The Valyrian Freehold was a great territory that spanned much of the continent of Essos,
but has fallen to ruin, brought down by a cataclysmic event known as the Doom of Valyria.
Culture that had been prospering for five thousand years was lost in one day.
Spells, knowledge, and recorded history were lost in the Doom, and the Century of Blood,
a period of chaos in Essos, followed the disaster.
The Valyrians of old are believed to have travelled as far as Oldtown, predating the
arrival of the First Men and trading with the elder races.
Some also claimed that Valyrians came to Westeros because their priests prophesied that the
Doom of Man would come out of the land beyond the narrow sea.
There are also speculations on some tragedy felling upon them that led them to shun Westeros
ever after.
Valyria was once a minor civilization of peaceful sheep-herding folk dwelling on the Valyrian
peninsula, until the Valyrians discovered dragons lairing in the Fourteen Flames, a
ring of volcanoes on the peninsula.
The Valyrians tamed the dragons with magic and mastered the technique of raising and
training the dragons into devastating weapons of war.
Dragons were controlled by whips, magic horns, and sorcery.
They began expanding their influence, establishing the Freehold with Valyria as its capital.
Magic flowered, topless towers rose toward the heavens where dragons soared and smiths
used spells to forge Valyrian steel weapons of legendary strength and sharpness.
The sorcerers of the Freehold could see across mountains, seas, and deserts with one of glass
candles.
They could enter a man's dreams and give him visions, and speak to one another half a world
apart, seated before their candles.
The Valyrians had no kings, but instead called themselves Freehold, because all the citizenry
who held land had the voice.
Archons might be chosen to help lead, but they were elected by the lords
freeholder from amongst their number, and only for a limited time.
The Valyrian nobility valued purity of blood.
Therefore, the practice of incest was common in old Valyria, as the Valyrians would customarily
wed brother to sister.
These practices were not limited to the Freehold; on Dragonstone the Targaryens continued to
practice incestuous marriage and polygamy to keep the dragon bloodline pure.
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, comparable to modern days 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, turning 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.
Valyria sent slaves of a hundred different nations to the mines beneath the Fourteen
Flames, searching for gold, silver, and other ores.
The worst slaves were sent down to die in the red darkness of the mines.
The mines of old Valyria were always hot and they grew hotter as shafts were driven deeper
into the earth.
The slaves toiled in an oven, the rocks around them too hot to touch.
The air stank of sulphur and seared the slaves' lungs as they breathed.
Sometimes when they broke through a wall in search of gold, they would find steam, boiling
water, or molten rock.
Certain shafts were cut so low that slaves had to crawl or bend.
Sometimes firewyrms, creatures that breathe fire but have no wings were encountered in
that red darkness, in the shafts of the mines by the slaves, leaving only burnt and blackened
corpses, yet still the mines drove deeper.
Slaves perished by the score, but their masters did not care.
According to some scholars, the dragonlords regarded all faiths as equally false, and
looked down on clergy and temples as relics of more primitive times but useful to placate
the lower classes with promises of a better life to come after death.
Thus, they promoted religious tolerance in order to keep their subjects divided, and
prevent them from unifying under the banner of a single god.
Valyrians themselves had a number of different gods, including Balerion, Meraxes, Vhagar,
and Syrax.
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 of fighting Rhoynar, 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 began almost a thousand years before Aegon's Conquest, when three
dragonlords from the Valyrian Freehold joined Volantis in destroying the Rhoynish port Sarhoy
on the Summer Sea.
The Rhoynar responded by uniting under by Prince Garin of Chroyane, the wonder of the
Rhoyne who temporarily made Valyria tremble.
Garin led a Rhoynish army of 250,000, which conquered Selhorys, Valysar, and Volon Therys,
where they defeated three dragons with Rhoynish water wizards.
The alarmed Volantenes sought help from Valyria itself, and the dragonlords responded by sending
300 dragons.
The Valyrians crushed Garin's army with their dragons, then destroyed Sar Mell and Chroyane.
According to legend, the men of Volantis and Valyria hung Garin in a golden cage and mocked
him as he called upon Mother Rhoyne to destroy them.
That very night, the waters rose and drowned the invaders of Chroyane.
From that day, the spirits of the fallen conquerors have said to have remained beneath the waters.
According to Tyrion Lannister Garin's Curse is only greyscale.
Many a voyager in the Sorrows has been lost, poleboats, pirates and great river galleys
too.
They wander forlorn in the mists searching for a sun they cannot find until madness or
hunger claim their lives.
Princess Nymeria of Ny Sar led the exodus of the remaining Rhoynar out of Essos, eventually
arriving in Dorne.
The singers 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.
The Valyrians had great skill in shaping stone.
It is often said that the old wizards of Valyria did not cut and chisel stone, but worked it
with fire and magic as a potter might work clay, although much of their knowledge is
now lost.
Valyrians had a powerful magic which could liquefy stone and shape it how they wanted.
Valyrian roads, known as dragon roads, still exist as monuments to their work as do the
castle of Dragonstone, and the Black Wall and Long Bridge of Volantis.
The Free Cities, the self-ruling daughters of Valyria, are spread throughout western
Essos.
Volantis and Tyrosh began as military outposts, while Myr and Pentos were founded by merchants
in Andal territory.
Dragonlords established Lys as a pleasure retreat.
Religious refugees founded Lorath, Norvos, and Qohor.
Essaria was founded as a colony near the Kingdom of Sarnor.
Braavos was founded by slaves who rebelled against a Valyrian slaving fleet, and this
Secret City did not accept the rule of Valyria.
The Valyrian peninsula contained cities Oros and Tyria.
Near Volantis were built Selhorys, Volon Therys, and Valysar.
South of the Painted Mountains were Bhorash, Mantarys, and Tolos, while located in Slaver's
Bay were Velos on the Isle of Cedars and Elyria.
The greatest remnants of the Old Empire of Ghis were Astapor, Meereen, and Yunkai.
South of the Summer Sea, the Freehold controlled Gogossos on the Isle of Tears and also had
three failed colonies at Basilisk Point in Sothoryos.
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.
Twelve years prior the Doom, Daenys Targaryen, the maiden daughter of Aenar Targaryen, had
a vision of the destruction of Valyria.
House Targaryen abandoned their homeland for Dragonstone, an act seen by other dragonlords
as cowardice.
Nearby Driftmark had already been settled by House Velaryon, a lesser Valyrian family,
and Claw Isle became ruled by the Valyrian Celtigars.
The Doom of Valyria was a cataclysmic event, after which the city Valyria was utterly destroyed
and the Valyrian Freehold crumbled and was no more.
The Doom fragmented the land surrounding the city itself into numerous smaller islands,
creating the Smoking Sea between them.
The area is now described as "demon-haunted", and most people are afraid to go there, as
all known expeditions to the shattered peninsula has ended up in failure.
At its height, the Freehold's capital, Valyria, was the greatest city in the known world,
the center of civilization.
Most of Valyria's culture, language, and craft was lost in the Doom.
Valyrian descendants scattered across the world, many across the surviving Valyrian
colonies, the Free Cities, and across the cities of Slaver's Bay.
Many of the surviving Valyrians intermarried and became mixed with other people.
Their descendants speak in various local dialects of Valyrian.
Valyrian Freehold may be gone, but its descendants continue to reshape the realm.
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