Difference between revisions of "Siege of Astapor"

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(Prelude)
(Prelude)
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Battle begins when the new [[Unsullied]] march out the city’s gates on the sortie against the forces of [[Yunkai]] and its allies and sellswords.  The sortie immediately proves to be a disaster, the new [[Unsullied]] march right into the iron teeth of a legion from [[New Ghis]] and are cut down almost to a man by the legion, and the [[sellsword]]s who quickly join the battle and finish the massacre.
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Battle begins when the new [[Unsullied]] march out the city’s gates on the sortie against the forces of [[Yunkai]] and its allies and sellswords.  The sortie immediately proves to be a disaster, the new [[Unsullied]] march right into the iron teeth of a legion from [[New Ghis]] and are cut down almost to a man by the legion, and the [[sellsword]]s, who quickly join the battle and finish the massacre.
  
 
==Battle==
 
==Battle==

Revision as of 21:08, 20 April 2012

Siege of Astapor
Date 300 AC ish ?
Place Astapor
Result Astapor fall
Combatants
Freedmen Yunkai
Commanders
Cleon, Butcher King Tattered Prince
Strength
Unsullied defenders Windblown company

The Siege of Astapor.

Prelude

The Yunkai, in their fight against Daenerys Targaryen, contract the Windblown mercenary company from Volantis; their first task was to travel east to Slaver's Bay and take over Astapor from the freedman salves.


By the time the Windblown scramble from the ships that have brought them from Old Volantis they hear the news that King Cleon the Butcher King is dead, King Cleon the Second is also dead and the Astapori are now ruled by King Cutthroat and Queen Whore.


Meanwhile the forces of Yunkai and its allies and sellswords have besieged Astapor.


Inside the desperate city the Green Grace has a vision that dead King Cleon will deliver Astapor from the Yunkai. The despairing Astapori heed this vision and attempt to break the siege, making the disastrous decision to have the dead Cleon’s corpse strapped onto the back of a starving horse to lead Astapor's new and vastly inferior Unsullied on a sortie outside the city’s gates.


Battle begins when the new Unsullied march out the city’s gates on the sortie against the forces of Yunkai and its allies and sellswords. The sortie immediately proves to be a disaster, the new Unsullied march right into the iron teeth of a legion from New Ghis and are cut down almost to a man by the legion, and the sellswords, who quickly join the battle and finish the massacre.

Battle

The battle began at dawn. It is told from Quentyn Martell's point of view, as a recollection.

Some of the Windblown were asleep when the battle commenced so had to quickly don their armour. Three hundred yards away Astapor’s Unsullied were pouring through the gates and forming up in ranks beneath Astapor’s crumbling red brick walls. Quentyn Martell, Ser Archibald Yronwood and Ser Gerris Drinkwater joined the Windblown horse line as drums beat in the distance. Gerris pointed out the Butcher King to Quentyn, the Butcher King sat tall upon an armoured horse in a suit of copper scale that flashed brilliantly in the sun.


As the Astapori advanced the Yunkishmen were still running about in fluttering tokars trying to get their half-trained slave soldiers into some semblance of order as Unsullied spears came crashing through Windblown siege lines. The Windblown and the Company of the Cat were ahorse in minutes and came thundering down on the Astapori flanks even as a legion from New Ghis pushed through the Yunkish camp from the other side and met the Unsullied spear to spear and shield to shield. The rest of the battle was butchery.


It was Caggo who finally cut the Butcher King down, fighting through the King's protectors on his monstrous warhorse and opening Cleon the Great from shoulder to hip with one blow of his curved Valyrian arakh, it is claimed that Cleon’s copper armour rent like silk, and from within came an awful stench and a hundred wriggling grave worms. Cleon had been dead after all - the desperate Astapori had pulled him from his tomb, clapped him into armour, and tied him onto a horse in the hopes of giving heart to their Unsullied. The act of cutting the Butcher King down earned Caggo the name Corpsekiller.


Dead Cleon’s fall broke the Unsullied; they threw down their spears and shields and ran, only to find the gates of Astapor shut behind them. Slaughter followed, the Windblown rode down the frightened eunuchs, slashing right and left their wedge went through the Unsullied like a spear point.


When the Windblown burst out the other side, the Tattered Prince wheeled them round and led them through again. It was only on coming back that Quentyn got a good look at the faces beneath the spiked bronze caps and realised that most were not older than he – green boys screaming for their mothers, but he killed them all the same. By the time he left the field his sword was running red with blood and his arm was so tired he could hardly lift it.


Quentyn Martell later thinks to himself that the fight beneath the walls of Astapor seemed real enough to him but according to Denzo D'han, the veteran of a hundred battles, it was butchery, not battle.


That night the Windblown made camp beside the shore of Slaver’s Bay, a half-moon shone upon the waters.


The Tattered Prince took the lion’s share of the Astapori plunder.


Quotes

We were dancing with the cripples at Astapor

Beans, on the Siege of Astapor


References and Notes