astarkchoice

True Remebrr the bulk of sellsword companies will be essosi born and bred and they wear armour. The pit fighter barristan fought had never e countered plate but we do see they can make armoir for pit fighters , slave troops and even the man belwas kills outside mereen! Seems.more that pitfighter just hadnt seen plate, his niche was rippimg out and esting hearts so he was probably.never matched vs armour wearers either! Says the forts have fused stone walls 1000ft high! Just like westeros its clear something horrible.came.to essos a long lomg time.ago

Which is why part of the deal was soo many marriages ! Roose and tywins sister already married into the freys pre betrayal then there were 3 manderly- frey marriages and 3 more to lannisters (one being a bastard though) on top of house frey of riverrun being created. The red wedding planners would give a world where theres: House lannsiter of winterfell (sansa and tyrion) House frey of riverrun and house frey of the twins House bolton of hornwood (ramsay would need something) and bolton of the dreadfort lord of the north! House lannister of darry (gatehouse ami and lancel) House baelish of harrenhall overlord of the riverlands and husband + actining lord of the vale Devan lannnister to marry a frey and 3 manderlyd to do the same in a merling vourt filled with frey spies and kiss asses A bastard frey to joy hill (probably has a sweet dowry provided by uncle tywin) The remaining free karstarks plotting to have karrion killed to set up a pro bolton karhold Its an ugly future they set up, thankfully they couldnt have forseen that its unwinding due to all kinds of insane circumstances !!!

Its scummy as hell but its not just revenge, its a calculated ambush spurred by both wanting revenge and walders cold cowardly reassasment of robbs chances to win , its a massacre to end the war utterly and be tied deeply into the winning regime

Hmmm well the ironborn have slaves. The finest armour is supposedly made in essos and most of the sellsword companies men will be essosi born and bred.Numbers would be interesting Securiry wise you sre right but wallwise we dont hesr much of the huge essosi wall and its 5 forts to make a comparsion!

I dont think mereen is any more militarised its just a bit bigger and its harpy movement has ex gladiators to bulk its ranks. Yunkais elite seem to be stupidly giddly with an assured victory over danys mereen hence they have turned vast parts of their army into a joke carnival parade of clowns... but their inital stance vs dany outside their city by contrast seemed competently handled and winnable for them. As for troops outside the niche gladiators and assasins slavers bay seems to produce 3 types of troops the stupidly niche unsullied mass produced 'not worth the swords they carry' that the clanker lords have dressed up sections stupidly ..although we do hear of a lot of crossbows among them (tyrion mentions as useless vs the dragons) which are a good way to make even worthless troops semi effective And the cities guard + military forces, like the volantis tiger guards professional and probably way better treated than most slaves to the point the masters can trust them to put slaves down to keep the status quo intact! New ghis seems to be the exception and for it is far more martial, being largely cut out of the constant swathes of slaves driven by the dothraki to the bay has stopped them going as soft!! Other than that we see the man who fought on horseback vs strong belwas seems.to be a leftover of what was once a military /martial culture among the slaver nobles!

Well they do have assasin cults , ex gladiator muscle , roboticly obedient unsullied guards , sellswords etc to help stamp out growing slave rebellions! Volantis leaders for example seem to be leaning towards the golden company to wipe out the fire priests for them. The sudden and slick organisation of the harpies seems to hint maybe the slavers have done something similar before to keep slaves down just probably smaller scale (and without so many ex gladiators to employ as extra killers)

Itd be hard to see how the logistics of a new slave trade get set up given how dramaticaly the old one is about to burn. If most of the cities move to a bravosi model theyl be richer anyway prevebting slavery resurection. Ig may not go away altogether like westeros with the ironborn thralls but bar a huge essosi wide economic collapse it seems unlikely to ever reemerge at the same industrial scale it is depicted as now

Id say again the slavers are done, their revival seems highly unlikely The dothraki are an essential slave 'gathering ' part of slaver machinery and they are about to either follow anti slavery dany or shel possibly toast large numbers of them before she flees! Mereen is about to be resolved brutaly by the anti slaver forces victory and the fighting forces of the slavers themselves being disease ridden when they flee home. That leaves slavers bay ie the place where almost all slaves get processed/trained up an anti slaverly zone for some time. No slave training = no slaves The free cities we see slaves outnumber freemen 3 or 5 to 1 and are majority fire worshippers all ready to pop ans follow theit anti slavery messiahs example. In Volantis we see half the guard are fire worshippers, the head priest is there with his own 1000 strong force. The widow can get inside the inner black walls , has her own armed forces and says the entire slave population is ready to rock. Add in we know most mercs would be in the disputed lands (varys says they are heating up in 1st few books) and swarming towards bravos for stannis iron bank backed contact for 20k men so most will be too far to intervene in any way. Finaly we know the faceless men and bravos dont like slavery , they were in a position before where tbey had to accept it but now they are in a position to stamp it out anywhere it threatens to emerge

Hes shown himself to be a bad commander once! He shouldnt have diluted his forces so much pre jamies attack! The other command issue .... his inability to read robbs mind! Not a bad commander issue plus he did sucessfuly repel all of tywins pushes even one backed by a 7ft superhuman! Shit if we are talking a tully who fucked up leading its hoster! Utterly failed to bring lord frey to heel , pushed the blackfish away , left edmure unmarried and of course could not have handled the lysa/LF issue worse.....left her bitter and possibly messed up her fertility while tossing away what could have been the son in law to turn his family around!

I think there's some towers along those cliffs as it is. Balon is said to have climbed them as a boy and went into a lords tower possibly the keep at house flint!!!

Cant see how it would occur lady olenna has the reach region nicely tied up with the way the family is married. The tyrells have the claim to the region, they are tied to the powerful fossways , hightowers and redwynnes. She (queen of thorns) was a redwynne married to a tyrell. Her son mace married a hightower, her daughter another redwynne and a further daughter married to a green apple fossaway! Maces uncle is lord commander of oldtowns city watch and grandson garlan (the one whos apparently better than loras with a sword) to another fossway.... unkown red or green! If none of these marriages existed somehow and everyone else still existed itd come down to the hightowers vs the redwynnes! Two financial powerhouses...id lean towards rewynnes due to the flexibility their huge fleet gives and the defensive advatage of being an island off the coast. Therrs no such thing as marines at this stage so the fighting men on the redwynne fleet will be familiar with weapons theyl just need to redrill on the arbor for large scale battle drills in case ome is need to decide the war. The tarlys have randyll tarlys leadership but dont strike as an above adverage strength(by reach terms) numbers wise Minus their lordship of the reach the tyrells arent that strong themselves BUT the cunning of lady olenna and willas cant be discounted nor the martial prowess of garlan and loras to turn even a lopsided battle. But overall itd probably be house redwynne

They travel much much further to raid essos and so on, its got fresh water and food and trees and probably space and rich soft soil for those things to exist on (all things they are short on) , sounds bigger than most of the other ironislands and yes they most certinly do sow...in fact they do better when they 'sow' and only raid essos , its only the arrogant priviligend greyjoys who can afford to not 'sow'! Besides no one else is there..the north has no western fleet, so theres no one to contest them adding this new ripe large island to the bleak stoney iron islands!!

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Aegon,_Rhaenys,_and_Visenya_(islands)

Red wedding 2.0 will virtualy exterminate the freys , the tullys will retake riverrun. Id doubt the lannsiters will keep darry nor littlefinger keep harrenhall.

I literaly take this as canon! The entire dorne arc and the viper going and clearly wanting revenge makes little sense without it. It ties in perfect with dorans entire niche of caring for innocents etc, he wants revenge but it has to be surgicaly precise not all out warfare

Yeah Essos has a lot of issues but the main one for me is we seem to be stuck in the less developed half...far eastern essos sounds far more interesting ...shit its even got proper horse nomads! Which is odd in a world where gods might actualy sorta exist!

Agreed i think the issue there is the fact feudal/peasant levies are largely confused with poorly trained consripts. We know the phrase itself means to literaly raise troops from the peasant class (anyone who isnt nobility or 99.999% of westeros) and sometimes this was mixed with what we would call consription but not always...medieval era covers a vast timeframe and a giant area. Now westerosi forces do seem to be very well trained based on thier performance in combat , stafford literaly keeps his fresh recruits 100s of miles from the from any frontline in a camp to be trained up alongside remnants of jamies 2 losses, even the northerners dont expect to see these forces for some time! That and almsit to a man they are helmeted, chainmailed and well armed..not the sort of stuff given to fodder. George doesnt detail any sort of society where 'conscripts ' as we know them that non professional levies could even come.from either!!! ....theres no talk of serf mandatory training, no archer/crossbow guilds in every small town or nationwide forced sunday training. We dont hear of farmers getting together to drill pike and sword and wrestling or boxing etc. Large towns doing mock battles followed by food and drink etc Instead we are told to the lowest feudal level george will go into (landed knight) that landed knights must arm,train and provide men at arms or other mounted forces....this all hints at professional to semi professional forces! Forces raised by vassals and vassals of vassals and so on etc but all pro or semi pro! Backed as we see in tywins force by limited numbers of wandering sellswords, hedge knights and even light armoured horse archers...but thats a few hundred vs the 45k he can raise in total!! What annoying with george here is he literaly creates another side of the world that DOES do conscript fodder, the slavers we are told can raise you a quick army of slaves ' not worth the swords they hold' or unsullied..or of course anything in between those 2 extremes!!! The church we are told fustratingly liytle about to..just that they are rich enough to lend the crown a fortune and thats it!

Ok issues that bother me -decline of the nights watch despite it directly affecting 2-3 -powerful northern houses before we even talk starks! Theres no reason they'd allow the watch to fall when raiders directly affect their lands..theyd be in regular contact with the lord commander for anything he needs. This includes the western sea having no ships too -the ripe islands close to ironborn and somehow they miss them. -the lannisters gold not slowly gaining them all of westeros once dragons died off -dorne, the north and the vale all being touted as impregnable yet easily acessible by sea...no in all those 100s of years thought to bypass the insane land blocks by just going by sea? -new ghis vast forces to face.....?

Based on 2 or so threads ongoing at the min. Once dany roots out slavery we could possibly see the essosi city states possibly raise their own standing freedmen armies rather than questionable loyalty sellsword comapnies (using many veterans of the sellsword companies currently). While sellsword companies may still exist wed expect the former slave freedmen to want a full time standing force like the westerosi ie forces that hopefully cant be paid by the uber rich to betray the anti slavery movement and force things back to the bad old slaver heyday!! The big issue is the dothraki khalassars would now be a threat not a vital part part of the slave trade anymore and thus would need to be dealt with!!! Heres how i think each city states forces would/should shape up.(perhaps iv played too much total war recently) Pentos: these guys would have the biggest need to get a khalasaar beating force and fast given they havent had a large military AND theyd likely be picked on 1st as a known soft target. They do have potential to have large navy and land force given their vast wealth. Like all free cities theyd need to heavily wall up the various outside settlements and invest in crossbows, archers and scorpions. They have the cash to have a large mixed force of well armoured horse archers , crossbowmen and archers , pikes and horse lancers to help.drive off the horselords!! Given their rivalry with bravos they may still have to keep forces to an agreed minimum . The windblown could be a good skelton to build this around as long as the tattered prince abandons his delusions of ruling it utterly. Qohor: the free city with the most work to do given their reliance on the unsullied. Perhaps using the existing eunuchs as professional backbone to train up most able bodied males into a milita! Longer spears and backed by lots of crossbows+ archers. They have the finest weaponmakers in all planetos to help. They make valyrian steel weapons too but clearly at too slow a rate to be a battle changer....unless instead of a few v.steel swords a month they produce hundreds of v.steel.arrowheads! The dothraki are unarmoured so that should pass through them like a hot knife though butter! One of their chief exports is wood from the forrest so finding lots of skilled axemen and training them up on the military equivalent shouldnt be too hard. Norvos: the slave bearded priest warrior caste would need altered to be purely volunteer but these could still form the officer/training corps of a larger force full.of either part time milita of full timers. Both they and the qohori live near such vast forrests archers and axemen should be plentiful to fill ranks, from the description though of moss overgrown pallisides theyd need to really build.up the walls to drive off the horselords. Lys: their island base means they dont have to worry about the dothraki but pirate slavers. They apparently already have high walls and a decent fleet , famed for bedslaves we.can assume this would remain but on a volunteer basis so could be good for info gathering. The fact they are famed for posions means they arent ashamed of them so possibly have archers with small pots to dip arrowheads in to increase fatalities. Tyrosh: like lys no danger from horselords as its across the sea but slaver pirates could be an issue. The fact the 3 cities would probably now be ruled by democratic councils could help stop the disputed lands and stepstones being fought over, the 3 could co-ordinate forces land and sea to keep pirate fleets away. Myr: is the only 3 sisters city to be in danger from the horselords once slavery is gone as they are on yhr mainland. The city os supposedly walled and they have apparently a preferrnce for crosebows....a perfect weapon to drive the dothraki off!. Add in myrish lenses on the city walls to spot khalassars, myrish fire the wound healing herb and they have a famous weaving industry meaning gambesons and brigandines could be standard weargear. Volantis: already an absolute brute military wise other than build up tje walls on its outside lesser walled cities they dont gave much to do. The elephants in the city could be very useful vs dothraki . The fire worshipper tigerguard (half their number) + firey hand troops could be moulded.into one huge profesional fanatical force at the beck and call of the fire priests to help preserve order and keep slavery at bay. Slavers bay: no reason of new ghis can field 6 ironlegions of freedmen the other 3 cities cant do at least 2-3 times that. The iron legions do have armlured and towered elephants bur asophot had elephants too so they should be able to get their hands on more (esp as they have exotic animals vs human eventd all the time). We see the clanker slaves have according to tyrion large amounts of lomg spears and crossbows , while hes right they are useless vs dragons these will help fight off dothraki. The crumbling walls would need touched up and of course finaly the pit fighters armoured up and sent out to demand personal combat from khals and bloodriders to leave them.leaderless!!

Just as in medieval times companies can be pretty loyal as future work depends on their reputations and sticking to contracts, like so.much of asoiaf everything is based on your pov....the lords of westeros as we see are utterly delusional to think their bonds of feudalism/vassals are any way more dependable than professional merc companies! Theres also the fact we see the stormcrows former captain (prendahl something) refuses danys offer to betray yunkai and break their contract as he is ghiscari, so there is some element of statehood/kinship involved too. It also reinforces the idea that breaking a contract even for a promised vast fortune is a big deal needing talked over among the captains! Also the slavery aspect means large standing forces outside the city states for hire sorta fits as a natural element in case any slave uprising movement sways the slave city guard troops to their side! Finaly between the slavery and capitalism the free cities have most things sorted withtrade so it makes sense military issues would also be sorted with such forces but without the nationhood or sense of unity needed for large standing forces outside city guards.

I cant see how it can fail short term when all signs point to it being rooted out utterly of essos. The slavery machine itself requires slavers bay to break/train slaves and it will probably be feedmen run for the near future, the dothraki who are major slave capturers will either join dany or be exterminated/nearly wiped out , volantis is set to fall as are most of the free cities. Its hard.to see.how it recovers or ever gets.to the same.heights again once the slaver bay 'processing' part of the slavery machine is ended nd the same time the dothraki as they are may cease to exist, this all on top.of the free cities moving to the more efficent freedmen run capitalism bravos model probably for good !! once the slavers lose again in mereen..its a semi religiously motivated powderkeg basicaly! Also bravos (and or the faceless men) may intervene to prevent slavery taking hold again!

Well theres the constant flaring up of the 3 cities disputed lands , norvos apparently bloodily contests the axe region with the ibbenese , unknown length of time for massive yi-ti civil wars and their wars with jogos nhai . The free cities , quarth and slavers may want a minimum amount of merc muscle in/near their cities to help supress any slave uprising (in case the slave troops in the city join in) not to mention some cities probably get nervous and hire some just when khalassars get close. In peacetime many will probably be broken up to protect merchant convoys on land and sea. A brave talented few may even get into mereens fighting pits!!! On top.of that theres the self inicted wound of patrolling ravenous slavers (dothraki and costal pirates) picking off people so anyone wealthy will want some hired muscle with their merchant convoys as they travel ! Not to mention agressive internal political power fueds [like in quarth] and rival merchants as powerful as minor westerosi lords wanting to wipe each other out! The offical wiki also says theres constant fighting in the disputed lands (we can assume these flare up from small scall skirmishing to full blown w0t5k scale wars!). It says 2 score companies are active in the region !!!! and worse sometimes captains can ignite wars themselves outside of free city orders (as we see there are bitter personal rivalries between captains!) So seems theres plenty of work for tens of thousands of mercs.on top of slave troops for hire and assasins. Add in various companies will have various levels of quality! We can assume the golden companys officers may pay out of their own pocket to keep the company largely together for large scale drills and high levels of training if theres 0 work or not enough for the whole force whereas lesser companies will release large numbers of infantry men in peacetime and expand again in wartime!

Yeah overall the sellsword market in westeros isnt huge vs essos. Tywin sends out for banners and sellswords but he has a week or so at most. We know later on stannis begins gathering sellswords and sellsails too. Now time is a constraint but also we know yi-ti is at civil war, the dothraki are imtimidatingly coallesing into one giant khalassar and the 3 sisters war is heating hence most of the sellswords.will be posdibly signed up already. For numbers we know Tywin assembles one wing of 1000(300 are valeclansmen so 700ish left ) of the rest some are concripts the rest are mercs described as horse archers,hedgeknights and freeriders etc on top of the brave companions. Later bronn manages to.recruit like 800 or so more for blackwater.

Yeah those sort might know of them true Even then they probably had a dozen or so picks above them of possible! The brave companions seem to be a bottom of the barrrel sellsword company.

Id doubt he sent for them personally or by name though, tywin doesnt seem the type to give 2 shits tracking the names or exploits of every paltry lil sellssword company.(esp given what he does with them in battle) They seem.to be scrapings frlm the bottom of the sellsword barrell