Massacre in the Mountains of the Moon

### Outcome

Massacre of two thirds of Lord Gunthor Arryn's host, a tense and forced peace that came in its wake.

**The Massacre in the Mountains of the Moon** was the final engagement in the bloody conflict known as the War for the Mountains of the Moon. While not a victory by traditional terms, many a Vale Lord and noble declared it one upon their return home, for the Clansmen had been forced so deep into the Mountains of the Moon that all that had kept them from Lord Gunthor Arryn's steel was their mountains.

## Background

With the Battle of the Coldwater having been some moons prior, the host of Lord Gunthor Arryn was ready and willing to take up a fierce engagement once more. The journey from the Coldwater to the territory of the Painted Dogs, where the Clansmen were so rumoured to be in hiding, was to where the host so journeyed.

Alas, their travel was not as simple as might have been hoped. For along the way it fast became that a steady trickle of men began to desert, and so it came to be that such had to be dealt with before the host continued its march, and so with numbers low, the host of Lord Gunthor Arryn was forced to spend a number of moons resting in a valley west of Spearhead Keep. Though such would not be so forever.

## Engagement

###### *An Exert from the Writings of Maester Yorwyck's Work, "The War for the Mountains of the Moon".*

The engagement itself was rather a short one. While Lord Gunthor Arryn and the five thousand men alongside him had spent some hours carefully and quietly traversing through the mountain passes as best they could, they were to prove no match for the Clansmen. Understandably so. The Clansmen had spent all their lives in these passes, and now they were to be invaded, as if they were but children playing at a game.

And so, the Clansmen allow the passage of the Valemen - for a time. They waited until the host of Lord Gunthor had entered deep into the mountains, and then sprung their trap when the bulk of the host was atop a narrow pass on the side of a steep and slopping mountain, with a deep ravine falling away below.

Boulders were let loose down the mountainside, rocks were thrown, arrows were fired, spears, javelins, and the like were thrown, the men did their best to retreat, but it was too much. First it was tens falling to their deaths, their screams echoing out through the mountains, then it was hundreds, and by the end, it was over three and a half thousand men, with Lord Gunthor Arryn and the noble front of the host barely making it out with their lives.

After such, the Lords of the Vale were forced to accept a simply fact; peace. They could not and would not reach the Clansmen, while so too, the Clansmen could not successfully bring battle unto them, as had been proven.

## Aftermath

The aftermath of the Massacre in the Mountains of the Moon saw a forced and tense peace settle over the Vale of Arryn. Neither could Lord Gunthor Arryn and his men successfully penetrate so deep into the Mountains of the Moon as to be able to kill the remainder of the Clansmen, and so too, neither could the Clansmen successfully sally out to meet the Valemen and bring them into equal battle.

And so, with thousands having been taken to the next in the Stranger's grasp, both the Lords of the Vale and the Mountain Clansmen were forced to accept that they were unable to make end of one another.