Victory on Skagos

In the early months of 404 AC, Lords Umber, Karstark, Overton, and Slate were faced with dwindling foodstores, and rumours upon the wild winds of Winter spreading among their smallfolk that Skagosi houses and tribes across the Bay of Seals enjoyed a surplus of food they had hoarded through ill gotten means. Risking an outbreak of lawlessness, the lords organised over a thousand of men for an invasion of the island. The Lord of Winterfell, sympathetic to their plight, only offered an ambivalent response: “These are desperate days.”

The Lords attacked as swiftly as the jagged, partially frozen Bay of Seals allowed them. In the swirling snows, some stretches of ice seemed as though they reached all the way to the island. Many men, impatient and tired of the breaking of ice required to move along, abandoned their longboats to march. The Bay would claim many before any steel was swung. Once upon the shores of ice and stone, violence was met with violence, but the northern lords pushed through Driftwood Hall and beyond, but the loss of fighting men and supplies occurred at every encampment and in every skirmish. When staunch resistance was found at Deepdown, led by House Crowl, the vengeful invaders were thrown back onto their meandering path towards Kingshouse.

At Kingshouse, it was said Lord Magnar and his heirs were killed in a brief, chaotic siege, and that the spoils of victory were said to have only been grainhouses and village cellars just as depleted as on the mainland. This news, however, did nothing to diffuse other rumours brought home by the victorious men: that many of the Skagosi stored their dead alongside with what little food they had, and that the northerners were right to end the horrific cannibalism.