The Five Year War for Myr

The Five Years War for Myr was a conflict against the Free City of Myr the Free City of Braavos and their Alliance of the Narrow Sea. Norvos joined peacefully shortly after.

## Prelude

After the Six Wars Against Subjugation at the turn of the century, the city of Pentos had enjoyed the benefits of an unrestricted and unmatched trade alliance with the Free City of Braavos. After Lorath submitted following the Blockade of Lorath and the Battle of Lorassyon Wake, the Sealord Jarilos Prestayn’s gaze passed onto the neighboring Free Cities of Myr and Norvos. Acknowledging that Norvos would not be accessible by the Braavosis’ greatest asset, their navy, his attention settled upon that of Myr, and daughter settlements of Anlos and Pelosse.

## The Five Year War

### The Siege of Anlos

The Sealord Jarilos Prestayn arrived at the city of Pentos in the second moon of 271AA, accompanied by a vast navy of over a hundred warships. Aboard his flagship *Malachite Shield*, named for the sigil of his family, Prestayn rallied the Magisters of the city, and between the cities of Braavos and Pentos, as well as a slew of sellsword companies, a mighty army is raised, numbering near fifteen thousand strong. Marching south down the Trader’s Road, the primary route between Myr and Pentos, the force of the Alliance of the Narrow Sea arrived at the walled city of Anlos to the south of the Pentoshi flatlands.

Sealord Prestayn demanded their surrender, and offered them a place as members of the Alliance of the Narrow Sea, under guidance from the Free City of Pentos. The Justiciars, a group chosen by the Magisters of Myr to govern the city in their stead refuse, instead holding faith that Myr would deliver them. Thus began the Siege of Anlos.

Around three weeks into the siege, the sellsword company known as the Black Wings, supposedly formed by a deserter of the Night’s Watch of Westeros attempted to infiltrate into the city at nightfall. The defenders were alerted however, when one among the sellswords staggered his footing, tumbling loudly and unsubtly from the battlements. Garnering the ire of the Justiciars, the Black Wings were punished further with volley after volley of arrows and stones, forcing the newly formed company into retreat. They would later seek penitence from the Sealord by offering to serve as forward scouts for the armies of the Alliance.

There were no further attempts to break through the city’s defences, and instead rather the Alliance simply waited out Anlos’ supplies. After two moons of waning provisions, the city finally surrendered, and was quickly occupied by a Pentoshi-Braavosi army. Three of the four Justiciars bow at the Sealord’s approach, and merciful to his word, Prestayn makes the decision to spare the custodians of the city that comply with his commands. The fourth, the indignant Aerarro Bahyl, was hanged from the Last Struggle, a monstrous set of gallows found in the Thorn Plaza in the north of the city.

Consolidating their victory, the Sealord as well as his Magisters and Generals begin to plan their southward assault. Unbeknown to the Alliance of the Narrow Sea however, the Myrish had all the while been preparing for the inevitable march south by the Sealord's army.

### The Ambush of Long Lake

Shortly after the Alliance of the Narrow Sea had arrived with their force of sellswords at the city of Anlos, news reaches Myr. Calling the surrounding villages and towns to arms, the Magisters of Myr muster a force to match that of the fifteen thousand of Braavos and Pentos, supplemented all the more by the Guild of the Blue, a sellsword company strongly associated with the noble Drahar Family. Led by the famed Myrish General Tyros Drahar, the Myrish army marched north, deviating from the Trader’s Road to camp on the water’s edge of Long Lake.

Guided by reports from collaborators within the occupied city of Anlos, Tyros marches his army along the river Tunval, catching the joint Braavosi-Pentoshi army in the rear within a league of the city. Caught largely by surprise, due once again to the failings of the Black Wings, the Sealord’s army is forced into a blind retreat. The Pentoshi general Ralo Narratys tries to rally the men of Brazen Titans and Long Lances to him, but is slain at the hand of Tyros Drahar himself, wielding the ancestral greatsword of his family, *Viridian*.

In the aftermath of the Ambush of Long Lake, the forces of the Alliance of the Narrow Sea were forced further into the Pentoshi flatlands, allowing for the Myrish to approach the occupied city of Anlos. Rallying the residents of Anlos to rise up against their subjugators, the gates were thrown open within a week of the Myrish siege, and its residents liberated. In reward for their assistance as informers to the Myrish cause, the merchant twins Illo and Jaqyllo Malar are appointed as Justiciars along with those forced to bow before the Sealord.

It was a year later by the time that the forces of the Alliance of the Narrow Sea grew bold enough to approach Myrish lands once more.

### The Second Fall of Anlos; The War Continues

Defeated, the Sealord and his army retreated to Pentos, stewing in their failings. Sending his generals forth, Jarilos Prestayn, having doubled his previous loan from the Iron Bank, hired several more sellsword companies, including the Second Sons, Company of the Cat and Bright Banners, as well as extending the contracts held with the Brazen Titans and Long Lances. Marching south once more, the Sealord and his bolstered force do not simply camp outside Anlos for a second time, and instead build siege weaponry, with which they assault the city’s defences. With sellswords swarming the walls and through the broken gates, the city’s defenders are deftly defeated.

The Sealord, having been burned for his mercy, has all the Justiciars of the city executed, and the newly erected statue of Aerarro Bahyl, remembered as the Defiant, torn down and smashed with hammers into dust. For the smallfolk of the city, it might have seemed that very little changed in their day to day life, but the Alliance of the Narrow Sea with the Sealord at its head held the city of Anlos firmly in its grasp.

### Myrmen's Lament

Following consolidation after the taking of the city of Anlos, the Sealord's force marched south down the Trader's Road towards Myr itself without delay. For the first time in the series of conflicts remembered as the Five Year War for Myr, the forces of Braavos and Pentos met on the open field against the Myrish army of around twenty thousand. It would prove a decisive victory for the Sealord’s forces, punishing General Tyros Drahar and his men so violently that the battle would be named the Myrmen’s Lament in recognition of the scale of the Braavosi victory.

The Sealord split his army into four, attacking from the front with three of the divisions, whilst striking at the Myrish flank with the fourth, the soldiers having been transported by Lorathi trader cogs into the Sea of Myrth. As Tyros gives the order to charge, leading from his vanguard, the sky suddenly erupts with volley after volley of arrows and flame, and the Myrishmen take heavy casualties before they are even in range of what they had believed to be the entire of the Sealord’s force.

The charge continues nonetheless, and Tyros’ vanguard met with the Braavosi’s own. Hacking his way through footmen, serjeants and eventually the captain of Brazen Titans in turn, Drahar and the Guild of the Blue ravaged the army of the Alliance of the Narrow Sea for a few moments, before being forced into retreat by a counter-charge commanded by Captain Janos Darktide of the Long Lances.  Famed for his lance marked with Valyrian glyphs and symbols, supposedly to grant him protection, Darktide ran down Tyros’ uncle, Dorol, as well as numerous other men of the Guild of Blue.

Harried from the north and west, those Myrishmen that survived the onslaught withdrew to the east, towards the river Navari, and its source near the Violet Lake. Among those slain on the battlefield are the two sons of Magister Lysero Naerin, Tyros Drahar’s brother Maran, and fifteen thousand sellswords and Myrish soldiers. Two-score minor companies were eradicated on the battlefield of Myrmen’s Lament, and those that lingered on did so greatly depleted.

Myr was left unguarded, allowing the Braavosi-Pentoshi to make their approach.

### The First Siege of Myr

By the time that the Siege of Myr had continued into its second year, the number of raids upon the camps of the Sealord's armies had grown to their peak. Striking at the Braavosi and Pentoshi night in the night, or setting fires at the base of their siege equipment, it would be nearly another moon before one of the perpetrators could be caught and coerced into talking. Representing a resistance made up of the last of the men who survived the Myrmen’s Lament, he is eventually tortured into giving up the location of Tyros Drahar and the remainder of the Myrish army. Defiant in his last breath, Beleo, once a baker from Myr, spits in the face of his capturers, before laughing at the idea that they’ll ever be able to beat them, even if they now know their location.

With the siege ongoing, the Sealord sends men in search of the Myrish general, but they find nothing to suggest any truth in the saboteur’s words, for there are no signs of Tyros or his men near the river Murana or its source.

### The Stand at Violet Lake

After continued raids and sabotage attempts upon their siege weaponry as the Siege of Myr continues into its third year, a larger Pentoshi-Braavosi force is sent to investigate the rumoured presence of the Myrish General Tyros Drahar to the southeast. The Sealord commands the excurcion personally, leaving his cousin Malo to continue the siege in his stead.

Unlike before, the men of the Sealord find evidence of the Myrishmen nearby, locating their fortified encampment in the hills to the east of the Lake. Finding themselves suddenly surrounded by a much larger force, Tyros Drahar orders his men to hold against the Braavosi for as long as possible, prompting a valiant last stand that would last the best part of a week as the army of the Alliance of the Narrow Sea slowly destroy the defences built over the last year between them and the last resistance to their dominion over the territories of Myr.

True to his word, when the Sealord’s army finally broke through, Tyros and his few hundred men fight to the last man. The Myrish General is beaten in single combat with the Braavosi Vogan Antaryon, whose Valyrian steel longsword cleaves through the blade wielded by the Myrman and splits the commander from collarbone to hip.

### Volantis Enters the Fray

Whilst a sizeable proportion of the Sealord’s army had marched east to search the lands around the Violet Lake for Tyros Drahar, the Siege of Myr continued on nonetheless by a number deemed sufficient enough to still exist as an imposing threat to the residents of the city.

They are attacked nonetheless, but not by a force surging from the city gates, but from the sea, with a dead man at its head.

Having left a token force at the Violet Lake, along with his armour in the hands of his other brother Harlos, Tyros Drahar and just over four-thousand men had continued further southeast still, marching to the Free City of Volantis. Following petitions with the Triarchs to help Myr in its defiance against the growing strength of Braavos to the northwest, Tyros recruited a number of sellsail companies to transport a Volantene army into the Sea of Myrth, where they deliver a scathing strike against those men left to continue the siege. Malo Prestayn, cousin of the Sealord is captured during the assault, and his men given a choice between serving the Myrish, or facing death. The Brazen Titans and Second Sons are quick to accept a new contract with the Free City.

When the Sealord and his principle army returns to Myr, finding it defended by a revitalised force, and seemingly commanded by Tyros Drahar, back from the dead. Ordering a retreat, the joint Braavosi-Pentoshi force returns north to Anlos, and Myr celebrates its deliverance from the Sealord's grasp.

### The Second Siege of Myr, or the Sealord's Ire

After the second failure to conquer Myr, the Sealord, still eager to consolidate Braavosi control over the Narrow Sea decided finally to play to the Secret City's strengths, and starts by blockading the Sea of Myrth with the Braavosi navy, despite petitions from the Keyholders that it would leave the Bay of Braavos undefended from attack. Dismissing the concerns and reminding the people of Braavos of the strength of the Titan and Sellagoro's Shield, the blockade continues on regardless.

With the Volantene reinforcements now on the other side of the Velvet Hills following ongoing struggles with the Qohorik and Sarnori over the city of Essaria, the Myrish find themselves limited once again. When another army lands directly around the city, the Myrish have little time to respond, and little ability to defend themselves, beyond fortifications of the city. Whilst they are stockpiled to last a siege, the prospect of another siege causes public discontent to grow steeper and steeper each day.

Two moons into the Second Siege of Myr, riots break out in the city, supposedly starting in the Seasalt Market following an altercation regarding the soaring price of bread and meat. Violence erupts between the City Watch and the Myrish citizens when the forges and barracks of the Garnet District are raided by the rioters, and soon much of the city is ablaze, including the manses of the Taenos and Sanolis families. Qos Sanolis, his wife and their children are butchered by the protesters in the streets of Myr, and the Magisters are forced to take notice.

They surrender to the Sealord.

Demanding they bend the knee, Jarilos Prestayn offers a choice. Rise again as part of the Alliance of the Narrow Sea, or remain kneeling, but at the axeman's block. All the magisters vote in favour for the former, and thus Myr joins the Alliance of the Narrow Sea, after five years of bloodshed.

## Aftermath

Shortly after the fall of Myr to Braavosi control, emissaries from the city of Great Norvos arrived at Braavos, seeking an agreement of non-aggression and ongoing trade deals. The Norvoshi join the Alliance of the Narrow Sea peacefully upon the signing of a series of documents referred to as the Pact in the eighth moon of 278AA, and have enjoyed membership ever since.

To this day, there is great unrest within the city of Myr and its territories. Many within the city seek freedom from the rules and laws put in place by the Sealord in distant Braavos, particularly those banning the provision of the slave trade. As the other Daughters continue to prosper on the trafficking of bedslaves and warriors alike, the Magisters of Myr have started to feel their coinpurses lighten, despite the promises from the Sealord otherwise. Something has to change soon for the city of Myr, and soon, but the exact details remain to be seen.

Tyros Drahar and the Guild of the Blue fled together to Lys after the war.