The World of Ice and Fire: The Valyrian Freehold by Maester Yandel:

The tale of the Valyrian Freehold is a fascinating one, as it came much later than other empires such as Old Ghis and the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, yet in several centuries, it would come to eclipse its predecessors with legendary weapons and technology that forever changed Planetos. Histories and legends found in the colonies of the Freehold suggest that the Freehold started around 2,000 B.C., where the shepherds of the Valyrian peninsula began to coalesce into city-states, the most prominent of which being Valyria. Basic industry began to develop in these cities, powered either by rivers or the hot springs which dotted the area around the Fourteen Flames.

Around this time, the records note the rise of the alchemists and pyromancers, practitioners of magic who were taught by a long-extinct civilization, who would be critical to the rise of the Freehold. Through the use of the pyromancers and the magma flows of the Fourteen Flames, Valyria produced the first steel in the known world - although it was merely equivalent to castle-forged steel, exporting the superior metal to other nations. Around 300 years after the founding of Valyria, a mighty army of spearmen and archers modelled after the legendary Lockstep Legions of Ghis spilled forth from the ornate gates, quickly subjugating the entire peninsula and forming the Freehold out of the conquered city-states.

The Old Ghiscari Empire, seeing the threat of a unified Valyrian peninsula, acted quickly to counter this new power, sending forth its own army and navy to shatter the Freehold and turn it into the weaker city-states it once had been. This set off the first of the Ghiscari Wars, a series of five wars fought over two centuries that would eventually end in the destruction of Old Ghis and the start of Valyrian hegemony in Essos. However, the First Ghiscari War ended in a white peace, as the Ghiscari held naval supremacy with their significantly larger and more advanced fleet while the superior Valyrian armour meant that the land battles were inconclusive. Needing a way to counter the pike hedges, Valyrians imported crossbows from Yi Ti and eventually began manufacturing them to more easily provide ranged support than the bow, which took years of training before a soldier could become an archer, as opposed to the mere months it required for a crossbowmen to wield a crossbow effectively. Despite the addition of the crossbows, the Second Ghiscari War, which was fought over the Kingdom of Sarnor was as inconclusive as the First Ghiscari War, with the land battle still being inconclusive while the Ghis fleet ruled the waves nearly uncontested.

The Third Ghiscari War also ended in a draw, but Valyrian tactics evolved to form a saelie, or a combined arms formation of crossbows, swordsmen, and pikemen that was beginning to prove superior to the Lockstep Legions. In the two decades between the Third and Fourth Ghiscari Wars, the most important innovation within the Valyrian Freehold was developed: gunpowder. Initially produced by accident after a foolhardy alchemist was searching for a treatment for kidney problems, the alchemist realized the potential of the mixture of saltpeter from caves along the coast and volcanoes of the peninsula, charcoal from forests, and sulfur from surface deposits near the Fourteen Flames as an explosive. The first gunpowder weapons were simply crude grenades packed with gunpowder and thrown at the enemy, and these were used in the Fourth Ghiscari War to great effect. At the Battle of Gorgai, a Valyrian fleet defeated a Ghiscari fleet for the first time when volleys of grenades sunk numerous oncoming galleys, although several Valyrian ships were also destroyed when the throwers failed to launch to the grenades early or dropped them on the deck. The grenades also turned the tide of the war on land, as grenadiers disrupted the tightly-packed formations of the Lockstep Legions, allowing the infantry to exploit the disorganization and rout the previously invincible armies of the Ghis. The war ended with the Ghis losing all their colonies in the Summer Sea, Basilisk Isles and Sothoryos.

The Fifth Ghiscari War would be the last, as the Valyrian fleet and army advanced towards Old Ghis, defeating any opposition in their path until they reached Old Ghis. A prototype bombard was shipped all the way from Valyria, and although it eventually cracked due to overheating in the barrel, the formidable walls fell to this terrifying technology, and the city was razed to the ground and the earth salted to prevent a Sixth Ghiscari War. Following the triumph of the Freehold over the Ghiscari, Valyria entered an age of relative peace up until the Spice Wars, as it colonized the western shores of Essos and expanded westward towards the Rhoynar.

During this time, many of Valyria's metallurgical and architectural innovations were developed and improved on, from the production of Valyrian steel to the famed Valyrian roads. Although the methods of manufacturing Valyrian steel were lost in the Doom of Valyria, Archmaester Vaegon's book The Lost Technologies of Valyria and Other Civilizations speculates that Valyrian Steel was made using magma flows, pyromancers, and advanced bellows to increase the temperature of a furnace far beyond the temperature of a modern furnace and remove impurities from pig iron. The end result was a steel that only the Valyrians knew how to make and was superior to any other metal, and once the Valyrian civilization fell, the few Valyrian steel artifacts that survived became highly valued by the nobility of both continents.

Valyrian concrete was the third major technology the Valyrians created. Although the Free Cities and Slaver's Bay still use concrete, their version is inferior to Valyrian concrete. The known ingredients of Valyrian concrete consisted of quicklime and volcanic ash, while some unknown aggregate is also used, with theories ranging from volcanic rocks to shattered dragonglass. The concrete was used to build the greatest structures in the history of man, from the mighty Black Walls of Volantis that have never been breached to domes in Valyria that could have an entire castle under them. Compared to the other two inventions, concrete is not as glamorous, yet it provided the backbone of the empire, allowing for the creation of roads and defensive works that held the Freehold together for nearly two millennia.

Gunpowder weaponry also made large leaps during this time period, with the first handheld firearms being developed as well as drastic improvements to artillery. In the aftermath of the Fifth Ghiscari War, the bombards that proved themselves effective with the destruction of the mighty walls of Old Ghis was further improved on, with the barrel being lengthened and narrowed to create a faster-moving projectile. While still being powerful enough to destroy walls, the smaller barrel size meant that it was easier to transport and mount, eventually leading to naval and field artillery. Gun carriages would be first developed during the Rhoynish Wars, allowing the Valyrians to use artillery on the field for the first time.

These new cannons were also reduced in size to be wielded, if clumsily, by a single man. By the time the Valyrian saelie marched against the Rhoynar, these hand cannons would be superseded by matchlock firearms that allowed the use to aim with both hands and provided slightly more accurate firepower. Within the saelie, the crossbows of the formation were gradually being phased out in favor of the hand cannons and arquebuses, as gunpowder weapons were significantly more powerful than any crossbow.

Around 1000 B.C., the Rhoynish Wars started with the First Turtle War after a border dispute between the Valyrian colony of Volon Therys and the Rhoynar city Sar Mell escalated when the Volon Therys militia killed a Great Turtle, an animal held sacred by the Rhoynar. The Rhoynar won the war decisively in a month by washing Volon Therys and their sizable army off the map in a massive flood conjured by their water wizards before Valyrian reinforcements could arrive. With the destruction of the offending colony, the Rhoynar were satisfied and brokered a white peace with the Valyrians, yet this would just be the start of another series of wars that would last two centuries and end with the exodus of the Rhoynar to Dorne.

The War of the Three Princes was fought between an unnamed Valyrian colony and an alliance between Qohor and Ar Noy, but the details of the war were lost to the Doom. The only things known about the war is that the treaty gave very minor concessions to Qohor, yet it caused the Freehold to be more involved in the state of the colonies and invest more soldiers and resources into the later Rhoynish Wars. The Second Turtle War was fought between Sar Mell and Volantis over the ruins of Volon Therys, ending with the burning of Sar Mell after a protracted bombardment from both sea and land. The records of the Fisherman's War, the Salt War, the Third Turtle War, the War on Dagger Lake, and the First Spice War have been lost, but maps during this period suggest that the Rhoynar had lost much of the the delta of the Rhoyne to the Valyrian army during this time except for the port of Sarhoy as well as the Qhoyne, including the city of Ar Noy, which was presumably razed during one of these wars. These wars gave the Valyrians the experience and reforms needed to fight the water magics of the Rhoynar, including phasing out the swordsmen from the saelie in favor of more arquebuses and developing gun carriages that would allow artillery to keep up with a marching army and be effective on the field.

The final and largest war between the Valyrians and the Rhoynar was the Second Spice War. Seeking to take over the spice trade of the Summer Sea, Volantis and their Valyrian overlords besieged and destroyed the Rhoynar port city of Sarhoy. In retaliation, Prince Garin the Great mustered the largest host in history at that point: a field army consisting of nearly 250,000 men, including 5,000 water mages, 10,000 mercenaries wielding gunpowder in the form of hand cannons and bombards from Sarnor, and 150 sorcerors from Asshai. This host conquered Selhorys, Valysar, and Volon Therys, decimating the armies through the sheer numerical disparity between Garin's army and the frontier garrisons that defended the cities. Seeing the threat of this force, the Volantenes requested the help of the Valyrians, who marched out with their own host of 100,000 men, including 300 pieces of field artillery and their own contingent of pyromancers.

Contrary to popular belief, the entire might of these forces never directly clashed with each other, but rather a series of battles of the course of a year cemented the fate of the Rhoynar. The Valyrian commanders were smart enough to avoid direct confrontations near rivers, thus denying Garin the use of his formidable water-sorcerers in any major capacity. In addition, lightly mounted dragoons consistently raided Rhoynar supply lines, slowly lowering the morale of Garin's forces as they failed to decisively engage the Valyrian forces.

Eventually, the Valyrians decided to give the Rhoynar their major battle at the Fourth Battle of the Valysar, where 50,000 Rhoynar clashed with 30,000 Valyrians and 90 guns. When scouts reported a Rhoynar host marching towards his camp, Daeron, the commander of the Valyrian forces, concealed his 90 cannons in the ruins of Valysar and led a gradual retreat against the Rhoynar. The Rhoynar pursued Daeron even into the night as Daeron had some of his saelie feign a rout, leading his pursuers to believe that the whole Valyrian host could be shattered if they kept on chasing the Valyrians. When the Rhoynar were almost on top of the concealed guns, a signal rocket was launched into the air, and 90 guns erupted as each cannon spewed hundreds of balls of shot at the surprised enemy. With uncanny coordination, the fleeing Valyrians immediately reversed their retreat, further throwing the Rhoynar into disarray. Then Daeron's cavalry, which had been ahead of the infantry and had retreated more slowly, wheeled around and hit the rear of the enemy's forces. The result was a massacre. Out of the initial 50,000 men that comprised the Rhoynar host, 30,000 were killed and 10,000 captured, while the Valyrians suffered less than 2,000 casualties.

With the shattering of nearly a fifth of the Rhoynar host, the tides turned against Prince Garin. His mercenaries either turned on him or deserted, and the Kingdom of Sarnor sent their own expeditionary force of 20,000 men, further turning the tides against Garin. Seeing his position as untenable, Garin led a retreat north of Dagger Lake, losing nearly 50,000 men to the month-long retreat as the pursuing Valyrian forces harassed his army. With less than half his forces remaining and the Valyrian host remaining mostly intact, Garin saw the end was near for the Rhoynar, and planned an exodus with Princess Nymeria of Ny Sar so that some of the civilization could escape. While the women and children escaped to the Narrow and launched the fleet of ten thousand ships, Garin's army made their last stands at what few remaining cities were left. Garin himself was killed while dueling Daeron during the siege of Ny Sar, but the last remaining resistance was at the Siege of Ghoyan Drohe, where the last 20,000 Rhoynar soldiers had fortified themselves. The siege ended after the few remaining survivors sacrificed themselves in a ritual to completely flood the city and inflict heavy casaulties on the 38,000 Valyrians besieging them, thus ending the Second Spice War and the presence of the Rhoynar in Essos.

The exodus of the Rhoynar eventually to Westeros was the final step towards Valyrian hegemony west of the Bone Mountains. The Dothraki had been decimated and neutralized while Sarnor was a vassal in all but name to the Valyrians. The five centuries before the Doom were a time of further consolidation and progress with the Freehold, although the Freehold still expanded and waged wars, like the ill-fated Valyrian expedition into the Bone Mountains and the colonization of Dragonstone. The greatest innovation of this time was the development of large and powerful ships such as first-rates and Ulthmen. When the Valyrians first began to build ships, they merely copied the design of the galleys of the Old Ghiscari Empire, and used that design for nearly seven centuries for everything from warships to trading. However, its low freeboard meant that its cargo capacity was limited and that it was completely unsuited for trade in the stormier Narrow Sea. As the Freehold expanded north and traded more with Westeros and Ibben, the need for a larger and more resistant ship became apparent, so the Freehold developed the andalogor (a portmanteau of "Andal" and "lōgor", High Valryian for ship). Originally conceived by shipbuilders who wanted to scale up the cogs used by the Andals, the Valyrian shipbuilders realized that the overlapping planks of the cog didn't provide enough hull strength to support a large vessel, so they developed a method where the hull planks were laid edge-to-edge and fastened to a stronger frame. This allowed the creation of three- and four-masted ships instead of the single mast a traditional cog had which held a lot more cargo than the galley and was stable in the stormy waters of the Narrow Sea. By 350 B.C., these had been phased out in favor of the Ulthmen, so named because of their ability to reach as far as Ulthos, which lengthened the hull and lowered the forecastle of the andalogor to produce a more stable and faster trade ship.

Warships were essentially variations of the trade ships, often built with slight modifications to make them unique or specialized, so their development mirrored that of the trade ship. After the invention of gunpowder, the first ship-mounted gunpowder weapons would be small hand cannons mounted on a swivel to fend off boarders. Later, cannons would be mounted at the bow, replacing scorpions and catapults as a more effective version of naval artillery. Valyrian naval tactics mostly remained the same at this point, albeit with slightly less emphasis on boarding, but that was about to change with the introduction of the andalogor. The lack of oars on a andalogor meant that guns could be added to the side, bringing a lot more cannons to bear with a single broadside than a volley from the forecastle. This in turn changed naval tactics, as admirals had to keep their ship's sides always facing the enemy to deliver broadsides. Eventually, tactics revolved around two concepts: establishing a line of battle to have all ships deliver broadsides without any risk of friendly fire, or to approach a line of battle head-on with another line of battle and deliver raking fire to ships on both sides of the now-divided line. These tactics proved themselves during the First Valyrian-Yish War, where 20 andalogors defeated a fleet of 50 Yi Ti war junks.

The Valyrians also began to classify their warships, following a similar reform within the army to professionalize and organize troops beyond the saelie. Ships of the line were the largest ships within their navy, so called because they were designed to engage fleets in pitched battles in a line of battle. These ships tended to have three or four decks of guns, although some two-decked ships were classified as ships of the line as they simply fielded more cannons per row. Frigates were designed for convoy escort and patrol, having two or less gun decks. Merchant ships tended to be classified as frigates, although some merchants commissioned ships of the line as merchantmen for more dangerous routes (like ships travelling from Valyria to Ibb) due to the presence of sea monsters such as leviathans and krakens.

This time also saw many developments to gunpowder, including the legendary Valyrian longshots and the heniby. The Valyrian longshot was composed by a unnamed inventor that bore spirals into the barrel of a gun, effectively doubling its range. Unfortunately, the method of boring has been lost to time, as attempts to cut the grooves into steel have failed, even with the use of a Valyrian steel-tipped bore, and the use of inferior metals. The longshot was only used by sharpshooters and scouts of the Valyrian army, as it was expensive to produce even for the Valyrians and took longer to reload. Archmaester Thurgood estimates that only 5,000 of these longshots survived the Doom of Valyria and the Century of Blood, making them relatively rare and reserved only for the best marksmen of an army. There are also less than 500 Valyrian steel longshots, which are highly prized by the upper class of both Westeros and Essos alongside Valyrian steel swords, which are regarded as an officer's weapon.

The heniby (from High Valyrian hen īby, which alludes to its origins in the Valyrian expedition across the Bone Mountains) was a critical invention that led to the obsolescence of the pike and the end of the saelie. It was devised during the Valyrian expedition into the Bone Mountains, where a force of 30,000 men marched into the Bone Mountains to conquer the remnants of the Patrimony of Hyrkoon and returned with less than a thousand men. Accounts from soldiers that were part of the expedition noted than due to a series of disastrous circumstances, nearly half the pikemen were wiped out by the time they exited the Bone Mountains and the Great Sand Sea. Forced to improvise in order to fend of the ferocious cavalry of the Jogos Nhai, many soldiers removed the grip of their issued knives and fitted them onto the barrel of their gun to make a makeshift spear. This had limited success, as the Jogos Nhai would simply take advantage of the soldier's inability to fire back and pepper them with arrows, but the concept intrigued many Valyrian generals who saw the opportunity to replace the pikemen with more muskets. Development eventually led to a socket-mounted heniby, which had an offset spiked blade attached to the barrel, enabling gunners to still fire with the heniby attached. With the role of the pike being replaced by the heniby, pikemen were abolished around 300 B.C. and the saelie with it.

There were other inventions during this time that were lost in the Doom. A ruined schematic of an engine powered by steam to pump water from the sulfur mines was found by a maester in Dragonstone, although attempts to replicate it have ultimately proved futile as half of the blueprint was missing. There were manuscripts arguing for the implementation of mining rails on the Valyrian concrete road network, although the iron requirements were prohibitively expensive. A variant of gunpowder called flarepowder was produced using the same ingredients as gunpowder in different compositions, which burned brighter and longer than gunpowder, and that was used for signalling and to illuminate the battlefield during night combat. A Valyrian alchemist developed a new method of saltpeter production, by mixing manure with either mortar or wood ashes, common earth, or organic materials like straw to a compost pile. The heap was kept moist with urine, turned often to accelerate the decomposition, then finally leached with water after approximately one year, to produce a substance that could be distilled into saltpeter. Following the Doom of Valyria, this method would be popular in Essos, which compared to Westeros, lacked the saltpeter found in the Riverlands to produce gunpowder.

The Doom of Valyria was almost instantaneous, eradicating centuries of work and progress in a single day, yet the signs were present almost three decades earlier. Around 130 B.C., a large tremor hit the Valyrian peninsula, causing significant damage to the various cities on the peninsula. However, the inhabitants brushed it off, seeing as tremors were common in the region, and the peninsula was expected to have large tremors every century or so. The tegon teptys, the Valyrian equivalent of maesters with a tin chain, realized that the volcano was behind the tremor and that there was increasing volcanic activity from the Fourteen Flames, so they tried to warn the populace. Very few heeded their warnings, particularly as they had more pressing matters, such as a civil war. One of the dragonlords, the famed military officers of the Valyrian peninsula, had declared themselves a king in Tyria with the support of 40,000 men and 12 of the 40 families that comprised the leadership of the entire Freehold. As such, the Valyrian leadership ignored the warnings of the tegon teptys. When several more tremors hit the peninsula, the pyromancers also joined the tegon teptys in their warnings of a cataclysmic event, noticing that their fiery magics, which were tied to the Fourteen Flames, had begun to grow agitated. While several minor houses decided to heed the warning and leave the peninsula, only one major house left the peninsula: House Targaryen. Daenys Targaryen, daughter of Aenar Targaryen, was one of these tegon teptys, and while Aenar initially ignored her warnings, he left once the pyromancers began supporting the proclamations of doom around 12 years before the Doom occured. They sold their assets on the peninsula, acquired Dragonstone as a residence, and stockpiled weapons and gunpowder while increasing the size of their personal army.

On the day of the Doom of Valyria, the Fourteen Flames exploded with more ferocity than even the tegon teptys had predicted. The entire peninsula was shattered, and 100-foot high walls of water slammed into parts of Essos and even as far as the Stepstones. Accounts in the Citadel tell of the False Winter, where the skies darkened across Westeros, temperatures dropped in the middle of a summer, and record rainfalls hit numerous regions. Mass famines hit nearly every nations as crops died, and the nomadic forces in Essos, began to move in numbers not seen since the Age of Heroes.

The colonies of the Freehold were the hardest hit, as the elaborate trade network that supplied them was shattered in an instant, devastating their economies. As the Valyrians kept all the gunpowder mills on the peninsula to prevent colonial uprisings, gunpowder instantly became worth more than gold, as the only remaining gunpowder mills were in Yi Ti, and the trade routes had become dangerous once again due to the scarcity of gunpowder for ship cannons, waves emanating from the Smoking Sea, and the resurgence of pirates everywhere. Each former city-state scrambled to find the components of gunpowder, even sending expeditions to the Smoking Sea to look for sulfur, although none returned. And so began the Century of Blood, a time of unprecedented chaos that saw civilization plunge back into anarchy after millennia of Valyrian rule.