War of the Last Dragon

The **War of the Last Dragon** was the longest and most brutal conflict the Seven Kingdoms had known in living memory. Not even Aegon and Daenerys before her had unleashed so much chaos; the fault lines beneath House Tyrell’s realm were exposed and exploited.

Not a single region was spared from the Dragon Queen’s onslaught as Garlan I defended his kingdom on several fronts. The tide was turned only by the diplomatic finesse and guile of his cousin, Mace Wildflowers, who boldly sought to bring the war back to Daena’s home turf.

The royal bastard persuaded the disgruntled magisters of Myr to rebel, compelling Daena to redirect her reinforcements to crush the revolt. Westeros’ defenders were given a much needed respite before launching a final offensive against the invaders.

In 381 AC, three years after the war began, Daena and Drogon were both slain in battle. The last dragon, and the last Targaryen pretender, were both defeated, and King Garlan I returned to King’s Landing a triumphant hero.

## Prelude

### Rebirth from the Ashes

The defeat of Daenerys and Aegon Targaryen in the War of the Two Dragons marked the end of an era for the Seven Kingdoms. Any desire to return the house of the dragon to the Iron Throne was squashed, and the Targaryen name all but disappeared from history. They were remembered in Westeros as nothing more than a failed dynasty of would-be conquerors. Their bloodline yet endured, but with their empire in Slaver’s Bay dismantled as soon as they had left and the last living dragon, Drogon, having abandoned them, they were reduced to a family of upstarts trying to carve out their place among the mercantile elite of the free city of Pentos.

While the Seven Kingdoms consolidated under the rule of House Tyrell, the children of Daenerys and Aegon put aside their parents’ vision for smaller ambitions; their goal became survival and eventual prosperity. The eldest of the new generation, Aelor Targaryen, grew up to command what had remained of the Golden Company and made his fortune as a sellsword. He took on contracts from Qarth to Lorath throughout his years, but it was always Pentos where he returned and later in his life, where he would pursue his political agendas.

The Pentoshi had lived in the shadow of the Titan of Braavos for as long as they could remember, and Aelor sought to remedy that. With the Golden Company and several aggrieved magisters behind him, the son of the Two Dragons cultivated great influence, and eventually won the election for the Prince of Pentos. Previously a purely ceremonial title to hold, he gave it new meaning.

Using his own wealth, he commissioned a new fleet of warships to bring the might of his sellswords to the seas, but to avoid scrutiny from Braavos, he had them constructed by his allies in Myr and Tyrosh - slaver guilds and cartels, who were eager to expand their trade to Pentos. By the time the Sealord demanded he adhere to their age-old treaty at the threat of war, Aelor had possessed an army and fleet large enough to reject him. It was a bold move but a necessary one for his city to regain its freedoms, and the magisters were willing to overlook the rise of a despot in favor of that prospect.

During Aelor Targaryen’s reign, Pentos once again became a power to be respected upon the Narrow Sea, but it was his daughter, Daena, who realized the full potential of their house’s newfound strength. In 348 AC, the whole world was startled when after decades of haunting the Stepstones from the solitude of his rocks, Drogon flew north with a rider on his back.

Daena Targaryen was the first rider of Drogon since her grandmother, and her ambition and tenacity rivaled that of the fabled Mother of Dragons, too. What set her above was strategy and patience; Daena was a pragmatic woman, who was said to walk several steps ahead of her peers, with the world itself being her cyvasse board. And she knew that force and fear were not the only means of conquest. Following her taming of Drogon, the archipelago that had served as an impregnable retreat to the Bastards of the Tide thanks to her beast, was left exposed - allowing Essosi merchants and Westerosi lords alike to get rid of the pirate problem that had plagued them for over a decade.

Daena wouldn’t always take credit for the events she set in motion, but her impact would be felt regardless. On her father’s behalf but at her own suggestion, she led the Golden Company towards Lorath to liberate the city from the God-King of Ibb, a man of mysterious origins, who had seized power from the Thousand and led his worshipers on a campaign to raid and terrorize the northern shores of Essos, including the thought-invincible city of Braavos.

Burning the God-King’s fleet and reducing the Port of Ibben to ashes were her first great victories, and they were but the beginning. Lorath was the first to bend before her, and in the next two decades, the free cities became her tributaries one-by-one - either by virtue of conquest or diplomacy. What she did was unprecedented, and when Prince Aelor breathed his last in 363 AC, the magisters of Pentos unanimously voted to abolish elections and grant the title of Prince to the House of Targaryen permanently.

Her deeds inspired the formation of a new cult in Lys that foretold the rebirth of the Valyrian empire under the rule of dragons, and came to worship Daena and Drogon as the harbingers of that new era while gradually seizing power for the descendants of Old Valyria in their city. Not a year after her accession as Princess of Pentos, the Lyseni invited Daena to a grand celebration, where they acknowledged her as the city’s head of state and proclaimed her the Queen of the Narrow Sea.

Daena’s ambitions, however, extended war beyond coastal cities. A proxy-war between Braavos and Volantis that was fought by Norvosi and Qohorik men gave her the perfect opportunity to begin her expansion eastward. She brokered a ceasefire between the two landlocked cities and turned her gaze to Volantis. The war she fought there lasted years but yielded a decisive result; for the first time in history, the Free Cities, except for Braavos, were united under one banner.

### Long Live the King!

The waves created by the Dragon Queen of Pentos were felt in Westeros. King Alester I Tyrell passed away in 377 AC, leaving every burden of his troublesome reign to his young and inexperienced son, Garlan. The War of White and Gold robbed the Crown of a significant portion of its treasury, leading to difficulties in returning debts to the Iron Bank, tension between several great houses of the Realm still brewed, and all that combined with House Targaryen’s sudden rise to power in the East left the fresh king shorthanded.

A few of his councilors suggested action; the Westerosi had defeated dragons once and they could defeat one again, but talks of a campaign across the Narrow Sea were superficial and ultimately bore no fruit. Most of the nobles concerned with the affairs of the East were confident that the Free Cities would eventually reject Daena’s tyranny and toss her aside like they had their Valyrian overlords right after the Doom.

Despite his desire to serve his people better than his father ever had, King Garlan had but one choice in the matter; listen to his advisors and wait. No different than his predecessor. The signs were there for all to see, but like those around him, he didn’t anticipate what was coming. The Dragon of the East sought to build an empire to last generations, and though she bided her time, Westeros had always been part of her plans.

When she struck, it was swift and unseen as a serpent’s bite, and her venom spread to every corner of the Seven Kingdom. It was up to a king yet too green to defend his country against a seasoned conqueror, who would bring the greatest war the continent had ever seen to him.

## Path of Conquest

### The First Bite

It began in Dorne. In the wake of Daena’s conquests and the various cultural shifts that had simultaneously occurred in the Free Cities, refugees from Tyrosh, Lys, and Myr came to the ports of Westeros; Weeping Town, Planky Town, and Sunspear chief among their destinations. Some of them brought their unwanted troubles to the land only to meet a prompt and bloody response from the local nobility, but a different kind of migration followed them as well.

Merchants from far and wide came to sell their goods, and sellswords, who could no longer find contracts in the Free Cities, arrived in southern kingdoms in the hundreds. Some were hired to respond to banditry and outlaw raids, but all in all, it seemed they were just as out of luck as they had been on the other side of the Narrow Sea. However, several of the small companies that crossed over under the pretense of seeking work, had already been in the employ of a generous payer.

They infiltrated every major port and holdfast along the coast of Dorne as freelancers and guards, and one hellishly hot night near the end of 378 AC they fulfilled their hidden purpose. From Sunspear to Starfall, the rookeries of every holdfast were raided, and lords, ladies, and maesters were awakened from their slumber to find their ravens all gone - either killed in a brutal massacre or poisoned through means of subtlety. All would remember the attack as the Night of Dancing Shadows later - named after the shrouded riders that were seen riding off with the horses from the stables - but right then, nobody knew that it was a coordinated strike that spearheaded an invasion.

The morning after, hundreds of ships bearing the sails of the red dragon showed up near Sunspear with many more on their way around the continent. The Dornish were caught completely off-guard; their ravens were dead and their messengers moved slow in the desert. They were robbed of their surest means of warning the King of the imminent attack, and when news reached the latter, it was too late.

Undermanned, the knights and warriors of House Martell resisted the onslaught to the best of their ability, but the walls of the Sandship were stormed and seized within less than a day, and the Martells were forced to flee for the Mountains. Still, Drogon was nowhere to be with the invading force in Dorne. Sunspear was taken by an army of sellswords commanded by Prince Viserys Targaryen, Queen Daena’s eldest son and heir, and the assault on the Dornish coast was a mere decoy. The dragon herself was on her way to hit a bigger target, and those that saw her fleet pass could not send word to their neighbours.

### The Storming of the Southlands

Daena had amassed tens of thousands of sellswords in Essos, but the bulk of her army was made up of the Golden Company, which she had reformed and expanded throughout her conquests. However, their true strength lay not in their numbers and professionail training, but in their organization and ability to mobilize. The company was divided into seven legions of multiple thousands each. Her fleet carried four legions to invade the Arbor.

One would have expected a grand battle at sea, where roughly equal forces clashed until one side’s hard-earned victory, yet such is not the case when one side is reinforced by a dragon.

Drogon descended from the skies as a massive, black shadow, and he was larger than anyone could have imagined or chronicles of past wars suggested. It was said that Balerion the Black Dread could consume a carriage whole nearing two centuries old; Drogon’s head was the size of a war galley at the age of eighty. By all accounts, he was the largest of his kind witnessed in history, and when he was given the command by his rider he breathed hellfire.

The famous fleet of the Arbor burned and melted before a battle could even take place; the surviving vessels were captured and the Golden Company landed without much resistance. The Lord of the Arbor surrendered his island to the invaders, who promptly occupied the town of Ryamsport to establish a foothold at sea, while the fleet split in two with the larger half following their Queen to Oldtown.

News of the dragon rider’s victory at the Arbor spread quickly along the Honeywine and soon the Mander, but there was still little time to prepare the city’s defenses. The Hightowers could muster only a few thousand in addition to the city watch and Highgarden remained conveniently slow in its response. It was without surprise that when Daena flew Drogon above the Hightower itself, in Lord Hightower's absence his brother commanded his army to stand down, and surrendered the city. Whilst her legions began their march into the heart of the Realm, Daena ordered the maesters of the Citadel to send their white ravens to every castle and holdfast bearing her message.

She gave the lords and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms a simple choice: submit before her or perish. Her presence was known then to all. Her armies seized every holdfast in their trail that had the sense to follow the Hightower’s example, and the few that resisted were burned. But there were those that resisted.

A second southron army amassed at Brightwater Keep, made up of well-equipped and trained men with many mounted knights among their ranks. They met the invaders on the Roseroad near Smithyton, their purpose to halt them while Highgarden and King’s Landing could mobilize. The dragon they had heard about was nowhere to be seen in the skies, only five thousand men clad in golden armor. They didn’t know what they were up against.

The vanguard of the Golden Company greeted them, led by Daena’s right-hand and foremost general, Gaelon Qoherys, while the Dragon Queen herself stayed behind - watching the ensuing battle from afar. Her game was simple: she wanted to let Westeros know that dragonfire wasn’t her only source of strength.

Set to fight a pitched battle, the southrons got into formation and engaged the sellswords, leading with a cavalry charge right into the latter’s phalances with the aim to shock them into a quick rout. The company-men, however, proved much more resilient than they had anticipated. Soldiers fell on both sides, but the First Legion comprised battle-hardened veterans from Daena’s past wars; the Golden Company’s best. Their pikelines held firm in the face of battle-chargers and the cavalry was eventually turned back. Many had to retreat and others were forced to dismount after their horses had been impaled.

The infantry was no match to the invaders thereafter; the Honeywine’s last line of defense was routed and Daena’s army marched on toward Highgarden.

### War along the Mander

The heart of the Reach had been seized once by a dragonrider, and in the past eighty years, the Tyrells had time to prepare. As soon as they heard of Oldtown’s loss, the white rose called its banners, but rushing to their old vassal’s aid was never their intent. Since the War of the Two Dragons, the Tyrells had built an arsenal of scorpions of the design the Dornish had allegedly used centuries ago to bring down Queen Rhaenys- only hoping they’d never have to use them.

But desperate times called for not-so-desperate measures. The Reach could raise the largest individual army in the Seven Kingdoms even after the Sundering, and with the best known weapons against those flying beasts behind them, the Tyrells were prepared to halt the Dragon Queen’s progress for good. The echelons of the Golden Company that reached Highgarden were outnumbered three to one by knights and men-at-arms amassed under Lord Tyrell’s command, but this time, Drogon accompanied them.

Daena was preparing to unleash the same hellfire upon the reachmen as she had upon the prized fleet of House Redwyne, but her opponents were faster. Before she could give Drogon the command, the dragon cried out and took a sudden turn. His massive frame served as a perfect target for the scorpions’ spear-like bolts. What happened then surprised everyone on the battlefield. Even though several missiles didn’t miss and one hit the dragon directly in his massive jaw, he didn’t seem to falter or begin to descend.

Drogon’s scales were tougher than any of his kind before. Most of the bolts could barely scratch them and were deflected as though they were arrows, and the couple that did touch his flesh were felt as nothing more than fleabites. The next turn was his, and Daena, having learned the rough location of the scorpions based on the missiles’ trajectory, made sure that his response would grace his aggressors.

Thousands burned that day in the battle that came to be known as the Pyres of Highgarden, and not one of Daena’s soldiers fell. Survivors fled or submitted themselves as prisoners, and for the second time in history, Targaryen banners were flown above Highgarden. It was there that the queen made her seat, with the wealth of the Arbor and Oldtown supplying her men.

Daena had a clear path to King’s Landing, but whilst she sent her reinforcements to seize the remaining castles along the Mander, she took her Vanguard north - to the Westerlands. The Iron Throne could wait - she made sure King Garlan would be occupied without her.

### The Western Campaign

Following her rapid conquest of the Reach, Daena moved to take on Westeros’ most prevalent source of wealth and arguably the second most powerful region in terms of military strength. The first castle in her path along the Ocean Road, Copperstone, was razed to the ground, and her legions moved on to assault Crakehall, while another force marched further inland to besiege Cornfield.

Though the former held a greater strategic importance, Daena elected to join the fray at the latter. She wanted a swift advance on the Goldroad as part of her strategy to gain control of most supply-lines. But with no dragon to melt their walls, the defenders of Crakehall proved hardy opponents to Captain-General Qoherys. While Daena burned her way through the Fieldmarch, the main Lannister host that had been mustered at Lannisport arrived at Crakehall and lifted the siege.

The First Legion of the Golden Company was forced to retreat, and in the following weeks, several skirmishes took place between them and the Westerlanders along the southern borders. Though their clashes always resulted in a stalemate since the lifting of the siege, the capital of the West was spared from their advance. This forced Daena to halt her march and let her armies reconnect, culminating in the Battle of the Goldvein.

A pitched battle, the Lannisters met the invading army south of Silverhill, and with House Serrett’s men-at-arms joining them, their odds shaped up to be equal. Equal, because once again, the Dragon Queen chose not to be present, although for different reasons. After instructing the Captain-General to deal with the Westerlarnders, Daena flew her dragon into the mountains to burn Deep Den and the Golden Tooth - the single most important border castles of the Westerlands.

Drogon’s fire melted wrought stone and the hardened earth of the mountains alike, and left behind nothing but ruin. The major mountain passes of the Westerlands were entirely blocked by rubble and massive rocks. The rider didn’t stop there, though. She continued towards the Riverlands, where she burned several holdfasts before turning back to rejoin her host.

Much to her disappointment, her second-in-command was defeated at the Goldvein and lost about a third of his men in the rout, but at the very least kept the Westerlanders busy in the follow-up skirmishes. When the dragon returned, of course, the latter no longer stood a chance. There was no surviving dragonfire, and if anything, Daena admired the resolve of the Westerosi.

It would be a while until the beaten lords could muster their strength again, and she moved into the next region to repeat the course. Seizing Lannisport and Casterly Rock and then moving into the Riverlands from the Riverroad was never her true intention.

The ravens she had sent to the Iron Islands carried a different message.

### The Iron Menace

Daena was aware of the Ironborns' recent grievance with the Westerlands, and the message she had sent to their high lords sought to exploit that. It was not a threat, but an invitation. She had told them to raid the West and take what they desire, promising them that whatever they could seize from would remain theirs after she had finished her conquest. She didn't ask them to fight for her, but to fight for themselves, and her rhetoric found many listening ears.

In 379 AC, a fleet of one hundred longships, crewed by reavers from every great island of the archipelago, set sail for the the Westerlands. The ships of Fair Isle didn't stand a chance, and while the bulk of the Lannister forces were battling the Golden Company to the south, the castles along the western shores had been left vulnerable. Dozens of settlements were pillaged, and wealthy towns such as Feasfires and Kayce were robbed blind. The Ironborn terrorized the Westerlands for months and they felt righteous in their savage cause; the Lannisters had wronged them, and now they had the opportunity to retaliate.

After beating the Lannisters at sea, they didn't spare their precious city either. The iron reavers hit the harbor with the power of a tidal wave, and the ensuing skirmish with the city watch ultimately yielded them victory. They were as fearsome as brutal as they were remembered, and everyone caught in their path of destruction was reminded again. They had stormed and sacked Lannisport within, and took everything their vessels could bear; they stole gold and jewelry in amounts they had never beheld before, emptied dozens of granaries for grain, and pulled innocent women from their homes to take as their salt-wives. It was said that their hundred ships were loaded so full with their hoard from Lannisport that some of them sank under the weight on their way back home.

When there was nothing left to ravage, they were gone as quick as they had come. Not since Balon's rebellion had the Ironborn slighted Casterly Rock so much, and their deeds would not be forgotten for a good while to come.

Not all denizens of the Iron Islands possessed such bloodthirst and greed, however. There were those that had enough of the practices of the Old Ways, and frowned upon their countrymen that had repeatedly chosen to undermine their standing with the rest of the Realm. After the war, they would have a word with the scum.

## The King’s Response

### Call to Arms

After news of the seizure of Oldtown and Highgarden reached the Red Keep, the young king called upon all the great lords of the Realm to answer the threat. Harrenhal and Storm’s End were the first to raise their banners, and within a couple weeks, thousands arrived from the Riverlands and Stormlands at the king’s muster. Meanwhile, the houses north of the Trident were preparing to join with the Northmen, and the houses of Cape Wrath were amassing a fleet to challenge Prince Viserys at Sunspear.

The Eyrie remained oddly silent, and despite Garlan’s request, no ships came from Gulltown and Wickenden to reinforce the Royal Fleet. However, that was the smallest of his troubles. Dorne fell victim to likely the most successful ambushes in history on a grand scale, but the forces that held Sunspear were but a portion of the Targaryen fleet, and Daena hadn’t taken all she had to invade the Reach, either. Another fleet had yet to land.

Only when the hinterlands had been disarmed did the final contingent of the Golden Company enter the fray. And they knocked right on the front door. A fleet of two-hundred warships from Pentos, Tyorsh, and Myr that had waited for their moment hiding in the Stepstones, sailed up north and entered Blackwater Bay. The Royal Fleet had been waiting, but without the reinforcements from the Vale, it was outclassed. Had it not been for the talent of the admiral in command, they would have been obliterated.

The ships of the Crownlands awaited the invaders in a crescent formation, which they could utilize to circle their opponents and inflict significant losses even in spite of their smaller numbers. Ships were damaged and sunk on both sides in large numbers, and though the Royal Fleet was forced into a scattered retreat, they had managed to create a dent in the Company's strength. Even if nothing stopped them from landing at Duskendale and taking the town, along with the islands of Driftmark and Dragonstone. Prince Viserys led the Eastern Invasion himself - having left only a token force to defend Sunspear.

### The Eastern Frontier

Unlike her ancestors, Daena didn’t bank the success of her campaign entirely on shock and awe, but also committed to the strategy at a much grandiose scale. She battered the Seven Kingdoms on all fronts - the superior mobilization of her forces and the simultaneous execution of her strikes eliminating almost all risk factors. Her dragon didn’t have to be present in the Crownlands to hand the king defeat.

As soon as he was alerted of the Royal Fleet’s loss, Garlan garrisoned the walls of King’s Landing with five-thousand men in addition to the city watch, and took the fifteen-thousand he had from the Stormlands and Riverlands to Duskendale. He was advised by his commanders that the Golden Company wouldn’t want to waste time defending a small town if their intention was rapid advance, and they were right.

The sellswords were lined up in tight formations before the gates of Duskendale, Prince Viserys at their head on horseback. Like at Highgarden, the royal forces outnumbered the invaders, but Daena’s heir didn’t seem threatened. He, in fact, waved a white-flag and invited the young monarch for a sit-down right there in the open field while their men were on stand-by behind, anxious about the looming battle or eager for bloodshed.

Prince Viserys offered King Garlan simple terms; listen to his mother and stand aside, or be burned by dragonfire, granted he survived the Golden Company on the battlefield. Garlan didn’t need his advisors to know the answer to that; he was going to defend his country whatever it took, and a smug foreign prince wouldn’t shake his conviction. He gave Viserys war.

After returning to his lines, the king gave the signal to charge. More than three-thousand horses galloped forward to shatter the enemy’s resolve, but something felt off. The company-men didn’t welcome the cavalry with a barrage of arrows as battle-tactics usually dictated; they stood still in their formations and Viserys awaited them calmly near the road leading into the town with only a handful of his bodyguards protecting him.

At the same time, loud and unfamiliar sounds echoed from beyond the walls, attributed by some to warhorns, yet too animalistic to exactly place. It couldn’t be the dragon - they would have seen a dragon. As the cavalry closed in, the gates of Duskendale opened and the sellswords parted their ranks to make way on the road. The Westerosi no longer had to guess what they had heard; elephants.

The Golden Company didn’t invade the continent without their single greatest assets. Their war elephants trumpeted in unison as they charged past the gate one by one, their long tusks reinforced with wooden spikes while archers and javelin-throwers were ready to strike from their backs. The cavalry tried to halt and disengage, but it was too late. The giant beasts waded through the mounted knights wreaking havoc, then crushed into the infantry lines in multiple columns as they spread out. Within the span of minutes, the odds turned to favor the invaders, whose foot soldiers followed in the trail of chaos left by the elephants.

King Garlan immediately called a retreat to spare as many lives as possible. The Company’s skirmishers caught up and began massacring the fallen and scattered, leaving not one soul alive. The king made the right decision by falling back; in the safety of the Red Keep, he could still mount a defense of his city. And if the rumors were true, Daena was waging war in the Westerlands, leaving him perhaps enough time to deal with the imminent threat of the prince.

Meanwhile, holdfasts and settlements near the capital fell into Targaryen hands, and the vanguard that had been previously held up at Bitterbridge was on its way to join the eastern frontier. The Siege of King’s Landing commenced shortly after the two forces had joined at Hayford and their ships had blockaded the harbor.

Garlan needed a plan, a shred of hope to see a way out from the worst situation a king could have ever dealt with. The Vale lay dormant, the North was slow to mobilize, and a message from the Golden Tooth claimed that Daena had already burned through the Westerlands, which could only mean she was well on her way to bring the same fate to the Trident.

### The White Rose’s Bastard

The Small Council tried to provide their young king with counsel, but the truth was, they were just as lost as he. Garlan turned to the only person he could always rely on, ever since they were children: his cousin, Mace Wildflowers, bastard of Prince Lyonel Tyrell. The general sentiment towards Mace in the Red Keep was ignorance at best; he was the illegitimate son of a rebel, whom the late King Alester chose to raise merely out of guilt, and whom Garlan should have exiled long ago according to a few.

As it happened though, the prince and the bastard grew up as brothers in the care of an absentee father, and had only each other to count on. In their chivalric tale, Garlan was the hero and Mace his loyal shadow - the sword and the hammer that tempered it. And though the former often saved the latter from beatings, it was often his cousin’s wit that in turn got him out of trouble. Wit, that over the years had only sharpened.

Having evaluated Daena’s strategy so far, the Small Council could conclude that it was her relentless exploitation of every weakness and fault the Seven Kingdoms’ recent history had facilitated that ultimately enabled her unparalleled success. Mace suggested that they do by her example and bring the war to ***her*** turf, where she would least expect. Having travelled the Free Cities and possessing a familiarity with their customs and peoples, Lyonel Tyrell’s bastard was the one wild-card Daena could have not anticipated, and he volunteered to undertake the task himself.

Mace snuck out from the besieged city with the help of smugglers at the dead of night and made for Weeping Town at haste to find passage to Essos. His destination were the Three Daughters, the cities that served as the base of Daena’s power; her wealth and reinforcements came from them, and the bastard intended to rob her of both.

He sailed to Myr, where he had made a few good friends among the magisterial families in the past, and he was quick to turn to them for information. It wasn’t much of a surprise to learn that most of the guilds were displeased at the loss of trade in favor of supporting the war effort, but the ruling classes of Tyrosh, Lys, and even Myr, placed almost fanatical faith in the dragon’s ability to conquer a whole continent. They had been promised lands, wealth, and slaves beyond measure, yet the cooperation of the bankers and merchant-guilds depended entirely on how fast those promises could be delivered. If the war was to drag out for too long, they were willing to pull their support and stop paying the sellswords.

To Mace and his men, that was enough to devise a plan. In addition to the trusted companions he had gathered back home, he enlisted the aid of local cartel members and ruffians, who, when promised enough coin, were not afraid to dirty their hands. It was the merchants that needed a little encouragement to dare challenge the dragon’s regime, and to that end, Mace utilized every tool at his disposal.

Sabotage, manipulation, and assassination were second nature to him. He sent catspaws to Tyrosh and Lys to eliminate key members of Daena’s elite, while he remained in Myr to instigate a revolt through the same means. The local thugs paid by Mace carried out a hit in the very heart of the Myrish market at the bright of the day; they attacked and stabbed the Prince-Admiral’s wife and sisters to death along with their armed retinue, and left behind a silken carpet with the words “Valar Morghulis” etched on it in blood.

The Prince-Admiral was the most influential magister in Myr and close friend and ally to Queen Daena. Usually reliable and level-headed, he took the murder of his beloved as an open threat against the rulers of the city and responded accordingly. At first, he began cracking down on the cartels and gangs operating in the markets, but as murders became a more frequent occurrence, the people he had never trusted to begin with - the merchants that paid Daena’s mercenaries - drew his suspicion. He ordered a city-wide lockdown and ordered his justiciars to launch an investigation with the city watch in tow and root out the perpetrators.

His move aggravated the merchant-class, whose members were being rounded up and imprisoned. Worst, however, was his resulting treatment of the sellswords, who were long overdue to sail to Westeros but instead were searched and questioned as potential culprits. The Prince-Admiral made the grave mistake of mistreating the men that let him stay in power in the first place.

Horonno Hothar, Master of the Glassmakers Guild, didn’t sit around waiting for prosecution and ordered the sellswords in his pay to attack the city watch. At that point, the intention of the merchants was no longer to compel the nobility for a compromise, but to put them to the sword. Sheer chaos rumbled through the streets of the magnificent city like an earthquake, and Mace and his band of misfits were at the epicenter of it. The aftershock reached Lys and Tyrosh as well; the Archon and his family were deposed and disposed of, and in the Lovely City, tens of thousands, including slaves, rose up against their dragon-worshipping elite.

The Three Daughters were done with Daena’s war as merchant-princes once again seized control in the bloodiest of affairs in their history, and within a few months, the Dragon Queen would feel the loss. Mace Wildflowers dismantled the core of her empire through deceit and trickery, and at the end of 379 AC, a whole year since the war had begun, it looked like the Seven Kingdoms would stand a chance.

## The Tides Turn

### Grim Tidings

The Dragon Queen was in the middle of her campaign in the Riverlands when her son sent her a message from the Siege of King’s Landing that the expected reinforcements from Myr and Tyrosh had not yet arrived. The rapid nature of her campaign gave her a great advantage over the Westerosi, but the sellswords and sellsails she had enlisted were of paramount importance to her conquest.

The second message she received not long after was far more concerning. There was no delay; her reinforcement wasn’t going to arrive at all, for the Three Daughters had been engulfed in the flames of rebellion and seceded from her empire. Daena was infuriated, and a change of course was required in her plans. Burning the approaching Northern host could wait; she turned her dragon around and took flight towards King’s Landing. It was time to crown her conquest.

Smallfolk and lords covered in fear as the dragon flew past their homes and the men of the Golden Company cheered on for their queen in exultant joy. The defenders of the royal capital stood firm in the face of Prince Viserys’ onslaught, but his mother was something else. When Drogon appeared on the horizon they were shaken to their very cores; the dragons from stories of old did not compare to the monstrosity hatched by Daenerys Targaryen.

A black shadow descending on the beleaguered city was the last thing witnessed by thousands of soldiers and citizens. With a single breath, Drogon burned a path from the Old Gate to the Red Keep, leaving nothing but rubble, ash, and charred corpses behind. As the gates of her ancestors’ seat crumbled, the dragon crushed two towers with a single swing of his tail before Daena landed him atop Maegor’s Holdfast to watch her legions charge into the city.

The streets turned red within a matter of minutes, and by the time the invaders had reached the Red Keep itself, there was barely anyone left to man the garrison. King’s Landing fell to the enemy, but the king, or any of his kin, were nowhere to be found. They had escaped through the city’s underground tunnels, abandoning their home so that they may continue to fight another day.

The dragon queen did not concern herself and left the matter of the boy-king in her son’s hands, whom she named the Prince of the Red Keep to rule in her absence. Conquering a kingdom meant little at the loss of another; she left immediately to put an end to the insurrection and bring back order to her dominion across the Narrow Sea.

She had carried out the most successful invasion and occupation of Westeros in history, but the war was far from over. As it would turn out, the opponents she was up against - two young men trying to hold together a dysfunctional country - were quite resourceful.

### The Court at Harrenhal

Utilizing the maze-like structure built deep below the Red Keep and the city at the orders of King Maegor, King Garlan and his sisters, along with the knights of the Kingsguard and other nobles of the court, were able to escape the city before the dragon attacked. Despite their dire situation, Mace’s distraction in the Daughters had worked, and it gave the young king hope that the war could yet be won.

Daena Targaryen had crippled the southern half of his realm, but there were more out there willing to stand against her. After the loss of the capital, Garlan fled north to the Riverlands, where he sought shelter from House Baelish and established a temporary court at Harrenhal to direct the war efforts from. With the dragon queen far away, he had the chance to retaliate and weaken the forces she had left behind.

News of his whereabouts were quick to spread, of course, and Prince Viserys didn’t hesitate to respond. Now the ruler of King’s Landing, he sent fifteen thousand men to besiege Harrenhal. Though a shadow of its former self, the castle of Black Harren could still withstand an assault, long enough for the direwolf to arrive and relieve them. The Starks had gathered all their strength, uniting Northmen and Wildlings into a single army.

On the way south, their ranks had been reinforced by the troops of Houses Mallister and Blackwood, and even a host flying the banners of their old enemy, House Frey. Together they made for a formidable force, which was capable of overwhelming the besiegers and scaring them into a retreat. The famous Golden Company, it seemed, wasn’t as tough without a dragon to earn their victories - or so was the sentiment in the victorious army.

Still, winning one battle didn’t win the war. His eastern neighbours, who had refused his call to arms at the onset of the invasion, were yet to honor their oaths. While the Realm was under attack, the Heir to the Eyrie, Ronnel Arryn, occupied the Sisters, which had been given to the North a decade ago in the wake of the Falcon’s Gambit. The Arryns were safe between the Mountains of the Moon, and had Daena visited them on dragonback and demanded they bend, they would have lost nothing by swearing to the dragon as they had before. They needed a good reason to give up their neutrality.

The on-going war presented the worst time to meddle in petty politics, but King Garlan was thankful to have Lord Stark in Harrenhal to discuss a subject of intricate nature. The Sistermen had caused the North a lot of grievance in the past; punishing them and the Arryns by handing their islands over to the Starks had seemed the right decision during King Alester’s reign, but also contributed to the Realm’s fracturing. His son was going to have none of that. As before, only a united Westeros had a chance at beating dragons.

With the aid of his Hand, he managed to bring Lords Arryn and Stark to the table, and they came to a surprisingly swift conclusion. The Starks were willing to cede the Sisters, but they required guarantee from the Arryns that something like the Gambit wouldn’t occur again. In truth, there was nothing the North wanted from the Vale then, but Garlan gave the former full authority over the waters of Bite and also promised the construction of fifteen new warships for White Harbor - their costs fully covered by the Crown.

In the next battle, fought near Maidenpool, the knights of the Vale - numbering five-thousand with their men-at-arms - had joined into the fray as well, and their ferocity earned the king a decisive victory. The tides turned in Westeros’ favor; while Daena gave the Daughters fire and blood, the united front Garlan had brought together presented a thorn in Prince Viserys’ side.

### The Prince and the King

The Dragon Queen’s heir was a talented commander and a warrior in his own right, if only overshadowed by the success of his mother. Spearheading the conquest on his own was his chance to distinguish himself, and losing battles to a green boy was the exact opposite of what he had tried to achieve. The occupied territories in the south were actively recovering their strength as well, and rumors had it that a host of Stormlanders and Reachmen was gathering near Ashford.

Viserys wanted to put a swift end to the Garlan’s recent success. When their armies met near Wildburrows, looking ahead to another pitched battle, he invited the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms for a parlay. The truth was that despite the recent victories the latter had earned, Viserys still had a vast advantage by exerting control over the major keeps and ports from the Arbor to King’s Landing, and that gave him a solid ground to make demands. He made the king the offer that if he gave up his titles and bent before the dragon now, his house could stay in power and rule a piece of Queen Daena’s empire as a tributary.

Garlan chose battle.

Following the initial clash of their cavalries and an exchange of arrows, the infantries clashed in a bloody melee. Despite its previous losses, the men of the Golden Company fought with renewed fervor. Their elephants no longer had their initial shock value, but having them on the battlefield was still a powerful boon. Their victory was on the horizon, and when Viserys spotted Garlan amidst the fighting men, he decided to seize the opportunity. Calling his Dragonguard in line, he pushed through the enemy lines to engage the king himself.

The targeted charge was successful and melee quickly ensued between the two commanders and their guards, and as the fighting went on, Viserys challenged Garlan to a duel between only the two of them.

The king accepted, and their dance of steel began, and a victor soon emerged. Viserys was the more experienced fighter of the two, but Garlan stood his ground as well, having been trained by the best knights in the Realm. Their skills were a match in practice, but one of them had been bound to make a mistake. The Targaryen managed to yank away Garlan’s shield after a close, leaving the king with only Victory in his hands while he fought with his family’s bastard sword, Blackfyre. His blade had a greater reach and delivered a few strikes that were only halted by his opponent’s plate armor.

The two Valyrian Steel blades clamored and sparked as they met repeatedly, but Viserys’ ferocious flurry of swings was forcing Garlan to take steps backward, his footwork struggling to keep up. The king eventually stumbled and fell over a body, but seeing the prince close in on him with the intent to kill, he rolled aside and got up into a crouch, from where he lunged himself full force at Viserys and knocked him over.

They ended up wrestling in the dirt, their swords no longer in play. Larger and stronger, the odds favored the Viserys, who shortly after the fall came out on the top with his fingers around Garlan’s neck. Desperate, the king tried to reach for anything in his reach, until he spotted a dagger sheathed on the prince’s belt. Without thinking twice, he pulled it and drove it under the Targaryen’s jaw.

His Kingsguard arrived just in time to free him of the weight collapsing on him and carry him off the battlefield, for the Golden Company succeeded in routing them. The battle may have been lost, but slaying Queen Daena’s heir was a victory in and of itself.

When the dragon returned from her reconquest of the Daughters with a new army behind her, she expressed only mild disappointment over the painful loss, and promised her soldiers that she would give them victory. Daena’s path of conquest until then was the result of a methodically executed strategy she had been planning for years, but now that her son had been slain, she rid herself of every reservation she had. She was going to give Westeros a true taste of her wrath.

## Dragonfall

### The Weapon

Mace Wildflowers had returned to Westeros shortly after the fall of King’s Landing, and he didn’t come empty-handed. Collapsing a cornerstone of the Targaryen dominion through deception and sabotage was not something a wise man would brag about, but a few had kept an eye on his progress. Before he had left Myr, a woman with Braavosi accent, who claimed to be a messenger from the Iron Throne’s friends, handed him a satchel, and when asked what it was, she uttered the words, *“Valar dohaeris”* and disappeared.

The occurrence had been a strange one, but after seeing the satchel’s contents for himself, Mace knew that it had to be delivered to his cousin at once. It was the blueprint of a weapon, which looked like the best tool in their arsenal that could help them actually win the war. After docking at Weeping Town with the gift closely guarded on his person, he made haste for Harrenhal.

King Garlan called his maesters and best available siege engineers to review what his cousin had brought. The blueprint was of a weapon deadlier than any built before, and reasonably so, for it was designed against dragons. The weapon was a massive scorpion fixed atop a foundation of stone, and the spears it would fire had Valyrian Steel tips with four hooks, designed to pierce the armor-like scales of the largest dragons and plunge into their flesh with lethal force else possessed only by their own jaws.

Five of these scorpions had been commissioned to be built in secret, and only the king and select few in his circles knew of their existence. Their construction was completed shortly after Daena had returned to finish her conquest, and the Westerosi had only to stall her long enough to be able to put their new arsenal to use. Whether the weapons would work was yet to be seen. For the time being, they were the last hope of the Seven Kingdoms.

### The Last Dragon

The year was 381 AC, and the weeks leading up to the final battle were a series of skirmishes throughout the Crownlands and the Riverlands. Several smaller holdfasts and even castles belonging to prominent houses were abandoned to prevent outright sieges and give Daena a reason to melt them. King Garlan divided his army into several small forces of only a few hundred soldiers each as well. His strategy was to avoid large massed encounters and preserve as many lives as possible until he could afford a battle in the open field once more.

He gave the Dragon Queen no opportunity to scorch thousands with a single breath of her beast. Instead, he focused on applying guerilla tactics and the disruption of the Golden Company’s supply lines. Even a dragon as mighty as Drogon couldn’t be in multiple places at once, and the king’s goal was to wear off his enemies before luring them to battle. After word came from Stoney Sept that the scorpions had been prepared, he knew it was time.

With Gaelon Qoherys on his trail, Garlan sent word to his commanders to move to the reinforced town. The host from the south came as well, fresh from a siege at Bitterbridge, where they had taken out the token force left by the Company and recaptured the keep. Under the king’s banners gathered some twenty-thousand men, all awaiting Daena and her Essosi army.

Many amidst their ranks were anxious though; their camp outside the walls - and town itself - served an easy target for the dragon, and if whatever the king and his council had planned wouldn’t work, they were all as good as dead. They knew what had transpired at Highgarden and King’s Landing, and the fate that had taken thousands of their brothers-in-arms while playing cat-and-mouse with the enemy.

The army comprising knights and men-at-arms had been lined up in wide formations near the township when the enemy arrived. As their battlehorns were blown to signal the charge, Daena was on the move as well. The Queen of the Narrow Sea descended on them with Drogon and burned a streak through their ranks, killing hundreds in an instant. She pulled back then and took a turn, preparing the repeat course once more before letting her sellswords finish the job.

As she maneuvered her beast and dived into another momentum, she fell within the range of the walls, where the five scorpions had been installed throughout two wall sections and three bastions. They were all fired at Drogon’s belly. Three missed, and two hit.

Drogon trembled in his flight and cried out in agony as the hooked steel spears tore into his flesh, and that was not even all, for each spear was roped to a winch that had been fastened to the stoneworks of the wall. The marvels of engineering these new weapons were, it wasn’t expected that they would pull such a massive divine beast from its flight, but there was enough force in them to pull the massive spears out along with the scales they had pierced and leave two gaping wounds in their place.

Daena tried to regain control as Drogon flailed beneath her, but all she could do was force a heavy landing barely a mile off of the battlefield - and then she knew it was too late for her dragon. His weight disfigured the earth as he crashed, but it wasn’t the fall that killed him; his rider survived, too. She got out of her saddle and slid down the dragon’s side and rushed to his head without bothering to inspect the wounds. But she didn’t need to, for she knew a dying dragon.

Meanwhile, her fall changed the face of the battlefield. The Company-men, who had stood by Daena for years and witnessed only her invincibility, were now frozen in shock, and the defenders of the Seven Kingdoms were awed. The only known living dragon fell, and their morale was at once restored. Not all were sure of the queen and her dragon’s fates, however, and Lord Baratheon dispatched half a dozen knights to see what had the scorpions achieved.

They arrived to see a mourning woman, who held her murdered son’s sword in one hand and closed her lifeless dragon’s lid with the other. She was cornered, but not anyone nor in any numbers could scare her, even in the most sorrowful moment of her life. They were there to kill her, and she was going to give them a fight.

Having lived five decades thus far, the Targaryen queen had experience and skill years beyond most of them. As soon as they engaged, she cut down one of them within the first second, and as they came at her one by one and then in pairs, she finished all but one. A knight from Weeping Town, **Ser Alaric Seaworth**, was the only one of his contingent who still held his ground. He and Daena were both wounded and exhausted from the engagement - what had transpired under minutes felt like hours. But they were not done. They met for one last clash, which ended with the knight emerging on top.

After beating Daena to the ground, he battered her helmed head with the dragonscale he had picked up, until its pointed edge cut through the light metal and plunged into her skull. Daena Targaryen, Queen of the Narrow Sea - greatest conqueror in the known world’s living memory - was slain by an ordinary knight who flew a banner with an onion. She would be remembered in history as the *Last Dragon*, and Alaric Seaworth as the man who slew her.

The Battle of Stoney Sept yielded the defenders of Westeros a great victory, and though the invaders had yet to be driven out in full, they also won the war that day.

## Aftermath

Queen Daena’s death shattered the Golden Company’s morale. The sellswords that had come to reinforce them fled from the battlefields and stole ships back to Essos, and those that remained lost all they had earned during their short-lived conquest.

The Battle of Stone Sept was followed by victories at Atranta, the Ring, and Middleton, and the invaders - whose numbers had greatly diminished - had no choice but to give up the castles and cities they had seized, and leave.

King Garlan and Ser Alaric returned to King’s Landing as triumphant heroes, and the Seven Kingdoms, having survived the bloodiest and most devastating conflict their continent had seen, were given a chance to learn and rebuild.

But as wounds heal, so does the memory of men fade. The lords of the Seven Kingdoms would settle back into their lives and return to the same old cycle of schemes and ambitions, and forget about the very causes that had almost led to their extinction.

Months after the final battle at King’s Landing, Garlan I Tyrell, hero and king, breathed his last in a fever, leaving the Iron Throne to his young sister, Myrcella.

Meanwhile across the Narrow Sea, the Golden Company returned to Pentos to deliver justice to the magisters that had slaughtered Daena Targaryen’s remaining family in the wake of their empire’s collapse.