Where the Freehold of Valyria once stood upon the volcanic chain called the Fourteen Fires, a broken wreck of stone and steam now smokes above grey water, all of it swallowed in a single catastrophe the smallfolk of a dozen nations still call simply the Doom. By most reckonings some hundred and two years passed between that night and Aegon Targaryen's landing at the Blackwater — though a maester notes the older histories do not agree on the count to the year, and offers the round number honestly as an approximation rather than a fact.
Valyria
The Smoking Sea
Valyria's grave, and the wreck no sailor's chart is eager to mark
- Region
- Valyria
- Kind
- city
The drowned, ash-wreathed ruin of the Valyrian peninsula, sunk beneath the sea in a single night of fire some hundred years before the Targaryen conquest of Westeros.
Trade, faith, and rule
No trade crosses the Smoking Sea at all; sailors give it the widest berth their charts allow and swap tales, none of them verifiable and most of them frightening, of the stone men who wander its shores wasted by greyscale, and of demons said to haunt whatever survived the drowning. A maester records such tales as tales — hedged, secondhand, and impossible to confirm — while noting that few captains care to test them personally.
The Smoking Sea in the novels
This carries the place's part in the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
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.
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Where is The Smoking Sea?
The drowned, ash-wreathed ruin of the Valyrian peninsula, sunk beneath the sea in a single night of fire some hundred years before the Targaryen conquest of Westeros.
Is The Smoking Sea 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.