Mountain Dwellers

There were enough people in grey walking around, that her hound's appearance didn't strike anyone as odd. She had expected it, but even then, the sight took getting used to. These weren't people who had forfeited their name, like he had, but people who had simply set their name aside. As he had when he had come here five years ago. Leave behind your old self and prove your new self instead, without the burden or blessings of your name.
How different it was elsewhere. Plenty of nameless who would hide the fact, hide the colours, if they could. Because in most of the kingdom, being nameless wasn't by choice. As she had told the people of Leathad Den Ghrian, forfeiting a name was permanent, an act that couldn't be undone. The nameless grey marked them as people less than others, unworthy of a name. No surprise then, how archaic they found the tradition of setting a name aside. Yet how archaic to her it was to feel contempt for the nameless.

The unnamed Flameheart territory has no nobles ruling it, nor is it properly supported by the Duke. It simply is, and those that dwell there carve out a place for themselves with their own hands. They make a living, depending not on law but on the will of the majority. Those that pose a threat, are taken down by the many before they can grow past being just the few. And they have the tradition of making someone prove themselves, an old tradition that some in the other Flameheart territories still follow.
One of them, surprisingly, is the sixth Duke of Flameheart. Once his heir, Marquis Aodhán Flameheart, reached the age of twenty-one, he sent Aodhán off to the mountains. There he had to put his name aside, donning the grey of the nameless, and had to prove himself worthy of a new name within a year's time. A tradition that deservedly earns the contempt of many, as it makes light of just how sacred a name is.
Nevertheless, Aodhán persisted. He returned a year later, to a situation that broke his heart into a thousand pieces. But he returned. As for the name he earned, or a proof of his deeds, none outside Flameheart truly know. Only the Duke and perhaps a few others truly know what the Marquis accomplished. And while the Duke feels little but contempt for his heir, he does respect what Aodhán had left behind in the mountains as his legacy.