Version 2.0
After dealing with the raid near the southern holdfast, Brandon Stark stayed in the holdfast waiting for any other movements. The Ironborn attack had been unsettling, and he couldn't shake the feeling that it was only the beginning. As he waited a raven brought news from the western coast.
The Barrow King, the Ryder King, the Warg King, and the Glover King had all been struck by large-scale raids from the Ironborn. The coast had erupted into chaos as the raiders attacked without warning, their ships moving like specters, descending upon the unsuspecting villages, then disappearing just as quickly. The Ironborn were ruthless in their assault. They burned villages to the ground, slaughtered the men who tried to defend their homes, and took the women as captives. Food stores, weapons, goods—anything of value was seized. They had hit the northern kings quickly, overwhelming the defenders, leaving nothing but ashes in their wake, before disappearing into their ships, safe from retaliation from the non-sea fairing people of the north.
The Ryder King, always proud and fiercely protective of his lands, had been hit the hardest due to his long coast and land mass. A particularly large raiding party had descended upon his coast, where a bloody battle ensued as they stayed to raid for longer. The Ryder King had rallied his forces quickly, leading a charge of his cavalry against the raiders. His horsemen thundered across the open fields. But unlike the northern who would form up and protect one another, they scattered. No formation formed as they left one another to fend for themselves, it was only when or if the cavalry was bogged down would they attack and rip the riders to shreds.
The charge was ferocious, and so the Ironborn scattered but did not break, instead, they yielded an inch of ground. Before they charged into battle, turning the battle turned into a brutal melee. The Ryder King himself was in the thick of it, cutting down raiders left and right, but the Ironborn fought with glee, with little fear of death and filled with berserker love of battle in their eyes as more blood filled the battlefield.
Despite their tenacity, the Ironborn were outnumbered and outmatched. The Ryder King's cavalry teared up the Ironborn charging through lines breaking men whenever they passed. They butchered every last Ironborn they stood and captured the rest.
After the battle, the Ryder King ordered the survivors to be rounded up. Among them was the leader of the raid, a grim-faced man who wore a crown of driftwood and a cloak of sealskin. The Ryder King demanded to know why they had come, The Ironborn king, battered and bloodied smiled and gleefully told.
He was a king of the Iron Islands, but the islands had descended into chaos. Many petty kings had risen, descendants of the Grey King, all claiming to be his son, hundreds of sons had done this and soon war and fighting broke out to decide the rightful king. Desperate to gain the upper hand, he had led his men across the sea to raid the North, hoping to gather enough wealth and supplies to tip the balance in his favour. But he had not come alone. Other Ironborn kings had followed him, each with the same idea, and what had begun as a single raid had turned into a full-scale invasion once news and ideas had spread.
The North was already fragile, with winter and wars. Now, with the Ironborn raiding the coast and the western kings preparing for another round of battles, the western coast of the north was about to be butchered up and carved out.
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As time passed, the raids from the Ironborn became more frequent, like a relentless tide slowly wearing down the northern coast. Brandon received reports from the western kings almost daily that small raiding parties appeared along the shores, striking villages and fishing towns. The coastlines of the Ryder, Barrow, Warg, and Glover kingdoms bore the brunt of these attacks, but for the most part, the raids were scattered and disorganized. The raiders were often fended off by local forces, their ships burned, or their warriors cut down.
But as the months dragged on, the raiders began to change their tactics. Defeated in small skirmishes, scattered and driven back to their ships time and again, the Ironborn soon began to gather, forming larger and more organized groups that came to be known as 'warbands'. These warbands united the raiders under common banners of loot and goods, and what had once been isolated raids turned into more coordinated invasions.
Reports flooded into Winterfell and the halls of the coastal kings. Quickly Three large warbands had formed, each comprised of around 85 raiding ships and 3,400 Ironborn warriors. The raiders no longer struck at only the outer villages and fishing towns—they pushed deeper inland, plundering larger villages and raiding farms. One warband marched through the northern coast, targeting the lands of the Glover and Warg Kings. The second struck harder into the Barrow King's territory, burning settlements and stealing what little food remained from the cold-stricken land. The third, the largest, focused its efforts on the Ryder Kingdom, as once they had found it was the largest kingdom on that side of the north they were blinded by greed.
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These warbands moved like a plague across the North, hitting multiple kingdoms simultaneously. The Ironborn raiders, emboldened by their newfound strength in numbers, fought like savages. They sought wealth, and captives to bring back to their island homes. As they moved deeper into the land, the devastation grew worse.
The Ryder King, once confident in his ability to fend off the raiders, now found himself under siege. His coastal fortifications, which had held firm against smaller raids, struggled to withstand the onslaught of the warband. Entire villages were set ablaze, and his cavalry, while fierce, could only do so much against the sheer numbers of the Ironborn.
In the Barrow King's lands, the situation was the worst. The Ironborn warband there had marched inland and burned everything after his loss in battle where the blood thirst of the Ironborn had led to the butchering of his army. Now stuck in his castle he watched crops burned, livestock stolen, and entire families taken as thralls by the invaders.
Meanwhile, the Glover and Warg Kings faced a similar crisis. The Ironborn warband ravaged their coastline, burning farms and looting villages. The Warg King, had allied with the Glover King, had joined together, and with the help of the Warg King's warg abilities and kids children's ability to do the same unleashed them against the Ironborn and pushed them back, but not before they had burned and raided large swaths of land.
The warbands were devastating the western coast. The warband that had just finished with the Barrow King was marching towards the next target of the Winter Kingdom.