THE IRON ISLANDS

The Iron Islands are a group of islands, whose capital city is Pyke, property of House Greyjoy.

Their ships are small and long, on board every commander is a king; just for this reason, the Iron Islands are called “The ten-thousands-kings country”.

It's stated that the islands are unsmiling and rocky places, scanty in comforts and poor in opportunities; death is always present and life is hard and dark. Men spend most of their time drinking ale and disputing on whom is living worse: fishermen who fight against the sea or farmers who work hard to grow something from the arid terrain. But, frankly, the ones who are living worse are miners, because they suffer down there, in the drakness, only for lead, iron, alluminium.

In the past ironmen were raiders. Some time ago, following the Old Law, ironmen had their rock-wives, who were their true wives, born in the islands, and their salt-wives, women captured during the raids; however today they hadn't more this custom.

In The Iron Islands is in force the religion of The Drowned God.

The Iron Islands live in the past times, because the time present is too hard and bitter to be tolerated.

According to the Old Law, women can wear jewels, acquired by moneys, but a true warrior wear only jewels removed from the bodies of the men he has killed by his own hands – as they say “acquire by iron”.

The Iron Islands are too desolate and rocky to feed good horses. Their seat is the Throne of the Sea, carved in the form of a great kraken, from a one, big block of black stone. According to legends, it was found by the First Men on Old Wyk's coastline, when they arrived in The Iron Islands.

The islands are Pyke, Orkmont, Old Wyk, Great Wyk, Harlaw, Blacktyde and Saltcliffe.

PYKE

Is The Iron Islands' capital city. It was put under siege during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion.

In Pyke there isn't any safe landing point. Coastline is a sequence of pointed rocks and hostile cliffs.

The castle looks an extension of that severe granitic scenery: towers, walls and bridges, built from the same grey and black stones, flogged by the same brackish waves, painted by the same green lichen's stains, dotted by the same seabirds' excrements. In the past the spur of ground, on which the Greyjoys built their fortress, leaned out like a sword, thrust in the Ocean's own viscera, but waves hammered the ground until they made several holes in it and finally broke it. Nowadays remain only three isalands, spoiled and desert, sorrounded by a dozen of towering rocks, who emerge from waters, similar to pillars of a marine god's temple, whipped by furious waves, who keep on shattering and boiling against them.

Threatening, bleak, prohibitive, Pyke hang over the summit of those islands and rocky pillars, as it is melted into them. Her perimeter walls block the access from the ground to the basement of the big stone-bridge, that, from the cliff's summit, reaches the biggest island, overtoped by The Great Fortress. Further, each one on her own island, there are the Kitchen-Fortress and The Bloody Fortress.

Other towers and buildings cling to the more external rocks, connected by covered arch-galleries where stony pillars are near each other, by communication trenches, made by wooden boards and ropes, where they are further.

There is a wooded promontory and cliffs covered by pine-trees. A little squared off castle overtop the hill. It was rebuilt by lord Sawane in order to replace a wooden building who was litterally burnt to the ground by Robert Baratheon; pale green flags wave on the squat towers at each of the four angles.

The Sea-Tower, high and cylindrical, rises from the farther isalnd, on Broken Sword's Point. Is the most ancient building of the entire castle, is heald by squared off pillars, that are almost corroded by the waves' continuous assault. The tower's basement is candid due to centuries of saltiness. The higher floors are undersieged by green tentacles of lichen, that covered them like a thick blanket. Battlements are black as pitch, due to smoke from sentries' fires, lit up every night.

At the castle's basement there are rostrums of stone, always full of sea foam.

The Sea-Tower's gate is made by thick grey wood and irony studs; wood is damp and rotten, iron all rusty. A spiral staircase leads to Lord Balon Greyjoy's solarium.

A semicircle of dark stones stretches from a cliff to the other, in the centre there is the guard-house, on both sides there are three square towers. A new South-Tower it was rebuilt on the ruins of the older one, its grey stones are paler and not yet infested by lichen.

In that place Robert made an opening, leading his horde on ruins and bodies.

The iron gate is rusty and full of muddy rostrums.

Inside the walls there is a fifty-acre hard ground, the sea is in the background. There rise stables, kennels and other far-flung buildings. To the south, near the cliffs, starts the big stone-bridge that leads to The Great Fortress.

Under the nonplussed protection of the castle, rises the village of Lords'Port.

After the Baratheons and Starks' siege razed the village to the ground, inhabitants rebuilt their new houses, using materials from the older ones and cutting new sods for covering the roofsi. A new inn, double bigger than the older one, rose near the docks. First floor is made by stones, il piano terreno fatto di pietra, the two upper, by woods. The temple, instead, wasn't rebuilt: only its seven-side foundations remain: From then on, in fact, ironmen stopped believing in The Seven Gods.

In Bloody-Fortress corridors and halls are bigger and better furnished than others, but no less cold and damp.

In Theon's quarters, ceilings are so high that get lost in the darkness. Inside there, about a thousand-year before, were killed the King of the Rivers' sons. They were literaly dismembered in their own beds, to send back to their father, on the continent, their bodies' pieces. Greyjoys only occasionally were killed in those rooms, and always by their brothers.

To reach the sea-Tower, unstable on its writhed pillars, is necessary to pass through three other bridges, every one narrower than the previous. The last one is made by wooden boards and ropes and is suspended in the air. Wind, loaded with saltiness, makes it slimy and moves it, making it look as a living being.

GREAT WYK

Is the biggest of the Iron Islands. Is so wide that the major part of lords, who have terrains on this place, often doesn't border on the sea, that sorrund the island. Very fruitful in mines, is the main source of the House Greyjoy's mineral resources. The foremost lords are the Sparrs and the Goodbrothers.

OLD WYK

Undoubtely smaller than the other homonym Wyk, is, however, the islands in which are clearest Ironmen's ancient mores and roots. From centuries is choosen as site for The King's Acclamation.

HARLAW

Seat of the homonym House who rules this island from a lot of generations, is probably the most westernized of The Iron Islands. It's governed by Lord Rodrick Harlaw, called “The Reader” from his ve for literature, who is probably the one of the Islands' lords who most absorbed the Seven Kingdoms' mores and cognitions.