The Tourney at Ashford

House Wydman
Vassals of House Arryn :: “Right Conquers Might”

HISTORY
House Wydman of Old Peake and Highhome is only a single generation removed from it’s founder, a tourney knight of prodigious renown (and, to hear some speak, prodigious size). During a wedding a Lord of the Vale and a Lady of the Westerlands, the young knight Ser Warryn Stone – at the time believed to have been knighted solely to appease his father – boasted that he could beat any challenger at the lists. Considered by many to be too large to ride a horse, Warryn was quickly challenged by a series of knights from various houses in attendance.

At the end of the day, he had won five tilts. A sixth challenger stood against him – his own father, the Lord Arryn. If Warryn won, Arryn said, he would legitimize him as a proper member of House Arryn. Unfortunately for Warryn, his horse was tired by this point and the tilt went poorly for him, being unseated in a single pass. Though not made a full member of House Arryn, Warryn so impressed his father that he instead bestowed upon him his own lordship and house – Warryn chose the name Wydman for his new house to mock those who had spoken against him.

Unfortunately for the new House Wydman, the land granted to the family was a narrow forested tract in the mountains south of the Vale proper in an area known to be heavily populated by the mountain clans. It became Warryn’s duty to rebuild the crumbling Andal fortress of Old Peake and fortify the lands against the clans. A marriage to Alys Waynwood, sister to one of the knights Warryn defeated, brought a small number of troops to assist with the effort.

Warryn and Alys would have five children – four sons and a daughter. Unfortunately, the long drawn out conflicts with the clans would see the three eldest sons killed in combat and Warryn’s daughter succumbed to sickness during her first winter. By the end of his admittedly long life, Warryn had only managed to wall, and thereby secure, a small settlement around Old Peake, a town he came to call Highhome.

It’s into this situation that the current lord, Ythan Wydman, came to power just before the Blackfyre Rebellion. While the rest of the realm marched to war on one side or the other, the Wydmans withdrew to secure their holdings.

The years since have not gone well; it seems that, for every camp of clansmen the Wydmans put down, two more rise up to take their place. There is not a single member of the Wydman’s fighting men who have not suffered some sort of injury at the hands of the clansmen; Lord Ythan himself sports a scar down the side of his face from a close call. Highhome finds itself repeatedly sieged by the clansmen and the Wydmans struggle merely to keep the spaces closest to their wall tightly under their control.

During one such ranging out to drive the clans away from the walls of Highhome, Lord Ythan’s heir, Jon, was injured by a clansman, taking a terrible blow to the head. Although Jon survived, he was never the same afterwards, rambling and screaming into the night. While unsure how to deal with the issue and instead beginning to prepare his second son, Warryn, to take the lordship, Ythan’s problems were seemingly solved when Jon broke out of his chambers one night and escaped the fortress, heading into the mountains. Although Jon as not been seen since, the scandal has caused the Wydmans to lose some of their standing in the Vale.

With his own injuries paining him more every day, Ythan Wydman works to prepare his only remaining son to take the lordship and to find a suitable match for his daughter while, at the same time, finally looking beyond the Vale for help with securing the lands granted his family by the Arryn.

HOLDINGS
Old Peake is a partially ruined fortress constructed by the Andal during their attempt to pacify the Mountains of the Moon thousands of years ago. In the approximately eighty years that the Wydmans have held it, less than a quarter of it has been reconstructed and made fit for habitation; countless tunnels stretch into the mountain the fortress is built against, many collapsed and many more unstable and unfit for use – no one is truly sure how deep the holding actually delves into the mountain. What is habitable of Old Peake, however, is rather bare; although the Wydman lands host substantial resources, little effort has been made to exploit those resources with efforts instead going to first secure the land.

Although many still tell the story of Warryn the Wyde, Wydman’s standing within the Vale has shrank recently with the death of Ythan’s heir Jon. Still, being cousins of the leading Arryn family, Lord Ythan and his family still command a decent amount of respect within the Vale. Lord Ythan hopes to soon expand that influence beyond the Vale to bring more men to protect his lands.

Most of the peasantry of Lord Wydman’s domain live within the walled city of Highhome that was built around Old Peake to support the effort to reclaim the mountain forests. The walls of Highhome and the towering presence of Old Peake keep the people safe even with the occasional attack by the clansmen.

Beyond the walls of Highhome, though, the Wydman lands are essentially lawless; the clans of the mountains rampage freely and trouble all would venture further than the road to the fortress town. This is, they claim, their land and they will violently defend it from interlopers. The recent rise of the clansmen warlord that the others call only the Yellowjacket has especially troubled the Wydmans; since the appearance of this new threat, the clansmen seem to have doubled down on trying to attack Highhome directly. For now, however, Lord Ythan’s meagre army manages to hold his seat without trouble; how long that will last, though, not even the Wydmans are willing to say.

The Wydman lands hold a vast quantity of wealth; the Arryns knew it, the Wydmans know it, and so do the clansmen. The wood of the forests would be a great economic boon and the mountains of the area are full of veins of precious metals. Unfortunately, by not having control of most of their lands, the Wydmans have no way to properly extract the resources. This has left the family relatively poor, with most of their wealth expended on manning and defending Highhome.