The Hand's War

The **Hand's War** was fought in the years 349 and 350 AC between King Eddard I Baelish and his former Hand of the King, Prince Vorian Martell, after the King had realised that the Hand's endeavours to build a new fleet had been directed to House Martell's own benefit. The war was almost exclusively fought on sea, involving the newly built ships, as well as other fleets.

## Prelude

First convincing the king that annexing the Stepstones into his realm would end the threat of piracy (ironically, citing the privateers’ attack on Weeping Town some years prior), he received Eddard’s blessing to begin amassing a fleet that would rival that of great powers such as House Redwyne or the Iron Fleet. When construction had completed, Prince Vorian once more maneuvered His Grace into granting the new vessels to House Martell, claiming that Sunspear would be the ideal place to stage an assault from.

Once he had received the fleet, however, the Prince would unknowingly offer a succinct summary of his treachery to Eddard. Upon his informing of the king that, following scouting the island chain, Vorian believed the islands to be “not worth the time of such an important figure as a Baelish”, the mockingbird flew into a blind rage. He revoked the man’s position as Hand in a heated argument, demanding the return of the fleet to King’s Landing - and he would have it, in time, but in no thanks to Prince Vorian.

## Vorian's Victories

Refusing to return his ill-gotten gains, the Hand’s War began when the Royal Fleet was fired upon during their approach to Sunspear, the attack led by sellsails aboard the vessel ironically named King Eddard’s Wisdom. With members of the infamously militant Vhassyl family of Lys now serving as his admirals, Vorian and Dorne would win their first engagement against the Crown’s forces - as well as the second, third, and fourth:

* **The Crowned Mummer’s Dance:** The first battle, a naval bout occurring within viewing distance of the walls of Sunspear. It ended in a decisive victory for Dorne when Magister-General Iralos Vhassyl rammed King Eddard’s Wisdom into the broadside of the aged royal flagship, King Robert’s Hammer, causing the Crown’s fleet to scatter as their commanding officer drowned in the Narrow Sea. Due to it’s proximity to the city, some two-thousand spectators crowded the docks to watch the first bout, prompting the battle to be named “The Crowned Mummer’s Dance” in relation to the king’s humiliation at the hands of Dorne.
* **Vorian’s Victory:** Named by Prince Vorian himself in a grand proclamation from the steps of the Old Palace, the second engagement of the Hand’s War would once again lead in a decisive victory for Dorne. Having been baited into an ambush by Magister Iralos, the contingent of vessels under the command of Lord Eddison Whitehead would be led into a trap by their own general, who sought vengeance against Prince Vorian for his public humiliation in court some years earlier. Every dromond under the Stormlander’s command would be either sunk or boarded, and Eddison would perish.
* **The King’s Loss at Lemonwood:** The third battle would occur a short distance from the seat of House Dalt, beginning when the lemon-knight sent a runner informing Sunspear of a royal armada spotted off of their coast - such had intended to be an ambush by their commander, a Crownlander named Qarlton Hogg, but he had misread the farmer’s almanac that predicted the moon’s shapes, falsely believing the darkness of a new moon would cover his advance. He would be captured and held above a scorpion pit at Shandystone until the end of the war, the abandoned holdfast having been turned into a sibling-prison of Ghaston Grey by Prince Vorian to hold the sudden influx of prisoners of war.
* **Eddard’s Idiocy:** The fourth battle, and the second great engagement of the war, would occur once more around the waters of Sunspear. A battle as decisive as it was almost entirely unnoteworthy, the spectators within the city that had watched the war begin now felt as if they were watching it repeat: once more, the royal fleet would be crushed, and the Prince would hold yet another grand feast with the Lysene, Magister-General Iralos Vhassyl, at his guest of honor.

Realizing that he had been thoroughly duped for near a decade now, for the first time in as many years King Eddard looked at his kingdom: the men that led his fleet were almost entirely inept, having bought their positions from the man they now fought against in previous years, and his own fleet was near the point of collapse from lack of maintenance, with Prince Vorian having redirected near all the funds towards it’s upkeep instead towards projects in his own home of Dorne. Eddard had inherited a realm made strong by his father, Petyr I, but he had let it languish ever since his coronation - and he allegedly shattered every bit of furniture in the council chambers at the realization of what had become of Westeros during his reign.

Swallowing his pride, he sought help from elsewhere: the Arbor.

## The Prince's Defeat

Having pledged near everything in his power to ensure Lord Gyles Redwyne’s support against Dorne, he placed the Hand’s necklace upon the man’s neck (a reproduction, as Prince Vorian had refused to return his own necklace) in a rushed ceremony at King’s Landing in 350 AC - and pinned the insignia of the Master of Ships upon the chest of another more loyal man, Lord Monterys Velaryon, who had been a rival in trade to the Prince of Dorne - and, once more, ordered his men to war. This time, however, the king sailed alongside them, famously having been quoted as wanting to “choke the double-crossing bastard with his own damnable necklace” in Archmaester Raymund’s Account of King Eddard the First.

Revitalized by the assistance of the forces of the Arbor and Shields, as well as Lord Gyles’ own purging of the ranks of any he believed to have been installed as a result of his predecessor’s corruption, the Royal Fleet began to finally succeed, and the war took a drastic turn in the Crown’s favor:

* **The Breaking of the Brimstone:** A brief affair, this skirmish between the Redwyne fleet and the meager navy of House Uller of Hellholt would end almost overwhelmingly in the Reachmen’s favor. Correctly predicting that the Dornish would attempt an ambush in their shallow-bottomed longboats when the Brimstone receded at night, Ser Myran Redwyne ordered his own forces to pull back to the river’s mouth - and fired a torrent of arrows at the forces under Lord Uller pursued, themselves being caught on a field of debris laid out by the Master of Ships as to block their advancement. The Dornish would suffer overwhelming casualties, while the Redwyne armada lost only a single individual: Pate the Woodcock, the pet of Ser Redwyne who was struck by an errant arrow during the battle.
* **The Mockingbird’s Fury:** The sixth engagement would start much the same as had the first and third: both the Royal Fleet and the Prince’s would square off in the waters near Sunspear, though this time the latter was now flanked from the south by the Redwyne navy. Ending in an overwhelming victory for the Crown, the most notable event of this battle was of King Eddard’s brazen boarding of the enemy’s commanding vessel: incensed at the sight of the flagship that bore his own name now sailing against him, the Second Mockingbird ordered his own vessel to board King Eddard’s Wisdom at all costs, going so far as to sail through the enemy lines when an opening presented itself. According to eyewitness testimony, King Eddard would lead the boarding party himself, and the warrior-king personally cut down as many men as was years in his reign in his rage; upon the surrender of King Eddard’s Wisdom by Magister-General Iralos Vhassyl, the flagship’s namesake reportedly applauded the Lysene’s skill in battle, before taking his seized longsword of Valyrian Steel and throwing it into the ocean, so that “both of them could now be considered to have stolen from the other.” Despite this less-than-pleasant introduction to the man, Iralos would serve King Eddard from that day on after - and, with his defection, Prince Vorian lost his greatest admiral, and hope for winning the war.

* **The Sacking of Sunspear:** Though referred to such after the fact by the bards of Westeros, the siege of Sunspear was far from a sacking: when the royal host under King Eddard sought to land at the docks, they were met by a cog flying the lemon-dotted sigil of House Dalt alongside the rainbow colors of parlay. Offered a complete surrender of Sunspear and House Martell would he spare Prince Vorian’s life, His Grace refused - and said as much in far more graphic detail, dispatching the lemon-knight that had met him to relay a message of threats of grotesque violence against the Lord of Sunspear upon their next meeting. The city would fall in an hour’s time, with Ser Andrey Dalt, Commander of the Threefold Gate, ordering the gates thrown open as the royal host approached from land and sea alike. What remnants remained loyal to Prince Vorian held out in the Sandship; in three days’ time, they too would surrender, their supplies of grain and barley having been exhausted by the series of extravagant feasts held by the former Hand to celebrate his victories over the Royal Fleet. When all was said and done and Sunspear had truly been beaten, King Eddard would still fail at his ultimate goal of slaying the man that had bankrupted his kingdom: Prince Vorian would never be seen again, and, though later Master of Whispers would report sightings of the man in various Free Cities, no amount of coin or assassins King Eddard sent would bring about his death.