~ Maegor Stark POV ~
~ Valyrian Freehold, Capital City Valyria ~
The Valyrian Freeholds capital, Valyria, is the most horrendously beautiful capital in this world, caked in blood and fire.
The Freehold of Valyria at the zenith of its power was neither a kingdom nor an empire, or at least it had neither a king nor an emperor. Instead, all freeholders, or freeborn landowners, had a say in its governance.
In practice, however, the Freehold was ruled by the lords freeholder, powerful noble families. They were forty families of great wealth, high birth, and strong sorcerous ability, those families which controlled and rode dragons in battle, who came to dominate, were known as dragonlords.
The Doom seems like a cosmic balancing of the atrocities the Valyrians have heaped upon the rest of Essos by enslaving entire fallen nations. Much like the Roman Empire of my last life, the Valyrian Freehold is a empire that is built upon the countless corpses of the enslaved people of conquered lands.
Some five thousand years ago, in the early days of Valyria, the Old Empire of Ghis dominated and controlled much of Essos. The Ghiscari attempted to stop Valyria's expansion and the burgeoning freehold was involved in a series of great wars against the Old Empire. The Ghiscari lockstep legions, the predecessors of the Unsullied, attacked Valyria five times, but they could never defeat them - with the help of dragons, Valyria was able to defend and emerge victorious each time.
Finally, in the last of the Ghiscari wars, the Valyrians marched on their capital, Old Ghis, razed it to the ground, and sowed its fields with salt, sulfur, and skulls, obliterating it and thereby destroying the Old Empire of Ghis. Adopting slavery from Ghis, Valyria expanded its influence over the surviving Ghiscari colonies of Slaver's Bay, and continued to conquer and colonize further.
The Valyrians are believed to have traveled as far as Oldtown, predating the arrival of the First Men and trading with the elder races, according to some old texts, but I know for a fact that it wasn't the Valyrian dragonlords but the dragonlords of the Empire of the Dawn that came millennia before the Valyrian Freehold was even an idea.
The Valyrian Freehold continued to expand and conquer further west, capturing many slaves from conquered lands and using them to mine great wealth from the Fourteen Flames, as well as build great cities and roadways that led to Valyria.
For many years the Valyrians were at peace with the Rhoynar civilization of the Rhoyne, west of the Valyrian peninsula. From the colonial freehold of Volantis, the Valyrians instead crossed the Rhoyne and marched west to wage war on the Andals of Andalos. Rather than be enslaved by Valyria, the Andals crossed the narrow sea and invaded Westeros. The Valyrians overwhelmed the remaining Andals of western Essos and established colonies west of their peninsula.
The Rhoynish Wars were a series of wars fought between the city-states of the Rhoynar and colonies of the Valyrian Freehold between ~950 BC and 700 BC.The wars were concluded in the Second Spice War, when the Valyrian colony Volantis turned its eyes to the ancient and high civilization of the Rhoynar. Prince Garin of Chroyane led an army of a 250,000 men and defeated the Valyrian armies at Selhorys, Valysar, and Volon Therys, where they won their greatest victory by defeating an army of a hundred thousand men and killing two dragons.
However, the Valyrians responded with an overwhelming force of three hundred dragons, capturing Garin the Great and making him watch from a gilded cage as they began burning the Rhoynish armies. Princess Nymeria of Ny Sar led the exodus of the remaining Rhoynar out of Essos away from the Valyrians wrathful flames, eventually arriving in Dorne. They say her ten thousand ships were filled with women and children, suggesting most of the men of fighting age had died in the conflict with the Freehold.
At the height of its power, the Freehold stretched over most of Essos west of the Bone Mountains. Many of the numerous cities were connected by dragon roads. Other cities and towns founded or conquered by the Freehold were governed by archons from Valyria. Some two centuries before the Doom, the Valyrian Freehold colonized the island of Dragonstone in the narrow sea and established a citadel there, with ineffective resistance from the local lords of Blackwater Bay. The island was the westernmost outpost of the Freehold.
Most of Essos west of the Bone Mountains. From the northern coast of the Shivering Sea to the islands of the Summer Sea, and even off the coast of Westeros across the Narrow Sea. All that trade and commerce funneling back into the Valyrian peninsula has created, like in ancient Roman, a monstrous tyranny of fire and blood. Yet unlike Rome, Valyria is on the precipice of imploding upon itself literally, whereas Rome figuratively imploded at the hands of its own tyrants.
In summary capital city was horrendously beautiful. Especially during the night where the flowing rivers of magma, running through the city like veins of blood, light up the black dragonstone towers and bridges in a fiery orange and red glow. Something that I've come to odly enjoy during these past few weeks in the capital of the Freehold.
Unlike most of the Valyrian people, the Targaryen estate has been a far more receptive to the 'prince of a savage nation' and his half-breed Valyrian mutt. Lord Aenar Targaryen was a gracious host while he endures the mocking of the other drangonlords. Yet at times, in what he assumed were his own private thoughts, he resented his aunt, my mother, for marring someone outside of Valyria. Wasting a chance to marry into a dragonlord family on the rise in the courts and close to the seat of Achron of the Freehold.
Not that it bothered my father and I, who were also here in Valyria to pick up the Valyrian steel greatsword Ice, that was commissioned to replace House Starks ancestral ordinary steel greatsword of the same name. Well, my father was on behalf of the King of Winter.
I was here for so much more.
So much will be lost in the Doom of Valyria, not just the empire itself but its accumulated knowledge and wonders. The dragonstone towers and how they are created along with the Valyrian roads. The magic of the Valyrian steel and the process of creating it. The blood and fire magic hoarded by powerful dragonlord mage families. The breeding and handling of dragons and the magic horns used to bind them. And the most intriguing, at least to me is the magic of the glass candles of Valyria, orcerers of the Valyrian Freehold used glass candles to see across mountains, seas, and deserts; give men visions and dreams; and communicate with one another half a world apart.
I'm here to make sure that all that knowledge and resources are not wasted in the Doom, that it all ends up in my hands to shape my future Empire of the New Dawn.
~