Lodos Goodbrother Birth Name Lodos Goodbrother Titles Drowned Priest of Corpse Lake Gender Male Date Of Birth 68 AC Location Iron Islands Culture Ironborn Religion The Drowned God Relations Liege Lady Gysella Goodbrother META Player Username /u/taygood Name on Discord taygood

Lodos Goodbrother of Corpse Lake is the eldest child of Lord Vickon Goodbrother.

Appearance and Character Edit

Lodos is slim but strong due to his years reaving, and is around 5 ft 10 inches. Neither that handsome nor that ugly, his face is often crusted with salt and a few light scars. His eyes are blue while his hair is brown tinged red and neck-length. He has a short beard and mustache. Lodos can get along with most people if he wants by wearing his “Goodbrother mask”, but takes it off so his harder self comes through while reaving. Some would call him a religious man.

History Edit

Baby Lake

It was known to outsiders as quite a small lake, with some calling it merely a large pond. Yet it had the most crystal clear waters any Ironborn had ever seen. Smooth stones, grey and black, composed the shore. A few blue and green trees even grew along the banks, dotted with bushes thick and high. The waters were so fresh and pure one could see clear to the thirty-foot bottom, and many who visited bathed while others drank and still others fished. And yet no one had ever had a baby in the waters.

In 68 AC the Lady Alannys Goodbrother was pregnant and possessed. The roughest, rainiest storm in memory was beating down their keep, and all the Lady wanted to do was join it. She had been in labor for days and it was understandable she wanted it to end, but in this fashion? No one could stop her. Her husband Lord Vickon Goodbrother was away, and although not well, she was in charge, and so outside she went. That night, Lady Alannys opened her heart to the storm and her legs to the lake. Thus it was in Corpse Lake that Lodos Goodbrother of Corpse Lake was born, first of his name.

From the beginning there was something odd about the child. He seemed at home in water, which was normal for any Ironborn, except he was obsessive about it. He had to be in water most hours of the day, or at least wet. If he were dry for more than an hour, the child would cry and wrap his arms around himself. From then on, Lodos was rarely seen without a cup of water in hand whether in his family keep or outside near Corpse Lake. As he grew up, he gravitated towards the sea, and so naturally became a fisherman. His nets brought in many great catches from the sea as he was always willing to fish in storms and in dangerous waters none dared tread. But the way he was seen preparing fish brought attention. He would slowly cut them at shallow and odd angles, prolonging their time alive, sometimes ripping them apart with his fingers and sucking out their juices.

In his early 20s, Lodos left Great Wyk to reave. Joining Veron Greyjoy and his raids from 89-95 AC around Andalos, the Cinnamon straits, and the Rhoyne, Lodos reaved far and wide. Not shy to venture inland, he killed as naturally on land as if he were catching fish in the sea. He was especially fond of using his Valyrian steel sword, Bonescape, an heirloom of the family, to cut throats. Lighter and sharper than normal steel, he won fights quick and easy. Over time, he became adept at destroying the lives of his victims, always returning with loot and resources. He had a particular tactic- setting fire to the houses of his prey, for in their haste to put it out they went to the sea, where, of course, the Ironborn were waiting. However, unlike his companions he never returned with thralls or salt wives. Any non-Ironborn in his path he would simply murder rather than take prisoner. Like his body, his blade was never dry and he was fond of licking the blood from it after a kill. Asked why he did this he once replied, “blood tastes of iron, and we are Ironborn. They are dead, and what is dead may never die, but makes us harder and stronger.”

The Sunken Ones

By his late 20s, Reaving had left its mark on Lodos. His hair had grown course and mangy. A crazed look infested his face when he smiled. It was joked his stare was so intense it could part the seas. The Goodbrother family welcomed him home, but it wasn’t his mother or father or siblings who first came to the beach to greet him, it was a drowned priest. The drowned priest had wanted to meet Lodos- this young man given the name of an infamous priest from a past age, and born in a lake known for death more than life. The two walked along the beach together and the priest spoke to Lodos of history. The priest wanted Lodos to know how Corpse Lake got its name, but to show him, first he would have to drown him. To become a drowned priest, one must first die, that is, drown, and then be resuscitated to come back stronger. Lodos didn’t know who this stranger was, but he had always been curious about Corpse Lake’s origins due to his birth in it. Wanting answers, he agreed to be drowned.

The sun was setting when Lodos went out to Corpse Lake and met the drowned priest, already standing knee deep in the clear waters. “Are you ready to know the truth?”

“Show me,” said Lodos, as he waded in. The sky was pink red, the trees blue green, and as the priest dunk Lodos’s head underwater, the colors bled and blurred. Lodos inhaled a mouthful of water and all went black. There was no color, no wet, no world at all. Then, Lodos realized, there was no water either, or rather, the air was now water, and he could breathe it as if he had gills. He was floating beneath the surface of Corpse Lake and everything was navy and gray.

Suddenly, another body plunged into place next to him. It was a young man with short ginger hair. His eyes were closed but his chest was heaving as he struggled to breathe. Lodos floated still as a schoolchild and observed. A moment later the heaving stopped, the man’s white eyes bulged open, closed, and his body drifted away to the bottom of corpse lake. As soon as he had sunk, another body dropped into the water in front of Lodos. This one was a woman with velvety brown hair and deep lines across her face. She too attempted breathing only to gag and shake. Just like before, her eyes bulged pasty white and blanked out before she sank down into eternal slumber at the bottom. After this came a teenage boy grimacing and skin flushed with red. He too gulped down a lung of lake and sank below. Upon all of this Lodos watched and smiled. He could breathe easy as if he were in air, though he was unsure if this were real, a dream, or something in between.

Bodies began dropping all around like anchors- to his left an old man, to his right a robed priest, underneath him sank a ragged thrall, body after body gasping in water, drowning in splashes, and only now did Lodos realize that next to water his blade was nothing. Wetness was the greatest killer of them all. Only now did he understand that he was in his element, that here is where he truly belonged, that the blood of his enemies he tasted not just for iron but because on land blood was the next best way to get himself wet.

And now with the bodies pitching into the water and popping around like popcorn, now Lodos let himself sink to the mass of human flesh below. But the bodies, far from lifeless, reanimated and waved to him, beckoned to join them at the core of corpse lake. And so he did. Lodos swam down, down, tens of feet, until the light whimpered and died and that wetness the essence of god reigned supreme. And at last he touched the black rocky bottom and weighed the fleshy miasma about, balancing himself like on a scale. Feeling a current beneath the rocks tickling his ankles, he reached down and lifted rocks from out which a red current poured. Lodos took a knee and there he saw a pane glass window under the rocky bottom, with a thick red flow of water pumping through it. Lodos squinted down through the glass and saw a vast ocean, one so big it encompassed every sea he had sailed and every sky he had seen except this sea moved like it were a creature, red currents for blood, a blue fire shining out in beats like a heart, a jello skin holding it together with a million dead bodies as hairs on that skin, ingesting the oceans, swarming the earth, crushing all other gods in its immensity. It was then that Lodos Goodbrother of Corpse Lake knew his place.

Lodos awoke coughing up water. He was on the banks of the river in the mud, and the priest was over him. He had passed the test. He had survived where others had perished. Lodos staggered up. “This was a grave. A mass grave.”

The priest looked long at him. “Once it was. Those who didn’t pass the test of the drowned god were left to wither in this lake. So came the name.”

“But, where, why aren’t the bodies still here?”

“I am afraid your House and others don’t adhere to the Old ways as much anymore. But tell me, Lodos Goodbrother, what did you see on your journey?”

Lodos leaned against a tree and hacked. “I saw God. I saw why I was born. I saw what I am supposed to do.”

The priest smiled. "Welcome back, Lodos Goodbrother, Drowned Priest of Corpse Lake."

Corpse Bride

“Where is this Corpse Lake they speak of, I want to see it myself.” Fisherman, reaver, lord, thrall, they all said that. Two hours hike inland from the coast of Great Wyk, it was Lodos’s job to show all inquiring minds the great “Corpse Lake” of his house. The last year or so he had stepped away from reaving to become the official Goodbrother tour guide of “Corpse Lake”. Under his father, the lake had become a tourist attraction designed to bring needed coin. The visitors were usually disappointed at the lack of dead bodies, but they nonetheless relished the saltless fresh water, a rarity in the Iron Islands. They bathed, frolicked, played, drank, sometimes hosted parties or even weddings at Corpse Lake. In time the very name came to be mocked in good humor, such was the immaculateness of the water.

The Goodbrothers welcomed this, and they had welcomed even more Lodos volunteering to lead the tours. Seen as a bit violent even by Ironborn standards, the family viewed this as a way to integrate Lodos back into the family peacefully. What was more mysterious to them was why Lodos had volunteered, and so enthusiastically at that. But to Lodos, a man capable of hiding his intentions, these waters belonged to the Drowned God, not to fat lords and little children. This was a place of worship and reflection, not of play and frivolity. Ever since his near drowning by the priest, he had known it was his duty to protect it, to change the lake back to the Old ways. But how to do this? His sister had more sway with his father, Lord Goodbrother of Corpse Lake, than he did, and he couldn’t just threaten them like they were thralls or greenlanders. No, he needed to destroy their sickeningly sweet version of Corpse Lake from within. As a guide, he could gain unlimited access to the lake and all those who sought it. So he played nice, wearing the Goodbrother mask at day, while he plotted as Lodos at night.

His sister, Yara, was to be married to some Lord from Pyke on the shores of Corpse Lake. It was to be a grand affair. When the wedding day came and the sun was at high noon and the lake flat and at peace, Lodos was ready. A hundred some people from all across the Iron Islands showed up on the shores of Corpse Lake. Tables were set and food was eaten and there was no end to the wine and music.

Lodos watched them all from a high hidden setup near a stream that fed the lake, overlooking the scene below. A black haired girl moaned on the ground next to him, bound and gagged. Her eyes were pink, her face full of terror, and she was bleeding from a deep gash on her forehead. He had found her in the port just sitting and watching the waves. Dressed in rags, whoever she was, she would not be missed, and it was easy for Lodos to lure her most of the way here with the promise of sweets. He said a prayer to the Drowned God, took out his knife, and slit her throat several times. Then he slit her wrists and other arteries and watched as the blood pooled around her.

Killing was easy to him. It was the aftermath that distinguished the common killer from the professional. With great care, he made sure no blood spilled on him as he dragged her into the stream. Lodos lifted up a rock and used it to pin down the dead girl’s legs, then he let go. Her lower body was immobile but her arms and torso flailed around like blades of grass in the wind. Her tongue lolled about as water coursed over her, and her eyes were open and swollen and looking down, down to the drowned god, or perhaps just to the wedding several hundred feet below that she’d attend as a ghost.

Lodos smiled and watched as the waters coursed over the corpse and brought its essence to the peoples below. They were bathing in the lake, drinking from it, but now they each had a little infinitesimal part of a corpse in them. The body was bleeding but the red blood was hopelessly diluted before reaching the lake such that no one even noticed. Lodos just left his offering there to decompose, and took a roundabout way back to the wedding.

“Where have you been brother? You look worn out. We missed you.” His sister exited corpse lake where she had been splashing around. She offered him a cup of water, “fresh from our lake.”

Lodos took it and smiled, “Thank you.” He drank it all.