Ser Aron Sunderland strode into the hall with a scowl on his face and his brows low. Here they all were, the champions of the great tourney. While they had saddled their horses and polished their plate he had been stuck in some rainstorm from the Summer Isles. {The gods have a most infuriating sense of humor} he thought to himself. Sailors spoke with dread in their voices about the merciless torrents of shipbreaker bay , but if anything that had been some of the smoothest sailing he'd had in months. Yet when he was off the coast of SUNspear a rainstorm saw fit to come in from the SUMMER isles and nearly cause drove his ship into the inescapable shallows off the sandy shores of Dorne.

He had hoped to gain some respite in the tourney, a break from the constant balls, feasts and audiences his father had been sending him to for the past year now. He was not a pretty or popular man but on the battlefield a mans worth was measured by his skill. Instead he would have to stretch out his webbed fingers to bid ladies ot dance with him. Whenever the proud nobles of the south saw the brand of the sistermen on his hands they looked at him as if though he was a walrus who had somehow learned to speak, equally fascinated and disgusted. He had hoped to slip in unnoticed but once he entered and the herald laid eyes on the blue and green wavy on his silken cloak and the three silver faces on the chain that held it in place he had wasted no time announcing with a loud and authoritative barritone "Ser Aron Sunderland of Sisterton". He might as well have said what everyone was thinking. "Ser Wrecker the bandit of Pirate's den".

He began looking at the tables to determine where he should sit. He would rather find a table where servants and hedge knights might have a seat, where food and drink was more important to people than highborn chittering and someone such as him might go unnoticed. This was wishful thinking though. Even if the herald hadn't announced his arrival so loudly that the drowned god would have complained about the noise, his cloak of naathi silk was practically glowing from the lights of the hall. And he knew that his father would want him to sit with a few nobles at the very least, preferrably someone eligable for marriage. much though he loathed this game they played in the ballrooms he would not dissapoint his father after everything he had put him through in those two years.

Suddenly he spotted the blue falcon of arryn on the cloaks of some of the guests. Few lords from the Vale had attended as far as he knew. Lord Osric had rejected the invitation. he was mainly here because his father had insisted. Lord Osric was welcome presence here, surrounded by southern strangers with their noses in the air, a man lakcing the pretentions of so many other high lords. However he did not appear to have any bannermen by him. "Lord Osric"? Aron exclaimed . "I thought you had declined your invitation."