[hider=The Riverlands Silliest Soldier]
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[h2]Jayse Rivers[/h2]
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Bastard son of House Mallister[/center]

[color=#ba4ede]Age:[/color] 19 (b. 241 AC)

[color=#ba4ede]Appearance:[/color]
A young man of unassuming height and a rather slender physique, Jayse is at the very least known to be a handsome young man. His hair falls near shoulder-length, largely unkempt except for when he dons his armor to which he ties it into a ponytail. Jayse, while not exuding confidence in his gait, does carry himself rather merrily and a smile is almost always on his face. While not in his armor, he wears rather common rags, greys and browns that bear the sign of many wearings on and off. His armor, however, is maintained and polished - cleaned to now end as a mark of pride in himself and the house he comes from. Over it, he wears a cream tabard with a gray eagle on it and with this donned he ensures that he stands above the rest.


[color=#ba4ede]Description & biography:[/color]

Born in 241 AC, Jayse Rivers was the bastard son of a minor Mallister lord and a Lysene courtesan who spent one scandalous summer in Seagard before vanishing without a trace. She left behind a baby with dark brown hair, a knack for avoiding responsibility, and an almost supernatural ability to stumble into fortune. Unlike most bastards who burned with ambition or resentment, Jayse never saw much point in dwelling on his station. Life was comfortable enough—he had food, a roof over his head, and just enough noble blood to get invited to feasts but not enough to be expected to do anything useful.


Jayse had an older half-brother, Ser Edric Mallister, a proper knight—dutiful, disciplined, and annoyingly noble. Unfortunately, Edric died in a skirmish with ironborn raiders when Jayse was 17. As the family mourned, Jayse quietly took his brother’s well-crafted armor—not out of ambition, but because no one else claimed it, and plate was expensive. He never intended to impersonate a knight, but life had other plans. The first time he wore Edric’s armor in public, someone mistook him for "Ser Jayse Rivers," and correcting them seemed like too much effort. He never called himself a knight, but if others assumed… well, that wasn’t really his fault, was it?

Jayse spent the next two years bumbling through the Riverlands, trying (and failing) to avoid trouble, yet always landing on his feet.

In 258 AC, he was supposed to deliver a message to a Mallister vassal but got lost and wandered into the wrong keep. When questioned, he panicked and claimed to be a hedge knight looking for service. The lord, impressed by his "humility," gave him a meal, a room, and a bag of silver before Jayse slipped away the next morning.

In 259 AC, he entered a Lannisport tournament on a whim. He had never jousted, and it showed—he fell off his horse before the tilt even began. As he scrambled to get up, his opponent’s horse spooked and threw its rider. The crowd, assuming Jayse had won through unconventional means, cheered. He collected a small purse and spent it all on wine that same night.

Later that year, while traveling to King’s Landing, he got into an argument with a Dornish sellsword. A duel was arranged, but before it could begin, Jayse tripped down a flight of stairs. The sellsword, taking this as an omen from the gods, decided to let him live.

By 260 AC, Jayse had acquired an odd reputation—not for skill, but for sheer inexplicable survival. Wherever he went, things just happened.

Jayse’s luck took a turn for the worse in the village of Greenbrook, where he stopped at an alehouse called The Staggering Stag for a drink. He had no coin left, but he was confident in his ability to charm his way into free ale—unfortunately, he misread the situation. The alehouse belonged to Harwin Grell, a petty knight known more for his temper than his skill. Jayse, thinking Harwin was just another tavern drunk, made a careless joke about the man’s receding hairline. Harwin, well into his cups, took offense and challenged Jayse to a duel at dawn.

Jayse tried to talk his way out of it. When that failed, he tried running. That failed too. By sunrise, he was standing in the muddy village square, armed with a rusty practice sword someone had thrown at him.

The duel began—and immediately ended when Harwin’s foot slipped in the mud. He pitched forward, cracking his head on the ground and knocking himself unconscious. A hush fell over the crowd. Jayse, covered in someone else’s spilled breakfast, awkwardly raised his sword. Someone cheered. Someone else called him "the luckiest bastard alive." That might have been the end of it—except Harwin’s younger brother, Alric, was furious. He demanded satisfaction and called Jayse a cheat. Not wanting to test his luck twice, Jayse made the wise decision to steal a horse and flee the Riverlands entirely.

Jayse arrived in Volantis with little more than a stolen horse, his dead brother’s armor, and a dwindling purse. Within days, he lost most of his silver to a rigged dice game, nearly got press-ganged onto a merchant galley, and somehow became the accidental bodyguard of a Volantene wine trader who mistook him for an actual knight. His true stroke of luck came when he crossed paths with the Sword of Shadows, the enigmatic leader of the Doombringers of Volantis, a sellsword company with a fearsome reputation. Jayse mistook the man for someone else and spent an hour recounting his version of his adventures across Westeros. Whether out of amusement or curiosity, the Sword of Shadows offered him a place among the Doombringers.

And so, by 260 AC, Jayse Rivers—bastard of Seagard, knight by mistake, survivor by sheer accident—found himself a sellsword.

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