Iron Islands

The archipelago lies west of the Trident and the Neck, hard against the northwestern edge of Lannister land, battered by a sea that leaves almost no safe harbor. Pyke is home to the Greyjoys; Great Wyk, among other houses, to the Goodbrothers and the Farwynds; Old Wyk keeps the First Men's ancient Seastone Chair.

Harlaw gathers the Harlaws and the Stonetrees; Orkmont holds the Orkwoods; Saltcliffe holds the Sunderlys and the Saltcliffes; Blacktyde holds the Blacktydes, and Lonely Light, the most remote of them all, lies eight days' row from Old Wyk.

The rest of Westeros calls them ironmen; among themselves, they are ironborn. They are a seafaring people, proud of a naval skill that for centuries had no equal, and unwilling to warm to the green lands of the mainland.

Their soil is too poor to keep them alive, so for generations their culture was built on reaving, leaving the working of the land to thralls. Almost no one here prays to the Seven or the Old Gods: the islands' faith is the Drowned God's. Bastards born here are given the surname Pyke.

Before the Greyjoys, the islands answered to House Hoare, which once held sway over much of the Westerlands and the Riverlands. Harren the Black, the last of that line, raised the monstrous castle of Harrenhal by the Gods Eye.

When Aegon Targaryen came to his gates demanding he bend the knee, Harren refused to yield the castle. Aegon mounted Balerion, and the towers burned with Harren and his sons inside, ending House Hoare for good.

After that death, the great lords of the islands gathered and chose Vickon Greyjoy of Pyke as their new ruler. His descendants have held the Iron Islands ever since.

When Robert Baratheon rose against the Targaryens, the islands sided with neither camp. The peace didn't last: some five years later, Balon Greyjoy took the crown of the Iron Islands for himself.

The answer came from Robert himself, by then on the Iron Throne, and from Eddard Stark, and that first uprising of Balon's was crushed.

With Robert dead and the Starks and Lannisters already at war, Balon Greyjoy crowned himself again and sent his ships against the North. Months later, Balon died.

The ironborn then gathered in a moot to settle the succession, and out of it came a new king: Euron Greyjoy.

The islands' land barely sustains anyone: fishermen and farmers work a thin, stubborn soil, keeping goats, sheep and the odd horse. What truly makes these rocks worth having are the seams of iron, lead and tin buried beneath them.