Battle for Dustspear

The Battle for Dustspear was a skirmish between the strength of the Pirate Lord of the Stepstones, Maron Martell and the forces of Sunspear, Lemonwood and Planky Town. It took place in 278AC, on the Stepstones island that gives the battle its name.

## Prelude

For years, Captain Maron Martell had made Dustspear his base of operations. Dustspear is a small and relatively barren island, the closest of the Stepstones to Dorne. An ancient fort stood upon a high hill on the island, a leftover remnant of a time before the Arm of Dorne was shattered after the invasion of the First Men to Westeros. Maron and his men moved in and repaired the place into a useable keep, while also constructing a series of tunnels in which to hide their stolen treasures underground.

The fort on the hill overlooks a fortuitous natural harbor on the eastern side of the island where Maron’s pirate fleet anchors their ships.

For years, the pirates grew wealthy off of raids on the merchant ships that crossed the Narrow Sea in both directions. Since Dorne was still a relatively new addition to the Seven Kingdoms, all of her most longstanding and lucrative trading partners had been the Free Cities of Essos, and it was Dorne’s prosperity that suffered most at the hands of Maron Martell. Eventually, the ruler of Dorne was through tolerating the existence of the pirate lord and gathered a sizeable fleet to seize the island, giving command to Ser Oberyn Dalt of Lemonwood, who sailed on his flagship, *Lucky Lemon*.

## The Sinking of the Sandship

Maron Martell’s flagship, named *The Sandship* after the ancestral keep of House Martell, was at the forefront of the initial clash between the two naval forces. While Oberyn Dalt commanded the larger fleet, Maron Martell and his men had greater experience fighting at sea. Still, after a lengthy fight, the numerical superiority of the Dornish forces won out and routed the pirates, but not before *The Sandship* went down in smoke and fire. The pirates beat a hasty retreat to the eastern side of the island, where they retreated into their hilltop keep.

Ser Oberyn Dalt made landfall later that day, as the sun was beginning to set. He instructed his men to make camp and prepare to assault the keep in the morning.

## The Sand Snake

What Ser Oberyn didn’t know was that the pirates weren’t planning on waiting. In the dead of the night, the pirates made their way into the treasure tunnels and came out at several exit points all around the island, surrounding the sleeping Dornish. They descended upon the camp in darkness and began the slitting throats of Dornish soldiers while they slept. They had successfully made their way through almost half the camp before the alarm was raised. As the Dornish roused and rallied themselves, any semblance of order was dropped and the scene devolved into a bloodbath with heavy casualties on both sides. The pirates numbers had been decimated, but they had won the battle. Maron Martell sent the head of Ser Oberyn back to Sunspear as a warning against future attempts by the Martells to take control of Dustspear. He also took Ser Oberyn Dalt’s flagship as his own, renaming it *Bloody Lemon*.