Alton Orkwood

Born in 412, Alton Orkwood is the second son of Harlon Orkwood and the current Lord of Orkmont, having been so since so since the year 435 following the end of the civil war that engulfed the Iron Islands and resulted in the deaths of his father and older brother.

Appearance and Character
A little over six feet, broad shoulders, strong from years spent at sea, but tired from the same. His face bears the faintest lines of an old anger put half to rest years ago. Beneath the thin, faded mask of a decade's worth of reaver's scars, hunter's scars, there remains a lightness of youth.

Childhood
Born to Harlon Orkwood and Helya Tawney in early 412. His mother died in childbirth. How different would it have been if she'd lived? Alton's father was a fair man, and not incapable of love, but he raised Ironborn sons. Alton was taught how to fight, how to row, how to read the waves and the stars better even than he could read letters on a page.

As a young boy he would spend whole days at the shipyard, watching as longships were built from the keel up, the planks joined stern to stern, one overlapping the next, and from the second he was old enough, he worked in those shipyards himself, learning to use the tools that any Ironborn worth his salt could use.

When he wasn't learning to build ships, he was learning to sail them, and gladly took up opportunities to crew fishing vessels and the like from the time he was 13 years old.

Adolescence
In 425 AC the arrival of the Blue Winter, and the storms, forced a moderate curtailment of seafaring activity throughout the Iron Islands. The vast fishing fleets of Orkmont came home, the shipbuilding industry slowed, and Alton, who by now was eager to spend as much time at sea as possible, suddenly found himself stuck on land and often indoors.

Never any kind of scholar at much other than the nautical sciences, Alton instead honed his skill with a sword during this time, favoring the speed and ease of movement afforded by a rapier, over the more common broadsword.

This was also the time when Alton began to take a greater interest in the affairs of his House, their relation to the other noble families of the Iron Islands, and the role they played in the politics of the day. He would listen to his father and his older brother talk at length about the hardships brought on the by the winters, and he took it to heart when they spoke about how the Ironborn had only ever known true prosperity when they fully embraced the Old Way.

At Sea
By the time Blue Winter had ended in 428 AC, Alton Orkwood had come of age, and like so many young men, and especially Ironborn, he wanted to see the world. So, in early 429, he took three ships from the Orkwood fleet and departed from the Iron Islands get a taste of what lay beyond this rusted little corner of the sea.

The next years saw him trace the shape of Westeros in a long crooked U, north to south to north again over on the eastern coast, and in there somewhere: the Stepstones, the Free Cities, the Shivering Sea, and though the Old Way had been gone from the Iron Islands since the days of yore, Alton and his men exported it when and where they could, laying in wait for the moments when some wealthy merchant or another would make themselves vulnerable on the water. They were sloppy about it at first, and Alton collected a few scars for himself down in the Stepstones, but what better place was there for a reaver to cut his teeth? They came out of it all the stronger, and carved their way up the Narrow Sea, learning just how narrow it truly was when they incurred the wrath of this family or that company and found themselves the subjects of one vicious pursuit after another until by 432 they'd run plumb out of sea.