(Used the generator here if you're curious:
http://www.mytribe101.com/crest/)
Sworn to The Crown (House Baratheon)
House Characteristics: Members of House Elmen are sometimes mocked as being pauper-lords and poor financiers, for their lands run lush and thick with unused resources. An Elmen would rather slay his own mother than plunder their land for mining and lumber. Certainly they don't favour finery or jewllery. Their clothing tends to forest colours - greens and browns, with bright reds and oranges coming in for the autumn. They are stubborn (though not honorable) and serious as a rule, but also extremely blunt and earthy about things others might dance delicately around; an Elmen does not woo his maiden with song and is considered unusually polite for waiting till the wedding night to have taken her maidenhead. As a rule, they have squat, stocky builds, thick brown hair and a tendency for bright green eyes. Bastards of House Elmen take the name Hunt and usually become wardens of the forest. The House's favoured weapon is a longbow.
Territory: Elmen territory is compartively small, bordering the Crownlands and Stormlands and their reputation as paupers is not entirely undeserved - their hunters and trappers are second to none, bringing in a healthy enough revenue, but their lands command no mines or quarries, nor even a city. Their land is dotted with many thick forests, woods and copses virtually unpassable save on foot, and with more villages than towns. In fact, the closest thing they have to a true 'city' is the market town of Father's Cross, a hub of trading commerce for those who wish to purchase the wares of the woodsmen and built around a crossroads. Father's Cross is almost exactly on the border with the Crownlands.
Elmen's greatest treasure is the Summering Wood, a vast expanse of lush, nearly-untouched forest that is known as some of the finest and richest hunting ground in Westeros and regularly patronised by the Crown, though not as often as the Kingswood due to the greater distance that must be travelled to reach it. It is from the Summering Wood that House Elmen derives most of its income and reputation, for it yields to their trappers and hunters a dazzling array of meats, furs, skins and herbs which they then sell on. As a result, it is jealously guarded by the watchful wardens, who keep an eye out for trappers, bandits and other trespassing ne'er-do-wells.
There are many stories about what secrets the Summering Wood holds. It is said that somewhere in the Summering Wood, there is a place known as the Traitor's Grove; gruesome tales tell that this is where House Elmen punishes its worst criminals (including treacherous wardens) by binding their limbs and then using wax to seal away inside the trunks of dead trees - with only an angered hornet's nest for company and time to wait for death. Other tales tell of the wondrous beasts that might be glimpsed by a lucky (and probably drunk) hunter - albino stags, boars big as horses and two-headed bears. Others say that if there is one place in Westeros where one might still hope to find children of the forest, it is the Summering Wood.
House Elmen holds its counsel at Overwood Keep, a stone fort built high atop a craggy cliff that commands a majestic view of the Summering Wood. Overwood is neither particularly large, fine nor imposing as keeps go, but its main defensive advantage is the fact that path one must follow to get there - the only path available - is long, narrow, winding and most importantly extremely exposed. Some of the only logging the Elmen regularly practice is along the road to Overwood, keeping it clear and in sight the keep - and its marksmen - for almost the entirety of the path.
Military: The plain and simple fact is that Elmen is far from being a military power. It lacks the territory, equipment, funding and population to muster a force sizable enough to cause the other Houses to worry in open battle - perhaps a few hundred armoured cavalry and ten thousand infantrymen at the very most, and only if they drafted the old and feeble at that. However, the dread reputation of their rangers and the thick, aggressive forest of their homeland makes them frankly a bugger to attack or invade, and the high quality of their scouts mean that they will likely be well-prepared by the time the invaders reach their borders. Roads are few, uneven and narrow, meaning the going will be slow and difficult. Those that do try to mount an assault find themselves harried at all turns by shadows from the forest - arrows coming out of nowhere, pitfalls dug into the road and the like. If one of the other Great Houses took a mind to burning the Summering Wood to the ground and seizing Overwood Keep, they probably could do it - but they would find it a long, costly and bloody campaign.
The Elmen know they are no great force to be reckoned with. They simply see to it that their enemies find no victory without regret.
Customs, Quirks and Superstitions: It is no secret that the Elmen place great value in the land, who they see as the mother of all. As such, they take great care not to harm the land and use its bounty sparingly. Metals and stones are extremely expensive due to their reluctance to mine and most Elmen arrows are in fact headed with sharpened stone and boiled leather is more common than plate or mail. Some legends say that the old king who sat at Overwood Keep wore a crown not of gold or silver but still-living weirwood, until the Andal came and burned both king and crown as one.
The Elmen raise the hunt to an almost fetishistic level and most of their important cultural and social rituals are based around hunting. They believe that hunts bring people together unlike any other, and that no man can truly be false to another man if they hunt together. Thus Elmen lords use hunts to not only excersize but seek counsel and foster relations, get to know someone better. A boy is not considered a man until he completes a solo hunt, and what beast he brings in is seen as an omen of his life as a man; a craven brings in birds or rabbits while a a canny lad might bring in a fox. It is considered taboo for a boy to kill a stag on his man-hunt, as it is the emblem of House Baratheon and to do so would be seen as the boy having a future as a traitor, but this taboo is not seen to apply on other hunts. Paradoxically, the reverse logic applies to a boar; despite it being the symbol of House Elmen, a boy who brings in a boar is seen as having a future of being a great member of the House.
Though the Seven are worshipped in Elmen lands, it is reluctantly; some septons have written of eavesdropping on locals practicing pagan rites of their own. The Mother, Father and Stranger are most commonly worshipped of the Seven. Amongst themselves, members of House Elmen claim to have descended from a First Man who laid with children of the forest. How true this claim might be is unclear - if they are, generations will have diluted the children's blood to almost nil - but as a result of these stories men of Elmen place great weight on 'the green sight' and other reports of visions and supernatural occurences. Some rangers have been said to be able to talk to the forest and its beasts, though again how much is true is unclear.
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Originally Posted by Wiki of Ice and Fire
