[hider=wip][hr][center][h1][i][color=lightskyblue]House Arryn[/color][/i][/h1][/center]
[hr]
[indent][hider=][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/HPq6ufh.jpg[/img][/center]
[center][h3][i][color=lightskyblue]“As High as Honor.”[/color][/i][/h3][/center]
[u][b][color=lightskyblue][sub][h3]House Description[/h3][/sub][/color][/b][/u]

[hider=]
[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][i]House Seat[/i][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][INDENT][INDENT]The Eyrie[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][i]Head of House[/i][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][INDENT][INDENT]Luthor Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of The Vale, and Warden of The East[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][i]Recent History[/i][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][INDENT][INDENT]To understand the current rule of a hunchback sitting on the weirwood throne of Arryn, one must understand the untimely deaths of its past three lords, starting with Robert Arryn. Born a sickly and frail child, "Lord Sweetrobin" ultimately died at twelve before producing an heir, passing the lordship to his older cousin with little outcry. Throughout the realm, Valemen seemed content to immortalize Robert as an eternal boy-king untouched by old age or war and move past his short-lived rule immediately. Harold Hardyng, who would then become legitimized as Lord Harold Arryn, went on to marry Cara Templeton, fathering a son and a daughter before marching North for the Night's War. Whereas some lords returned home with tales of glory or relics of war, Lord Harold returned home scarred and broken, frozen into a pale imitation of his former self by the horrors he had been unprepared to witness. Harry the Heir was a shattered man after the Night's War, spending hours walking the halls of the Eyrie in the silence of the night, drinking alone, and locking himself in his chambers for days. He was not a father to his children, much less a lord to his people, and passed zero laws or decrees during his rule. Though Harold Arryn escaped the Stranger on the fields of the North, he would ultimately meet him again at the edge of the Moon Door at twenty-nine years old.

The morning Harold Arryn's death was discovered, lordship was passed to Harold's only heir, Mandon Arryn, on his tenth nameday. The young lord inherited a Vale driven to poverty by his father's shiftless reign as an absentee ruler, and was subesquently locked in his study for the better part of three years, training in economics and legislation while his mother, Lady Cara, maintained a shaky control of the realm. Lord Mandon would flourish under this pressured responsibility and become the most economically productive lord the Vale had ever seen. Mandon sold mountains of stone to the North, who required a great deal of it after many of its castles had been destroyed during the Night's War, as well as for efforts paving the King's Road in the North. Mandon purchased miles of seaside property in the Free Cities, which had been reeling from a plague and scattered civil wars. Mandon taxed gold from the lesser landowners on these lands as often as he could, creating a scattered array of slums and shantytowns in Essos, but stimulating the Vale's economy all the same. 

By the time Mandon was eighteen, the stress of his work had made him half-bald. By the time he was thirty, he was twice as bald, but five times as wealthy. He had been given the monicker "Mandon the Miser" by a smallfolk rebel leader who was hanged two days after his rebellion had started, though the nickname stayed with Mandon forever. During Lord Mandon's rule, he had raised taxes two and a half times as high, implemented arbitrary taxes for things such as windows, covered wagons, or mules, and purchased prisoners of other realms to be sent to the Vale's salt mines to "work for their freedom", unpaid, until they had died of exhaustion. Aside from these nefarious ventures, Mandon invested in the creation of many Northern and Riverlands businesses, and it was said that he owned at least a plank of every ship and inn from Gulltown to Bear Island. By his fourtieth nameday, Mandon owned what would have been a small kingdom within Essos, had all of his properties been connected. By his calculations, the Arryns could have been the richest family in Westeros by his eightieth nameday, looking down from their mountains at the golden lions and crimson dragons who held power over them for centuries.

Ultimately, Mandon would not realize his goals of transcontinental dominance, or even his humbler goals of living to eighty. By the time he was fourty-one, he had fathered eight hardworking children -- all as business savvy as their economist father, with small ventures of their own -- and one soft-spoken, simpering hunchback. Taking the birth of this cripple as a sign from the gods to cease his procreation and focus on business, Mandon put his youngest son into the Eyrie's sept for training night and day, continuing to focus on ventures and fathering his non-deformed children. This exclusion of his youngest son would ultimately keep the line of Arryn from going extinct; Days after lord Mandon's fourty-first birthday, the second tallest tower in the Eyrie collapsed. Lord Mandon was killed in the disaster, along with his wife, eight of his children, and several of his cousins, who had gathered in the relatively small tower to view a solar eclipse.

At the time, his youngest son had been sailing around the shores of Essos, visiting his father's foreign holdings in celebration of the septon's vows he would take upon his return. After returning home, he found his entire family had been killed in an accident and that he, a boy of sixteen trained in nothing more than the Faith of the Seven, would become the lord paramount of the Vale. Naturally, this caused the timid and bookish young lord a great deal of stress, though not as much as his father had inherited. After selling all of his family's investments, Luthor Arryn would go on to find that the Vale was not as difficult to run given his father's devotion to the post-war kingdom. Luthor lowered taxes to what they had been before his father's rule,, spent coffers of gold building and refurnishing septs, and began throwing tourneys worthy of song. Aside from his extravagantly expensive, exclusive "parties", Luthor has a model lord in many ways, brokering small trade alliances between neighboring kingdoms and sending frequent gifts to Great Houses of Westeros. He has maintained a small presence in King's Landing through his frequent visits to his boyhood friend Lyonel, and is unquestioningly favored in the Western half of the Vale.[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][i]House Relations[/i][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][INDENT][INDENT][b]House Baratheon:[/b] The Arryns and Baratheons are arguably the two currently closest-linked Great Houses of Westeros. Lord Baratheon has been a close friend to Lord Arryn since boyhood, which has lead to Lord Arryn's frequent visits to the capital to visit the Master of Laws. Accordingly, the Vale and Stormlands has lead to a level of trade almost unnecessary, with sanctions and routes designed to mutually boost their economies as opposed to lending this trade to King's Landing, White Harbor, or Dorne. This trade union, officiated with the signing of [i]The Western Union of the Stag and Falcon[/i] in 364 AC shortly after Lyonel's coronation, has lead to a greater number of Essosi goods available in the Stormlands.

[b]House Stark:[/b] The North has maintained a close trade relationship with the Vale for generations, starting with Lord Stark selling Mandon Arryn the Valyrian dagger of Peter Baelish for its worth in stone. This gesture would rebuild nearly three quarters of Moat Cailin, and spark a long-standing trade relationship with the Vale, rebuilding the North after the Night's War with mountains of Vale stone. Now, although the trade relationship with the North is as healthy as ever, Lord Luthor has never actually [i]met[/i] the Starks. With his best friend's sister having married to their lord, it is likely that the Vale would side with the North in the coming wars.

 [/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][i]Conceptualization[/i][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][INDENT][INDENT]Lord Arryn has lived well for some time -- Not even the Queen has lived in the excess he has for the past three decades. Now, at a historical turning point, Lord Arryn will either double his opulence as Hand of the King or lose everything he has worked to hide. Father to a naive fop of a son and a renowned maiden of a daughter, Lord Arryn will be forced to maneuver through the already tight crevasses he has created within the Vale by alienating his political enemies and upjumping those he owes debts to. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/hider]
[u][b][color=lightskyblue][sub][h3]Point-of-View Characters[/h3][/sub][/color][/b][/u]

[hider=Character Name][center][h2][b]Luthor Arryn[/b][/h2]
[img]https://78.media.tumblr.com/68063dc42bc998785ff67d7b949d2006/tumblr_oqbsdwE2bQ1uusxqfo1_400.gif[/img]

[b][i]Lord of The Eyrie, Defender of The Vale, and Warden of The East[/i][/b][/center]

[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][i]Age[/i][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][INDENT][INDENT]42[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][i]Appearance[/i][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][center][img]https://im.ezgif.com/tmp/ezgif-1-c07336ed6a.gif[/img][/center]
[INDENT][INDENT]For all his notable disfigurement, it would be nothing short of a lie to describe the Lord of The Vale as anything less than handsome. Typical of the Arryns, his nose is strong and straight, coming to a slight hook at the end above a set of full, ever-smiling lips. Luthor's eyes are an indistinguishable shade of blue or green, inviting those who speak with him to try and ascertain by staring at them, with high cheekbones and a jaw that comes to a sharp point by his neck. He has a mane of dark brown hair, carefully combed down the sides of his gaunt face.

This is all, of course, offest by Lord Luthor's [i]hump[/i], a malformed source of scorn and pain. There exists a muscular mass of flesh above Luthor Arryn's left shoulder that makes Luthor appear as if his left shoulder is always raised and that his right shoulder is always lowered. As a result of this disfigurement, Luthor's left arm is withered and crooked, bent across his chest as if it were held in a sling. Accordingly, he typically hides this by leaning on his left arm, or covering his hump and arm with a half-cloak. On the rare occasions Lord Arryn has had to don armor for war, his armor has a custom-tailored harness for his arm that nearly hides his lame arm.[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][i]Reputation[/i][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][INDENT][INDENT]Luthor Arryn is one of the most famous nobles of his generation, with tales and rumors concerning his supposed dealings from Mole's Town to Sunspear. Some of them, in fairness, are true -- For instance, Luthor [i]does[/i] host a lavish orgy at the Gates of the Moon at the end of each lunar quarter, and he [i]did[/i] appoint two smallfolk sellswords to his personal guard at a knight's tourney instead of any Valeman. While he did inherit the Vale after the sudden death of his family, it was not an accident he caused (As those in any tavern would have you believe), nor did he conspire to cause the disaster with Essosi blood magic. Other rumors, such as his belief in R'hllor or other foreign, pagan faiths, are equally untrue. Luthor Arryn does not eat the children of smallfolk in the Reach who misbehave, nor does his hump whisper the secrets of his enemies to him, nor does he pretend to be crippled to feign weakness.

Fortunately for Luthor, the wide variety and nonsensical nature of many rumors surrounding him act as a shield for those rumors which are true. When low lords whisper amongst themselves that Lord Luthor's hump is a shielded pair of leathery wings, or that his daughter was conceived by himself and Queen Daenerys, the whispers about the men he brings to bed and his involvement in the upper echelons of the Faith go unnoticed more easily. Aside from the scandalous nature of stories surrounding him, Luthor has done everything in his power to maintain relations with some of the most powerful people in the realm, and warm relations at that. When a storm shattered Lord Greyjoy's flagship, Luthor donated his own, with a Lysian whore in her captain's quarters. When the youngest Dornish princess fell ill, Luthor sent a small circus to Sunspear to lift her spirits. Even without his extravagant gifts, Lord Arryn's presence in King's Landing and Oldtown have given him a retinue of friends as far south as the Starry Sept, lending a strange duality to his reputation.[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][i]Relations[/i][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][center][img]https://images-ext-1.discordapp.net/external/zJMSq_nT9J8eTc86fpJcHuUu2vIax8V3Qe-8xqDx_t8/https/image.ibb.co/cYgs27/Vale_Politics.png?width=520&height=430[/img][/center]

[INDENT][INDENT][b]Vale Bannermen:[/b] Luthor Arryn has extremely strong support in the Vale's Western half as well as in the Sisters, but is quietly hated by the low lords of the Vale's port-towns. Lord Arryn keeps his favor with most of the Western half of the Vale through invitations to his exclusive, secretive "parties" and through trade dealings with their houses, subsequently giving them occasional gifts and visits from their ruling Lord. Further from the Eyrie, in the seaside towns where the tumultuous tax changes of the past half-century have affected low lords the most, Lord Arryn's charitable visits are rarer, and his beneficial trade relations are nearly non-existent. His father's frequent dealings with Essos has lead to a small Essosi population on the Vale's coast, a demographic that chafes the bannermen who rule them. Additionally, unbeknownst to Luthor Arryn, one of his banner houses has been siring a forgotten Arryn cousin, grooming him for a rule that can only come through usurpation.

[b]Lyonel Baratheon:[/b] Lord Lyonel has been Luthor's closest friend and longstanding confidant since Lord Arryn's boyhood. It was Lyonel's initial gift of friendship that brought Luthor out of his shell in his adolescence, magnified further after a life-changing trip to Essos the two shared. When Luthor was nearly assassinated some twenty years ago, it was Lyonel who he bequeathed the upbringing of his only son and heir to, and when hill tribes threatened his rule, it was Lyonel who led the forces that smashed them into the mountainside. In turn, Luthor allowed Lyonel the use of The Eyrie not only to personally marry him to Rylene Redfort, but for the two to stay until the birth of his first son, Axel Baratheon.

[b]House Hightower:[/b] After the Red Keep, Luthor's second-most visited destination is Oldtown. A pious man through and through, Lord Arryn has donated coffers of gold to the Starry Sept for repairs, renovations, and the construction of new statues, wings, gardens, and Septs. He frequently prays at the Starry Sept upon his visits to Oldtown, and has by now created a friendship between himself and the Most Devout. Accordingly, he has encountered the Hightowers many times and has been hosted in their ancestral keep -- as opposed to an inn -- on several occasions.

[b]House Tyrell:[/b] While the two kingdoms share only paltry trade relations, Lord Luthor's trips to Oldtown have meant encounters with the Tyrells on multiple occasions. Luthor enjoys the lifestyle found in the Reach, and has often considered marrying on of his children to the Tyrells in order to retire in Highgarden. His visits with the Tyrells, while frequently brief and courtly, have all been respectful encounters.[/INDENT][/INDENT][/hider][/hider][/indent][/hider]