'Our Grasp Is Unyielding'
The Glovers are an old and proud house of the North, with roots that go back to the Long Night and the Age of Heroes many thousands of years ago. Up until a few thousand years ago they ruled the eastern half of the Wolfswood as sovereign petty-kings, styling themselves the 'Kings in the Trees' and periodically warring with the 'Raven Kings' of House Blackwood who ruled to the west. However, at the dawn of the 3rd millennium after the Conquest (approximately 5000 BC/L) the last King in the Trees, Robb III Glover, bent the knee to the Starks and buried his crown of twisted, tangled branches in the deepest reaches of the Wolfswood, reducing House Glover to the status of Stark bannermen. In the stories the Glovers tell, he had done this because of a deal he had made with the Starks, promising that he would accept their suzerainty in exchange for their aid in driving away the Blackwoods who were coming dangerously close to overrunning Deepwood Motte; once the Starks had kept their end of the deal, beating down the Raven Kings with such ferocity that they fled the North entirely, he was honor-bound to keep his own end.
The present generation of Glovers is comprised of: Lord Galbart Glover, who would have been the tenth of that name had the family still ruled as Kings in the Trees; his elder brother Leobald, a brother of the Night's Watch; and their younger sisters Gilliane and Grisella, with the former married to the chief of the neighboring Clan Wull and the latter married to one of their bannermen. Galbart himself has three young sons by his wife, none of whom are over 13 years of age.
| Galbart Glover, High Lord of the Wolfswood | 
Age: 42
Skills: (10 pts, being 42) +3 Battles, +2 Scout, +2 Pathfinder, +1 Survival, +1 Duel, +1 Naval Battles
Spouse: Lady Alysane Woods
Galbart is the second son and successor of Lord Rodrik Glover, who ruled the Deepwood for a quarter of a century before dying of a stroke nine years ago. Being plain-faced, stern and solemn (the last time he smiled, it was at his own wedding and onlookers informed him that he looked as though his face was going to crack) even in childhood, he made few friends as he grew up and was not expected to do anything beyond serving the entirety of the human race at the Wall. That all changed when Galbart's elder brother Leobald accidentally murdered his best friend Cayn, the son of Deepwood Motte's stable-master in a drunken tavern brawl weeks after Galbart's own 14th birthday. Although Lord Rodrik, who cared for justice only so long as it was useful to his own ambitions, plotted to claim the boy had died in an accident and pay his father enough coin to convince him to play along, the remorseful Leobald refused and banished himself to the Wall to atone for his crime. Galbart was thus groomed to succeed his father, a man whose arbitrary nature and proclivity to injustice dimmed Galbart's respect for. While Rodrik stewed over his mistakes in life in Deepwood Motte or was away on business with the other Northern lords, Galbart was out in the Wolfswood, wandering from village to village to hear the smallfolk's grievances, enforce the King's justice and beating down bandits and the occasional Ironborn reaving party. Over his teenage years and young adulthood he built up a reputation as a hard-handed lawman who knew his runes so well that no criminal could find a loophole in the law to avoid his wrath, a traditionalist who personally executed those deserving such a fate before the nearest weirwood as custom demanded despite not being a particularly great swordsman, and a skilled commander who knew the ins and outs of the Wolfswood from the shore to the reaches of the Deepwood better than all but the most experienced hunters in his employ.
Following Rodrik's death, Galbart smoothly ascended to the High Lordship held by his fathers since the Glovers lost their crown, on account of having no brother save the man now at the Wall. He has spent the last nine years continuing to mete out justice unto his subjects and doing what he can to defend the northwest coast of the Kingdom of the North from Ironborn incursions, at times even daring to give chase to reaving parties with ships built from the sentinel and ironwood trees of the Wolfswood. Galbart is of the firm belief that the Ironborn must be evicted from Bear Island in order to secure the North's, well, northern shore; and of course, if the time to decide who the isle should be granted to ever comes up, he'll be ready with charts proving the existence of multiple marriages between the Glovers and the now-extinct Woodfoots who used to rule the island in the days when they were both kings as justification for why it should go to House Glover. |
| Leobald Glover, Brother of the Night's Watch | 
Age: 46
Skills: (11 pts, being 46) +3 Battles, +3 Duel, +2 Scout, +2 Pathfinder, +1 Rearguard
Spouse: None
Leobald is the eldest son of Lord Rodrik Glover, though not the man who eventually succeeded him. Unlike his little brother Galbart, Leobald is a loud, upbeat and gregarious man, quick to laugh and wrath in equal measure. As a child and a young man, he energetically participated in physically strenuous activities that ranged from racing ponies through the Wolfswood with his friends, engaging in spear-throwing contests and marching with the Glover host to do battle with the occasional Ironborn raider; indeed, Leobald was so eager to fight that he killed his first man, a lightly-equipped reaver, at age twelve with a sharp rock. For a time, it seemed that the Glovers' succession and the safety of the Wolfswood were both assured with a strong and capable war-leader ready to succeed old Lord Rodrik. However, Leobald's star dimmed significantly when at age 18 he killed his best friend Cayn, the eldest son of the horse-master at Deepwood Motte, in an argument at a tavern: the two of them got too drunk for their own good, one of Leobald's jabs at Cayn while they were squabbling over the same serving girl resulted in Cayn punching him in the face with enough force to knock him off his seat, and Leobald retaliated by grabbing his stool and swinging it at Cayn's head until nothing was left but broken bones and mush. Overtaken by grief and remorse after he regained his senses, Leobald spurned his father's attempts to help him evade justice and confessed to the murder before heading off to the Wall to atone for his crime.
Since arriving at the Wall, Leobald put his bloodthirst & talent at fighting with even improvised weapons to good use as a Ranger. The might of the Night's Watch is far from waning, and so Leobald is hardly alone among capable warriors in its ranks, and having been humbled by his crime he has conceded defeat to greater Brothers who were able to take advantage of his wild, savage fighting style to bring him down in sparring sessions. Though he must now spend the rest of his days battling Wildling incursions and working with his peers on rangings into the frosty lands beyond the Wall, Leobald is content to serve at the edge of the civilized world in atonement for his grave crime, and hopes to be able to face Cayn with a clean conscience in the afterlife through his service to the human race (besides Wildlings, of course, because as he'd say, ' them'). |
| Galbart's sons | Bennard Glover, age 13
Calon Glover, age 11
Larence Glover, age 8 |
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