in the ground, staring down at the body of the man who’d changed his life so much. He supposed that he thought this would be different but, in the end, Ser Arlan had died the way he lived – as a hedge knight. The man had rode at his side, his squire for years, from keep to keep, taking service with this lord and lord, fighting in their battles and feasting in their halls until the war was done before moving on.
There had always been tourneys from time to time as well – how Ser Arlan had loved the tourneys! Of course the old man hadn’t ridden in a tilt himself, not since the tourney at Storm’s End where he’d rode against the Prince of Dragonstone himself years before. Ser Arlan always told him they had seven times passed against each other but, in the end, the old man had been unseated by the Prince. It is not every man who can boast that he broke seven lances against the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms, he had said.
“That was how I’d always thought you’d die, old man,” the man said, frowning. “On the battlefield, not on the side of some muddy road.” That brought something else the old man had always said to mind: Another day done and who knows what the morrow will bring us, eh?
One morrow had brought the rains – the same blasted rain he wiped from his face now. The one after that had brought gusts of wind. The next, a chill – it was, after all, hardly yet spring. By the fourth day, the old man had been too weak to ride.
“And now you’re gone.” The man rubbed the back of his head, “I’d leave your sword but it would only rust in the ground.” Maybe the gods would give the knight a new one; he’d done so much he only deserved it.
He reached for the shovel again and glanced back to the knight’s body, “I wish you didn’t die, ser. You were a true knight and you never beat me when I didn’t deserve it.” Well, except that one time at Harrenhal; he hadn’t touched that stable girl, no matter what she’d said – he wasn’t like that at all. But he guessed it didn’t matter now.
The shovel scooped up some dirt and the man looked down one last time, “The gods keep you, uncle.”
It took Ser Robert of Pennytree nearly an hour in the rain to bury his uncle. By the time he’d finished, the sun was already coming up; the horses needed to be seen to, he realized. But then what? As he patted down Sweetfoot, his uncle’s old rounsey, he considered his option. He’d only ever known the life of a hedge knight; there was little else he could do.
They had been headed to the tournament at Ashford, perhaps he could – no, Robert decided quickly, that would never do. He was no tournament knight, he had never been able to manage even the simplest of tilts; he’d never make it there – no, Ashford would be for other champions. He could always go to Highgarden or Lannisport and find himself work as a guard. Surely someone would take him on; he had served with Ser Arlan for the Lannisters before, after all.
Satisfied with his decision, he packed up his little camp and led the horses down the road, towards the city of Highgarden.
Sometime later, he passed a small inn by the side of the road. A young boy, no more than eight years old with a clean shaven pate, pulled himself from the river where bathed. The bald boy wrapped himself in his simple clothes, watching as the strange hedge knight rode by without a word or so much as glancing in his way.
The boy frowned internally as he padded into the inn; he’d been hoping that one would stop – then he might have been able to get away from here, away from –
“Aegon!” the drunken call came. “Aegon! I need you!”
The boy sighed and went to the source of the call, “Yes, brother?”
The drunk’s eyes were bloodshot from several days of drinking, his clothes reeking of whatever types of drink he could manage to find. He closed his eyes and shook his head, “Aegon… I-I had a dream, brother…”
“A dream?” the boy sat beside his brother, suddenly interested. “Tell me, brother.”
“I had a dream of… two dragons, one red, one black…” He opened his eyes opened sleepily, “They stared at each other.” He smiled slightly, putting his head down on the table, “Funny… I could have sworn they were standing over Ashford Castle...” He was snoring almost before the words were done.
Aegon frowned; this did not bode well – his brother had dreams, true dreams, and that was the only time he’d ever mentioned dragons before. What did it mean? He tapped his fingers on the table and made a decision – he had to find some way to get to Ashford, with or without his drunken lout of a brother.
Welcome to the first of the previews for The Tourney at Ashford, a game set in the universe of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire – better known to most people as Game of Thrones. The game will use the A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying (SIFRP) system from Green Ronin.
Almost ninety years before the death of Jon Arryn would set in motion the events of the novels, though, a time of peace had settled over the Seven Kingdoms. As a new spring dawned, Darryn Ashford, Lord of House Ashford, declares a tournament in honour of his daughter’s thirteenth name day. Early in the year 209 AC, would-be champions descended upon the fields of Ashford to vie for the right to name a queen of love and beauty.
The game is currently set to begin on August 24th, a short time after GenCon, and run until the end of September of this year with character selection/submission and pre-game stuffs beginning shortly before. Feel free to ask any questions of me either here or in the appropriate Ashford channel on Discord; I (or my co-GM Jasper) will get to them as soon as we can answer them.
Players will play as a member of one of six noble houses, each sworn under a different Great House in the Seven Kingdoms: House Algood, House Dunn, House Forrester, House Kellington, House Terrick, and House Wydman. Each house will come with a handful of pre-generated characters for those who wish to forgo the character creation system and hop right in with already connected characters - we will also be accepting player made characters into those houses and will be on hand to assist with character creation and with integrating them into the existing house; these characters will all be created using the rules from the SIFRP core book.
