H O U S E F L O R E N T
"We Do Not Forget."
H O U S E D E T A I L S _________________________________________________________House Seat: Brightwater Keep, on the Honeywine _________________________________________________________ Region: The Reach K E Y M E M B E R S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Lord Aubrey Florent ◼ Age: 54 ◼ Appearance: A tall, thin man who carries himself as though the weight of a crown rests upon his brow, even if the crown itself was lost generations ago. Lord Aubrey has a narrow, angular face defined by high cheekbones, a long straight nose, and a jaw that tapers to a clean, pointed chin. He has the prominent, slightly too-large ears that mark the Florent bloodline, though he has learned over the decades to hold his head at angles that diminish them. His eyes are a pale, washed-out hazel, almost amber in certain light, and they possess an unsettling stillness. His hair, once a dark reddish-brown, has gone to grey at the temples and thinned at the crown, though he wears what remains swept back and neatly oiled. His hands are long-fingered and precise, more suited to a maester's quill than a knight's lance, and he is seldom seen without a signet ring bearing the fox-and-flowers of his house. He dresses richly but never ostentatiously, favouring fine wool in deep amber and ivory trimmed with fox fur at the collar, as if to remind every man in the room exactly whose blood runs in his veins. ◼ Biography: Aubrey Florent was not born to inherit. He was a second son, more interested in genealogies than swordplay, content to remain in his elder brother's shadow. That ended at the crossing of the Blueburn in 170 AC, when Denys took a Dornish arrow through the throat. Aubrey was seventeen. Their father, Lord Garmon, spent his lordship nursing the ancient Florent grievance against House Tyrell without ever possessing the cunning to act on it. He drank, raged, and died in 178 AC, leaving Aubrey a house diminished in every way that mattered: coffers half-empty, bannermen restless, and a name spoken with pity rather than respect. Unlike his father, Aubrey did not rage. He calculated. Over eighteen years he rebuilt, marrying Lady Lynaera of House Rowan to bind Brightwater to a powerful family. Lynaera became more than a political alliance: she was the spine of his household, balancing ledgers and quieting creditors while Aubrey played his long game. She bore him three children (Aladore, Jon, and Alysanne) and together they slowly raised a house that had nearly forgotten how to stand. Then the rebellion killed his wife and daughter. Lady Lynaera and Alysanne were set upon while travelling the Honeywine with a small escort. The official account holds that bannerless renegades robbed and murdered the party. No survivors were left to confirm or contradict this. The truth, if it differs from the telling, is buried alongside the dead. Lord Aubrey does not concern himself with the distinction. The rebellion created the lawlessness. The rebels are responsible. And so the rebels must pay. The man who emerged from the sept after three days of vigil over two shrouded bodies is not the man who entered it. The patient schemer has been scoured away. What remains is something colder: a man with nothing left to lose but his sons and his name, and a fury that has cured his famous patience like fire cures green wood. He no longer speaks of the post-war reckoning as an opportunity. He speaks of it as a debt owed in blood. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Ser Aladore Florent ◼ Age: 24 ◼ Appearance: Where his father is all angles and restraint, Aladore is warmth and motion. He stands just over six feet, lean and athletic, shaped by years of hard training and long rides along the Honeywine. His face is handsome in a less refined way: a strong brow, a slightly crooked nose broken at a tourney in Highgarden and never properly reset, and a wide mouth that falls easily into a cocksure grin. He has his mother's colouring, with thick auburn hair worn longer than fashion dictates, often falling across his forehead in unruly waves, and warm brown eyes flecked with gold. He has inherited the Florent ears, though on him they seem less unfortunate and more characterful, giving his profile an alert quality that women at court have called roguish. He carries himself with the easy physicality of a natural athlete, loose-limbed and quick on his feet. In armour he wears burnished steel chased with amber and white enamel in the Florent colours, with a fox-head visor on his helm that has become his signature at tournaments. In court dress he favours rich russet doublets slashed with cream silk, a short cloak thrown carelessly over one shoulder. ◼ Biography: Aladore has spent his entire life being told he is the hope of his house. His father educated him in arms and in the arts of court, but where Aubrey is patient and calculating, his heir is bold. Aladore was knighted at eighteen after leading a mounted charge in a border skirmish near the Prince's Pass, scattering a force twice his own. He has grown up steeped in his father's ambition, raised on stories of the Gardener kings and the theft of Highgarden. Where Aubrey has quietly let the grievance guide his decisions over the years, Aladore burns with it. He has competed in tournaments across the Reach, unhorsing Tyrells and Tarlys alike, and earned a reputation as one of the finest young lances south of the Mander. Common soldiers take to him in a way his father will never inspire. The deaths of his mother and sister have turned the burning into something hotter and less controlled. He does not grieve quietly. He rages, he drinks, and he sharpens his sword until the whetstone screams. The grin does not come less easily now than before, but there is an emptiness to it now. He loved his little sister Alysanne in particular with the fierce protectiveness of a brother who knew she was cleverer than him by half and destined for something great. That she and their mother died on a road he should have been riding is a thought that visits him nightly. The coming war is what makes his pulse quicken now. He has sworn his sword to the Red Dragon and means to wield it at the front of every charge, not just for glory but for the scalding satisfaction of making someone pay. His father worries about him. He is right to. But for the first time in his life, Lord Aubrey does not counsel restraint. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Ser Jon Florent ◼ Age: 19 ◼ Appearance: Jon Florent almost looks more like a septon's apprentice than a knight of the Reach. He is of middling height, narrower in the shoulder than his brother, with a slender frame that lends itself more to quickness than power. His face is long and serious, dominated by thoughtful grey-hazel eyes set beneath heavy brows that give him a permanently contemplative expression, as though he is perpetually working through some problem no one else has noticed. His hair is a mousey brown, darker than his brother's auburn, kept cut short and practical. He has the Florent ears (more noticeable on his thinner face than on Aladore's) and a scattering of freckles across his nose and cheekbones that make him look younger than his years. He is clean-shaven, not by choice but because his beard comes in patchy and thin, a source of private embarrassment. Despite his scholarly air, his hands are calloused from training; Jon may not love the sword, but no Florent has ever been permitted to neglect the martial arts entirely. He dresses plainly by the standards of his house, in muted browns and creams with unadorned leather and functional boots. ◼ Biography: Where Aladore was the heir, trained and celebrated, Jon was the spare, and he learned early to find his worth in places his brother never thought to look. He is the more intelligent of the two. He reads often and possesses a good memory for maps, genealogies, and the web of feudal obligation that governs the Reach. His father sent him to study at the Citadel, but Jon chose knighthood over the maester's chain. He may be studious and intelligent, but Jon never wanted to be a maester. He was knighted at seventeen and is a competent if not particularly noteworthy swordsman who fights the way he thinks: carefully, looking for the opening rather than forcing one. His primary edge in a fight may well be an opponent underestimating him due to his appearance. The murder of his mother and sister has changed Jon in ways less visible than Aladore but no less profound. He does not rage. He goes quiet, and the quiet has a weight to it that unsettles people. He has read the accounts, questioned the outriders, studied the road where it happened, and drawn too few conclusions. The story of bannerless renegades may be true. It may not. The not knowing gnaws at him like rot in a beam. What he does know is that his father and brother are no longer thinking clearly. Grief has made Lord Aubrey reckless; fury has made Aladore murderous. Jon shares their anger, but someone in this family must still think past the next battle, and with his mother gone, that burden has fallen to him. He is nineteen, and not sure he is equal to it. Aladore will do something glorious and reckless in this war. Jon has resolved to be beside him when it happens, because someone will need to think clearly when the blood runs hot. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Lady Lynaera Florent, née Rowan [deceased] ◼ Age: 49 at death ◼ Appearance: A handsome, sharp-featured woman with silvered honey-blonde hair, grey-green eyes, and the straight-backed posture of someone who refused to be overlooked. ◼ Biography: Second daughter of Lord Mathis Rowan of Goldengrove, married to Lord Aubrey as a political match and transformed over three decades into the true spine of House Florent. She managed the estates, balanced the books, raised the children, and maintained a correspondence network spanning half the Reach. Killed alongside her daughter on the Honeywine road during the early chaos of the rebellion. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Alysanne Florent [deceased] ◼ Age: 17 at death ◼ Appearance: Small, slight, and elfin, with vivid amber eyes and deep auburn hair; the family beauty, though it was the sharp, unsettling kind that made men uneasy rather than enchanted. ◼ Biography: Lord Aubrey's only daughter and, by his own reckoning, his most valuable piece on the board. She had her father's patience, her mother's pragmatism, and an instinct for reading people that was alarming in a girl of seventeen. Every marriage offer had been refused; Aubrey was saving her for the match that would seal the Florents' rise. The war took her before he could play her. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Ser Bertrand Florent ◼ Age: 48 ◼ Appearance: Thick-set and broad-shouldered with a twice-broken nose, a jagged scar from cheekbone to jaw, iron-grey hair cropped close, and the look of a man who has spent thirty years sleeping in mud and never quite forgiven the world for it. ◼ Biography: Lord Aubrey's younger brother, third-born son of the late Lord Garmon. He has spent his adult life as a household knight in the Dornish Marches, and was summoned home when the rebellion broke out. He serves as castellan of Brightwater Keep: a capable soldier, a reliable commander. A man whose years fighting alongside Marcher lords (many of whom now ride for Daemon) give him sympathies his brother would rather he did not have. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Maester Edwyn ◼ Age: 63 ◼ Appearance: Stooped and liver-spotted, with watery blue eyes and a fringe of white hair around a bald crown. ◼ Biography: Assigned to Brightwater Keep by the Citadel over twenty years ago. A competent but unambitious man who has served the Florents faithfully and without distinction. Since Lady Lynaera's death, much of the household correspondence has fallen to him by default, a duty he performs adequately but without her instinct for what matters and what does not. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Ser Harmon Florent ◼ Age: 31 ◼ Appearance: A lean, sandy-haired man with a long jaw, the Florent ears, and the pinched, cautious expression of someone perpetually worried about giving offence. ◼ Biography: A cousin of Lord Aubrey's, son of a younger branch that holds a modest manor along the upper Honeywine. Serves as captain of Aladore's personal guard in the field. Loyal, solid, unimaginative, and quietly terrified that Aladore will do something that will get them both killed. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Rycherd Ashford ◼ Age: 15 ◼ Appearance: A slight, freckled boy with straw-coloured hair and an earnest face that has not yet lost its baby fat. ◼ Biography: Squire to Ser Aladore, second son of a minor Ashford knight. Worships his master with the blind devotion of a boy who has not yet seen real battle. Rides south with the Florent cavalry. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Name: Septa Myranda ◼ Age: 56 ◼ Appearance: A broad, plain-faced woman with grey hair pulled severely back and calloused hands more suited to a washerwoman than a servant of the Faith. ◼ Biography: Served as governess and spiritual guardian to the Florent children. She travelled with Lady Lynaera and Alysanne but was left behind at a waypoint along the Honeywine the morning before the attack, recovering from a fever. She has not forgiven herself and likely never will. ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ -◼ Name: Lady Emphyria Florent, née Cuy ◼ Age: 72 ◼ Appearance: A tiny, sharp-eyed old woman with white hair, a hooked nose, and a tongue that could strip paint from a castle wall. ◼ Biography: Lord Garmon's widow and mother to Aubrey, Denys, and Bertrand. She has outlived her husband, her eldest son, her daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter, and carries each loss like a stone sewn into her skirts. Still resides at Brightwater, where she is alternately ignored and feared by the household staff. | H I S T O R Y House Florent is one of the oldest noble houses in the Reach, tracing its lineage to Florys the Fox, the cleverest of Garth Greenhand's many children. Legend holds that Florys took three husbands, each ignorant of the others, and from those unions sprang three great houses: the Florents, the Balls, and the Peakes. The Florents descend from Flement Brightwater, Florys's first husband, who built the original keep on the banks of the Honeywine. It is a lineage older than the Tyrells, older than most houses still standing in the Reach. For generations beyond counting, the Florents served the Gardener Kings with distinction. The blood of the Gardeners flows in Florent veins through a direct male line descending from a younger son of King Garth X Gardener. When the dynasty ended on the Field of Fire, consumed by dragonflame alongside King Mern IX, the Florents had every reason to believe that Highgarden would pass to them. Aegon the Conqueror thought otherwise. Harlen Tyrell, the steward of Highgarden, opened its gates to the dragons and was rewarded with lordship over the entire Reach. A steward elevated to supremacy over the very bloodlines he had served. The Florents knelt. They had no choice. But they did not forget. In the centuries that followed, House Florent pursued a path of bitter loyalty. They fought in the Faith Militant's rising, in the Dornish wars, in every conflict that demanded Reach swords. Lord Jarmen Florent perished on the Field of Fire alongside his Gardener king. Lord Patrek rode for the Greens in the Dance and was cut down at the Battle of the Kingsroad. Lord Symond marched with Tyrell into Dorne and was slaughtered at Sunspear. The pattern never changed: the Florents fight, the Florents bleed, and the Florents receive nothing. Each generation produces a lord who believes this will be the time things change, and each generation is disappointed. By the time Lord Garmon Florent inherited Brightwater Keep, the house had entered a quiet decline. No single disaster, merely the slow erosion that comes from being perpetually passed over. Garmon spent his lordship raging against the Tyrells and drinking himself into an early grave, accomplishing nothing except ensuring that the name Florent became synonymous with impotent grievance. His son Aubrey inherited a diminished legacy: a keep in need of repair, bannermen growing distant, coffers thinning, and a name that great lords spoke with pity rather than respect. But Aubrey was not his father. Where Garmon raged, Aubrey planned, slowly but steadily reversing the Florent fortune. Whilst not exactly prosperous, House Florent had become a house of some prominence in the Reach. Until tragedy once again struck. C U R R E N T S I T U A T I O N When Daemon Blackfyre fled King's Landing with Aegor Bittersteel and Quentyn "Fireball" Ball, the Reach was thrown into chaos. Anti-Dornish sentiment runs deep here; King Daeron's marriage to Myriah Martell is a wound that has never healed. When Fireball rallied his banners, many Reach houses answered. The Peakes have declared openly. The Osgreys ride with Daemon. The Costaynes and the Balls have turned their cloaks. The Hightowers of Oldtown maintain a tense neutrality that satisfies no one. House Florent chose differently, and has paid a price no one anticipated. Lord Aubrey was among the first Reach lords to pledge his banners to King Daeron II, publicly and without equivocation. His reasoning was simple: the rebels would lose, and the lords who bled for the winning side would feast on the carcasses of those who did not. Then the war killed his wife and daughter, and calculation became something else entirely. Lady Lynaera and Alysanne Florent were set upon while travelling the Honeywine with a modest escort. Every member of the party was killed. The official account holds that bannerless renegades (opportunists born of the chaos Fireball's campaign has sown) robbed and murdered them. There are no known witnesses to confirm or contradict this. Lord Aubrey has not sought the truth with any great vigour. The rebellion created the lawlessness. The rebels are responsible. That is enough. The deaths have fundamentally broken the slow, steady path House Florent was set upon. Lynaera was Brightwater's spine: the woman who balanced ledgers, managed the household and acted as Aubrey's anchor. Alysanne was Aubrey's most valuable political piece, a daughter of ancient blood held in reserve for the marriage that would seal the Florents' rise. Both are gone. In their place is grief, rage, and a dangerous clarity. The ever-patient fox is patient no longer. Where once Lord Aubrey offered loyalty as an investment he now wages war as a vendetta, with his eye on the holdings of House Peake in particular. Brightwater can field roughly fifteen hundred swords. Ser Aladore has ridden south with the bulk of the cavalry to join Lord Leo Tyrell's muster, burning to make someone pay. Ser Jon accompanies him as possibly the last steady mind the Florents possess. Lord Aubrey remains at the keep, but it feels emptier than its garrison would suggest. There are rooms he does not enter. There is an unease permeating from the man always considered so calm and collected. The fox no longer has the luxury of patience, or the inclination for mercy. And the fox does not forget. Ancient Reach house with better Gardener blood than the Tyrells, been salty about getting passed over for Highgarden since the Conquest. Spent the last few generations in slow decline thanks to a string of lords who were better at complaining than scheming. Current lord, Aubrey, is the first competent Florent in a while and has spent eighteen years quietly rebuilding. When the Blackfyre Rebellion kicked off, Aubrey immediately backed the Red Dragon. Not out of love for Daeron, but because he did the maths and figured the rebels were going to lose, and he wanted to be first in line when the crown started handing out confiscated rebel lands (looking at you, House Peake). Then his wife and teenage daughter got killed by bandits (allegedly) on the road during the chaos of the war. Now the calculating political operator has been replaced by a grieving father with a grudge, and his eldest son Aladore (the heir, a hothead tournament knight) is out for blood. The only person in the family still thinking straight is Jon, the kind-of-bookish younger son, who is nineteen and very aware he is not ready for this. Uncle Bertrand holds the castle. He is a grumpy old soldier who spent thirty years in the Marches and has complicated feelings about fighting his former comrades. Loyalist house. Motivated by revenge. Probably going to do something unwise. |
