Blackhaven

The Dondarrions' marcher seat, its banner a purple lightning bolt ÔÇö carried this season by Ser Beric, sent to arrest the Mountain.

The fuller tale

Blackhaven guards the Boneway where it climbs out of the stormlands toward Dorne, a strong dark-stoned castle in the driest, most fought-over corner of the Marches, and House Dondarrion has held the pass for centuries under the strangest arms in the region: forked purple lightning on black, remembering the storm-sent bolt that saved the house's founder from Dornish ambush and struck down his attacker in the road. Marcher lords are bred to a particular temper ÔÇö vigilant, hospitable and quick ÔÇö and the Dondarrions have supplied the realm with model marchers for generations, along with squires from Dorne itself, the marches' old wars having mellowed into the marches' old marriages.

The tale empties the castle with a single errand. Its young lord rides to King's Landing for a tourney, catches the eye of half the court, and is handed a commission by Ned Stark: take a hundred men and bring the Mountain to justice. The lightning lord who rides out never truly comes home ÔÇö what returns to the riverlands' war, again and again, is something the red god keeps relighting, a leader of broken men fighting for the smallfolk long after his own memories gutter. Blackhaven waits meanwhile at the top of its pass, a seat whose lord is legally alive, factually otherwise, and in both tellings the tale's foremost proof that death, for some purposes, is negotiable.

Born here

The fallen of this place ÔÇö if any, they are named here. Spoilers.

No death the chronicle records has come to this ground ÔÇö or none the maesters have set down.