Slavers Bay
Slaver's Bay is the name given to an area on the southern coast of Essos, located to the south-east of Westeros and the Free Cities and to the west of Qarth. The name can refer to the bay itself or the entire region. As the name implies, the cities of Slaver's Bay are the hub of the international slave trade.
Slaver's Bay has a hot, semi-arid climate. Agriculture is maintained through extensive irrigation systems.
The area borders the Dothraki sea, which is located to its north. It is noted as the location of the three great slave-cities of Meereen, Astapor, andYunkai.
The country of Lhazar, noted for its unwarlike shepherd-folk, is located up the Skahazadhan River from Meereen, to the northeast of Slaver's Bay. The Dothraki enjoy pillaging areas close to Slaver's Bay and driving captives to the slave cities in return for riches. They particularly enjoy pillaging Lhazar, since it is located conveniently close to Meereen.
The bay also used to be the heartland of the fallen Valyrian Freehold, with the shattered peninsula of Valyria located to the west of the bay.
The region later known as Slaver's Bay was once the heartland of the great Ghiscari Empire, which flourished well over five thousand years ago, and was one of the earliest civilizations in the known world. About five thousand years ago, the new power of the Valyrian Freehold began to rise to the west, across the Gulf of Grief. Valyrian expansion was driven by their discovery of Dragons in the volcanic mountains of the Valyrian peninsula, which they mastered and rode as weapons of war. The two great empires developed an intense rivalry, and clashed in a series of five massive wars, but the vast slave-legions of the ancient Ghiscari could not withstand Valyrian dragonfire. Five thousand years ago, the Valyrians finally succeeded in destroying the Ghiscari Empire, burning its capital city Old Ghis to the ground, conquering its surrounding lands and colonies, and enslaving the survivors. Five thousand years of Valyrian mastery obliterated much of the original Ghiscari culture.
Four hundred years before the War of the Five Kings, the Doom of Valyria destroyed the great civilization within a single cataclysmic day - after which Valyria's outlying colonies and conquests reasserted their independence. While their colonies to the west of Valyria developed into the Free Cities, in a parallel development, their colonies to the east overthrew their Valyrian overlords and became the independent city-states of Slaver's Bay. The three most powerful of these cities became Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen.
The ruling elites of Slaver's Bay continue to practice large-scale slavery; indeed, their entire economy centers around it. In times of peace they breed them, and in times of war they capture them. Many slaves are taken from distance lands, even places far across the sea such as the continent of Sothoryos. Due to this ethnic melting pot, combined with thousands of years of Valyrian domination, little of the original culture of the old Ghiscari Empire has survived. Even the language spoken in present-day Slaver's Bay is a derivative of High Valyrian, not the Old Ghiscari language - which is functionally dead. The Low Valyrianlanguage spoken in Slaver's Bay is, however, very distinct from the other Low Valyrian languages spoken in the Free Cities, as it was geographically separated and subjected to unique local influences. A few constructions and loanwords from Old Ghiscari such as "mhysa" ("mother") survive into Slaver's Bay Low Valyrian, but it fundamentally remains a derivative of their old Valyrian conquerors.
Despite the vast chronological and cultural gap between them, the local ruling slavemasters of Slaver's Bay pride themselves on surviving scraps of Ghiscari culture, and like to think of themselves as a continuation of the Ghiscari Empire's old glories - extending to the point that each of the slaver-cities uses a Harpyas its sigil, as the old Ghiscari Empire did.
