Sellsword companies, brotherhoods, and sworn bands
Sellsword Companies & Brotherhoods
The free companies of Essos, the brotherhoods and sworn bands of Westeros, and the smallfolk risings that shaped the wars of A Song of Ice and Fire — from the Golden Company's long exile to the Brotherhood Without Banners. Grouped by kind; each with its own page.
Free Companies
- Free CompaniesThe Golden CompanyTen thousand exiles who boast they have never broken a contract — a claim this chronicle records without yet being able to test it.
- Free CompaniesThe Second SonsOne of the older companies of the Disputed Lands, and for one uneasy season in Slaver's Bay a company that could not decide whose coin it preferred.
- Free CompaniesThe WindblownA company where a man's birth name is the one thing he is free to leave behind.
- Free CompaniesThe Brave CompanionsCalled the Brave Companions by their own captain and the Bloody Mummers by everyone who ever had reason to hire them.
- Free CompaniesThe StormcrowsFive hundred horse under a banner of crows and crossed lightning, and a captain who chose a queen over a contract.
- Free CompaniesThe Long LancesEight hundred riders under a captain who, by the queen's own estimate, looked rather more shoemaker than soldier.
- Free CompaniesThe Band of NineNine claimants who swore beneath a tree to make one another kings — an oath most of them outlived by rather less than a year.
The Faith Militant
- The Faith MilitantThe Warrior's SonsCalled the Swords for the blades worked into their robes — the knightly arm of a Faith that once fielded its own army against the Iron Throne.
- The Faith MilitantThe Poor FellowsCalled the Stars for the seven-pointed star crudely sewn on their breasts — the Faith's foot soldiers, sworn to poverty and to the road.
- The Faith MilitantThe Faith MilitantThe martial arm of the Faith of the Seven — Swords and Stars both — an army the Iron Throne once had to fight, and may yet have to court again.
Brotherhoods & Risings
- Brotherhoods & RisingsThe Brotherhood Without BannersAn outlaw band raised in the king's name during the War of the Five Kings, and rumored since to answer to a captain the war was supposed to have killed.
- Brotherhoods & RisingsThe Kingswood BrotherhoodThe last great outlaw band of the royal forest south of King's Landing, hunted down as much for its swagger as for its crimes.
- Brotherhoods & RisingsThe Sons of the HarpyA masked insurgency that answers Meereen's liberation with a dagger in the dark — its membership, and its masters, a mystery this chronicle keeps carefully veiled.
Beyond the Wall
- Beyond the WallThe ThennsThe most disciplined fighters beyond the Wall, and by their own reckoning the last true First Men left anywhere.
- Beyond the WallThe Free Folk ClansScores of clans beyond the Wall who agree on almost nothing except that no man should call himself their king — until, for one brief season, one did.
Which companies and orders are covered here?
A selection of the sworn bands the chronicle turns on — the free companies, brotherhoods, and risings a reader of the novels meets most often, grouped by kind. It is a working guide, not an exhaustive roll: each band given its own page, with its history and notable members.
Are these from the books or the show?
Book canon. Each entry follows George R. R. Martin's novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.