Griffin's Roost

A red-stone seat on a headland shaped like a griffin's beak.

The fuller tale

Griffin's Roost stands on a headland of red stone thrust into Shipbreaker Bay, reached by a narrow neck its household can hold against an army ÔÇö a proud small seat for a proud small house, whose griffin banners flew highest for one generation exactly. Jon Connington was Prince Rhaegar's dearest friend, made Hand of a failing king in the rebellion's desperate hour, and broke his career at the battle of the Bells: too honorable to burn a town to smoke out Robert Baratheon, he lost the battle, the Handship and his home, exiled while lesser men kept their chairs. The Roost was stripped of most of its lands for his failure and handed down a diminished line ÔÇö a castle punished for its lord's insufficient ruthlessness, which is as stormlands a fate as exists.

The books bring the griffin home silver-haired and grimmer. Connington returns from exile with the Golden Company at his back and a young man he calls Rhaegar's son at his side, and takes his own castle by stealth and memory ÔÇö the first move of a claimant's war the show never adapts. He climbs to the roof where he once dreamed, notes how small the great keep of his childhood has become, and carries with him, hidden beneath a glove, the grey death he caught saving a dwarf from drowning. Griffin's Roost thus holds one of the saga's live fuses: a father's love, a pretender's cause, and greyscale, all garrisoned behind one narrow neck of red stone.

The chronicle here

• The Golden Company takes Griffin's Roost, Jon Connington's stolen home, in Aegon's name; the greyscale on the exile's hand climbs while his prince's war begins ahead of schedule. (ADWD 62)

Born here

Souls the story brings 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.