The Northern Famine

The Free Men of the Kingsroad
Desperate, starving northerners turned to banditry and ambush during the Great Famine. Scores of trained soldiers, and those that joined them, all leaving their loyalties behind, banded together along the Kingsroad to wreak havoc upon the holdings of nearby nobles. Houses Cerwyn, Tallhart, Dusti, Waterman, and others, all reported to Winterfell, telling of encounters with deft and well-trained bandits calling themselves “free men”.

When reports of thieving raids from within his vassals’ castle walls began to reach the greying Lord Rickard Stark, he decided even the Great Famine was no cause for such lawlessness. Gathering the most capable of his garrison, he rode south to rid the road of the pestering cravens. The already-weakened Stark force reached the Barrows and were met promptly by several organised bands that seemed to have grown into the hundreds.

The bandits were too adept in the hills for the men of Winterfell, and Lord Rickard was felled by an arrow in the dead of night. His heir retreated back to Winterfell, and soon the call went out to the other lords to reconvene and scour the Kingsroad.

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