Glossary : Dorne
WORK IN PROGRESS
"Only a Dornishman can ever truly know Dorne"
Archmaester Brude, who was born and raised in the shadow city that huddles beneath the walls of Sunspear, wrote the articles called 'DORNE: A List of Lies and Truths'.
Vast deserts of red and white sand, with forbidding mountains and treacherous passes, guarded by an untrustworthy peoples. A land filled with scorpions, poisons, and castles made of mud, a sweltering heat with sandstorms, the only good thing they have are dates, figs and blood oranges - these things are what most of Westros think of and know of about Dorne. And all these things exist, to be sure, but there is far more to this ancient principality than that, for it has a history that stretches back to the Dawn Age.
- The coast of Dorne is as inhospitable as the desert, being just rocky shores ridden with reefs.
- The seas around Dorne are very dangerous, filled with whirlpools and sea-monsters many lay claim to seeing krakens and other large beasts of the sea.
- Sunspear is apparently appears to be just a small town, not a city. The town is built of mud and straw.
- Planky Town is actually built from ships and barges all lashed together, floating on the river Greenblood, though surely some of it is actually on land.
Dorne has more in common with the North than either the rest of the realms that lie between them. One is hot, one is cold, yet these ancient kingdoms of sand and snow are apart from the rest of Westeros by history, culture, and tradition. Both are thinly peopled, compared to the lands between. Both cling stubbornly to their own laws and their own traditions. Neither was ever truly been conquered by the dragons. The King in the North accepted Aegon Targaryen as his overlord peaceably, whilst Dorne resisted the might of the Targaryens valiantly for over a hundred fifty years, before finally submitting to the Iron throne through marriage. Dornishmen and Northmen alike are derided as savages by the ignorant of the five 'civilized' kingdoms, and celebrated for their valor by those who have crossed swords with them.
Dorne, according to written history is the oldest kingdom in Westeros.
The Children of the Forest called Dorne "The Empty Land"
Eastern Dorne is just shrubs and rocks; West Dorne is just endless sand dunes, with sandstorms that can rip a man's flesh off in minutes.
Dorne is the only place where legends of Garth Greenhand are not told.
The Greenblood is the soul of Dorne. The First Men settled along it, using it to try and irrigate the land. Others lived by the Narrow Sea, where seafood sustained human life. There is fertility at the base of the Red Mountains, called the Greenbelt; there is also some greenery in the Red Mountains themselves; this is because the Stormlands send storms with water southwards through the Boneway. Those who were mad enough to venture into the sandy deserts sometimes survived by living off of water wells they dug. "For every man who stumbled upon a well, a hundred must surely have died of thirst beneath the blazing Dornish sun."
First Men Era
- House Dayne legendarily founded their lands on the Torrentine river by following a falling star, and his descendants were known as the Kings of the Torrentine.
- Fowlers called themselves Kings of Stone and Sky.
- House Yronwood found fertile land in the Boneway and considered themselves High Kings of Dorne. They had plentiful wood and minerals and other resources, unlike the rest of Dorne.
- Rivaling House Yronwood's High Kingdom, another High Kingdom was in the east; Its king was always chosen by election from all the settlements along the Greenblood and along the eastern shore; Houses: Wades, Shells, Holts, Brooks, Hulls, Lakes, Brownhills, and Briars.
- These kings ruled from a moat-and-bailey castle near the Lemonwood. Eventually the kingdom broke up from infighting, as expected, and it was replaced with multiple petty kingdoms and 3 of the old houses were wiped out.
- House Dayne, House Fowler, and House Yronwood were the most powerful in Dorne before the Andal Invasion.
Andal Invasion Era
- Few Andals actually wanted to go to Dorne; the seafaring Andals considered it useless and filled with terrible things like snakes.
- Uller was an Andal who decided to live next to the sulphurous Brimstone River; the castle has always smelled terrible
- Qorgyle was an Andal went deep into the desert and took over the only well in a fifty-league radius, and fortified it.
- The Vaiths (more Andals) came and setup themselves up at the junction of the Vaith and Greenblood rivers; their castle is white and tall.
- Allyrions, Jordaynes, and Santagars are also Andals, but not much else is said besides that they too carved out their own lands.
Morgan Martell (Andal) and his kin descended on lands loosely held by House Wade and House Shell, defeated them in battle, seized their villages, burned their castles, and established dominion over a strip of stony coastlands fifty leagues long and ten leagues wide. House Martell has always been cautious, and they only expanded slowly, and they were never considered powerful until Nymeria arrived. They never called themselves kings, despite being surrounded by them, and they even bent the knee to Jordaynes, "pious" Allyrions, the many petty kings of the Greenblood, and even Yronwood, at many different points in their history.
Coming of the Rhoynar
- Hundreds of years passed since Martell setup in eastern Dorne;
- Rhoynar had many beautiful cities, water magic, and gender equality they style their rulers as Princes and Princesses
- Princess Nymeria of Ny Sar gathered every ship that remained on the Rhoyne river, filled them with as many women and children as they could carry, (for most of the men died in battle); the fleet sailed downriver, passing all the ruins of their civilization and sad battlefields, through the Rhoyne which was covered in blood.
- An older channel was taken to avoid the Valryian city of Volantis and they ended up in the Summer Sea.
- The Ten Thousand Ships she had then took to sea in search of a new home
- They went south the Basilisk Isles, north of Sothoryos; The Corsair Kings there attacked them, took many slaves, and then said they could settle on the Isle of Toads if they provided endless tribute of thirty virgins and pretty boys for each king every year. Nymeria refused, of course, and took heir fleet to sea again.
- To Sothoryos now; Many settled there for a time along the shores, even Nymeria. Golds, gems, rare woods, exotic pelts, queer fruits, and strange spices - many treasures were found.
- But the Rhoynar did not thrive here. Sullen wet heat, swarms of stinging flies that brought blood-boiling diseases. Even to jump in the river was to court death, where carnivorous fish and infesting worms lived. Slavers came too, and inside Sothoryos there are "ghouls". After a year, Nymeria took all her people and left Sothoryos.
- For three years, the Rhoynar wandered at sea. The Naathi welcomed them peacefully, but their strange god stuck down Rhoynar with a mortal illness.
- In the Summer Isles, they settled on an uninhabited rock off the eastern coast of Walano, which became known as the Isle of Women, but it yielded little food and many starved.
- Many eventually abandoned Nymeria for a priestess named Druselka who took her followers back to their old cities on the Rhoyne and were then slaughtered.
- The battered, tattered remains of the Ten Thousand Ships led by Nymeria sailed for Westeros now. Many sank in storms.
- The remaining ships landed on the Greenblood's estuary, not far from the ancient sandstone walls of the Sandship (seat of the Martells).
- Dorne was thinly peopled and hugely divided, and people warred over every little stream and tributary river, and every oasis and well and tiny forest.
- Most Dornish lords viewed the Rhoynar as unwelcome interlopers, invaders with queer ways and strange gods, who should be driven back to the sea.
- Lord Mors Martell, however, saw opportunity and supposedly fell in love with Nymeria.
- Eight of every ten Rhoynar newcomers were women, but a quarter of those were warriors, and even those who were not warriors were hardened by the odyssey. As well, thousands who had been young boys in the destruction of Rhoynar civilization were now grown men and had taken up the spear.
- By joining the Rhoynar, Martell would increase his power tenfold.
- When Lord Mors took Nymeria as wife, his vassals and knights also did so with Rhoynar women, and even those already wed took them as paramours.
- Thus were two people joined by blood. Much wealth was brought, and many artistry skills from the Rhoynar civilization, and all its many, colorful customs.
- This put the eastern Dornish way ahead of the rest of Westeros in sophistication and technology.
- Their armor and weaponry was soon matched by no one in Westeros.
- It is said Rhoynish water witches knew secret spells that made dry streams flow again and deserts bloom.
- Nymeria burned her ships so that this would not change and that her people would never leave.
- Some however mourned the loss of the ships and became the Greenblood orphans, forever worshiping the Mother Rhoyne still.
- Nymeria named Mors as the Prince of Dorne, asserting his dominion over "the red sands and the white, and all the lands and rivers from the mountains to the great salt sea."
- The Martells and their Rhoynish partners met and subdued each petty king after the last, and no fewer than six kings were sent to the Wall in golden fetters by Nymeria and Mors;
- Only Yorick Yronwood remained, the Bloodroyal, Fifth of His Name, Lord of Yronwood, Warden of the Stone Way, Knight of the Wells, King of Redmarch, King of the Greenbelt, and King of the Dornish.
- Nine years war was fought between two sides: Martell (including Fowler, Toland, Dayne, and Uller) vs Yronwood (including Jordayne, Wyl, Blackmont, Qorgyle, and many more).
Many battles, too many to count. Mors Martell fell to Yorick's sword in the Third Battle of the Boneway, and Nymeria assumed command of his force. Two more years of battle came, and in the end, Yorick Yronwood bent the knee to Nymeria.
- Nymeria thereafter ruled in Sunspear, which was built up by her arrival and reign.
She married twice more, to a Lord Uller and then to a Sword of the Morning, but remained the true ruler of Dorne with her husbands only being advisors and loyal generals.
She survived a dozen attempts on her life, put down two rebellions, and threw back two invasions by the Storm King Durran the Third and one by King Greydon of the Reach.
- When she died, it was her eldest daughter by Mors Martell, not her son by Dayne, who succeeded her, for by then the Dornish had come to adopt many of the laws and customs of the Rhoynar, though the memories of Mother Rhoyne and the Ten Thousand Ships were fading into legend..
- Kings sent to the Wall by Nymeria: Yorick of House Yronwood, Vorian of House Dayne (greatest swordsman of Dorne), Garrison of House Fowler (blind), Lucifer of House Dryland (last of his family), Benedict of House Blackmont (who was said to be able to turn into a vulture), and Albin of House Manwoody (a troublesome madman).
- In songs, Nymeria is said to have been a witch and a warrior, but neither is true. She did not bear arms, but led her soldiers in battle through intelligence.
Seven hundred years has House Martell since ruled Dorne without even one successful rebellion against them.
Queer Customs of the South
- Though the Stone Dornish of the Red Mountains have more in common with Stormlanders and sometimes Reachmen than the rest of Dorne, they still hate the Reach and Stormlanders with a burning passion, for they warred endlessly with each for their entire history.
The Stone Dornish have been almost as brutal as the Mountain Clansmen of the Vale in their history, fighting amongst themselves and endlessly raiding and pillaging their Reach and Stormlands neighbors.
- The Sand Dornish are more Rhoynish than the Stone Dornish, and often live by wandering from oasis to well and back again, raising their children alongside their goats and livestock.
The Sand Dornish are the breeders of the famous Sand Steeds. The Dornish love their sandsteeds so much that a Knight of Santagar even stabled his in his own hall.
- The Salt Dornish, scions of the Rhoynar, lost their mother tongue over time, though that tongue still marks the way the Dornish speak the Common Tongue - stretching some sounds, rolling others, and lilting still others in odd places. Dornish speech has been described as charming by some, and by others (the marchers, chiefly and unfairly) as incomprehensible.
But more than that, the Rhoynar brought their customs and their laws which the Martells then spread throughout Dorne. Gender Equality, etc
- Dornish do not care if a child is born in or out of wedlock, but will enforce legitimacy for inheritance usually (unless there are no legitimate heirs). They do this still today without interference from the Iron Throne.
- As we all know, the oldest child inherits, regardless of gender.
- Sexuality is likewise not tabooed, for people of the same sex or opposite sex can do whatever they please.
- Septons have tried to change the Dornish, but they never have any effect whatsoever, and so give up, and even assimilate.
- Fashions are different in Dorne, with loose layered robes, as we know;
- food is spiced with "dragons peppers" and "drops of snake venom".
- The Greenblood Orphans still speak a variant of Rhoynish, though some early Martells attempted to forbid it.
- The Three Successors after Nymeria were known as the Red Princes (though two of them were Princesses), and their reigns were ridden with wars in and out of Dorne.
- Planky Town was built by the above rulers by lashing together boats; They built a citadel nearby eventually to protect it once it became a popular stop for ships from Essos.
- a Dornish whore named Sylvenna Sand convinced her King to try and make the whole of Westeros adopt gender equality and even a socialist setup for injured war veterans and homeless folk, but obviously it was repelled by the lords of Westeros like it was a pile of dogshit
Dorne Against the Dragons
- The Dornish were smart. When the Targaryens attempted to conquer it, they would just flee and disappear, and harry and ambush armies while hiding from the dragons.
Armies would die of thirst and heat, and the dragon-riding tyrants would leave each time, finding it a pointless conquest.
- House Toland even fooled Aegon the Conqueror: They left the castle and left their ghost banner flying above the walls, and left their fool to fight as "champion".
Aegon killed the "champion" to find the castle empty and that he had just killed a fool. The Tolands later changed their banner to a dragon biting its tail, mocking the Targaryens and honoring the fool's sacrifice.
- Orys Baratheon got trapped and captured in the Boneway and was ransomed back by the Iron Throne after several years.
He and all his knights and followers returned with their sword hands cut off, so that they would never raise weapons against Dorne again.
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The Dornish endlessly refused to bend to anyone but the Martells.
- When Sunspear was captured, the Targaryen thought themselves victorious, and placed Lord Rosby in Sunspear and Lord Tyrell to quell revolts. Targaryens returned to KL.
- Dorne rebelled immediately, and all garrisons and armies were put to the sword by the Dornish. It became a game by the Dornish to see which captive knight would last the longest in torture.
- Lord Harlan Tyrell set out from Hellholt to retake Vaith and Sunspear, but vanished into the sands, never to be heard of again. Supposedly sometimes bones and pieces of armor sometimes reveal themselves in the desert, but the Dornish say Dorne has had a thousand battles, so they could be from any time.
- Aegon was intent on revenge after Orys (now called One-hand) was returned to him. The dragons burned castles again and again. The Dornish responded by sending a fleet to the Stormlands and setting half of Cape Wrath on fire and sacking half a dozen towns and villages. More castle burned by dragonfire. The Dornish responded this time by sending a host under Fowler that seized and burned the marcher castle of Nightsong and carried off its lords and defenders as hostages, whilst another army under Dayne marched to Oldtown and burned all its fields and villages. Dragons again razed castles in Dorne.
- Queen Rhaenys died at Hellholt, when a scorpion struck the eye of her dragon, and both of them died. Her body was never returned to King's Landing.
Some say she fell and died, others say she was crushed by her dragon, and still some say the Ullers tortured her to death. All we know is that she perished at Hellholt in the Tenth year after the Conquest.
- Two years afterwards are called the Dragon's Wroth. Grief-stricken Aegon and Visenya set ablaze every castle, keep, and holdfast in Dorne at least once .. save for Sunspear and the shadow city. In Dorne, they say that the Targaryens suspected Meria Martell had a cunning way to kill dragons, something she had purchased from Lys. Likelier is that the Targaryens hoped to turn the rest of Dorne against Martell for being so unscathed. Letters were sent to lesser houses claiming that the Martells had betrayed them. This doesn't seem to have worked.
- The last phase of this war: The Targaryens placed prices on the heads of every Dornish lord, and half a dozen and more were killed by assassins - though only two ever lived to collect their reward. The Dornish responded by assassinating lords as well, killing many even in King's Landing. King Aegon was attacked on three occasions, and Visenya almost died if she had not had Darksister with her. Lords all over the Reach and Stormlands and King's Landing died, outweighing the 6 deaths in Dorne by manyfold.
- Dorne was a blighted, burning ruin by this time, and still the Dornish fought and hid in the shadows, refusing to surrender. Even the smallfolk refused. The toll of lives was innumerable.
When Princess Meria Martell died in 13 AL, her throne passed to her son, the aged and failing Prince Nymor. He sent a delegation by his daughter Deria to King's Landing.
This delegation carried the skull of Meraxes, Rhaenys' dragon, and most considered it an insult and wanted to put Deria in a brothel to service any man for a low price.
But Aegon listened instead, and received a private letter from the Prince of Dorne. He held it so hard as he read it that his hand bled.
He left for Dragonstone that night and returned the next morning, and accepted peace with Dorne.
- What the letter contained, no one can know. Did Nymor reveal the Rhaenys still lived, broken and mutilated, and that he would end her suffering if Aegon ended hostilities? Was the letter ensorceled? Did he threaten to take all the wealth of Dorne to hire Faceless Men to kill Aegon's son and heir, Aenys? These questions will never be answered, it seems.
- The result was however a peace that lasted a great amount of time. Of course, raiders from Dorne and from without Dorne still attacked each other, and many other wars occurred, but never anything huge.
- In the Dance of Dragons, Dorne refused to take part, saying "I would rather sleep with scorpions than dance with dragons again."
- When King Daeron I came to power, the peace ended, as we all know.
But his conquest lasted only a summer, and cost many thousands of lives, including the king himself. It was left to Baelor the Blessed to make peace, and even that was grievously costly.
Aegon IV attempted to take Dorne with "dragons" of his own make, but that is a madman's folly and ended in humiliation.
- It was Aegon's son, Daeron II the Good who brought Dorne under the Iron Throne with soft words, smiles, and a pair of well-considered marriages, and a solemn treaty that granted the Dornish princes their style and their privileges and guaranteed that their own laws and customs should always prevail in Dorne.
- Dorne continued to ally closely with House Targaryen from thence on, as we all know.
Sunspear
- It used to just have been the Sunship, a squat ugly keep. But when the Rhoynish came, beautiful towers popped up and the location became known as Sunspear.
- Sunspear sits on a small peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water, and on the fourth and only land side, the shadow city.
- Though the Dornish call it a city, it is no more than a town, and a queer, dusty, ugly town at that. The Dornish built up against the walls of Sunspear, then built up against the walls of the neighbors' homes, and so on out, until the shadow city took on its current form. Today, it is a warren of narrow alleys, bazaars filled with the spices of Dorne and the east, and the homes of the Dornish built of mud brick that remains cool even in the height of the burning summer.
- The Winding Walls were raised some seven hundred years ago, built to be strange and serpentine to confuse and deter attackers.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:23, Fri 13 Mar 2015.