What is The Red Waste?

[Sh3ck3tt3ck]

What's the deal with this location...is this where the planet was hit by an asteroid resulting in the off-kilter seasons? Was that the asteroid that the sword Dawn was forged from? Was that asteroid part of the Red Comet that is now coming back? Is it significant that Dany's dragons were born here? Also is this the same area that Tyrion sees from the ship, glowing in the darkness or is that another (radioactive?) wasteland?

[AzureOwl]

It’s just a desert. Not even that forbidding a desert; given that the maps in the Lands of Ice and Fire show that in older times there were we several cities and trade routes going thru it.

It’s likely that this world’s equivalent of the Nabateans lived in the Red Waste until the Dothraki destroyed their cities and the secret of the watering holes and oases was lost with them.

And the area that Tyrion sees from the ship is Valyria, where the Doom still holds sway.

[Franq of Braavos]

I think it's just like a hamada of the real world, a normal rocky desert.

[Hempen Dan the Ropemaker]

I think it's an area that the valyrians laid waste to when they were forging their empire. The whole land and the cities are scorched and rakharo swears he rode through a dragon skull. It is ironic that dany kind of comes to life there as the mother of dragons in this place her ancestors destroyed, in the same way the valyrians turned ghis and slaverys bay into slavers and dany is undoing that work.

[AzureOwl]

I think it's an area that the valyrians laid waste to when they were forging their empire. The whole land and the cities are scorched and rakharo swears he rode through a dragon skull. It is ironic that dany kind of comes to life there as the mother of dragons in this place her ancestors destroyed, in the same way the valyrians turned ghis and slaverys bay into slavers and dany is undoing that work.

I don’t think so. We’re given a fairly detailed description of Vaes Tolorro and it points to the city having been sacked by conventional means, probably by the Dothraki. If dragonfire had been used to destroy the cities of the Red Wasted, the description of them would resemble that of Harrenhal, with the stone itself almost melted.

[Hempen Dan the Ropemaker]

I'm not so sure it would resemble harrenhel. Harrenhal is massive and so required extra burning. This could have been done differently. Also, if the place used to be a trade route, how else could it turn into a desert?

[Jon Blackfyre]

What's the deal with this location...

It’s just a desert. Not even that forbidding a desert; given that the maps in the Lands of Ice and Fire show that in older times there were we several cities and trade routes going thru it.

Exactly, just a big desert which most likely become less hospitable after the Dothraki destroyed the towns/cities that used to be present and destroyed what form of irrigation and agriculture that was developed.

Those maps do raise a lot of questions though, hoping that tWoIaF will illuminate some of the areas east of the Dorthraki Sea and north of Asshai

[AzureOwl]

I'm not so sure it would resemble harrenhel. Harrenhal is massive and so required extra burning. This could have been done differently. Also, if the place used to be a trade route, how else could it turn into a desert?

You can have trade routes thru deserts you know.

Like the Incense Route. There’s also the Trans-Saharan trade routes.

[History of Westeros]

Dany remarks on just how incredibly white and colorless the place is, though she does indicate there are burns as well. Probably not enough to be dragonfire, but the Valyrians didn't have to destroy the city, it could've surrendered.

The city is not barren, remember. Only the land around it. They find a large well and lots of very active fruit trees.

Both of these theories can co-exist. The city could've been conquered by Valyria, much of the land around it devastated, or largely/completely destroyed and then rebuilt. It's pretty likely the Dothraki came through at some point, there's plenty of evidence for that.

[Eternal Northern Lights]

There are plenty of clues to the Dothraki unpleasant visits.

The statues are missing from their bases as noticed by Danny, and we only know one type of people that practice this kind of sacrilege for trophy. As for the Valyrians, there is not a whole lot of evidence for them to have been there. A burned city means little since everyone including Dothrakis practiced burning places to the ground during wars. The red waste is also very close to the shadow land which might explain the dragon bones Danny's rider saw while searching for a place to stay.

[SirRunty]

Big desert.

[TheCrannogDweller]

Those maps do raise a lot of questions though, hoping that tWoIaF will illuminate some of the areas east of the Dorthraki Sea and north of Asshai

The City of the Winged Men, on the shores of the Hidden Sea, beyond the Mountains of the Morn? Indeed.

[Nittanian]

The red waste is also very close to the shadow land which might explain the dragon bones Danny's rider saw while searching for a place to stay.

The red waste is just west of the Bone Mountains; the Shadow Lands are much farther to the east past Yi Ti.