Pennytree

A small village on the Red Fork, its great oak nailed with pennies for luck — the place old Ser Arlan named himself for, and all the home Dunk's master ever had.

The fuller tale

Pennytree is barely more than a crossroads village on the Red Fork, notable chiefly for the great old oak at its center studded with pennies hammered in by generations of travelers hoping for luck on the road ahead — nobody in the village can say anymore who started the custom, only that stopping it now would feel like inviting bad fortune on purpose. It gave its name to a hedge knight of no particular birth, Ser Arlan of Pennytree, who took the village as his own the way landless knights sometimes borrow a place to stand behind instead of a father’s name.

Ser Arlan died on the road toward Ashford, an old man whose knighthood his last squire could never quite verify and never once doubted, and it is that squire — a huge, gutter-born boy with a grave to dig and no other plan — who becomes Ser Duncan the Tall. Pennytree itself never appears again in the tales after lending its name to the opening pages, but the coin-studded oak is, in its way, the truest monument the story ever raises to Ser Arlan: an old, worn thing that keeps travelers a little braver than they’d otherwise be.

In the first season

Ser Arlan took his name from this village and its coin-nailed oak. He served half a lifetime for hearth and bread — and Dunk carries his shield, his horse, and his lessons.

The chronicle here

• On a hillside by the roseroad, Dunk digs a grave for Ser Arlan of Pennytree, the old hedge knight he has served since he was a boy of Flea Bottom — and decides to take the old man's arms, his horses, and his trade. (THK 1)

Born here

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

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