Character from House of the Dragon by George R.R. Martin
A dragonseed — a baseborn man with enough Targaryen blood to claim the great dragon Vermithor, who fought for the Blacks until ambition and opportunity turned him traitor at the First Battle of Tumbleton.
Hugh Hammer is what happens when you give a dragon to a man with no loyalty and limitless ambition. He was a blacksmith's bastard on Dragonstone, one of the dragonseeds recruited by Jacaerys Velaryon in a desperate bid to find more dragonriders for the Blacks. He claimed Vermithor — the Old King's dragon, one of the largest and most powerful alive — and suddenly a man who had been nothing was the most dangerous military asset in the war. The power went to his head immediately. He began demanding lordships, titles, lands. When the Blacks could not — or would not — give him what he felt he deserved, he betrayed them at the First Battle of Tumbleton, turning Vermithor on the Black-allied town and burning it to ash. He declared himself king, or tried to, and was killed by one of his own allies before the claim went anywhere. He is the Dance's cautionary tale about desperation: when you need dragonriders badly enough to arm men with no stake in your cause, do not be surprised when they burn you with the weapons you gave them.
Huge, broad-shouldered, and powerfully built, with the rough hands and blunt features of a blacksmith — which is what he was before the dragons. He has some Valyrian coloring — enough to suggest Targaryen bastard blood — but it is diluted and coarsened by common ancestry. He carries a massive warhammer in battle, which he wields with the casual strength of a man who has swung a smith's hammer his entire life.
Also known as: Hugh, Hugh Hammer, Hugh the Hammer