Drowned God

 

The Drowned God is the deity worshiped on the Iron Islands. Together with the North, where the worship of the Old Gods of the Forest remains strong, the Iron Islands is one of the few regions in Westeros not abiding by the main religion of the Seven Kingdoms, the Faith of the Seven.

The belief system of the Drowned God justifies the ironborn way of life of piracy and raiding. Followers of the Drowned God believe he brought flame from the sea and that he created the ironborn to reave, raid, and pillage. Much of the religion centers around maritime skills and seafaring ability. It is not simply praiseworthy to kill enemies in battle, it is considered a pious act. A youth in the Iron Islands is not considered a man until he has killed his first enemy. The religion also encourages paying the "iron price" instead of the "gold price" -- that is, it is better not to pay or treat for possessions, but to take them by force from the hands of dead enemies.

 

While to outsiders the Drowned God religion seems like a thinly veiled justification for pillaging and plundering, the ironborn themselves take their religion very seriously, and actually have a fairly well developed cosmology and belief system surrounding it.

 

Within this belief system, the Drowned God is locked in an age-old struggle against the Storm God. The Drowned God's halls are located beneath the ocean, while the Storm God lives in a castle in the sky with his thunderclouds. The Storm God is constantly trying to send storms to dash ironborn ships against rocks to their ruin.

 

Resurrection figures prominently in the religion, in the form of being revived from drowning. The Drowned God itself is said to have drowned in the sea, for the sake of the ironborn, but returned to life "harder and stronger". However, drowning is also employed as a method of sacrificing enemies to the Drowned God.

 

Due to their belief, the ironborn do not fear drowning in the sea. "Godly" ironborn, that is fearless raiders, who drown are believed to be taken to the Drowned God's watery halls to feast on fish and be tended by mermaids for eternity. Thus, whenever a man dies, ironborn say that the Drowned God is in need of a strong oarsman.