Theon Rivers

Theon Rivers is the current Grandmaester of King Viserys III.

Biography
[281-293 AC]

Upon a dull summer’s day a man dressed in garments of crimson came riding eastward through Maidenpool’s halls. He rode from cold, frigid lands where few men called home, and told tales of dark deeds and kings dressed in red. If Joy learned his name, she hid it quite well; a tale of romantic fantasy she’d never tell. Their encounter was brief, intense, and long did it linger, leaving a boy to be born with pale skin like winter. He was a bastard to a fault, born without father, just a moonlit hape upon a horse with a cloak floating on the wind. A northern lover earned her newborn a northern name: a peasant-boy named Theon Rivers.

His youth was a fair one as smallfolk lives came; his mother served Mootons as her kin did before her, and though no man toiled for their health, they wanted for little. Their lord was a kind one, old as he was, and kept an eye for young Theon when it was his time to serve. A steward's nephew he was, and so a servant he would be. From the age of six and upwards, he fetched plates, cups, and more. He carried a glimmer to his eye that grew brighter in time. An eye for detail and the will to know more. Theon lingered in halls to hear wise men speak, and outstayed his welcome in the rookery's bounds. Pawing for paper and baubles, he kept only two; a duo of daughters just a few years younger: Lucinda and Margaret, who no doubt could choose better.

Young friends from the start, their friendship gave him the slip. He dwelled in places past his station and pilfered in good graces. Books found their way onto his lap. Large and small, dull and vibrant, all markings on a page of vellum and parchment. Though grueling and long, he found their meanings. Making letters on walls and etching in dirt, his hand with a 'quill' suited better than most. To learn to read was rare by all means, but rarer to learn by one's own effort, and by a boy with no house to shelter him and feed his budding mind with a gilded spoon.

Theon’s wit bit as harsh as a flame, and manifested quickly like one too, catching with every slip of paper. It was his little pleasure when the day was done, or the lull between tasks grew on. It singed his friends when they lingered too close; the Mooton girls he played with lingered behind and upstream. Joy struggled to hold him still. He turned his eyes out beyond the confines of the lauded castle. He could not suffice to live like a stray - living within walls that closed and could thrust him out when they pleased, living on pittances. Rivers felt a stirring - nay, a calling. Unsettling for a boy of twelve. The feeling was not peculiar. Any man, woman, or child trapped by station and reason could sit with that gnawing feeling. Like a rat chewing through him. There were two options: kill the rat and return to normal. Or, let the rat through.

[294-300 AC]

It is due for a reminder that Theon’s circumstances were by no means as destitute as they were ultimately ordinary. He and his mother, Joy, were not wanting. Nor were they unknown to the port of Maidenpool. Already, the bastard had the watchful eye of its aging lord, whose family line grew many branches from wedlock and infidelity. He had the ears of the old salmon’s granddaughters, for which he grew fonder as he struggled to sit idle and compliant.

There was a great surprise when the opportunity presented itself as clear as daylight in the doorway: his benefactors dropped a pittance of gold in his lap. Enough to secure passage to Oldtown. To the steps of the Citadel.

A young serving boy never considered the prospect of being a maester. To most, they were bloodletters and grey rats, servants of a different coat. Though… not all men who forged chains were bound with them. A lonesome boy entered the book-lined halls and exchanged rags for grey robes. Thirteen years to his name, he found company in those closer to his age. He stood in the shadow of two boys each a year his senior: Artos, a Northman, and Wilbert, an Oldtowner. They quartered together, both elders expecting to teach their bastard his letters, but he came ahead of the curve. His attention went to his studies. His struggle lay only in what direction to take first.

The first link was wrought from black iron, as dark as raven’s feather. Though he found kinship in like-minded boys, and relished the freedom to be as he ought to be, his thoughts were of home. Maidenpool. Months by foot, weeks by boat, and days as the crow flew. Ravens proved interesting company, and he sought each chance he could to send ravens eastward with letters tied afoot.

The second and third were made from platinum, for culture and language. His mind was young and malleable, and took easily to the forgotten tongues of the world. Dead empires and forgotten races of men titillated his intrigue. He collected the hard, inflexible runes of the Old Tongue and the harsh utterances of the old Valyrians to his repertoire, and read deeply in the ways of Old Valyria’s daughters and cast-aways.

The fourth and fifth came hot on the heels of his recent forays in the morals and principles of distant lands. He studied the quickly escalating faith of the Red God, which burned stubbornly in all ports-of-call in Westeros, and a ruthless foray into the Seven-Pointed Star. Born less from zeal, and more a keen intrigue in the machinations and justifications of their asceticism.

Theon forged his sixth link from raw lead after displaying a competent understanding of the writings of Archmaester Rigney. The unbroken, ever-rolling wheel of history cycled each time a Blackfyre or a Marcher lord picked up the sword. His interpretations served him well in future studies.

The seventh shone a glistening amber: the glimmer of copper, forged with mastery of the histories. Vague and mythical, his decision to focus upon the Age of Heroes before the arrival of the Andals was a controversial one, but not the first of his controversies. Yet when it came to his eighth chainlink in its ever-building length, it was an assurance of his interests in modern bureaucracy and the hierarchy of the Iron Throne’s court that kept him grounded in legal sciences.

In his seventeenth year, Theon made exceptional progress. Forging three links in only ten moons. One from red-gold, the byproduct of countless hours stretched over maps worn, faded, and outdated, the second from reading the skies, winds, sun, and moon for nearly a half-year’s time to anticipate coming storms on the coast, and the third forged in simple brass at the end of a moon painstakingly categorizing poisonous and toxic flora in the Trident.

It was starting to grow heavier. His chain was long. Eleven separate links, glinting in over a half-dozen colors. With only a few more, he could be brought before the Conclave to make his oaths. Theon was barely a man, but a lingering feeling worried the rest of his days were decided. His pursuit of knowledge seemed but for the sake of having it, serving no other purpose but self-aggrandizing.

Theon’s twelfth link came to a more practical effect. His longest and most difficult, taking over a year and more than his fair share of rebuttals. In the dusty halls of the Citadel complex, he dissected cadavers and watched surgeons mend and split flesh with a careful eye. He learned the proper balancing of humors and the subtle art of bloodletting and leeching. Remedies and poultices came on its heels. In only three months, he supplemented the silver of medicine with a link of zinc for alchemy. His comprehensive understanding of poisonous plants fell hand-in-hand.

Tonic and medicine were not the only brew prepared in Theon’s nineteenth year. He served with maesters whose concern for the sick and the dying were trifling and piecemeal. They seemed to search for answers to empirical questions on the nature of human life. It intrigued him, and worried the young men he had studied alongside these years. Almost alienating them in the process, Theon took a room in the Quill and Tankard to best serve his need for privacy.

[301-304 AC]

There was a red wave cascading over Westeros in the last years of Theon’s time as a novice. The red temple in Oldtown burned brighter at the break of day and fall of night, and whispers from traders and sailors abroad spoke extravagantly of the priests that divined the future from fire. This was no secret to him. His link of electrum for studying the faith of Rh’llor sat at his neck for years, but never did he turn his eyes on its practitioner’s exhibition of the supernatural.

Colleagues and mentors warned him that the occult was an academic dead-end. Magic, at its apex, died with Valyria. Even the late Bloodraven’s supposed sorcery was never called on by the courts, and the Crown Prince Viserys would not come to power on a trail of arcane fire. Scorning all of it, he persisted. Though he never strayed into true sorcery, he ruthlessly studied what little record of Asshai existed, and translated nearly a dozen texts from the Volantene priests to discern their arts in a fundamentally mechanical way.

Perhaps it was the most orthodox of his studies involving the ‘other’ world of academia, but the Conclave was as ever reluctant to provide another Valyrian steel link for a prospective maester’s chain. It would not be the last, but the first of three. Artos and Wilbert had grown concerned. They visited him often, and found him disheveled and sleepless. Naysayers and rivals accused him of stealing books from the archives, but never found a trace in his possessions, only translated copies written in a hand that didn’t correspond to his own.

The second Valyrian steel link was forged for a fitting subject: Valyrians after the Doom. The Freehold had not been touched upon directly in some years, and Theon saw it fit to compile a proper record. Centuries of refuse mentioned Valyria in passing, mostly as a death-trap to passing traders and intrepid adventurers, but little record existed from a Westerosi perspective.

He secured passage across the Narrow Sea to hear the accounts of Volantene scholars and academics in the Three Daughters, and requested whatever records existed from the Targaryen dynasty in Dragonstone on his return trip from Essos. Often, he found himself forced into the investigation of dragons. The last had seemed to be just that - the final nail in a draconic coffin, no matter how many rumors and half-truths existed concerning eggs and the frost-breathing beasts north of the Shivering Sea. His brass link served little use here; the beasts were far from any bear or wolf or beetle he researched in his adolescence.

Both his treatises on the death of the dragon species and the historical account of Valyria’s downfall earned him a second Valyrian steel link. The rippling red metal was a badge of pride to him, and a scarlet letter to the rest. Another young mind lost to sorceries and hypotheticals.

The third Valyrian steel link, Theon decided, would be the last in his chain. It hung loose around his neck, and he was prepared to face the test expected of all triumphant novices.

In the melancholy of his young adulthood, he decided upon a most clandestine field: the practice of blood magic and witchcraft. It was a far-reaching subject, touching on anything as limited as woods-witches and leechers in the destitute corners of Westeros, to the lofty heights of necromancy rumored to be practiced in circles beyond the Wall, within the Shadow, and the dark lords that ruled Westeros in the Age of Heroes: the Drumms, the Baneforts, and the Red Kings.

Through his knowledge of R'hllor theology, Theon understood Azor Ahai’s efforts to forge Lightbringer and temper it with the blood of his wife, Nissa Nissa, as nothing short of blood sorcery already. Human blood was already rumoured to be the fuel of old Valyrian society, involved in the forging and reworking of their mythically potent steel.

The foresters of Qohor sacrificed living men and women to sate their thirsting god, and the witches and crones of Westeros’ countryside often required the blood of animals or maidens to enact their divinations and charms. Theon compiled these reports into a thesis that an innate quality to mankind was necessary to tap into the wellspring of magic and disaster that built and plagued the old world.

[305 AC]

Theon looked back at the state of his life, and found its color muting. When the last chain was forged, the length of metal on metal hung loose. He knew the summer had only just begun, and would not last forever. The same could be said for his young life. It could be the same existence day to day; eyes burning from hours at parchment, his hands aching and arthritic from writing and carrying implements and books up the winding passageways of the Citadel’s complex. Letters from Maidenpool piled in his study, waiting to be responded to.

He entertained certain thoughts. Maybe becoming a maester was a poor choice of lifestyle. Many left the Citadel, becoming barbers, scribes, and cartographers. They had lives of their own. Lovers, children, even land and coin. He thought long and hard about Maidenpool again. The castle that seemed to close in on him so long ago was a distant, cherished memory. His mind wandered to his friends. His mother. Margaret. There were talks of a marriage. He swallowed his pride, and made his intentions known to the Conclave. He would return in time. The other maesters held their breath, hoping this would be the last they saw of Theon Rivers.

When his passage arrived in Maidenpool, much had changed. Voices he read mail to had deepened. Men he served were growing gray and duller. His mother was worn and silvered, though her pride swelled over. The Mooton girls, just children when he left, were grown. Lucinda was a woman of her own, Margaret was gone. Aggs and Gretch were no longer just whining voices in cribs.

He stayed for a brief time, aiding the household in their duties. Servant work at times, occasionally offering a hand to the household maester. An over-reaching hand, and one unwelcome at times.

Against his better judgement, he went in search of Margaret Mooton. Perhaps before she was Margaret Tully. When he came to the gates of Riverrun, it was perhaps too late. The betrothal was made, a wedding planned, and an avenue decided. Still, Margaret was as happy to see him as he was to see her. His presence lingered long after he made his peace and returned to the Citadel.

[306 AC]

Theon returned, to collective disapproval, to the Citadel with a conviction. On his first day back, without taking time to find quarters, he stepped to the doors of the Conclave and demanded his vows be taken. Each step was punctuated by the rattling of a chain around his neck. His gesture was, rightly so, a brazen and unnecessary one, but was met summarily.

He was left to his own devices after night fell, in a room with no light, not if he was unable to light the glass candle. Clawing in the dark, he spent the hours drawing sigils in the ground. Scraping runes in the wall with only cracks of moonlight keeping his way. When the maesters came to him after dawn, the obsidian candle had been thrown to the wall and shattered in countless pieces. His left hand was bloodied, but stitched. The test was discussed with his comrades in hushed whispers for days.

Theon awaited an assignment with baited breath. Whether they gave him a mask and rod to silence his crude interests, or sent him to a remote keep to serve an ungrateful lord. Few had forged as many links as he did in such a short time, and never in such peculiar fields. His answer came sooner rather than later, and to a mixed response. The Grand Maester, in service to King Viserys Targaryen himself, was failing in his years by the day. An extra pair of hands was needed, to supplement the small cadre of maesters and acolytes already within the Red Keep.

He arrived at King's Landing later the same moon, when the chill of autumn began to creep south in earnest. Theon’s duties were ultimately custodial. Cleaning the paper trail, sorting the libraries, and replacing the countless droughts he administered to the man himself. He anticipated the end within a week of his stay. Within the next three moons, Uther would be dead. The man was old, of course, and death would come for him sooner rather than later - but he believed it would come all too soon. The Grand Maester’s hacking cough seemed almost rotten. He thought of almost a hundred ways to prolong it.

Uther died two days after Theon predicted, hacking out his lungs in the dark of night until his body rattled and shuddered one last time. He presumed the Grand Maester’s duties, awaiting the response of the Seneschal. In a few days, he expected another to take Uther’s place.

[307-309 AC]

The letter from the Conclave read right as rain. There would be no replacement coming, for it was already there. The king was an unpopular man in his realm, and so Theon was in the bounds of the Citadel. A persistent thorn and a blemish upon them. There was one weight heavy enough to keep him from returning; the Red Keep. He would fill the vacant office, one of the youngest to do so. Practically overnight, Theon was thrust into the direct service of the royal family.

As a young man, Theon found it easier than most Grand Maesters to insert himself at court. None of these men understood the scorn his colleagues had shown in Oldtown. A clean slate. He ingratiated himself to knights and courtiers, the Queen and the Prince, and even held lines of communication to the new Lady Tully. Margaret, only a different cloak.

Viserys, too, allowed him to come closer. Though he held a pragmatic view of the gods, his understanding of the Targaryen’s manichean morality suited them both well. He earned a place in the dragon’s shadow, never too far from his side, and willing to offer his eclectic knowledge and due counsel when the time came to it.

The office of Grand Maester was not without its privileges, too. The library was sprawling and old. Not unlike the Citadel, only without its forbidden archives and exclusivity. When his day’s work had ended, he found himself taking books to his heart’s content. Genealogies, surveys, maps, and more. A variety of baubles, trinkets, and discarded refuse were the perfect reagents in his seedier alchemical decisions.

In 309 AC, the office is still fresh. Theon is a man of eight-and-twenty. He has seated himself at the table of the royal family, overlooking the education of the crown prince, looking after the welfare of Viserys’ neglected queen, and speaking privately in the king’s own quarters.

Timeline

 * 281-293 AC: Theon RIvers is born in Maidenpool. He is a serving boy to House Mooton, and mostly unremarkable, save a thirst for knowledge.
 * 294-300 AC: Theon Rivers begins his education in the Citadel. He becomes an acolyte in the same year, and forges countless links.
 * 301-304 AC: Theon Rivers delves into the occult and the supernatural, forging the last of his links during a personal crisis.
 * 305 AC: Theon returns to Maidenpool during a brief reprieve. He makes a detour in Riverrun to meet his childhood friend, Margaret Mooton (now Tully)
 * 306 AC: Theon makes his vows and becomes a Maester. He attends to Grand Maester Uther, who dies the same year
 * 307-309 AC: Theon becomes and serves as Grand Maester to King Viserys Targaryen.

Family Tree

 * Joy, a smallfolk woman from the Riverlands. Servant for House Mooton - (b. 256 AC)
 * Unknown nobleman from the North - (b. circa 250-260 AC)