In the long twilight of the First Men's rule over the riverlands, when the Andal warbands had begun to spill westward from their landings upon the narrow sea, the strongest of all the river kings was Tristifer, fourth of that name of House Mudd, whom the singers call the Hammer of Justice. From his seat at Oldstones upon the Blue Fork he ruled the greater part of the lands between the Neck and the Blackwater, and against the invaders who came with the seven-pointed star upon their shields and the new gods in their hearts he waged war without rest. The histories, such as survive of so distant an age, record that he fought a hundred battles against the Andals and their allies among the First Men, and that in ninety-nine of them he was the victor, so that for a time it seemed the tide of the Andal conquest might break upon him and turn back.
But the Andals came without end, wave upon wave in their longships, and where one warband was broken two more landed to take its place. In his hundredth battle Tristifer IV Mudd was at last overwhelmed and slain, and his kingdom did not long outlive him; his heir, Tristifer V, could neither win his father's victories nor hold what his father had held, and within a generation House Mudd was thrown down and its line all but extinguished, the last of the river kings of the First Men swept away. Tristifer was buried at Oldstones, and long after his castle had fallen to ruin and his house had passed out of memory his weathered stone likeness still lay upon its lid above the hilltop, a king whose name the smallfolk had forgotten. So ended, the maesters record, the old dominion of the First Men over the rivers, and so passed the riverlands into the hands of the Andals.