Marq Waynwood

Lord Marq Waynwood is the head of House Waynwood and the Lord of Ironoaks. A dangerous swordsman and a skilled huntsman, he leads a company of rangers and marksmen against bandits and wildlings in the Vale's great woods.

Appearance and Character
At court, the handsome heir to Ironoaks was known as a polished rogue, possessed of a glib tongue and a cutting wit. Well-made, a splendid sword and a gifted huntsman, he was marked out at an early age as one to watch.

Bold to the point of recklessness, today, Marq leads a band of rangers in the heavily forested regions of Ironoaks.

History
The child of a loveless marriage, the heir to House Waynwood grew up caught between two sides of a family quarrel that had been brewing for centuries. His mother, Elethea, Lady of Ironoaks in her own right, spearheaded what many saw as a progressive movement away from the old traditions that the Waynwoods had held to since the Age of Heroes. His father, Ser Tarleton, hailing from an insignificant Waynwood cadet branch, the Waynwoods of the Wailing Wood, championed the Old Way and all it entailed.

Ser Tarleton, in his youth a tourney knight of some renown, now a bad-tempered drunk embittered and soured by the years, took his son's training in the martial pursuits firmly in hand even as his lady wife pushed the boy towards more refined scholarship. Exposed to one thing one day, then its opposite the next, but browbeaten and scolded at every turn, Marq Waynwood found a kindred spirit not in the other young nobles at Lady Elethea's court, but in the maester's bastard, a young man named Laurens.

At the age of 7, Marq began training with the Braavosi swordsmaster Orbelo Reyaan, an old friend of his father's, brought up from Oldtown. The last of Reyaan's students, he and Laurens studied the water-dance under the great swordman for two years before Lady Elethea packaged him off to foster at the Eyrie.

Squiring for his uncle-by-law, Ser Osric Arryn, from the age of 9 onwards, as part of a deal arranged by Lady Elethea for her sister's hand, Marq discovered a lifelong affinity for the great outdoors, particularly the Vale's great forests and slopes.

Quickly recognized as one of the Vale's most talented young swordsman, Marq took the Eyrie by storm. Unsurpassed by boys of his age in the yard, Waynwood quickly let the arrogance of skill get to his head, and Ser Osric was put upon at times to curb his wild young charge.

Yet despite a few well-deserved knocks here and there, he found the Eyrie a haven from the turbulence and tumult of his home. He visited the great stone fortress of his ancestors for the first time since leaving for the Eyrie in the year 403 A.C., for a ball celebrating his mother's nameday. In this week at home, he renewed his friendship with the boy Laurens, before spending two days lost deep in the woods with his sister Jocelyn, his elder by two years.

Ever after, he would always visit home for an evening and a night every other fortnight. Even after the Lady Elethea sent the boy Laurens to train under the Eyrie's septon.

One day, after a particularly destructive romp through the kitchens, Ser Osric took his young squire out with the Winged Knights to investigate reports of a merchant caravan set upon by wildlings. As the Winged Knights dismounted to search for survivors, Marq was left holding the leads of their mounts when a band of clansmen, lying in wait, fell upon the caravan's rescuers. The young squire sent the small herd of warhorses into a stampede, the thunder of their hooves causing some of the wildlings to break off and flee. In the desperate fighting that followed, young Marq cut down two mountain clansmen and saw a fellow squire fall. It was the young Waynwood heir's first encounter with the men of the Mountain Tribes, and it left a major impression on him.

The Mummer's War
Marq was a squire of sixteen when his aunt's caravan was attacked on the roads. Enraged at her younger sister's fate, Lady Elethea gathered four thousand some foot and two hundred knights, and sent to the Eyrie demanding permission to bring fire and sword to the Mountain Clans. Alaric Arryn refused this request, and instead levied the host to join the forces gathering in Maegor Waters' name. Lady Elethea would have kept some of the host to wage a war of her own in her liege lord's absence, but her husband, Ser Tarleton, marched the entire contingent off in the night, leaving Lady Elethea only her garrison to wreak her vengeance.

When Ser Tarleton arrived at the Eyrie at the head of the Waynwood host, he asked of Lord Alaric a boon--to have his son attend him in battle. As Ser Osric was to be sent to treat with the North, Marq asked his master for permission to ride with his father--he had grown close with his aunt, and he had been as loud as any in calling for the taking of a blood-price.

He fought valiantly at the Ruby Ford, shoulder to shoulder with his old friend Laurens, a septon now, and took the life of many a royalist soldier and knight. When Tarleton Waynwood fell to a lance in the leg, his son rallied the Waynwood swords to him and stood over his father, personally slaying the Golden Company knight who'd wounded his father and successfully holding their bank of the Ford.

At the battle's end, Ser Tarleton had himself propped up by two guardsmen so he could dub his son a knight, as Septon Laurens anointed him with holy oils. It was a touching moment, shared between father and son, the last for many years, for on their return, his lady mother send his lord father to his branch's seat in the Wailing Wood. In the years thereafter, Ser Tarleton would only be seen at Ironoaks for the occasional feast, grown sour from drink and his wound.

In the Years before 418 A.C.
After his knighting, sixteen year old Marq would return home briefly, before being sent to the Eyrie by his mother after a quarrel to take one of five empty places in the Brotherhood of Winged Knights. Once betrothed to a daughter of House Templeton, who died of a wasting illness, his mother hoped to find him a match amongst the richer and more powerful Houses of the Vale. There, he continued to make a name for himself, earning a reputation as a rake and a scoundrel, fond of dueling over pretty women. Disagreement and bad feeling bloomed between him and his commander, Ser Alester Hersy, as between two stags in the rutting season, and things escalated to a point in 413 A.C. No-one knows the spark that set things alight between the two. Some hypothesize that the two fought over a daughter of House Donniger. Others attribute the final break in the rift between knight and captain to Marq's darling sister, who had married Hersy's lordly cousin of Newkeep. As many and vivid as the rumors are, there is no public consensus to what prompted the events to follow, and perhaps there never will be.

Regardless of the cause, what is known firmly is that young Ser Marq called out Ser Alester to fight with swords "until a conclusion is reached". Lord Osric got wind of the duel and had the two brought to his quarters. When the three exited, Ser Marq had his belongings gathered from the barracks and left straightaway for Ironoaks. It was known thence that Ser Marq had resigned his place in the Winged Brotherhood to "tend to his inheritance".

In the years since, it soon became understood that Marq Waynwood tended to his inheritance the only way he knew how-through blood and steel. As the clansmen grew more bold in the years since, the heir to Waynwood raised a light company of rangers and marksmen to patrol the vast forests of his family's ancient domains. Clad in green and black, wielding spears, javelins, and bucklers, they have proven remarkably effective, earning a fearsome reputation among the tribes of the Vale.

Recent Events
Marq Waynwood was looking forward to the Great Tourney of Summerhall, where he hoped to challenge the celebrated knight Leyton Lightsteel, his old master Reyaan's most famous student, when news reached the hunting lodge where he and his men had stopped to take water. His mother, the wise and well-respected Lady Elethea, had passed in the night.

So it was that instead of leaving for the Tourney of a lifetime, Ser Marq Waynwood knelt amongst the ancient weirwoods of Ironoaks to take on the mantle born by countless Lords and Ladies Waynwood before him.