Age: 53 (Born 3rd moon 149 AC)

Physical Description: Tall and broad, he is a man who has spent most of his adult life training for and participating in combat. Despite his age he is in good physical fitness, training often with the sword. He has short dirty blonde hair, kept short for ease of donning a helm, which is increasingly streaked with grey and white. His face bears wrinkles and a few scars, as well as a bushy mustache, whose color too is beginning to fade.

Starting Location: Harvest Hall

Attribute: Strong ( 5 combat threshold)

Skill Points: 22

Skills: Marshalling (MAR), Formation (MAR), Weapon Proficiency (Swords, Shields) (COM), Footwork (COM), Industry (STA)

Mastery: Duelist

Username: /u/nstano

Discord Username: nstano

Other Characters: n/a for now

Basic Information and Character

Orys is a quixotic figure, a man with a romantic notion of duty and honor in defense of the Stormlands. Yet, the world he was raised for was one that was gone before he could experience it. His strong sense of duty and honor have drawn him into many conflicts, yet he soldiers on with confidence. He is suspicious of outsiders, but very close to his friends and family.

History

Youth

Orys was born in 149AC, the first son born of his father’s union with XX. His youth was a time of prosperity and healing. The years of the Dance had brought great devastation to Westeros, and the rule of King Jacaerys Velaryon helped to keep the conflict from simmering. With peace, the fields of Harvest Hall sent grain across the Stormlands and made life comfortable for the House Selmy. The young Orys was squire to YY, and followed him south during Aegon’s Invasion. While he was too young to see combat firsthand, his father had instilled in him the importance of readiness for battle lest Dorninsh raiders threaten the Stormlands from the south. The conclusion of that conflict would radically reshape the structure of Westeros with the integration of Dorne into the Seven Kingdoms. His father was not alone among the Marcher lords whose distrust of the Dornish fell on deaf ears in King’s Landing, as King Jacaerys sought to placate his new vassals. Whether intended or not, this slight would have profound impacts on the years to come. Had King Monterys been possessed of the political skill of his father he may have been able to defuse the tension, but his actions served only to increase it. Orys watched as the wealth that had come from his family’s fields once to the realm’s prosperity now seemed to be wasted on one frivolity after another from the throne. He heard his father and the other lords of the Dornish Marches become increasingly unguarded about their disdain for the king and his actions, all too willing to blame his decadence on the Dornish influence at court.

Lord of Harvest Hall

It was during this time that Orys took up his father’s mantle as Lord of Harvest Hall, and fit in with the grumbling lords as his father had. As a new generation of lords began to take power in the Dornish Marches, years of grumbling soon turned into plots. The Staedmons had turned to Orys as they plotted and at first he demurred. To plot against the crown is treason and folly unless one is triumphant, and Orys had little desire to become too entangled in the plot. He told Lord Staedmon that the banners of Harvest Hall would only be raised if there was a chance for victory. Throughout the 170s and early 180s, more lords pledged their support. In 185AC two ravens appeared in the rookery at Harvest Hall, the first spoke of a failed plot in the halls of the Red Keep, with several Dornishmen escaping the assassin’s blade. The second bore the seal of Staedmon and the word agreed upon to begin the uprising. Such an inauspicious start did little to inspire the confidence of Lord Orys, but he kept his word and raised the banners of Harvest Hall.

The Folly

At first, the Marches who had united behind Staedmon saw successes. Gathering at Blackhaven, the army marched rapidly through the Boneway. They encountered little resistance, for the Dornish had been ignorant of their years of plotting. Orys was with the army as they approached the walls of Wyl, and that keep received the fury of decades of discontent. The defenders of Wyl, caught off-guard, fought as bravely as they could but to little avail. Many fell by Orys’s blade, the Valyrian steel of Bitter Harvest. The Marchers, seeing the ease of their success, felt as though they had made their point to the Dornish and that their ferocity would keep them from intervening further. The army left Wyl a smouldering ruin, and Orys rode north with them to link up with Tarly and the Marcher lords of the Reach.

As the army marched north, weighed down with loot from Wyl and confident in their success, they encountered the riders from the Reach. The news of the fates of the Tarlys and Peakes cast a pall over the army and its commanders. The price of their actions was coming into sharper focus, and Orys and his fellow lords agreed they had only one hope for victory, if the king had divided his force to deal with the Reach lords, they had to defeat the royal army in the Stormlands before the king joined it. Defeating the armies separately would be their only hope for survival. Perhaps Lord Darklyn knew this as well, for he refused to give the Stormlords battle. Each day they spent chasing the wiley Darklyn they became more desperate to find him. It was at Skullfort that the army came upon a new set of banners, that of the young King Maelor. The Stormlords were men who had been raised into a life of battle, and even Orys doubted the tactical ability of the young king. Privately, he felt the king a preferable opponent to his more experienced retainer. He made preparations for battle, and the Stormlords fell upon the royal army with all the force they could muster. They charged headlong into the king’s trap, and the royal army was able to outflank the Stormlanders. Orys fought hard with his men, trying to pull them back as the charge became a rout. He had tried to fight his way to join his forces with the other lords, but as Caron and Staedmon fell, he decided to strike his banners. The men of Harvest Hall, in their attempt to withdraw, found their way blocked by the fusily banners of the Lord of Duskendale. Orys could taste defeat, presenting his sword to Lord Darklyn as a sign of his submission.

“You are fortunate, Lord Selmy, that it is I who have accepted your surrender,” Lord Darklyn began, examining the blade of Bitter Harvest, “for my master is not as pragmatic a man as I.” He turned the blade in his hand, presenting the hilt to Orys. “Do not forget that you are in my debt.” Thus did Orys receive Darklyn’s pardon.

Revolt of the Sapphire Isle

The next three years were spent rebuilding from the devastation of the Folly. The fighting had ended, but the resentments lingered, and the Marchers rebuilt more in anticipation of what was to come rather than out of trust for the peace. When Lord Tarth brought his sellsword army to the Stormlands, Lord Orys answered his liege’s call for aid. Battles in this revolt were not like those he had fought before; the wiley sellswords would not face them in open battle. None of the lords expected honor from the sellswords, but Orys spoke out against those who wanted to take punitive action against those among the smallfolk who joined the rebels.

Darklyn’s Rebellion

Years of rebuilding followed the revolt, and doubtless many prayed for relief from the strife. Orys had spent these years focused on stewarding his lands, making them more productive. His concern was less about recovery from the last conflict than it was for the conflict yet to come, with his attention pointed south to Dorne. He had not followed the machinations of court politics, but they would soon be at his doorstep. When 194AC came, the preparations began for war. While the Marcher lords, and the Stormlands more generally, had no great love for King Maelor, Lord Darklyn had a debt with Orys Selmy. That debt was called in 194, and the Lord of Harvest Hall was obliged to raise his banners against the king for a second time.

After the surprise Dornish assault on Nightsong, Orys joined his men to the army that marched south into the Boneway. This time, the pass would live up to its grim name as the Stormlords were ambushed and surrounded. In the council of war he was first to stand with Lord Caron and refused to yield to the Dornish, vowing to fight until the last drop of blood. While the army was able to sack Wyl a second time, they were again devastated in the Boneway.The campaign had taken Lord Connington and Lord Caron, and nearly all of the army the Marchers had gathered. While Orys pledged to return and avenge them, his forces had taken some of the heaviest losses and he spent the rest of the war behind the walls of Harvest Hall.

Timeline (optional)

• 149AC Born

• 160-161AC - Aegon’s Invasion

• 167AC - Age of Majority

• 168AC - Marries (wife from house tarly)

• 176AC - Becomes lord

• 185AC - Staedmon’s Folly

• 188AC - Revolt of the Sapphire Isle

• 195-196AC - Darklyn's Rebellion

Family

Parents

Beric Selmy (125-176)

Joanna Selmy (nee Connington) (124-179)

Children

Ormund Selmy b 169

Lyonel Selmy b 171

Jena Selmy b 172