♛ → THE CROWNLANDS && STORMLANDS present VAEGON VELARYON, the LORD OF NIGHTSONG SHARP POINT / MASTER OF SHIPS of HIGH TIDE / DRIFTMARK. when the dragons danced in the sky they thought the BLACKS would still fly, but in the blink of an eye, they would all die. the THIRTY-TWO year old MALE who was BRILLIANT & UNSWERVING before they saw the first of the flames, is now GRASPING & VAINGLORIOUS after seeing the last. they’re often associated with the songs of dragons, fire and flesh, filling the night with music -- beautiful and haunting; the wind-lashed ocean roiling over sandy shores as lightning or dragonflame crests each wave; highest pine trees sweeping the moonlit skies -- the only sounds the rustle of trees and the sad, sweet song of the lonesome nightingale. ( thomas doherty )
TIMELINE
110 AC - aged 0 - birth of vaegon velaryon to corlys velaryon and his wife, rhaenys targaryen, the queen who never was.
114 AC - aged 4 - great tourney is held to celebrate the anniversary of the marriage of king viserys i targaryen to his queen alicent hightower, and the factions are named. birth of caerella to princess rhaenyra targaryen, and of jaeherys targaryen to prince aegon and princess helaena targaryen.
115 AC - aged 5 - year of the red spring. death of lady laena velaryon, aunt to vaegon.
120 AC - aged 10 - ser criston cole forcibly takes custody of all black dragons at court.
129 AC - aged 19 - death of king viserys i targaryen. aegon and rhaenyra both separately crowned. vaegon is witness to the latter ceremony.
130 AC - aged 20 - the dance begins with the death of hugh hammer. veagon sees his first action in the stormlands and is nicknamed brightstorm by the men he protected.
c. 131 AC - aged 21 - battle of rook's rest, resulting in the death of rhaenys targaryen and her dragon, meleys, the red queen. vaegon's dragon, brightfyre, dies as well, plunging the badly wounded vaegon into the sea where he almost drowns. vaegon claims the cannibal as his next dragon. vaegon's next bloody actions see his epithet changed to darkstorm.
c. 132 AC - aged 22 - battle of the gullet, death of prince jaecerys velaryon.
138 AC - aged 28 - battle above the gods' eye, deaths of daemon and aemond targaryen.
139 AC - aged 29 - battle of tumbleton.
140 AC - aged 30 - aegon and rhaenyra die killing one another, razing king's landing in the process and nearly killing vaegon's half-sister, selene. leaders of westeros declare independence from one another, creating seven kingdoms once more.
142 AC - aged 32 - a coup leaves jaehaerys ii king of the crown and stormlands which he calls new valyria. vaegon is appointed lord of sharp point and vacates nightsong, per the king's request. current year.
BULLETPOINTS
moody and impulsive, vaegon is known for his arrogance, his quicksilver wits, and his feats during the dance where he served as a dragonrider for the blacks and ultimately earned the epithet darkstorm due to action in the stormlands
bc of these actions, however, he is particularly despised there -- smth that proved unfortunate when he was awarded nightsong
currently, he's working to stabilize his position there, to gain the trust of his people, & to help rebuild for their wellbeing as best he can, while also serving as master of ships to queen caerella despite his landlocked seat
as a son of corlys velaryon, however, he is singularly well acquainted with the waters, more than able to hold his own there, even from afar
vaegon is ambitious, overly blunt, deft, and utterly unyielding
capable of both great generosity and of terrible ruthlessness, his mercurial nature is troubling to just about everyone, but despite what he would have you believe, he is not without a heart, after all
vaegon is plagued by prophetic dreams, carousing to forget, but he remembers it all…
BIOGRAPHY
While lying asleep within his cradle, Vaegon was gifted a dragon egg, hand selected by his mother from a clutch laid by Meleys, the red queen. Golden and crimson, it laid beside him within his cradle until the day that it cracked and a tiny dragon broke free. This dragon was named Brightfyre, and his scales were all of glorious gold and scarlet so that, when he moved, the shimmering dragon appeared a living flame in flight. Brightfyre was a sight to behold and, as he grew, lauded just after Sunfyre as the renewed glory of Old Valyria. None knew, then, that the dance too soon would come and the dragonlords would take the skies one final time: warlike Valyria of old reborn in truth.
The lad for whom Brightfyre had hatched was, too, a source of pride to his House. Quick and whip-sharp, Vaegon Velaryon was a promising student in everything at which he tried his hand: his studies and swordplay alike coming easily to the young man. Because everything came easily to him, however, Vaegon had a sad tendency to value little, and a propensity for relentless boredom. Born with a hunger he seemed unable to satisfy, he fought to feed his intellect, his body, give himself every stimulus he could think of, but nothing ever seemed to entirely satisfy. He craved more. More, more, more. He could never get enough.
Gifted with a surfeit of energy and a glinting eye, Vaegon was known widely upon High Tide for his bright-vaulting laughter and his inherent mischief. Quite the prankster and forever underfoot, the dark-headed boy with the silver flashing eyes was quicksilver to catch and had a penchant for climbing and for sailing far and wide with his father, but what he loved best of all things was flying, caught high up amongst the clouds on Brightfyre's back, overlooking the gleaming world below.
All around him as the child grew to a man, long-held tensions bubbled to the surface, but Vaegon waded little into the throes as his family bent upon tearing itself apart. "Let our cousins bicker here," he would say, waving a hand. "Better that they storm and shout upon solid land than that they should take their grievances to the skies."
That, after all, was the stuff of nightmares. Often, Vaegon saw these horrors in his sleep, all the world burning around him; the curling sigil of the Targaryens coiling upon itself, self-devouring; his loved ones struck down, falling, falling, falling from the sky as the flames rose up to meet them: Westeros set ablaze. He had always slept little, and he slept less as he grew older, instead slipping out into the gloom and leaping upon Brightfyre's back to ramble across blistering dawn skies, the only place he could find solace. Yet, still, the dreams grew worse -- worse and worse and worse, and Vaegon fell upon every distraction he could rouse, every distraction available to a handsome young princeling, anything to take his mind off what he foresaw in his dreams.
Bad as things were, however, there were bright-vaulting patches of light, as well, perhaps the most important of them his courtship of Iona Tully, a woman who had a way of helping him forget the wretched future and recalling the beauties of life. Her laughter was a balm, her smile a light, and Vaegon fell deeply and entirely for her, making plans for a forthcoming marriage. It was not to be.
There could be no avoiding the Dance of the Dragons. The drakes were bred for war, and their lords soon proved no less bellicose. Vaegon was twenty years old when the war began. Everything seemed to happen all at once. Rhaenyra and Aegon were both crowned. A dragonseed's flowing blood ignited an even bloodier conflict, and even Iona was wed to another. There could be no more running. The Dance was well and truly begun.
Vaegon fared well at first, his airborne battles winning him fame and glory. His first engagement was undertaken alongside his mother, helping to clear the path for troops the greens attempted to waylay, and it proved a success. He second battle was fought alone -- and it was to prove a fateful affair in more ways than one. With two contingents separating, mother and son did likewise, each defending a unit as it marched. From aloft, Vaegon shadowed a corps moving deep into the Stormlands. Soon enough, an enemy formation was spotted maneuvering nearby and the commanders on both sides knew good and well that there would be conflict upon the morrow. Meeting in advance with the enemy commanders -- a last ditch effort to avoid battle -- the green contingent faced down the blacks. The talks did nothing to satisfy either party.
At last, everyone satisfied there would be battle the next morning, the Baratheon commander addressed Vaegon, his cousin. "Your mother may be Targaryen and Baratheon, both, boy, but you're just a seahorse far from the ocean, and we've a dragon of our own waiting in the wings, far bigger than yours. You better sit this one out without your mama here to protect you, lest you make me a kinslayer upon the morn when the storm comes."
Vaegon chuckled, laughing eyes bight with quicksilver light, his gaze a measurement. "I am the storm," he sneered and, turning, Vaegon mounted his dragon, flying away to meet again in battle upon the morrow.
Dawn was dark that day, thunder rolling across the skies as sheets of heavy rain pounded the earth and, still, battle began. The volley of water was too heavy for Vaegon to fly high, leaving Brightfyre vulnerable to attack from spears and arrows and scorpions, alike, and Vaegon knew his chief duty, anyway: to move his troops through, not to engage. Soaring low as he dared, Vaegon had Brightfyre roar his heat, not his flame. Instantly, the thundering rain turned to mist, shrouding dragon and soldiers alike so that the Baratheon host could not easily make out their movements.
Cloaked in clouds, Vaegon harrassed the Stormlanders, here in the flash of lightning, gone as the thunder boomed behind it. Upon the ground, the men later remarked that they did not know which was the lightning and which was dragonfire; which was thunder and which the roars of dragons. Above in the skies, Vaegon tangled with another dragonlord, looping here and there, looping away, hiding and darting and showing himself to deal fire and fury. He knew he could not defeat the much larger dragon straight on, but he was swifter and that was his advantage.
Terrified and finding themselves fighting now storm and sky and shadow, now claws and teeth and fire, the Stormlanders on the ground were routed, their dragon forced to follow after to protect them, and Vaegon Velaryon was soon dubbed Vaegon Brightstorm by the men that followed him. His following exploits brought him only further fame, further glory, yet these things too were to have their bitter consequences.
Lauded wherever he went, Vaegon grew arrogant, a trait that would soon bring doom upon those he loved. Hearing of the oncoming galleys approaching Rook's Rest, Rhaenys and Vaegon flew there to defend it. Finding themselves met with Aegon on Sunfyre and Aemond on Vhagar, the largest and most terrible dragon in the world, Rhaenys advised her son that they had to make their every maneuver count. "Show no fear, mother," replied Vaegon. "We will overcome this menace."
tw: violence, injury, death, animal death struck through
But Vaegon was impatient. Rather than keeping with the strategy he and Rhaenys had agreed upon beforehand, when Vaegon saw an opening in Sunfyre's attack, he flew. Aemond was ready. Vhagar slammed into the much smaller dragon, breaking Brightfyre's back, and unleashed a blast of emerald flame so hot it melted the armor on Vaegon's arm. Beneath, his skin sizzled and cracked. Vaegon screamed.
Distracted in her battle with Sunfyre, Rhaenys turned her attention on Vhagar, taking on the two dragons at once. Dying, Brightfyre sped towards the ocean below. The waters rose up, up, up to meet them. Vaegon drew his knife. He slashed at the bonds that tied him to the saddle. He was doing to drown. He attacked his own armor. It would drag him under. Metal pieces pealed off. Too late. He had to leap. The dragon would crush him.
Hauling himself up, Vaegon darted the length of the dragon. He leapt into the sea. Behind him, the sea surged. The dragon crashing into the briny deep. Vaegon sucked in a deep breath. He ripped at his armor but he'd lost his knife in the fall. His fingers weren't deft enough underwater. The armor was dragging him down. He gazed upwards. A burst of fire. He watched, watched helplessly, as his cousins viciously murdered his mother. He could do nothing. Nothing. Nothing as slowly he was dragged beneath the waves and horribly, horribly, horribly his mother died far above.
Vaegon does not speak of it, but whatever horrors he witnessed as his mother fought alone amongst the clouds, they changed him, forever. The bright, lively spark was gone. Vaegon was not gone long, but washed up on the shores, half dead and grievously wounded. Brightfyre washed up two days later -- wounds still smoking and quite dead.
(vaegon's arrogance leads him to make a decision to causes the battle of rooks' rest to go just as it does in the book))
Vaegon did not know how long he was under. All he knew was that he saw a woman swimming to him, flaming locks fanning around her like a fiery halo. For a moment, he imagined it was Iona coming to him in death, but when her lips touched his, his lungs burned again with breath and he awoke, suddenly, upon the shore. He had washed up. What else he saw beneath the sea he does not say.
Following Rook's Rest, Vaegon recuperated, his laughter silenced, his quicksilver eyes darkening as he watched, serious, grim -- haunted. When Vaegon returned home, it was as a changed man, yet he carried with him renewed certainty. When he arrived at High Tide, he simply announced, ‘I must have a dragon,’ and he took off to search out one of the great, ancient drakes that haunted the shores of Dragonstone.
With a whip at his hip and a shield strapped to his back, Vaegon climbed the smoking side of the Dragonmont., gaze fixed and determined. Many a dragonseed had already attempted to claim the beast he had in mind, their corpses laid scattered before him, but Vaegon was not to be deterred. Hastening up the cleft, he ventured into the Cannibal's cave, dark and littered with the bones of mena nd dragons, alike. A behemoth moved in the dark, silver-grey scales glittering with queasy glory in the light of her fiery breath. The Cannibal was over a hundred years old, a hulking creature with silver-black scales and huge, slitted golden eyes. She was both terrible and fierce. Vaegon did not return home until he had claimed her, soaring through the air mounted upon her back, his shield a smoking ruin, his whip a string of ribbon abandoned amongst the corpses of the cave...
The Vaegon who returned with the Cannibal was not the Vaegon who had left for Rook's Rest. Hope and idealism had died in the sea, burned away in the scorching heat of dragonflame, and the Vaegon who now returned to the war was but the skeletal marrow of that boy: cold and scheming. Yet, his arrogance was undinted, his mind as sharp and faceted as it ever was. Vaegon faced down a tempest and, in the conflict to come, he meant to emerge -- this time -- victorious. Now, he was all fury, and war was merely revenge.
Mounted on the Cannibal, Vaegon revisited the Stormlands, but now he did not fight to protect: now he fought to obliterate the foe, scorching the land with fires so hot that even amidst a ferocious rainstorm, the blaze did not go out for three days, and even then smoked for weeks to come. Even the men who fought for him looked towards their commander with fear. No longer did they jubilantly cry "Brightstorm!" as he rode past but instead, whispered to one another, "Darkstorm."
The rest of the war would proved horrific and unswerving, Vaegon's relentlessness undinting until the very end. Tumbleton finished it, the Cannibal lost amongst the carnage and Vaegon's own leg shattered.
Still, no one in Westeros knows peace, and Vaegon, now invested both as Queen Caerella's Master of Ships, and as ruling Lord of Nightsong, seeks to reconcile his positions, strengthen his hold over a people who too well remember him as Darkstorm, and improve the lives of those for whom he's responsible. Still, part of him seeks to right the wrongs of the war -- he believes that Caerella is the rightful Queen of all of Westeros (for if she is not, what did his mother die for?) and hopes someday to see the nation reunited in peace beneath her glorious banner.
In the mean time, Vaegon indulges in excesses of all types, a means of drowning out his meories and dreams, alike. Yet, he plots, ever watchful, ever cunning, determined to find a way of at last putting the world back to rights...
