The moment Daenerys phrased her question, Aegor felt his heart sink.
She didn’t say “the false king.” She said, my nephew.
That small detail spoke volumes. Even if she didn’t fully believe it, she at least had doubts—enough to consider that the young silver-haired prince might truly be her kin.
Perhaps the war had ended too quickly and decisively—before this so-called king had the chance to truly threaten her rule or cause significant harm. The instinctive bon...
As the most powerful man and woman on the continent, their so-called "walk" was, of course, never just a casual stroll. True to expectation, Daenerys soon shifted the conversation to matters happening not here in the west, but in the east, where a different crisis was unfolding.
"We must move quickly. If the Reach lords are willing to surrender, sparing them even slightly is not out of the question. The Reach isn’t going anywhere—it won’t fly away. Once we finish dealing with the...
Considering the logistical burden on the Crownlands and the efficiency of resupplying along the way, Aegor had deliberately dispersed the weaker Riverland levies and the unruly Northmen when the main force of his Western Expedition set out. The army he personally led numbered just over thirty thousand, though he publicly claimed forty thousand, a figure that included non-combatants. As they swept across the land, taking castle after castle, he had to leave behind garrisons of a hundred or so ...
2025-01-29 18:32:10 +0000 UTC View Post"Impossible!"
King Aegon shot to his feet, his face flushed with fury. "I will not cower behind my own Hand like some sniveling coward, begging my aunt for forgiveness!"
They hadn't even managed to salvage a single ballista.
"Shut the gates—now!" Jon Connington barked. There were undoubtedly stragglers still outside, but at this point, there was no time to care.
"All men still standing, get to the walls and prepare to fight! The enemy came too quickly to bring si...
Has anyone ever used shadow-binding like this before?
Broad daylight. In full view of thousands.
A shadow surged straight through the heart of the battlefield, slipping past legions of soldiers, heading directly for the enemy's command post.
To accomplish this attack, Aegor had offered the pure magical essence of R'hllor’s Scale as the catalyst. For over thirty straight hours, Melisandre had fed it power without rest, and Kinvara had poured nearly all of her own energy ...
It seemed absurd that the soldiers of both armies could struggle to distinguish friend from foe, but the reality was that both sides bore the same sigil—the Three-Headed Red Dragon.
Neither Daenerys nor young Aegon had been willing to modify the Targaryen banner, even in the slightest way, for the sake of battlefield clarity. Not even a simple color change, as had been done during the Blackfyre Rebellion, had been considered. Both were too fixated on asserting their legitimacy as the...
A sea of metal, banners, and bloodied helmets churned across the battlefield, an unrelenting tide of war. At its heart, like a lone reef amidst the storm, Jon Connington stood still, his gaze fixed on the impenetrable tortoise-like formation of the western campaign army.
"The last scraps inside that shell are starting to gather," he noted, relaying the scout reports in the simplest terms. Then, with a frown, he muttered his own doubts. "Strange... It’s like Aegor is always one step a...
"Gather the baggage train guards, the kitchen hands, and every man in the southern second phalanx who can still lift a weapon. Bring them to me."
Aegor had accepted the reality of his situation. There was only one choice left.
"Send word to the artillery positions—fire off all remaining grapeshot westward, then switch to solid shot. Aim for the river to the north, adjust for range, and prepare to engage enemy ships!"
The Reach’s intentions were painfully obvious—alm...
Aegor sensed something was wrong even before the call for reinforcements reached him.
Following the principle of “balanced combat distribution,” the explosive grenades of the western campaign army had been evenly allocated among the nine phalanxes—each phalanx was assigned around a hundred grenadiers, each carrying two grenades. Any extras were reserved for Aegor’s direct vassal forces, while the Unsullied and Westerlands cavalry were not equipped with them at all.
Unlik...
The sharp blast of horns cut through the chaos of battle, accompanied by the rise of a stark black banner. Like a tide of midnight, the armored warriors who had instilled fear into nobles and slave masters alike surged forward, flowing through the gaps between formations toward the embattled southeastern corner of the battlefield. A wave of sheer, unshakable confidence swept across the Queen’s forces in their wake.
“Deploy the Unsullied! Fill the gap! Replace the southern second ph...
Men and horses tumbled.
Men and horses tumbled again.
Men and horses tumbled again and again...
The battlefield was a cacophony of destruction. The sharp whistle of projectiles cutting through the air, the sickening crunch of impacts. Warhorses reared and collapsed, riders thrown violently from the saddle—some dead before they hit the ground, others rolling helplessly before being trampled under the relentless charge of their own comrades. The clash of steel, the scream...
Clang! Thud!
Scattered arrows clattered against armor, some finding flesh with wet, sickening sounds. But the Reach’s cavalry, seasoned and disciplined, remained unfazed. They ignored the occasional fallen horse or unseated rider, pressing forward with unwavering momentum. As orders rang out, they began tightening their formation, shrinking the wide and loose battle line into a more concentrated wedge.
Yet while the soldiers’ positions remained fixed, the artillery had a dif...
When Aegor set out from King’s Landing, he thought the western campaign would be a straightforward march to victory—steady advances, crushing resistance along the way. He never expected to find himself in a perilous situation where only a stroke of cunning could ensure survival.
As a modern man from a peaceful world devoid of the supernatural, he had no grasp of meteorology, no knowledge of occult warfare, and his understanding of military strategy was limited to common works like ...
Can the gamble be won?
As the intensified cannon fire thundered across the battlefield, the thickest clouds of smoke yet billowed from the Queen’s army’s lines. The sheer density and volume of the gunpowder fog were so overwhelming that it seemed as if some god had poured a vast vat of pure white milk mixed with rice porridge into the glass basin of the Reach's plains. In an instant, the entire frontline was obscured, the battlefield swallowed by a tangible sea of smoke. Even from ...
Highgarden.
The name of this castle is composed of two Common Tongue words, literally meaning “High Garden.”
At first glance, it seems straightforward, but in truth, it carries significant meaning, divided into two parts: "High" and "Garden."
The first part is self-explanatory—the castle is perched atop one of the highest hills in the central plains of the Reach, with an elevation exceeding a hundred meters. While such a height wouldn’t even qualify as a "mountain...
"Indeed. After a lengthy discussion with Lord Connington, I also came to agree with Lord Randyll’s viewpoint: completely discarding our initial plan would mean throwing away our greatest advantage—our cavalry—and we simply do not have the time for a full strategic overhaul." Strickland let out a long sigh, nodding in recognition. "Thus, the conclusion we reached was to take a balanced approach. While our primary focus must be on reinforcing our infantry, we will make subtle but targeted...
2025-01-29 18:28:07 +0000 UTC View PostThe sun dipped westward, casting long shadows across the Reach. Another spring day on the vast plains was drawing to an end.
Nearly twenty miles west of where the morning’s one-sided bombardment had taken place, the massive Reach army had set up camp. Sixty thousand infantry, along with an uncountable number of auxiliaries and camp followers, stretched across the landscape in a sprawling encampment so vast it extended beyond the horizon. At the heart of this city-sized war camp, with...
Garlan ultimately chose to dispatch troops to report to the command headquarters while he himself led the cavalry in a distant harassment maneuver. It was a wise and correct decision—if he launched a direct assault, he would be charging into a defensive phalanx, pikes braced, shotguns loaded, and every measure prepared to counter cavalry. Yet if he simply withdrew, the Western Expedition would no longer be pressured on the flank and could resume a conventional march, accelerating toward Hig...
2025-01-29 18:27:31 +0000 UTC View Post"Understood!"
From their vantage point due south of the Queen’s army, looking directly at the base of the trapezoidal formation, it was difficult to tell with the naked eye that the shape was an isosceles trapezoid. Fortunately, that distinction wasn’t necessary to grasp the key details—multiple thousand-man phalanxes forming the core, flanked by two angled wings.
The first priority for the cavalry commanders was to deploy enough men into countless roving scouting detachme...
"Understood!"
From their vantage point due south of the Queen’s army, looking directly at the base of the trapezoidal formation, it was difficult to tell with the naked eye that the shape was an isosceles trapezoid. Fortunately, that distinction wasn’t necessary to grasp the key details—multiple thousand-man phalanxes forming the core, flanked by two angled wings.
The first priority for the cavalry commanders was to deploy enough men into countless roving scouting detachme...
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom…
The second round of artillery fire was slightly less synchronized than the first, but the rolling thunder of explosions still carried a lingering echo-like resonance, stretching across the battlefield. First came the flashes of fire and plumes of thick smoke. Then, a beat later, the shockwaves slammed into them. Only at the very end did the cannonballs arrive—hurtling down like judgment from the gods.
Matthos Rowan’s shoulders jerked involunta...
On the banks of the Blackwater, the Gifted Army’s artillery had fired from the north bank, shelling the south bank where the wedding was taking place and covering the vanguard’s river crossing. The entire Blackwater separated the cannons from their target, forcing Aegor’s artillery to elevate their barrels and fire at a medium-angle trajectory, relying on their maximum range to achieve their tactical objective.
Moreover, the battlefield—the riverbank in its dry season—was alr...
The eastern sky shifted from purple to gold to blue as the sun crested the horizon and rose into the sky. The last few bright stars, still twinkling against the dark vault above, finally faded into nothingness. Bathed in the golden morning light, Count Matthos Rowan rode up the highest nearby hill, reined in his towering warhorse, and raised his Myrish lens to observe the slow, deliberate approach of the Westerland army.
The Reachmen had hoped to gather all three advantages—time, ter...
The Western Expeditionary Army moved with mechanical efficiency.
Under the command of Night’s Watch-trained officers and veterans from the Gift, the Queen’s army quickly donned their armor, assembled into formation, and surged through the gates of their camp.
Beyond the wooden palisades, the open fields stretched out toward the Mander River, where Aegor’s troops began deploying into a formation unlike any seen before in Westerosi warfare.
----
The Battlefield & A...
A light rain had fallen in the early hours before dawn, stopping just as the sky began to brighten. The first rays of sunlight broke through the remnants of the night, casting golden light over the vast expanse of the Reach. Mist rose lazily from the damp ground, forming a hazy veil that refracted into a brilliant rainbow stretching across the sky.
As the droplets of rain evaporated from the blades of grass, the wild growth and crops in the fields lifted their heads, competing for the ...
The Riverlands had already fallen.
The storm had already passed over the Crownlands.
And now, the Reach was on the verge of becoming the true battlefield of this war.
The Queen’s army wielded gunpowder and dragons—the Reachlords could not hope to defeat them in a head-on clash. Their only choice was to leverage their overwhelming numbers, stretching the battle lines wide, using their sheer numerical advantage to envelop and smother their foes.
If cannons were A...
The city-state of Braavos—more precisely, Braavos the Freehold, the heart of the Braavosi Republic—was encircled by a natural ring of mountains that shielded it from the open sea. Within this stone barrier, the city itself was a patchwork of islands, both large and small, scattered across its vast inner waters, forming the world-renowned City of a Thousand Isles.
These encircling mountains did more than separate Braavos' inner waters from the open ocean; they also worked in tandem ...
The air in the chamber grew thick, almost tangible with tension. A cold, suffocating stillness settled over the room, raising the hairs on more than a few arms. In that atmosphere of expectation—where everyone was anticipating a dramatic confrontation—the Faceless Man did not disappoint.
He spoke, as always, in his detached and impassive tone.
"The House of Black and White and Braavos share a mutually beneficial relationship based on equal cooperation. We are not your subord...
This was not something that could be explained in a few words—because, aside from him, the only Faceless Man in the room, everyone else was merely mortal.
"You’re thinking too small! Intelligence confirms that these two men were indeed the ones who founded the bank, but could anything bearing the Targaryen name have been established without the Queen’s approval?" One of the Keepers scoffed and shook his head. "Since we’ve already decided to use our final measures, and since we ...
This was not something that could be explained in a few words—because, aside from him, the only Faceless Man in the room, everyone else was merely mortal.
"You’re thinking too small! Intelligence confirms that these two men were indeed the ones who founded the bank, but could anything bearing the Targaryen name have been established without the Queen’s approval?" One of the Keepers scoffed and shook his head. "Since we’ve already decided to use our final measures, and since we ...