The priests of the Blind God among the mazes of Lorath. (illustration credit 161)
Soon each island had its own king, whilst the largest boasted four. Ever a quarrelsome people, the Andals spent the next thousand years warring one upon the other, but at last a warrior styling himself Qarlon the Great brought all the islands under his sway. The histories, such as they are, claim he raised a great wooden keep at the center of Lorassyon’s vast, haunted maze and decorated his halls with the heads of his slain foes.
It was Qarlon’s dream to make himself King of All Andals, and to that end he went forth time and time again against the petty kings of Andalos. After twenty years and as many wars, the writ of Qarlon the Great extended from the lagoon where Braavos would one day rise all the way east to the Axe, and as far south as the headwaters of the Upper Rhoyne and Noyne.
But his southward expansion brought him into conflict not only with other Andal kings but also the Free City of Norvos on the Noyne. When the Norvoshi closed the river against him, he left his hall in the maze to lead the attack against them, defeating them in two pitched battles in the hills. Unwisely, he took these victories too much to heart and marched against Norvos itself. The Norvoshi sent to Valyria for help, and the Freehold rose to the defense of its distant daughter, though all the lands of the Andals and the Rhoynar lay between them.
Distances meant little and less to the dragonlords in the summer of their power, however. It is written in The Fires of the Freehold that a hundred dragons took to the skies, following the great river north to descend upon the Andals as they lay siege to Norvos. Qarlon the Great burned with his army, and afterward the dragonlords flew onward, bringing blood and fire to the isles of Lorath. Qarlon’s great keep went up in flames, as did the towns and fishing villages along his shores. Even the great stones of the mazes were scorched and blackened by the firestorms that swept across the islands. It is said that not a man, woman, or child survived the Scouring of Lorath, so hot did those fires burn.
Thereafter the Lorathi isles remained uninhabited for more than a century. Seals and walrus returned in great numbers, and crabs scuttled through the scorched and silent mazes. Whalers from the Port of Ibben put ashore to mend their hulls or find freshwater, but they never ventured inland, for the islands were said to be haunted, and the Ibbenese believed any man accursed who went beyond the sound of the sea.
When men at last returned to the isles to live, they were men from Valyria itself. Thirteen hundred and twenty-two years before the Doom, a sect of religious dissidents left the Freehold to establish a temple upon Lorath’s main isle.
These new Lorathi were worshippers of Boash, the Blind God. Rejecting all other deities, the followers of Boash ate no flesh, drank no wine, and walked barefoot through the world, clad only in hair shirts and hides. Their eunuch priests wore eyeless hoods in honor of their god; only in darkness, they believed, would their third eye open, allowing them to see the “higher truths” of creation that lay concealed behind the world’s illusions. The worshippers of Boash believed that all life was sacred and eternal; that men and women were equal; that lords and peasants, rich and poor, slave and master, man and beast were all alike, all equally worthy, all creatures of god.
An essential part of their doctrine was an extreme abnegation of self; only by freeing themselves of human vanity could men hope to become one with the godhood. Accordingly, the Boash’i put aside even their own names, and spoke of themselves as “a man” or “a woman” rather than say “I” or “me” or “mine.” Though the cult of the Blind God withered and died out more than a thousand years ago, certain of these habits of speech endure even now in Lorath, where men and women of the noble classes regard it as inutterably vulgar to speak of one’s self directly.
The Blind God and his followers made the ancient mazes of the first Lorathi their towns, temples, and tombs, and dominated the islands for three-quarters of a century. But as the years passed, other men, who did not share their faith, began to cross the bay to hunt seal and walrus or fish for cod. Some chose to stay. Huts and hovels sprang up anew along the shores and became villages. Men came from Ib and Andalos and other, stranger lands, and the islands became a refuge for freedmen and escaped slaves from Valyria and its proud daughters, for the priests of the Blind God taught that every man was the equal of every other. Three fishing villages on the western end of the largest isle waxed so populous and prosperous that they grew together into a town, and with the passage of years stone houses grew where daub-and-wattle hovels once stood, and the town became a city.
These new Lorathi were at first subservient to the followers of Boash who had come before them, and for many years the priests of the Blind God continued to rule the islands. In time, however, the numbers of newcomers swelled whilst the ranks of the faithful dwindled. The worship of Boash fell away, as the priests who remained became more worldly and corrupt, forsaking their hair shirts, hoods, and piety and growing fat and rich off the taxes they extracted from those they ruled. Finally the fishermen, farmers, and other smallfolk rose in rebellion, throwing off the shackles of Boash. The remaining acolytes of the Blind God were slaughtered—all save a small handful who fled to the great temple maze on Lorassyon, where they remained for the best part of a century, until the last of them died.
After the fall of the blind priests, Lorath became a freehold after the manner of Valyria, ruled over by a council of three princes. The Harvest Prince was chosen by a vote of all those who owned land upon the islands, the Fisher Prince by all those who owned ships, the Prince of the Streets by the acclamation of the free men of the city. Once chosen, each prince served for life.
These three princes continue to sit today, though the titles have become purely ceremonial. The true authority resides with a council of magisters made up of nobles, priests, and merchants. Its isolation meant that the Lorathi were little involved in the events of the Century of Blood, save for those few who sold their swords to Braavos or Norvos.
Today Lorath is generally accounted the least of the Nine Free Cities; the poorest, the most isolated, the most backward. Though possessed of large fleets of fishing vessels, the Lorathi build few warships and have little in the way of military power. Few Lorathi ever leave their islands, and fewer still ever make their way to Westeros. They prefer to trade with their nearer neighbors, Norvos, Braavos, and Ib.
NORVOS
The Free City of Norvos stands upon the eastern banks of the river Noyne, one of the greatest of the vassal streams of the Rhoyne. The high city, ringed about by mighty stone walls, looms above high, stony bluffs. Three hundred feet below, the lower city spreads along the muddy shores, defended by moats, ditches, and a timber palisade much overgrown with moss. The ancient nobility of Norvos lives in the upper city, dominated by the great fortress-temple of the bearded priests; the poor huddle below amongst the wharves, brothels, and beer halls that line the riverfront. The two parts of the city are joined only by a massive stone stair, called the Sinner’s Steps.
Great Norvos, as the Norvoshi name their city, is surrounded by rugged limestone hills and dense, dark forests of oak and pine and beech, home to bears and boars and wolves, and game of all sorts. The city’s domains stretch as far as the western bank of the Darkwash to the east and the Upper Rhoyne to the west. Norvoshi river galleys rule the Noyne as far south as the ruins of Ny Sar, where she joins the Rhoyne. Great Norvos even claims dominion over the Axe upon the Shivering Sea, though this claim is disputed, often bloodily, by the Ibbenese.
Close by the city walls, the Norvoshi work the land on the terraced farms. Farther out, men gather behind stout timber palisades in holdfasts and walled villages. The streams here are swift-running and stony, and caverns honeycomb the endless hills. Many of the caves are home to the brown bears common to these northern lands, others to packs of red or grey wolves. In some can be found the bones of giants and painted walls that speak of men’s dwelling here in ages past. One cavern system, some hundred leagues northwest of Norvos, is so vast and deep that legend claims it is the entrance to the underworld; Lomas Longstrider visited it once and counted it as one of the world’s seven natural wonders in his book Wonders.
Some scholars have suggested that the dragonlords regarded all faiths as equally false, believing themselves to be more powerful than any god or goddess. They looked upon priests and temples as relics of a more primitive time, though useful for placating “slaves, savages, and the poor” with promises of a better life to come. Moreover, a multiplicity of gods helped to keep their subjects divided and lessened the chances of their uniting under the banner of a single faith to overthrow their overlords. Religious tolerance was to them a means of keeping the peace in the Lands of the Long Summer.
Though Great Norvos dominates the headwaters of the Rhoyne today, the Norvoshi are not descended from the Rhoynar who ruled that mighty river of old. Like the other Free Cities, Norvos is a daughter of Valyria. Yet before the Valyrians another people dwelt along the Noyne where Norvos stands today, raising rude villages of their own.
Who were these predecessors? Some believe them to have been kin to the mazemakers of Lorath, but that seems unlikely, for they built in wood, not stone, and left no mazes to confound us. Others suggest that they were cousins of the men of Ib. Most, however, believe them to have been Andals.
Whoever these first Norvoshi might have been, their towns did not survive. Legend tells us they were driven from the Noyne by an onslaught of hairy men out of the east, surely some close kin of the Ibbenese. These invaders in turn were expelled by the fabled prince of Ny Sar, Garris the Grey, but the Rhoynar did not linger, preferring the more temperate climes of the lower river to the dark skies and cold winds of the hills.
Like her sister cities Lorath and Qohor, the Free City of Norvos as we know her today was originally founded by religious dissidents from Valyria. At the height of her power, the Freehold was home to a hundred temples; some had tens of thousands of worshippers, some precious few, but no faith was forbidden in Valyria, nor were any exalted above the others.
Many Valyrians worshipped more than one god, turning to different deities according to their needs; more, it is said, worshipped none at all. Most regarded freedom of faith as a hallmark of any truly advanced civilization. Yet to some, this plethora of gods was a source of continuing grievance. “The man who honors all the gods honors none at all,” a prophet of the Lord of Light, R’hllor the Red, once famously declared. And even at the height of its glory, the Freehold was home to many who believed fiercely in their own particular god or goddess and regarded all others as false idols, frauds, or demons, bent on deceiving mankind.
Dozens of such sects flourished in Valyria, sometimes quarreling violently with one another. Inevitably, some found the tolerance of the Freehold to be intolerable and set out into the wilderness to found cities of their own, godly cities where only the “true faith” would be practiced. We have already spoken of the followers of the Blind God Boash who founded Lorath and what befell them there. Qohor was settled by worshippers of that grim deity known only as the Black Goat, as shall be related shortly. But the sect that settled Norvos is as strange, or stranger, than either of these, and far more secretive. Even the very name of their god is revealed only to initiates. That he is a stern deity cannot be doubted, for his priests wear hair shirts and untanned hides and practice ritual flagellation as part of their worship. Once initiated, they are forbidden to shave or cut their hair.
From the founding to the present, Great Norvos has been a theocracy, ruled by its bearded priests, who are themselves ruled by their god, who speaks his commands to them from the depths of their fortress-temple, which only true believers may enter and live. Though the city has a council of magisters, its members are selected by the god, speaking through his priests. To enforce obedience and keep the peace, the bearded priests keep a holy guard of slave soldiers, fierce fighters who bear the brand of a double-bladed axe upon their breasts and ritually marry the longaxes they fight with.
Only Norvoshi priests are permitted beards; freeborn Norvoshi of both high and low birth favor long, unswept mustachios, whilst slaves and women are shaved bare. Norvoshi women, indeed, shave off all their body hair, though the ladies of the nobility will don wigs, especially when thrust into the company of men from other lands and cities.
Travelers paint upper Norvos as a grim grey place of sweltering summers, bitter cold winters, harsh winds, and unending prayer. The lower city, with its riverman’s haunts, brothels, and taverns, is said to be much livelier. There, out of the sight of priests and nobles alike, lowborn Norvoshi feast on red meat and river pike, washed down with strong black beer and fermented goat’s milk, whilst bears dance for their amusement and (it is whispered) slave women mate with wolves in torchlit cellars.
Archmaester Perestan notes the importance the Norvoshi give to the axe as a symbol of power and might and proposes that this is proof that the Andals were the first to settle Norvos, suggesting the bearded priests took the emblem from ruins they found as they established Great Norvos. As he argues, next to the carvings of seven-pointed stars, carvings of a double-bladed axe appeared to have been the next most favored symbol of the holy warriors who conquered the old Seven Kingdoms.
Etched in Stone by Archmaester Harmune contains a catalog of such carvings found throughout the Vale. Stars and axes are found from the Fingers into the Mountains of the Moon, and even as far into the Vale of Arryn as the base of the Giant’s Lance. Harmune supposes that, with time, the Andals became more devoted to the symbol of the seven-pointed star and so the axe fell by the wayside as an emblem of the Faith.
It should be said, however, that not all agree that these carvings represent axes. In his refutation, Maester Evlyn argues that what Harmune calls axes are in fact hammers, the sign of the Smith. He explains the irregularity of the depictions of these hammers as the result of the Andals’ being warriors, not artisans.
A procession honoring the sacred god of Norvos. (illustration credit 162)
No account of Great Norvos is complete without a mention of the city’s three bells, whose peals govern every aspect of city life, telling the Norvoshi when to rise, when to sleep, when to work, when to rest, when to take arms, when to pray (often), and even when they are permitted to have carnal relations (rather less often, if the tales be true). Each of the bells has its own distinctive “voice,” whose sound is known to all true Norvoshi. The bells bear the names Noom, Narrah, and Nyel; Lomas Longstride was so taken by them that he named them one of his nine Wonders Made by Man.
QOHOR
Even more mysterious than Norvos and Lorath is their sinister sister, the Free City of Qohor, easternmost of all the daughters of Valyria. Qohor stands on the river Qhoyne on the western edge of the vast, dark, primordial forest to which she gives her name, the greatest wood in all of Essos.
In folklore, even as far as Westeros, Qohor is sometimes known as the City of Sorcerers, for it is widely believed that the dark arts are practiced here even to this day. Divination, bloodmagic, and necromancy are whispered of, though such reports can seldom be proved. One truth remains undisputed, however: The dark god of Qohor, the deity known as the Black Goat, demands daily blood sacrifice. Calves, bullocks, and horses are the animals most often brought before the Black Goat’s altars, but on holy days condemned criminals go beneath the knives of his cowled priests, and in times of danger and crisis it is written that the high nobles of the city offer up their own children to placate the god, that he might defend the city.
A preserved example of a lemur from the Forest of Qohor can be found stuffed and mounted in the Citadel, though so many hands have patted it for luck in their examinations that its fur has long since fallen out.
The woods that surround Qohor are the principal source of the city’s wealth. The earliest settlement here was a lumber camp, the city’s histories reveal. Even to this day, it is as hunters and foresters the Qohorik are most famed. The shining cities and sprawling towns of the lower Rhoyne hunger for wood, and their own forests have long ago been depleted, cut down and plowed under for fields and farms. Huge barges heavy with timber depart the docks of Qohor every day for the long voyage down the Qhoyne to Dagger Lake and the markets of Selhorys, Valysar, Volon Therys, and Old Volantis.
The Forest of Qohor also yields up furs and pelts of all kinds, many rare and fine and highly prized, as well as silver, tin, and amber. The vast forest has never been fully explored, according to the maps and scrolls at the Citadel, and it likely conceals many mysteries and wonders at its heart. Like many northerly forests, it contains elk and deer in great numbers, along with wolves, tree cats, boars of truly monstrous size, spotted bears, and even a species of lemur—a creature known from the Summer Isles and Sothoryos, but otherwise rarely seen farther north. These lemurs are said to have silver-white fur and purple eyes, and are sometimes called Little Valyrians.
The artisans of Qohor are far famed. Qohorik tapestries, woven primarily by the women and children of the city, are just as fine as those woven in Myr, though less costly. Exquisite (if somewhat disturbing) wood carvings can be bought in Qohor’s market, and the city’s forges have no peer. Qohorik swords, knives, and armor are superior to even the best castle-forged steel of Westeros, and the city’s smiths have perfected the art of infusing deep color into the metals of their work, producing armor and weaponry of lasting beauty. Only here, in all the world, has the art of reworking Valyrian steel been preserved, its secrets jealously guarded.
Qohor is also famed as the gateway to the east, where trading caravans bound for Vaes Dothrak and the fabled lands beyond the Bones are outfitted and provisioned before heading into the gloom of the forest, the desolation that was Sarnor, and the vastness of the Dothraki sea. Conversely, caravans returning from the east come first to Qohor, to refresh themselves after the crossing and sell and trade the treasures they have acquired. This trade has helped to make Qohor one of the richest of the Free Cities and surely the most exotic (though it is said the city was ten times richer still before the destruction of Sarnor).
Maester Pol’s treatise on Qohorik metalworking, written during several years of residence in the Free City, reveals just how jealously the secrets are guarded: He was thrice publicly whipped and cast out from the city for making too many inquiries. The final time, his hand was also removed following the allegation that he stole a Valyrian steel blade. According to Pol, the true reason for his final exile was his discovery of blood sacrifices—including the killing of slaves as young as infants—which the Qohorik smiths used in their efforts to produce a steel to equal that of the Freehold.
Strong stone walls protect Qohor, but the people of the city are not of a martial bent. The Qohorik are merchants, not fighters. Apart from a small city watch, the defense of the city is entrusted to slaves—the eunuch infantry known as the Unsullied, bred and trained in the ancient Ghiscari city Astapor upon the shores of Slaver’s Bay.
During the Century of Blood that followed the Doom of Valyria, Qohor and Norvos made common cause against Old Volantis when the Volantenes attempted to bring all the Free Cities under their heel. Since that time, those two Free Cities have been more often allies than enemies, though it is known that the bearded priests of Norvos regard the Black Goat of Qohor as a demon, with an especially vile and treacherous nature.
A sacrificial altar dedicated to the Black Goat. (illustration credit 163)
Four hundred years ago, when a Dothraki khal named Temmo rode out of the east with fifty thousand savage horsemen at his back, three thousand Unsullied turned him back at the gates of Qohor, withstanding no fewer than eighteen charges before Khal Temmo died and his successor bid his men cut off their braids and toss them at the feet of the surviving eunuchs. From that time to this, the Qohorik have relied upon the Unsullied to protect their city (though they have been known to hire free companies as well in time of peril and to offer lavish gifts to Dothraki khals to persuade them to pass on).
THE QUARRELSOME DAUGHTERS: MYR, LYS, AND TYROSH
The easternmost of the Free Cities—Lorath, Norvos, and Qohor—have little commerce with Westeros. For the rest, it is a different matter. Braavos, Pentos, and Volantis are all coastal cities blessed with great harbors. Trade is their life’s blood, and their ships travel to the far ends of the earth, from Yi Ti and Leng and Asshai-by-the-Shadow in the far east, to Lannisport and Oldtown on Westeros. Each city has its own customs and histories. Each has its own gods, too—although the red priesthood of R’hllor holds sway in all of them and often wields considerable power. Over the centuries, their rivalries have been many, and the squabbles and wars between them could—and do—fill volumes.
All this is also true of Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh, those three quarrelsome daughters whose endless feuds and struggles for dominion have so often managed to embroil the kings and knights of Westeros. These three cities surround the large, fertile “heel” of Essos, the promontory that divides the Summer Sea from the narrow sea and was once part of the land bridge that joined that continent to Westeros. The fortress city of Tyrosh stands upon the northernmost and easternmost of the Stepstones, the chain of islands that remained when the Arm of Dorne fell into the sea. Myr rises on the mainland, where an ancient Valyrian dragonroad meets the tranquil waters of a vast gulf known as the Sea of Myrth. Lys is to the south, on a small archipelago of islands in the Summer Sea. All three cities have claimed part (or all) of the lands between them, which we know today as the Disputed Lands, for all attempts to fix borders between the domains of Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys have failed, and countless wars have been fought for their possession.
In history, culture, custom, language, and religion, these three cities have more in common with one another than with any of the other Free Cities. They are mercantile cities, protected by high walls and hired sellswords, dominated by wealth rather than birth, cities where trade is considered a more honorable profession than arms. Lys and Myr are ruled by conclaves of magisters, chosen from amongst the wealthiest and noblest men of the city; Tyrosh is governed by an archon, selected from amongst the members of a similar conclave. All three are slave cities, where bondsmen outnumber the freeborn three to one. All are ports, and the salt sea is their life’s blood. Like Valyria, their mother, these three daughters have no established faith. Temples and shrines to many different gods line their streets and crowd their waterfronts.
A Myrish tradeswoman. (illustration credit 164)
Yet the rivalries between them are long-rooted, giving rise to deep-seated enmities that have kept them divided, and oft at war with one another, for centuries—to the undoubted benefit of the lords and kings of Westeros, for these three rich and powerful cities, if united, would make for a formidable and dangerous neighbor.
Lys, the most beautiful of the Free Cities, enjoys what is perhaps the most salubrious climate in all the known world. Bathed by cool breezes, warmed by the sun, on a fertile island where palms and fruit trees grow in profusion, surrounded by blue-green waters teeming with fish, “Lys the Lovely” was founded as a retreat by the dragonlords of old Valyria, a paradise where they might refresh themselves with fine wines and sweet maids and soothing musics before returning to the fires of the Freehold. To this day, Lys remains “a feast for the senses, a balm for the soul.” Its pillow houses are famed through all the world, and sunsets here are said to be more beautiful than anywhere else on earth. The Lyseni themselves are beautiful as well, for here more than anywhere else in the known world the old Valyrian bloodlines still run strong.
The truth of the combined strength of Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh was proved when these three cities did in fact unite, albeit briefly, in the aftermath of their victory over Volantis at the Battle of the Borderland. Pledging eternal friendship with one another, they came together in 96 AC as the Triarchy, though in Westeros their union was best known as the Kingdom of the Three Daughters. The Triarchy began with the stated aim of cleansing the Stepstones of pirates and corsairs. This was welcomed in the Seven Kingdoms and elsewhere at first, for the pirates greatly stifled trade. The Three Daughters won a swift victory over the pirates, only to begin to demand increasingly exorbitant tolls of passing swifts after gaining control of the islands and the channels between. Soon their rapaciousness surpassed that of the pirates they replaced—especially when the Lyseni started demanding handsome youths and beautiful maidens as their toll.
For a time, the Triarchy found itself overmatched by the power of Corlys Velaryon and Daemon Targaryen and lost much of the Stepstones, but the men of Westeros were soon distracted by their own quarrels, and the Three Daughters reasserted their power—only to be brought down by internal conflicts following the murder of a Lyseni admiral by a rival for the affections of the famous courtesan called the Black Swan (the niece of Lord Swann, she in time came to rule Lys in all but name). The rival alliance of Braavos, Pentos, and Lorath helped bring about the end of the Kingdom of the Three Daughters.
Tyrosh, an altogether harder city, began as a military outpost, as its inner walls of fused black dragonstone testify. Valryian records tell us the fort was raised initially to control shipping passing through the Stepstones. Not long after the city’s founding, however, a unique variety of sea snail was discovered in the waters off the bleak, stony island where the fortress stood. These snails secreted a substance that, when properly treated, yielded a deep dark reddish dye that soon became wildly fashionable amongst the nobility of Valyria. As the snails were found nowhere else, merchants came to Tyrosh by the thousands, and the outpost grew into a major city in the space of a generation. Tyroshi dyers soon learned to produce scarlet, crimson, and deep indigo dyes as well by varying the diet of the snails. Later centuries saw them devise dyes of a hundred other shades and hues, some naturally and some through alchemy. Brightly colored garments won the favor of lords and princes the world over, and the dyes that produced them all came from Tyrosh. The city grew rich, and with wealth came ostentation. Tyroshi delight in flamboyant display, and men and women both delight in dyeing their hair in garish and unnatural colors.
A council of the Triarchy. (illustration credit 165)
The origins of Myr are murkier. The Myrmen are believed by certain maesters to be akin to the Rhoynar, as many of them share the same olive skin and dark hair as the river people, but this supposed link is likely spurious. There are certain signs that a city stood where Myr now stands even during the Dawn Age and the Long Night, raised by some ancient, vanished people, but the Myr we know was founded by a group of Valyrian merchant adventurers on the site of a walled Andal town whose inhabitants they butchered or enslaved. Trade has been the life of Myr ever since, and Myrish ships have plied the waters of the narrow sea for centuries. The artisans of Myr, many of slave birth, are also greatly renowned; Myrish lace and Myrish tapestries are said to be worth their weight in gold and spice, and Myrish lenses have no equal in all the world.
Whereas Lorath, Norvos, and Qohor were founded for religious reasons, the interests of Lys, Tyrosh, and Myr have always been mercantile. All three cities have large merchant fleets, and their traders sail all the world’s seas. All three cities are deeply involved in the slave trade as well. Tyroshi slavers are especially aggressive, even going so far as to sail north beyond the Wall in search of wildling slaves, whilst the Lyseni are famously voracious in seeking out comely young boys and fair maids for their city’s famous pillow houses.
The wife of King Viserys II Targaryen, who gave birth to both King Aegon IV (the Unworthy) and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, was the Lady Larra Rogare of Lys. She was a great beauty of Valyrian descent, and seven years the prince’s elder when she wed him at nine-and-ten. Her father, Lysandro Rogare, was the head of a wealthy banking family whose power waxed even greater following the alliance to the Targaryens. Lysandro assumed the style of First Magister for Life, and men spoke of him as Lysandro the Magnificent. But he and his brother Drazenko, the Prince Consort of Dorne, died within a day of one another, beginning the precipitous fall of the Rogares both in Lys and the Seven Kingdoms.
Lysandro’s heir, Lysaro, spent vast sums in pursuit of power and fell afoul of the other magisters, even as his siblings became embroiled in plots to control the Iron Throne. After his fall, Lysaro Rogare was scourged to death at the Temple of Trade by those he had wronged. His siblings received less fatal punishments, and one among them—Moredo Rogare, the soldier who carried the Valyrian sword Truth—eventually led an army against Lys.