wild, hatched sometime before 1 AC — no year is recorded, only that he was already old and feral long before the Dance
Died
unrecorded — vanished with his rider into the Mountains of the Moon after 130 AC and was never accounted for again
Size
A large old wild dragon, decades untamed, muddy brown and unlovely — dangerous with the particular caution of a beast that had never once known a saddle before Nettles found him.
Temperament
Suspicious of nearly everyone by a century of hard habit, and won over, in the end, by nothing grander than patience and a daily offered sheep — proof, the maesters allow, that persistence answers a dragon at least as often as blood does.
Sheepstealer earned his name the honest way, living wild and unclaimed on Dragonstone for the better part of a century by raiding the shepherds' flocks on the slopes below the dragonmont — a nuisance too dangerous to hunt and too wary to trap, ignored by generations of Targaryens who had grown up with easier dragons to fly. It took the desperation of the Sowing, when Rhaenyra's council threw open every unclaimed dragon on the mountain to any commoner bold enough to try, before anyone found a way to reach him.
That someone was Nettles — a lowborn girl of no recorded family, dark of skin by most accounts and dismissed by half the court as unworthy of the attempt, who won Sheepstealer over the plain way rather than the daring one: bringing him a sheep every day until the wild dragon simply stopped objecting to her company. It scandalized the realm considerably more than her actual service warranted. Nettles flew Sheepstealer on scouting and raiding work for the blacks through the war's last months, and drew the close, jealously watched attention of Prince Daemon himself — a closeness Fire & Blood treats as more rumor than established fact, though rumor enough that Rhaenyra is said to have wanted the girl killed for it. When the fighting guttered out, Nettles and Sheepstealer simply flew into the Mountains of the Moon and out of the record entirely. No raven ever brought word of either again, and the Citadel, for once, admits it has no better answer to offer than the silence itself.
The fate of Sheepstealer
This carries how the dragon's story ends in the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
Flew off with Nettles into the Mountains of the Moon after the war's fighting wound down, and neither dragon nor rider was ever seen again — whether the two of them simply chose to disappear together, or met a quieter end the histories never learned of, the Citadel offers no verdict and several competing rumors.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
SourcesFire & Blood
Who was Sheepstealer?
Sheepstealer earned his name the honest way, living wild and unclaimed on Dragonstone for the better part of a century by raiding the shepherds' flocks on the slopes below the dragonmont — a nuisance too dangerous to hunt and too wary to trap, ignored by generations of Targaryens who had grown up with easier dragons to fly. It took the desperation of the Sowing, when Rhaenyra's council threw open every unclaimed dragon on the mountain to any commoner bold enough to try, before anyone found a way to reach him.
Is Sheepstealer from the books or the show?
Book canon. This entry follows George R. R. Martin's novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.