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Mar. 23rd, 2013 10:37 pmooc preferences
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spellcoats
threadjacking: I prefer to be notified, but that aside I'm okay with it.
fourth walling: Please no.
backtagging: saves my soul
ic preferences
fighting/maiming: Fighting, yes. Maiming, ask first.
death: So long as it's planned out first.
kissing/touching/hugging: Well, Dany certainly won't like it. And you don't want to wake her dragon. (I don't much mind.)
relationships: Presently in one (kind of), but open to development.
shipping preferences
tba
Dany comes from an extremely trigger-heavy canon.
Please let me know if there are any topics you would like me to avoid.
contact method:
threadjacking: I prefer to be notified, but that aside I'm okay with it.
fourth walling: Please no.
backtagging: saves my soul
ic preferences
fighting/maiming: Fighting, yes. Maiming, ask first.
death: So long as it's planned out first.
kissing/touching/hugging: Well, Dany certainly won't like it. And you don't want to wake her dragon. (I don't much mind.)
relationships: Presently in one (kind of), but open to development.
shipping preferences
tba
Please let me know if there are any topics you would like me to avoid.
tu shanshu }{ app
Mar. 9th, 2013 11:34 pmPlayer Information:
Name: Hiccup
Age: 24
Contact:spellcoats
Game Cast: n/a
Character Information:
Name: Daenerys Targaryen (Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Shackles, Breaker of Chains, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea) (Dany) (it's your fault for asking for most common aliases)
Canon: A Song of Death and Tears by Evil Santa
Canon Point: Her final chapter of Dragons Behaving Badly, when Khal Jhaqo rides out of the grass to find her soiled, blood-stained, and standing beside her dragon.
Age: 16
Reference: If I look back I am lost.
Setting: Remember all those childhood dreams you had about living in a fantasy world, riding into battle as a knight or being the fair maiden in the tower waiting to be rescued?
Boy were you ever suckered.
The doorstopper epic A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin takes place in a world steeped in medieval fantasy tropes, but mixed with the gritty, inhumane brutality of the very real world. The plot is massive, the setting epic, and the resultant mass of information covering past to present so vast it can easily seem convoluted. We will call this Westeros 101. A map will be helpful. For coherency's sake this explanation will be divided into sections.
Principles of the world
The world of ASOIAF (referred to only as "the known world") is composed of three primary continents: Westeros, Essos, and Sothoros/Sothoryos (there is also Ulthos, but we know nothing about it). Westeros and Essos were once connected by a land bridge, which legend tells was shattered by the children of the forest over 12000 years ago, creating a chain of islands called the Stepstones.
Magic was once thrived the world over, though it has largely since faded into song and myth, and what arts are still practiced are as uncommon as they are dangerous. Many numerous species of mythical beasts have died out in the process, but many still inhabit the world: aurochs, giants, great wooly mammoths, dragons, basilisks, centaurs, direwolves, unicorns, wyverns, krakens, firewyrms, and the sentient white walkers and the children of the forest all once roamed the lands of ice and fire, and many still do.
A year once followed the usual turn of four seasons until some great magical cataclysm threw the cycle of nature off course. Now summers and winters last years, their length marked in accordance with old records of the proper length of a year. Word of god remains quiet on the exact nature of the cataclysm as of present. Most winters and summers last only a few years, but a long ten-year summer ends at the start of book two, which many believe heralds a longer and more brutal winter than has been seen for centuries.
On Essos and its peoples
The happenings of Westeros would not be the same were it not for the history of Essos, so it is to Essos we must look first. A sprawling, massive continent to the east, Essos is home to innumerable cultures and societies great and small, which have been feuding for millennia.
To the far east lies the city of Asshai, built in the Shadow Lands, a place spoken of in hushed, fearful whispers. In the present age Asshai is said to be the last refuge of magic in the world, home to shadowbinders, bloodmages, warlocks, and practitioners of the dark arts. Separating Asshai overland from much of the rest of Essos are Yi Ti, Jogos Nhai, and the Red Waste, a desert as vast as it is cruel. Perched at the south of the Red Waste, at the mouth of the Jade Sea, is the wealthy city-state of Qarth, ruled over by a competing triumvirate of powers including the Pureborn nobility, the merchant guilds, and the warlocks.
Northwest of the Red Waste is the Dothraki Sea, a vast grasslands that takes up roughly two-thirds of the continent. Inhabited by the Dothraki, a fierce warlike people divided into numerous feuding tribes called khalasars, the Dothraki Sea is home to only one city: Vaes Dothrak, built beneath a lone mountain the Dothraki call the Mother of Mountains and beside a lake they call the Womb of the World. Vaes Dothrak is the only place the Dothraki maintain peace, as the ancestral law of the city dictates that to draw steel or shed blood is death. The Dothraki maintain a horse culture, living nomadic lives in the saddle, traveling in their vast hordes from one city to the next to make war and take plunder. Daenerys's story begins when she is married to the khal, or war-leader, of a vast khalasar so her brother can secure his troops for his cause.
Along the southern edge of the Dothraki Sea, and along the coast of Slaver's Bay and the Gulf of Grief, are the three remaining cities of the great Ghiscari Empire that once spanned the length of the coast: Astapor to the south, Meereen to the north, and Yunkai between the two. Until the Valyrian Freehold the Ghiscari Empire was the greatest the world had ever known, but its shadow children make their meager fortunes training slaves for combat and indulging in blood sport.
Splitting the western stretches of Essos from the Dothraki Sea is the great river of the Rhoyne, peopled along its great length by the Rhoynish who have built several cities, the greatest of which is Volantis at the delta of the Rhoyne. Volantis is also one of the Free Cities, independent city-states that populate the great length of Essos's western coast: Braavos, Lorath, Norvos, Pentos, Qohor, Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys. The cities maintain a state of constant competition which occasionally erupts into warfare.
And finally, Valyria. Both a ruined city and a peninsula jutting from the southern edge of Essos, situated between the Rhoynish delta and the Gulf of Grief, Valyria was once home to the greatest empire in the known world. Initially a peaceful shepherding people, the Valyrians discovered dragons living in the chain of volcanoes strung along their peninsula. With a talent for magic, the Valyrians set aside animal husbandry, mastered the dragons, and used them to conquer a vast swath of land stretching from the Ghiscari slaver cities all the way to the modern Free Cities, with even an outpost on the island of Dragonstone off the coast of Westeros. Along with their military might the Valyrians spread their language, their infrastructure, their magic, their craft, and their culture. Think Rome, but with dragons.
Like Rome, Valyria came to an end, but theirs was a more hellish one. No one knows precisely what the Doom of Valyria is or what caused it, but in the course of one night at the height of Valyria's power, the land tore open, the seas boiled and raged, and the sky was filled ash and fire, and the greatest city in the world vanished. A century of blood and chaos followed, and the land is still a smoking, haunted wasteland.
On Westeros and its peoples
Westeros, as its name might suggest, lies to the west, separated from Essos by the Narrow Sea and bordered to the west and south by the Sunset Sea (no one is known to have ventured across the reaches of the Sunset Sea, so it is unknown what lies beyond it). The original inhabitants of Westeros were the children of the forest, a sentient, diminutive people who worshipped nature gods believed to inhabit weirwood trees carved with human-like faces. They practiced magic and lived in harmony with nature. During that time Westeros was still connected to Essos via a land bridge, and it was through that route that the First Men invaded. Larger, stronger, and better-equipped than the children, the two races nevertheless fought for dominion of Westeros for years until they forged a truce. The children would retreat to the forests, bogs, and wild lands, while the First Men would control everything else. Eventually the First Men even absorbed the children's religious practices, worshipping the faces carved into the weirwood trees.
Some four thousand years later the relative peace was disturbed by a period of time referred to as the Long Night. Said to be a winter generations long and colder than had ever been known, this period was marked by the arrival of the mysterious "Others," officially called White Walkers. Little is known about the White Walkers. Legend tells that they hate all life and warmth; they return the fallen to life as their slave wights and control vast hordes of walking dead, riding slain horses and bears and hunting with ice spiders big as hounds. Eventually the children and the First Men came together to drive the Others back into the far north, and sealed off their realm from the walkers by building a giant wall of ice reaching seven hundred feet into the sky and stretching some three hundred miles from coast to coast, to be manned by an order of brothers in black called the Night's Watch.
Thus ended the Age of Heroes, and thence begins the Andal Invasion:
Roughly 6000 years before the present, a king in the Hills of Andalos in Essos had a divine revelation and subsequent spiritual awakening that he put into a holy book, the Seven-Pointed Star. Hugor of the Hill founded the Faith of the Seven, and years later Ser Artys Arryn led his people across the Narrow Sea to land in the Vale of Arryn, from where they began their invasion. The Andals swept south as south would go, and up along the coast into the Ironman's Bay, but were stalled by the First Men at the Neck of the Trident, who held the Moat Cailin against their greater numbers and weapons. Forced to be content with ending their crusade there, the Andals turned to assimilating the local people, being assimilated by the Iron Islanders, and cutting down what carved weirwood trees they found.
The modern Westeros is encapsulated almost entirely by the Seven Kingdoms, so named for the seven independent kingdoms later conquered by the Targaryen and united into one. The present structure of Westeros is that of a feudal society; the capitol, King's Landing, was the site of Aegon Targaryen's landing at the start of his conquest. Westeros is divided into ten provinces, for lack of a better word: Dorne in the south, then the Reach, the Stormlands, the Crownlands, the Westerlands, the Vale of Arryn, the Riverlands, the Iron Islands, the North, and the Lands Beyond the Wall. Each region is ruled over by a high liege lord, to whom all lesser lords and knights in the region swear fealty as vassals. The North is ruled by the Starks, the Iron Islands by the Greyjoys, the Riverlands by the Tullys, the Vale of Arryn by the Arryns, the Westerlands by the Lannisters, the Stormlands by the Baratheons, the Reach by the Tyrells, Dorne by the Martells, and the Crownlands to the representative of the royal family who holds the island fastness Dragonstone. But for the North where worship of the weirwood gods is still practiced, the rest of Westeros south of the Neck adheres to the Faith of the Seven. Maesters operating out of the Citadel in Oldtown to the south serve as the continent's masters of healing, learning, and communication, through the use of trained ravens. Dates of the current era are marked in accordance with Aegon's Landing, and thus the present year is 300 AL (three hundred years after Aegon's Landing). The throne is presently held in name by House Baratheon, in truth by House Lannister with the support of House Martell.
On dragons and House Targaryen
Many legends surround the birth of dragons. Some say they come from the far east, in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai; others say a second moon was their egg, and dragons came into the world when the sun cracked that moon-egg's shell. Whatever the truth of their origins, dragons became central to much of human history five thousand years ago when the Valyrians discovered them nesting in their volcanoes. Using sorcery, the peaceful shepherding folk mastered the dragons, learned to ride them, and used them to conquer much of Essos. But since the Doom their numbers have dwindled, and no living dragon had been sighted for a century and a half until Daenerys Targaryen walked into her husband's funeral pyre and used her instinctual command of bloodmagic to hatch three dragonlings from fossilized eggs. Those hatchlings she named Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion.
House Targaryen was one of the forty-some noble houses of old Valyria, but twelve years before the Doom they relocated to Dragonstone, a small island off the coast of Westeros. Along with the House they brought five of their dragons, including Balerion, the future mount of Aegon I Targaryen, called the Conquerer for his conquest of Westeros, as well as a small cache of eggs. The Targaryen dragons are the only ones known to have survived the Doom. The family resided on Dragonstone for a century before conquering Westeros.
Dynastic incest was a practice of old Valyria, and the Targaryens continued the style with Aegon's polygamous marriage to his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys. All three siblings played prominent roles in the conquest, and it was their military and political acumen, and more importantly, their dragons, which won them their empire more than any particular military might (the siblings in fact had only a small handful of soldiers at the start of their campaign). Only Dorne defied them. Rhaenys flew directly to the Dornish stronghold to demand their surrender, but Princess Mariya Martell of Dorne responded with, "This is Dorne. You are not wanted here, return at your peril." Furious, Rhaenys promised the Targaryens would return, "With fire and blood." Fire and Blood became the official words of House Targaryen thereafter.
Yet after the Conquest Aegon was content to leave governance of his realms to his sisters. His current line descends from Rhaenys, the younger of his wives, of whom Aegon was reportedly fonder. The Red Keep was completed under the rule of Maegor the Cruel, Aegon's son by Visenya; Maegor also succeeded in beginning the disarmament of the militant arms of the Faith, an act which was completed by his successor (and Aegon and Rhaenys's grandson) Jaehaerys the Conciliator.
Targaryen rule over the Seven Kingdoms consolidated, and the dragons might have thrived were it not for the building of the Dragonpit on Rhaenys's Hill, and a dynastic civil war that would be known as the Dance of the Dragons. When Jaeherys's son Viserys I died in 129 AL he was meant to be succeeded by his daughter Rhaenyra, whom he had been grooming as his heir. In defiance of the late king's will, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Criston the Kingmaker, crowned Aegon II, Viserys's son by a second wife. The war lasted for three years and the bloody toll included both presumptive monarchs, uncounted minor lords and commoners, and the vast majority of the Targaryen dragons. The final dragons--weak, stunted things--died during the reign of Rhaenyra's son Aegon III, earning him the title Dragonbane. Thereafter the Targaryens used a chemical mixture called dragonfire.
Succession issues and unrest continued to plague the Targaryens for the next century. Dorne was finally incorporated peacefully through royal marriages, and a king's legitimized bastard children instigated a series of rebellions in an attempt to take the throne. King Aegon V, his son and heir Duncan the Small, and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Duncan the Tall all died in the Tragedy of Summerhall, a great fire that destroyed the Targaryen summer palace. Popular blame for the fire is attributed to an attempt by the Targaryens to hatch their fossilized dragon eggs. Aegon's son Jaehaerys succeeded him only to die young of illness, and be succeeded in turn by his own son and daughter, Aerys and Rhaella.
The End of a Dynasty to the Present ("The Game of Thrones")
King Aerys II's reign started out promising. Aerys was clever and competent, with the highly capable and notoriously ruthless Tywin Lannister serving as his Hand. Aerys's marriage was less happy; they produced three children--Rhaegar, Viserys, and Daenerys--but detested each other, and in later years Aerys took pleasure in viciously abusing his wife. Rhaegar himself was married to Elia of Dorne (Daenerys had not even been conceived at the time, or he might have married her), and they had two children, Rhaenys and Aegon. Born on the anniversary of Summerhall, Rhaegar was every inch the consummate Targaryen prince, and he believed himself to be the Prince That Was Promised. In later years he came to believe that Prince was actually his infant son Aegon.
A failed rebellion, the Defiance of Duskendale, saw the start of Aerys's descent into madness. The king grew increasingly paranoid, and as his madness grew so did his lust for violence. The mounting unrest reached a flashpoint when Rhaegar Targaryen abducted Lyanna Stark, daughter of the Lord of Winterfell and betrothed to the young Baratheon heir Robert. Houses Stark and Baratheon spearheaded a rebellion against the crown, joined by Tully and Arryn, while Martell and Tyrell remained royal loyalists until the war's end. Robert slew Rhaegar at the Battle of the Trident, Aerys was murdered by a member of his own Kingsguard, and the Lannisters joined the rebel cause by brutally murdering Rhaegar's wife and young children. Rhaella was safe at Dragonstone with Viserys, though she died soon after giving birth to Daenerys. Both siblings fled across the Narrow Sea and spent their childhood wandering from city to city, penniless and friendless.
Robert Baratheon's victory at the Trident won him his kingship and a long, peaceful reign of decadence, over-indulgence, and a host of behind the scenes political schemes by other parties that would precipitate the present state of anarchic violence. Viserys, meanwhile, sold his sister to a Dothraki khal in return for support for his claim, but was ultimately murdered by the Dothraki himself. When the khal himself died, Daenerys walked into his funeral pyre and emerged unhurt, a mother of three dragons. She has since taken it upon herself to restore her family to power, but has become sidetracked conquering the Ghiscari slave cities on Slaver's Bay.
Personality:
Appearance: Small, slim, with silvery-blonde hair and violet eyes. Can we just magically handwave her hair being back? Because I like her hair.
Abilities: Dany possesses some innate talent for Valyrian bloodmagic, harnessed only the once to bring her dragons to life, and possibly a second time in forcing Drogon to submit to her. She is also immune to normal fire and burns, though not to dragonfire in all circumstances, and presumably not to some forms of magical fire; and she possesses a talent for occasional prophetic dreams/visions, particularly in relation to dragons.
Inventory: Herself.
Suite: A penthouse apartment in the Earth sector with access to the roof.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
The stinking, sweltering, sprawling expanse of Meereen falls away beneath them as Drogon surges up to embrace the open sky. Dany laughs and clings to him tighter, feeling the wind slap against her face and drag all her worldly cares away with it. Beneath her Meereen is an anthill, its people swarming ants, and Daenerys Targaryen is mounting the world--
She wakens curled in upon herself, shivering and weak as a newborn babe. The strangers who surround her help her to her feet, murmuring comforting words and explanations she hears but cannot attend to. Something about death and life and cities trapped in dreams. Like a child they must help her through ornate passages and down long halls, into the world outside. None of it feels real until the sun touches her face, and her mind comes alive again. They try to help her into the cart, but she jerks away from them, and though it is a struggle and she hurts all over she climbs into the vehicle under her own power.
Beneath her the cart rumbles, graceless and ungainly compared to a dragon in flight. If she'd thought she felt sore and sick in the grasslands, it's nothing compared to how she feels now. Every bone in her body feels brittle and about to break, her muscles pulled too-tight over gaunt angles and skin dry and cracking. The memory of that first flight floats at the surface of her mind, waiting, waiting… She wants to drown in it, submerge herself in it, let herself be lost. How simple it would be. But the kedan hover around her like bloodflies, a reminder of reality, and like bloodflies she wants to reach out and swat them. She tries asking her questions sweetly at first, then snappishly, and then she commands them, demanding answers. They give her nothing but riddles, and her patience is thin as a veil of silk. In the end she orders them silent, and they at least obey her in that.
Once settled in her apartments Dany immediately dismisses the kedan. She moves from room to room, tapping her curled whip against her blood-sticky leg in time with the beating of her heart. Every inch of it is strange and foreign, and she nearly balks and calls for the kedan when she finds the bathroom. But instead she stubbornly sets about learning the room on her own, and before long she has filled the tub with burning hot water and settled into it to be cleansed. The water washes away her irritation and anger along with the dirt and blood, until her mind is clear as a summer sky.
She is not dead. That much she is certain of, as certain as she has been of nothing since climbing onto Drogon's back, and walking into Drogo's pyre before that. It is an instinct rooted deep within her bones. Trapped here in some space between life and death, dream and waking, she may be, but it will not hold her. She is the blood of the dragon, shackle--breaker, and she will make herself free.
Network:
Have I been gone so long? It feels as if only moments have passed for me, and yet the mainland lies nowhere in sight. Only water... In the way of the people of my first husband, Drogo who was my sun-and-stars, the sea is called the poison water. They fear that which their horses cannot drink.
[ And Dany? What does she fear? ]
Again, I seek word of Drogon, if he is here. When last I was present he'd only just arrived, and injured several people. Though they weren't residents of Keeliai, I submit my apologies regardless. If he's still here and has hurt anyone since... You may submit yourself to me for recompense, and I will ensure justice is done.
To those who are new since my last term of residence, I give greetings. My name is Daenerys, of House Targaryen.
Name: Hiccup
Age: 24
Contact:
Game Cast: n/a
Character Information:
Name: Daenerys Targaryen (Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Shackles, Breaker of Chains, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea) (Dany) (it's your fault for asking for most common aliases)
Canon: A Song of Death and Tears by Evil Santa
Canon Point: Her final chapter of Dragons Behaving Badly, when Khal Jhaqo rides out of the grass to find her soiled, blood-stained, and standing beside her dragon.
Age: 16
Reference: If I look back I am lost.
Setting: Remember all those childhood dreams you had about living in a fantasy world, riding into battle as a knight or being the fair maiden in the tower waiting to be rescued?
Boy were you ever suckered.
The doorstopper epic A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin takes place in a world steeped in medieval fantasy tropes, but mixed with the gritty, inhumane brutality of the very real world. The plot is massive, the setting epic, and the resultant mass of information covering past to present so vast it can easily seem convoluted. We will call this Westeros 101. A map will be helpful. For coherency's sake this explanation will be divided into sections.
Principles of the world
The world of ASOIAF (referred to only as "the known world") is composed of three primary continents: Westeros, Essos, and Sothoros/Sothoryos (there is also Ulthos, but we know nothing about it). Westeros and Essos were once connected by a land bridge, which legend tells was shattered by the children of the forest over 12000 years ago, creating a chain of islands called the Stepstones.
Magic was once thrived the world over, though it has largely since faded into song and myth, and what arts are still practiced are as uncommon as they are dangerous. Many numerous species of mythical beasts have died out in the process, but many still inhabit the world: aurochs, giants, great wooly mammoths, dragons, basilisks, centaurs, direwolves, unicorns, wyverns, krakens, firewyrms, and the sentient white walkers and the children of the forest all once roamed the lands of ice and fire, and many still do.
A year once followed the usual turn of four seasons until some great magical cataclysm threw the cycle of nature off course. Now summers and winters last years, their length marked in accordance with old records of the proper length of a year. Word of god remains quiet on the exact nature of the cataclysm as of present. Most winters and summers last only a few years, but a long ten-year summer ends at the start of book two, which many believe heralds a longer and more brutal winter than has been seen for centuries.
On Essos and its peoples
The happenings of Westeros would not be the same were it not for the history of Essos, so it is to Essos we must look first. A sprawling, massive continent to the east, Essos is home to innumerable cultures and societies great and small, which have been feuding for millennia.
To the far east lies the city of Asshai, built in the Shadow Lands, a place spoken of in hushed, fearful whispers. In the present age Asshai is said to be the last refuge of magic in the world, home to shadowbinders, bloodmages, warlocks, and practitioners of the dark arts. Separating Asshai overland from much of the rest of Essos are Yi Ti, Jogos Nhai, and the Red Waste, a desert as vast as it is cruel. Perched at the south of the Red Waste, at the mouth of the Jade Sea, is the wealthy city-state of Qarth, ruled over by a competing triumvirate of powers including the Pureborn nobility, the merchant guilds, and the warlocks.
Northwest of the Red Waste is the Dothraki Sea, a vast grasslands that takes up roughly two-thirds of the continent. Inhabited by the Dothraki, a fierce warlike people divided into numerous feuding tribes called khalasars, the Dothraki Sea is home to only one city: Vaes Dothrak, built beneath a lone mountain the Dothraki call the Mother of Mountains and beside a lake they call the Womb of the World. Vaes Dothrak is the only place the Dothraki maintain peace, as the ancestral law of the city dictates that to draw steel or shed blood is death. The Dothraki maintain a horse culture, living nomadic lives in the saddle, traveling in their vast hordes from one city to the next to make war and take plunder. Daenerys's story begins when she is married to the khal, or war-leader, of a vast khalasar so her brother can secure his troops for his cause.
Along the southern edge of the Dothraki Sea, and along the coast of Slaver's Bay and the Gulf of Grief, are the three remaining cities of the great Ghiscari Empire that once spanned the length of the coast: Astapor to the south, Meereen to the north, and Yunkai between the two. Until the Valyrian Freehold the Ghiscari Empire was the greatest the world had ever known, but its shadow children make their meager fortunes training slaves for combat and indulging in blood sport.
Splitting the western stretches of Essos from the Dothraki Sea is the great river of the Rhoyne, peopled along its great length by the Rhoynish who have built several cities, the greatest of which is Volantis at the delta of the Rhoyne. Volantis is also one of the Free Cities, independent city-states that populate the great length of Essos's western coast: Braavos, Lorath, Norvos, Pentos, Qohor, Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys. The cities maintain a state of constant competition which occasionally erupts into warfare.
And finally, Valyria. Both a ruined city and a peninsula jutting from the southern edge of Essos, situated between the Rhoynish delta and the Gulf of Grief, Valyria was once home to the greatest empire in the known world. Initially a peaceful shepherding people, the Valyrians discovered dragons living in the chain of volcanoes strung along their peninsula. With a talent for magic, the Valyrians set aside animal husbandry, mastered the dragons, and used them to conquer a vast swath of land stretching from the Ghiscari slaver cities all the way to the modern Free Cities, with even an outpost on the island of Dragonstone off the coast of Westeros. Along with their military might the Valyrians spread their language, their infrastructure, their magic, their craft, and their culture. Think Rome, but with dragons.
Like Rome, Valyria came to an end, but theirs was a more hellish one. No one knows precisely what the Doom of Valyria is or what caused it, but in the course of one night at the height of Valyria's power, the land tore open, the seas boiled and raged, and the sky was filled ash and fire, and the greatest city in the world vanished. A century of blood and chaos followed, and the land is still a smoking, haunted wasteland.
On Westeros and its peoples
Westeros, as its name might suggest, lies to the west, separated from Essos by the Narrow Sea and bordered to the west and south by the Sunset Sea (no one is known to have ventured across the reaches of the Sunset Sea, so it is unknown what lies beyond it). The original inhabitants of Westeros were the children of the forest, a sentient, diminutive people who worshipped nature gods believed to inhabit weirwood trees carved with human-like faces. They practiced magic and lived in harmony with nature. During that time Westeros was still connected to Essos via a land bridge, and it was through that route that the First Men invaded. Larger, stronger, and better-equipped than the children, the two races nevertheless fought for dominion of Westeros for years until they forged a truce. The children would retreat to the forests, bogs, and wild lands, while the First Men would control everything else. Eventually the First Men even absorbed the children's religious practices, worshipping the faces carved into the weirwood trees.
Some four thousand years later the relative peace was disturbed by a period of time referred to as the Long Night. Said to be a winter generations long and colder than had ever been known, this period was marked by the arrival of the mysterious "Others," officially called White Walkers. Little is known about the White Walkers. Legend tells that they hate all life and warmth; they return the fallen to life as their slave wights and control vast hordes of walking dead, riding slain horses and bears and hunting with ice spiders big as hounds. Eventually the children and the First Men came together to drive the Others back into the far north, and sealed off their realm from the walkers by building a giant wall of ice reaching seven hundred feet into the sky and stretching some three hundred miles from coast to coast, to be manned by an order of brothers in black called the Night's Watch.
Thus ended the Age of Heroes, and thence begins the Andal Invasion:
Roughly 6000 years before the present, a king in the Hills of Andalos in Essos had a divine revelation and subsequent spiritual awakening that he put into a holy book, the Seven-Pointed Star. Hugor of the Hill founded the Faith of the Seven, and years later Ser Artys Arryn led his people across the Narrow Sea to land in the Vale of Arryn, from where they began their invasion. The Andals swept south as south would go, and up along the coast into the Ironman's Bay, but were stalled by the First Men at the Neck of the Trident, who held the Moat Cailin against their greater numbers and weapons. Forced to be content with ending their crusade there, the Andals turned to assimilating the local people, being assimilated by the Iron Islanders, and cutting down what carved weirwood trees they found.
The modern Westeros is encapsulated almost entirely by the Seven Kingdoms, so named for the seven independent kingdoms later conquered by the Targaryen and united into one. The present structure of Westeros is that of a feudal society; the capitol, King's Landing, was the site of Aegon Targaryen's landing at the start of his conquest. Westeros is divided into ten provinces, for lack of a better word: Dorne in the south, then the Reach, the Stormlands, the Crownlands, the Westerlands, the Vale of Arryn, the Riverlands, the Iron Islands, the North, and the Lands Beyond the Wall. Each region is ruled over by a high liege lord, to whom all lesser lords and knights in the region swear fealty as vassals. The North is ruled by the Starks, the Iron Islands by the Greyjoys, the Riverlands by the Tullys, the Vale of Arryn by the Arryns, the Westerlands by the Lannisters, the Stormlands by the Baratheons, the Reach by the Tyrells, Dorne by the Martells, and the Crownlands to the representative of the royal family who holds the island fastness Dragonstone. But for the North where worship of the weirwood gods is still practiced, the rest of Westeros south of the Neck adheres to the Faith of the Seven. Maesters operating out of the Citadel in Oldtown to the south serve as the continent's masters of healing, learning, and communication, through the use of trained ravens. Dates of the current era are marked in accordance with Aegon's Landing, and thus the present year is 300 AL (three hundred years after Aegon's Landing). The throne is presently held in name by House Baratheon, in truth by House Lannister with the support of House Martell.
On dragons and House Targaryen
Many legends surround the birth of dragons. Some say they come from the far east, in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai; others say a second moon was their egg, and dragons came into the world when the sun cracked that moon-egg's shell. Whatever the truth of their origins, dragons became central to much of human history five thousand years ago when the Valyrians discovered them nesting in their volcanoes. Using sorcery, the peaceful shepherding folk mastered the dragons, learned to ride them, and used them to conquer much of Essos. But since the Doom their numbers have dwindled, and no living dragon had been sighted for a century and a half until Daenerys Targaryen walked into her husband's funeral pyre and used her instinctual command of bloodmagic to hatch three dragonlings from fossilized eggs. Those hatchlings she named Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion.
House Targaryen was one of the forty-some noble houses of old Valyria, but twelve years before the Doom they relocated to Dragonstone, a small island off the coast of Westeros. Along with the House they brought five of their dragons, including Balerion, the future mount of Aegon I Targaryen, called the Conquerer for his conquest of Westeros, as well as a small cache of eggs. The Targaryen dragons are the only ones known to have survived the Doom. The family resided on Dragonstone for a century before conquering Westeros.
Dynastic incest was a practice of old Valyria, and the Targaryens continued the style with Aegon's polygamous marriage to his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys. All three siblings played prominent roles in the conquest, and it was their military and political acumen, and more importantly, their dragons, which won them their empire more than any particular military might (the siblings in fact had only a small handful of soldiers at the start of their campaign). Only Dorne defied them. Rhaenys flew directly to the Dornish stronghold to demand their surrender, but Princess Mariya Martell of Dorne responded with, "This is Dorne. You are not wanted here, return at your peril." Furious, Rhaenys promised the Targaryens would return, "With fire and blood." Fire and Blood became the official words of House Targaryen thereafter.
Yet after the Conquest Aegon was content to leave governance of his realms to his sisters. His current line descends from Rhaenys, the younger of his wives, of whom Aegon was reportedly fonder. The Red Keep was completed under the rule of Maegor the Cruel, Aegon's son by Visenya; Maegor also succeeded in beginning the disarmament of the militant arms of the Faith, an act which was completed by his successor (and Aegon and Rhaenys's grandson) Jaehaerys the Conciliator.
Targaryen rule over the Seven Kingdoms consolidated, and the dragons might have thrived were it not for the building of the Dragonpit on Rhaenys's Hill, and a dynastic civil war that would be known as the Dance of the Dragons. When Jaeherys's son Viserys I died in 129 AL he was meant to be succeeded by his daughter Rhaenyra, whom he had been grooming as his heir. In defiance of the late king's will, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Criston the Kingmaker, crowned Aegon II, Viserys's son by a second wife. The war lasted for three years and the bloody toll included both presumptive monarchs, uncounted minor lords and commoners, and the vast majority of the Targaryen dragons. The final dragons--weak, stunted things--died during the reign of Rhaenyra's son Aegon III, earning him the title Dragonbane. Thereafter the Targaryens used a chemical mixture called dragonfire.
Succession issues and unrest continued to plague the Targaryens for the next century. Dorne was finally incorporated peacefully through royal marriages, and a king's legitimized bastard children instigated a series of rebellions in an attempt to take the throne. King Aegon V, his son and heir Duncan the Small, and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Duncan the Tall all died in the Tragedy of Summerhall, a great fire that destroyed the Targaryen summer palace. Popular blame for the fire is attributed to an attempt by the Targaryens to hatch their fossilized dragon eggs. Aegon's son Jaehaerys succeeded him only to die young of illness, and be succeeded in turn by his own son and daughter, Aerys and Rhaella.
The End of a Dynasty to the Present ("The Game of Thrones")
King Aerys II's reign started out promising. Aerys was clever and competent, with the highly capable and notoriously ruthless Tywin Lannister serving as his Hand. Aerys's marriage was less happy; they produced three children--Rhaegar, Viserys, and Daenerys--but detested each other, and in later years Aerys took pleasure in viciously abusing his wife. Rhaegar himself was married to Elia of Dorne (Daenerys had not even been conceived at the time, or he might have married her), and they had two children, Rhaenys and Aegon. Born on the anniversary of Summerhall, Rhaegar was every inch the consummate Targaryen prince, and he believed himself to be the Prince That Was Promised. In later years he came to believe that Prince was actually his infant son Aegon.
A failed rebellion, the Defiance of Duskendale, saw the start of Aerys's descent into madness. The king grew increasingly paranoid, and as his madness grew so did his lust for violence. The mounting unrest reached a flashpoint when Rhaegar Targaryen abducted Lyanna Stark, daughter of the Lord of Winterfell and betrothed to the young Baratheon heir Robert. Houses Stark and Baratheon spearheaded a rebellion against the crown, joined by Tully and Arryn, while Martell and Tyrell remained royal loyalists until the war's end. Robert slew Rhaegar at the Battle of the Trident, Aerys was murdered by a member of his own Kingsguard, and the Lannisters joined the rebel cause by brutally murdering Rhaegar's wife and young children. Rhaella was safe at Dragonstone with Viserys, though she died soon after giving birth to Daenerys. Both siblings fled across the Narrow Sea and spent their childhood wandering from city to city, penniless and friendless.
Robert Baratheon's victory at the Trident won him his kingship and a long, peaceful reign of decadence, over-indulgence, and a host of behind the scenes political schemes by other parties that would precipitate the present state of anarchic violence. Viserys, meanwhile, sold his sister to a Dothraki khal in return for support for his claim, but was ultimately murdered by the Dothraki himself. When the khal himself died, Daenerys walked into his funeral pyre and emerged unhurt, a mother of three dragons. She has since taken it upon herself to restore her family to power, but has become sidetracked conquering the Ghiscari slave cities on Slaver's Bay.
Personality:
"I know she is proud. How not? What is left to her but pride? I know she is strong. How not? The Dothraki despise weakness. If Daenaerys had been weak, she would have perished with Viserys. I know she is fierce. Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen are proof enough of that. She has survived assassins and conspiracies and fell sorceries, grieved for a brother and a husband and a son, trod the cities of the slavers to dust beneath her dainty sandaled feet"
— Tyrion Lannister on Daenerys Targaryen
— Tyrion Lannister on Daenerys Targaryen
Dany begins the books meek and pliant, a victim of unfortunate circumstance and a temperamental, abusive brother who liked to take out his fits of anger on his helpless little sister. The only childhood happiness she knew was in her early tender years in the house with the red door, the only place that ever felt like home. Home since that time has come to mean an ideal for Dany, a symbol she dreams of but does not know, a place she wants to make for herself. This want for a home is one of her primary motivations. Viserys sold her to a warlord in exchange for soldiers, and through the course of a year Dany slowly developed a strong sense of identity separate from her brother. She is strong, she is resilient, and she knows how to endure. When she walks into Drogo's funeral pyre she is a child, but she emerges a woman.
This woman is clever and intelligent, confident and proud, fiercely moral and just and absolutely dedicated to the wellbeing her people. The hardships she has endured have fostered a unique sort of kindness in Dany that stands out among her lordly peers. She casts herself into the role of the woman-savior, all-loving and all-protecting. Not only are her dragons her children, but her people are her children, and to fail them is a personal failure. In some ways she is like a dragon herself--fiercely possessive, jealous, vicious when angered. Though she has a tender heart she is capable of great cruelty when her wrath is drawn. With her enemies she is ruthless, though she draws a line when dealing with innocents; children in particular present a special weakness for her. She has a particular loathing for slavery and blood sport, and often tries to act as a moral guardian for her people.
However, while she has a great capacity for leadership, it's held back by her youth and relative inexperience. No matter what she has endured, Dany still has very little experience ruling, and still has a young woman's shining idealism. She can be distracted by her love for others, whether it be the men and women in her service, her husband, her children, or her lover. She has been burned, so to speak, her trust abused, but rather than swear she will not trust again, Dany has the wisdom to know if she closes her heart she will die for certain.
Her ambitions are inherently contradictory: to have a home she must make one, and to make one she must fight, but she hates war though it runs in her blood. Like a dragon she can be at turns jealous and possessive, vengeful and cruel, but at her core she has gentle heart, though she tries to hide it lest it be perceived as a weakness. Ultimately she accepts this contradiction, and will not allow herself to be deterred or halted. Her personal mantra of "If I look back I am lost" reflects this. Dany will not allow herself to second-guess her choices, because the only path to take is forward. That doesn't mean she's incapable of recognizing her errors or that she refuses to do so, but that she knows where the line lies between regret and despair. It's a mature sort of practicality that allows her to continue to grow rather than be dragged down by her own ghosts.
Daenerys is no stranger to death. Her mother died birthing her, her son died in her womb, and she was forced to kill her own husband. Only death can pay for life, and Dany has harnessed the death around her to make a life for herself and those she loves. Nor is she a stranger to magic or illusion, though she views both with a heavy mixture of respect and distrust. She will be certain of one thing: that she is not dead. To her Keeliai will seem much the same as the House of the Undying, though perhaps less surreal. But like the House of the Undying it is a maze to be navigated, a cage to be broken free from, and it will not hold her forever.
Daenerys's previous and very short time in Keeliai didn't give her much opportunity to grow, so personality-wise she remains largely unchanged from before. However, her small experience with the very different and much more forward people of the other worlds will result in a less haughty (though still slightly distant) approach to personal and public relations.
Daenerys's previous and very short time in Keeliai didn't give her much opportunity to grow, so personality-wise she remains largely unchanged from before. However, her small experience with the very different and much more forward people of the other worlds will result in a less haughty (though still slightly distant) approach to personal and public relations.
Appearance: Small, slim, with silvery-blonde hair and violet eyes. Can we just magically handwave her hair being back? Because I like her hair.
Abilities: Dany possesses some innate talent for Valyrian bloodmagic, harnessed only the once to bring her dragons to life, and possibly a second time in forcing Drogon to submit to her. She is also immune to normal fire and burns, though not to dragonfire in all circumstances, and presumably not to some forms of magical fire; and she possesses a talent for occasional prophetic dreams/visions, particularly in relation to dragons.
Inventory: Herself.
Suite: A penthouse apartment in the Earth sector with access to the roof.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
The stinking, sweltering, sprawling expanse of Meereen falls away beneath them as Drogon surges up to embrace the open sky. Dany laughs and clings to him tighter, feeling the wind slap against her face and drag all her worldly cares away with it. Beneath her Meereen is an anthill, its people swarming ants, and Daenerys Targaryen is mounting the world--
She wakens curled in upon herself, shivering and weak as a newborn babe. The strangers who surround her help her to her feet, murmuring comforting words and explanations she hears but cannot attend to. Something about death and life and cities trapped in dreams. Like a child they must help her through ornate passages and down long halls, into the world outside. None of it feels real until the sun touches her face, and her mind comes alive again. They try to help her into the cart, but she jerks away from them, and though it is a struggle and she hurts all over she climbs into the vehicle under her own power.
Beneath her the cart rumbles, graceless and ungainly compared to a dragon in flight. If she'd thought she felt sore and sick in the grasslands, it's nothing compared to how she feels now. Every bone in her body feels brittle and about to break, her muscles pulled too-tight over gaunt angles and skin dry and cracking. The memory of that first flight floats at the surface of her mind, waiting, waiting… She wants to drown in it, submerge herself in it, let herself be lost. How simple it would be. But the kedan hover around her like bloodflies, a reminder of reality, and like bloodflies she wants to reach out and swat them. She tries asking her questions sweetly at first, then snappishly, and then she commands them, demanding answers. They give her nothing but riddles, and her patience is thin as a veil of silk. In the end she orders them silent, and they at least obey her in that.
Once settled in her apartments Dany immediately dismisses the kedan. She moves from room to room, tapping her curled whip against her blood-sticky leg in time with the beating of her heart. Every inch of it is strange and foreign, and she nearly balks and calls for the kedan when she finds the bathroom. But instead she stubbornly sets about learning the room on her own, and before long she has filled the tub with burning hot water and settled into it to be cleansed. The water washes away her irritation and anger along with the dirt and blood, until her mind is clear as a summer sky.
She is not dead. That much she is certain of, as certain as she has been of nothing since climbing onto Drogon's back, and walking into Drogo's pyre before that. It is an instinct rooted deep within her bones. Trapped here in some space between life and death, dream and waking, she may be, but it will not hold her. She is the blood of the dragon, shackle--breaker, and she will make herself free.
Network:
Have I been gone so long? It feels as if only moments have passed for me, and yet the mainland lies nowhere in sight. Only water... In the way of the people of my first husband, Drogo who was my sun-and-stars, the sea is called the poison water. They fear that which their horses cannot drink.
[ And Dany? What does she fear? ]
Again, I seek word of Drogon, if he is here. When last I was present he'd only just arrived, and injured several people. Though they weren't residents of Keeliai, I submit my apologies regardless. If he's still here and has hurt anyone since... You may submit yourself to me for recompense, and I will ensure justice is done.
To those who are new since my last term of residence, I give greetings. My name is Daenerys, of House Targaryen.