Dalen Snow

= Childhood and History = Dalen 'Nomad' Snow was born in the land governed by Winterfell. His father, Duke Lawrence Leastark, was a minor noble and sworn bannerman to Winterfell who could trace his lineage back to the third son of King Torrhen Stark – the King Who Knelt – which would make Dalen 8th cousins, once removed from Lord Eddard Stark and 9th cousins with his children, although as a young child Dalen did not know that. For the first five years of his life, Dalen lived with his mother in a simple cottage in the woods where she would make simple remedies to sell when she was able to get to the nearest market.

A very inquisitive child, Dalen would often wander off into the woods, often giving his mother a fright when he would be missing for hours. One day, when returning from one of his excursions in the woods, Dalen heard loud voices and the sound of fighting; frightened, he snuck closer until he could see that the commotion was taking place near his home, which was ablaze with black smoke rolling into the sky. A small group of men and women in rough, mismatched furs were fighting with men from the Night's Watch and men dressed in the dark green and light grey of the nearest duchy, that of the Leastarks. In just a matter of moments, the last of the wildlings were slain and Dalen - full of fear for his mother - rushed out of the bushes and toward the burning house. Before he could get to a hole gaping in the wall one of the men in Leastark colors caught him and held him off of the ground, attempting to quiet the sobbing Dalen. The wildlings had trapped his mother inside their house and burned it down around her, with the Leastarks and Night's Watch arriving just minutes too late.

The man who was attempting to comfort the young Dalen was none other than Duke Leastark and eventually the child understood that the Duke was planning to take him back to live in the keep, though Dalen still did not realize that the Duke was his absentee father. Over the next few weeks, Dalen slowly came to understand that the reason Duke Lawrence took him in and insisted to the Duchess that he stay was that the Duke was his father and felt guilty for not being part of his life. While Dalen could feel respect for the Duke, he found himself feeling angry and betrayed - not quite blaming the Duke for his mother's death, but believing that things should have been different.

The Duchess, for her part, essentially ignored Dalen; whenever possible, she would act as if he did not exist and the few times that she was forced to acknowledge his presence she treated him as though he were a servant. In fact, she treated him worse than any of the servants. Dalen's half-siblings did their best to make him feel welcome and included, but he was the youngest of them all by several years and never quite felt comfortable around them.

Over the next few years, Dalen learned the area around the keep very well, often disappearing for hours while he would walk through the forest. As he grew older, these trips would often turn into several-day-long excursions. After returning from one of these trips, this one having lasted for almost a week, the Duke made a comment that Dalen was a nomad, never staying in one place for very long. Several of Dalen's half-siblings heard and began calling him Nomad rather than his name. While this did increase his sense of isolation, Dalen really didn't mind the nickname and took it in stride.

As Dalen began to grow into a young man, he started sitting through lessons with the Maester assigned to the Leastark keep to learn all of the same social niceties that his half-siblings had, along with arithmetic and the sciences. Along with his time spent with the Maester, Nomad began training with the house man-at-arms, learning to wield a variety of weapons such as sword and shield, pike, short bow, and crossbow and how to move in heavy armor. While this training cut into his walk-abouts, he was still able to view it as a place away from everything. After several years of training in the art of combat, the aging man-at-arms informed Dalen that there was nothing more that he could teach him and the only way to continue to improve was to teach others. With no more formality than that, he was handed the responsibility of training all the new recruits and smallfolk. Nomad found that while he was teaching these people the basics it allowed him to go back over the lessons he had learned early on and really cement them in his reflexes so every movement was second nature.

In time, Dalen was able to hand the training duties over to one of the more promising soldiers, though he would still attend the lessons whenever he was in the keep, but he returned to spending more time out in nature than he did in the keep. Often, he would meet up with some of the hunting parties that the Leastarks would send out to keep their larder full and join with them for a day or two, learning some of their tricks. It appeared he was a natural when it came to tracking and, as he already knew from his martial training, an excellent shot with a variety of bows.

Shortly after Nomad’s 24th nameday he was returning from one of his excursions and ran into the youngest of his half-siblings, Cayden Leastark. This was the half-brother that Nomad was closest with, likely because they were the closest in age. Cayden was also on his way back toward the keep, having been out hunting and as he had quite a haul Nomad slowed his pace to help transport the game back to the keep. As they began to get closer to the keep, they could occasionally catch the scent of smoke on the wind. Often it was possible to smell the wood burning from the kitchens or from the numerous fireplaces throughout the keep so neither were overly worried – at least not until they noticed that the closer they went to the keep the stronger the smell was until it was almost overwhelming. As they broke through the trees surrounding the keep they could see black smoke roiling through the air above the destroyed buildings. Even from this distance they could see the motionless forms of several Leastark soldiers on the ground outside of the walls; any carnage inside the walls was obscured by the thick smoke.

Dalen took in the tableau in silence, his thoughts racing back nineteen years to a very similar sight – his mother’s small cottage burning. It seemed that for the second time in his life he had been in the wrong place to protect people that he cared about. Even if Nomad had never been able to truly love this family, his father had at least taken him in when he had no other place to go. Dalen had wished them no ill will, not even the indifferent Duchess – she may not have cared to acknowledge him, but she had never been cruel either. Now it seemed that once again his family had been ripped away from him, with the only person that he knew in the world is older half-brother; even as Nomad had this thought, he noticed that while he had been lost in his thoughts Cayden had gone running down to the burning keep, apparently to check for any survivors. Now, the only surviving Leastark was running straight toward the wall looming in the distance without a word or a backward glance. Dalen knew that he should follow – should do everything he could to bring justice to those that slew their family – but he could not bring himself to head further north. The north held nothing but pain, nothing but loss. If he never saw the wall again, if he never saw a wildling again, it would be too soon. Without a second thought or even making his way down to the ruins he had called home for the past nineteen years, he turned in the opposite direction from his brother and headed south.

For the next five years, Dalen traveled through the realm avoiding people whenever possible. He rarely slept in the same location twice, becoming that which his half-siblings had named him so long ago – a nomad. Although he avoided people, he still tried to look out for the settlements, often apprehending thieves and attempting to return the items they had stolen. Using the skills he learned from the hunters he was able to live fairly comfortably off of the land, weathering many storms. At least that was the case until one blew in shortly after his twenty-ninth nameday that caused him to be swept out to sea. The next thing he was able to recall was waking up on the beach in the southwest portion of the realm, with all of his tools, weapons, and armor missing. At that moment, Nomad decided it was time to rejoin civilization and headed toward the most central area of the realm he could find, hoping to be able to help anyone that may need assistance.

= Season 7 = Over the course of his first season back in civilization, Dalen made many friends in and around the Black Sands area. He became close with many members of the Tymberlands, offering his services to Duke Darvin Tymber whenever there was need of it. During the Pride Day celebration at the Vale, Dalen met Mariana Mossmar and the two of them took an instant liking to one another; for the next four days the two of them spent nearly every waking moment together. Dalen had never met anyone like Mariana; he had never had a childhood sweetheart or a girlfriend before, but he knew he was falling hard for this woman. Unfortunately, five days after they met, Mariana was murdered in front of Dalen’s house while writing a letter to him. Her death shattered Dalen and he was consumed by grief for several days, becoming fairly self-destructive. A note left on Mariana’s body made it seem that Charlie Baratheon - the former king of Westeros - had been behind her murder, but a conversation with Zeth Talian and Melarie Greengood caused Dalen to question that.

Taking it upon himself, he traveled to the Iron Islands to demand answers from Charlie Baratheon, but he was not able to find anyone. Determined to get information, Dalen waited on the Iron Islands to watch for anyone waking up and moving around. While waiting, he became lost in his own thoughts and perhaps an hour later he finally heard voices – it was Darvin and Melarie, there for the same reason that Dalen himself was there for. Unlike Dalen, they had managed to find Charlie and were having a conversation, easily in earshot from where Dalen was hiding. The conversation he overheard assured the sellsword that Charlie had nothing to do with the death of Mariana – apparently, someone had framed the former king, attempting to stir up trouble. At this point, the trail was already very cold and not even a tracker of Darvin’s skill would be able to find the killer unless they wanted to be found or slipped up and bragged about killing a defenseless woman on the black sands. With that being said, and based upon the tragedies in his past, Dalen immediately suspected wildlings. It could only serve their purposes if the south became embroiled in a war and caused a distraction from the threat north of the Wall.

After a few days, Dalen began to come out of his debilitating grief. A wildling attack on the settlement where Mariana used to live snapped him out of his sorrow and left him with a simmering anger that he was able to use to focus on the here and now. He now realized that he was letting his grief for Mariana affect his duties; there were still people alive that he cared for that needed him to protect the area – vengeance for his lost love would have to wait.

Through the following weeks, Dalen continued to heal from the heartbreak and even managed to bring himself to hold a memorial service for Mariana. New people continued to move into the area, and the sellsword made friends with many of them, especially with his new neighbor – Claire Mourning. The two of them, along with Dalen’s other neighbors – the Tills, and Simon – began talking about forming a settlement themselves after the coming storm. Even with the new things distracting him, in the back of Dalen’s mind there was always the thought of avenging Mariana – or as he couched it to people he spoke with, serving justice to her murderer.

= Storm between Season 7 and Season 8 = When the storm finally began to roll in, rather than battening down his hatches as all of his neighbors did to ride out the storm, Dalen rode north to the land of his birth – and then to the wall. Making sure he was far from Castle Black, he used grappling hooks to scale the wall and made it safely to the other side. It was time to hunt…

Several months later, Dalen finally felt that he had found the trail of the wildling that had killed Mariana. It had taken weeks to even get confirmation that it had been a wildling that killed her, and weeks more – and the interrogation of many of the Free Folk – to get a name. Even with this information, he could not know for sure if this was the correct wildling he was tracking. Dalen had heard that this wildling had been south of the wall at the right time, and had been wanting to stir up trouble, but no one had yet been able to tell him that his prey had killed the woman he loved.

Three days later, Dalen was limping slowly away from the scene of a fight. The wildling he had been tracking lay dead in the snow – they had fought two days ago, and Dalen could not bring himself to give the dying wildling mercy. Before they had fought, he had gotten the wildling to admit – brag, really – that he had killed Mariana. Filled with rage, Dalen had attacked him and hadn’t even felt the jagged blade the murderer wielded cut him multiple times. Even though he was possibly mortally wounded himself, he still waited until the wildling drew his last breath before he started heading back south. Even with all the time that he had spent tracking this murder, he still was not far from the wall – perhaps a day or two of walking in his current condition.

Sometime later, Dalen awoke in a bed with sunlight streaming through a window onto his face. Foggy at first, he slowly was able to vaguely remember a ranging party from the Night’s Watch coming upon him as he was on the verge of collapsing. Somehow he was able to convince them that he was not a wildling, and they got him back to the Wall. But this didn’t feel like the north, it was too warm. As he was trying to figure out where he might be, the door to the room he was in opened and a Maester walked in. After a few minutes of conversation, the fogginess in Dalen’s head began to dissipate and was able to understand that he was in the Citadel, recovering from his grievous wounds. He still had a lot of recovering to do before he was healed, and some of the damage he might never recover from. He had lost his right eye – how he missed that in the fight, he didn’t know – and had taken a sword through the upper right of his chest. The worst of the wounds was the one that nearly disemboweled him – starting from his lower right hip and ranging to just under his left ribs. It would take him months of therapy to even be able to wield a sword again, and he may never be able to shoot a bow accurately again.

A few days after his 31st nameday – more than a year and a half after he had left to track this wildling – Dalen left the Citadel. Although he still moved a bit stiffly, and was not quite used to the lack of depth perception, he was able to wield a sword with nearly the same skill as before he had been injured. It was time for him to return home to the Black Sands.

= Season 8 = Upon arriving back at the Black Sands, Dalen joined with his close friend Simon Brooker and their neighbors the Tills to form a small community. While they were all able to work together, both Simon and Dalen began to feel that they were more hired help than family when it came to their relationship with the Tills. When a sudden storm blew up after a few weeks, Simon and Dalen took the chance to start on their own with Claire Mourning. The three of them were quickly joined by Mareth Grimm and they were able to build a beautiful compound where they all felt at home.

It wasn’t long after they had settled into their new lives that Vonda Cromwell-York and Leonard Crane from Casterly Rock began courting their group to join Casterly. They, along with Lady Aleah Mallister, were willing to make some concessions to Dalen’s family to get them to join, including allowing them to remain in their compound on the Black Sands. After a bit of deliberation, the four of them decided that they would give it a try. When they went up to Casterly to give the good folks their decision, they were greeted by Aleah whom made a very bad first impression upon Dalen and infuriated Simon and Claire by commenting very bluntly upon Dalen’s bastard heritage. Although Dalen had grown up with this prejudice, it was still painful for him to have his honor questioned over a situation in which he had no control. Even while he was reeling from the poor way in which a noble lady had handled the first meeting, Dalen was able to draw Simon and Claire off to the side and calm them down. Dalen felt that even though the lady had been rude, perhaps joining Casterly would still be in the best interest of their family.

The very next day the Mourning Sands compound was attacked by wildlings and Claire was injured so badly that she ended up in a coma. Mareth was also injured and ran off to get help from Casterly, but by the time he returned the wildlings had left. The injury that Mareth took likely led to him falling from the roof of the house he was putting together for himself and breaking his leg, leaving him out of commission for the rest of the summer while it healed. Dalen and Simon were able to fall into a bit of a routine together – waking up and doing chores around their compound, then heading out to patrol the area for any suspicious activity and good animals that Simon would be able to tame. Anytime they found good tames, Dalen would guard the stablehand until the animal was ready to be led back to their compound or up to Casterly Rock. While they were content enough to continue on this way, it began to feel much the same for them as it had at the Clearwater compound with the Tills – although the majority of Casterly was very welcoming and tried to make them feel part of the family, Lady Aleah seemed to take every chance she could to make snide comments about Dalen’s birth or the fact that he was just a sellsword and not an anointed knight. One day, Lady Aleah and Zaldrises Targaryen, the Master of Law, asked Dalen to join them in the training yard. Perhaps it was Dalen’s sense of discontent and his simmering anger toward the Lady of Casterly, or a desire to prove himself a valuable member of the kingdom, but he nearly went too far in his practice duels with both of nobles. Both of them ended up with numerous wounds that needed stitched up by the time the duels were done, and Lady Aleah instructed Dalen that he was not to duel any other Casterly citizens. This caused Dalen to feel even more unwelcome up at the kingdom, and he was so involved with his own discontent at the situation and the loneliness he had felt since Claire had been injured that he had no idea that others at Casterly were also upset with Lady Aleah’s leadership style until Simon informed him one morning that there had been a vote to replace Aleah as the Lady of Casterly. Unfortunately for everyone who was wanting a change, King’s Landing had just declared war on the Iron Isles and Queen Hura Targaryen declared that no vote would be recognized while the crown and its allies – which included Casterly Rock – were fighting the conflict.

The conflict, which Dalen began to refer to as “The War That Wasn’t” ended quickly, without any bloodshed. The Iron Islanders sent an envoy to King’s Landing with terms and a new leader was placed on the island of Pike. Once that had been dealt with, the vote was able to resume although it had been a stressful few days for Casterly. The day that the war was supposed to begin, Aleah announced that Zaldrises had proposed to her and she had accepted. Zaldrises was brother to Queen Hura, so when he stated that after they were married he would be moving to join the Casterly family what all of the citizens heard was “After we marry, I will be your new lord, so your little vote does not matter.” Fortunately, the Queen allowed the results of the vote to hold true and Vonda Cromwell-York was voted in as the new Lady of Casterly Rock, with her husband – the former-Maester Karl Cromwell – joining Casterly as Lord. Even though a white raven had been sent out from the Citadel, thereby signaling the start of winter, the next week was a time of celebration at Casterly as everyone – Dalen perhaps most of all – welcomed the new leadership.

One of the first actions that the new Lord and Lady performed was to raise Dalen Snow – bastard of the north and a possibly extinct family, a sellsword of no great renown – to the position of a Knight of House Cromwell. Ser Dalen Snow never wanted a title, and in fact had he been offered the same by the former-Lady Aleah Mallister he would have refused, but he could not turn down the offer made to him by his long-time friends Karl and Vonda. If he had put any thought into what his reaction would have been to being knighted, he would have thought it to be apathy, but with the honor being bestowed on him by the Cromwells he could not help but feel as though he had finally found greater purpose in his life.