New Ghis

An island city where the old empire's descendants drill iron legions.

The fuller tale

New Ghis holds its island south of Slaver’s Bay and takes the old empire more literally than its cousins: alone among the Ghiscari cities it drills iron legions in the ancient fashion — freeborn spearmen in lockstep, not bought Unsullied or hired companies — as if five thousand years and a few dragons were a temporary setback. The books give the legions their audition: when the slavers’ world closes ranks against Daenerys, New Ghis ships thousands of legionaries to the siege of Meereen, the largest honest army in the coalition of hirelings and tokar-wearing amateurs camped before the walls. Whether the old lockstep fares better against dragons the second time is a question the published story leaves poised — but the city itself is the bay’s driest joke: the empire Valyria erased, patiently reenacting itself on an island, waiting out the millennia for a rematch.

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

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