Ormund Hightower, Lord of the Hightower and head of his ancient house, ruled Oldtown and bore the Valyrian steel sword Vigilance through the years of the Dance of the Dragons. A nephew of Ser Otto Hightower, three times Hand of the King, he raised the banners of the green for his kinsman King Aegon II Targaryen and led the chief host of the Reach to war—a thousand knights, a thousand archers, three thousand men-at-arms, and a great mass of less disciplined levies besides. Not all the Reach marched gladly behind him, for Ser Alan Beesbury and Lord Alan Tarly harried his camps and slew his scouts while Lord Owen Costayne fell upon his baggage train.
Cautious by nature, Lord Ormund wished to await reinforcements from King's Landing, yet the war would not wait upon him. He carried his host up through the Reach and on toward the Mander, and in the year 130 AC his march ended at the town of Tumbleton, where the First Battle of Tumbleton was fought. There Lord Ormund Hightower was slain, and the treachery of the dragonriders Hugh Hammer and Ulf White turned a green victory into a sack. By his first wife he left sons Lyonel, Martyn, and Garmund and a daughter Bethany; some years a widower, he had wed again to the Lady Samantha Tarly, who outlived him.