Mantarys

An ill-omened city whose people are said to be born twisted, on the haunted road to Valyria.

The fuller tale

Mantarys stands inland on the demon road, the old Valyrian highway that runs from Volantis to Meereen through the Lands of the Long Summer ÔÇö a road so ill-reputed that sane travelers add months of sailing to avoid it. The cityÔÇÖs own reputation matches its address: its people are said to be born twisted, monstrous more often than chance allows, as if the DoomÔÇÖs poison had settled in the soil and the bloodlines both. Whatever the truth of the tales, Mantarys endures where the cities nearer Valyria died, trading warily along a road that eats caravans.

The story brushes it at armÔÇÖs length. In the books it is numbered among the powers courted in the war around Meereen ÔÇö even a city of ill omen has spears to promise ÔÇö and in the taleÔÇÖs imagination it serves a darker purpose: proof that ValyriaÔÇÖs fall did not end ValyriaÔÇÖs reach. The FreeholdÔÇÖs roads outlived its dragons, and something in the land they cross remembers. Mantarys is what living downstream of an apocalypse looks like, three centuries on.

The fallen of this place ÔÇö if any, they are named here. Spoilers.

No death the chronicle records has come to this ground ÔÇö or none the maesters have set down.