[X] Artemis1992
Where is everyone?
So pull a Daenarys Breaker of Chains but with MORE DRAGON?
So, belatedly, here's my thoughts on this comparison and on a potential Three Daughters Campaign. Which apparently turned into an essay, sorry.
1. If we intervene in Essos, the question of slavery is unavoidable.
Viserys has certain moral foundations, breaking which tilts him into Evil (which I think the quest decisively does not want), and opposition to slavery is the biggest of them. Unlike canon's Viserys and Dany, quest!Viserys didn't spend time wandering around the various Free Cities - he was raised in Westeros and Braavos exclusively. Also the Old Gods - slavery, it has been noted, is the only one of their taboos Bloodraven never broke. Not to mention the example being set for quest!Daenerys, etc..
Even if the questers didn't care about abolishing slavery (and some don't), there's the reputational matter of having already banned slavery in Sorcerer's Deep and (more importantly) Mantarys, from raiding slaver ships, from being Braavos-raised. Viserys doesn't like slavers, but moreover, slavers don't like Viserys.
The point is - slavery will come up as a subject of conflict, even if we intervene in the power struggles without outright conquering anything, but especially if we do. This isn't a bad thing. We would have a hard time holding a Free City under normal conditions, at least if we wanted to be more than a figurehead. IIRC all nine of them are republics of some sort right now. Holding multiple Free Cities, something that has been achieved twice in the past four centuries and collapsed within a generation both times?
So we're going to have a lot of enemies, from within and without, if we do conquer anything in Essos. We'd need a base of support, and slaves make up 75% of the population of these cities. And making it an ideological struggle also gives us justification for war.
Of course, it also gives our opponents justification.
2. Why Canon!Daenerys failed in Slaver's Bay
Okay, there's a long list. But above all, she failed to hold either Astapor or Yunkai. Daenerys in aDwD does not fail because of restructuring the cities' economy or anything like that. At book's end, Meereen is held by Barristan Selmy and allies, loyal to his queen despite canon!Dany being who knows how far away in the Dothraki sea. The problem is that the city is under siege by a coalition of every other city in the area, with Yunkai at the coalition's center.
Then we have other issues. Daenerys is still thinking of her people as a khalasar. This is part of why she doesn't hold Astapor or Yunkai, but also it means that she does not plan to hold Meereen forever. She's going to leave to invade Westeros, and the nobles of Meereen know this, and are just waiting for everything to go back to normal once she does. Related are the failures in social change - chaos in Astapor, compromise in Meereen, and complete failure to affect any change at all in Yunkai. Note that going full Lenin would necessarily have been any more likely to succeed, since it would have alienated the other cities even more and been more likely to lead to chaos within Meereen.
And, of course, the dragons aren't enough. They weren't entirely enough even before being chained, because they are not really under Daenerys's control. But once they're chained, she simply does not have enough of an apparent force advantage to keep her grip on the city.
Daenerys in Slaver's Bay also had some advantages we do not. In particular, she was dealing with a smaller and more isolated population.
3. Population figures
Here is an analysis of the population of the Free Cities. I think the figures should be about 25% higher, personally, because KL is stated as being noticeably smaller than all the Free Cities - maybe Lorath gets excluded from this, but the Three Daughters shouldn't. Then we have
urban populations:
1 500 000 - Volantis (83% enslaved), 7-8M with towns+rural
1 000 000 - Braavos, 4-5M with towns+rural
650 000 - Pentos, 2-3M with towns+rural
500 000 - Tyrosh=Myr=Lys (75% enslaved), 1.5-2M each with towns+rural
450 000 - Volon Therys=Valysar=Selhorys (83% enslaved), subservient to Volantis [these I think should be below the Three Daughters]
Okay. After a brief look at what the Internet thinks about Slaver's Bay, pre-war
urban population is probably around:
250 000 - Meereen
150 000 - Yunkai
100 000 - Astapor
Mantarys, Tolos, Elyria, and New Ghis are all, IIRC, smaller than Astapor.
For the most part, Slaver's Bay is likely as urbanized as the Free Cities, if not more. Looking at the map, the cities are isolated from their obvious hinterland by mountains. The exception is New Ghis, the "smallest but most dynamic" of the cities of Slaver's Bay. It also apparently has 10 legions of 6000 free men, which is just so large an army that I'm hard-pressed to reconcile it with the rest of the Slaver's Bay numbers. For the sake of consistency we'll say 6000 is the nominal size, and the actual strength of the legions is more like 2000 men each.
We thus get total populations around:
2M - New Ghis (smallest city, largest polity)
900K - Meereen
500K - Yunkai
400K - Astapor
300K - Mantarys=Tolos=Elyria
For comparison, Westeros estimates have some consistency in order of magnitude because of an abundance of sources. Something like:
12M - Reach (Oldtown 350K)
5M - Westerlands (Lannisport 200K)
4M - North=Riverlands=Vale (Gulltown 70K, White Harbor 50K)
3M - Stormlands
2.5M - Dorne
1.5M - Crownlands (King's Landing 400K, later swells to half a million due to refugees)
1M - Iron Islands
4. Westeros-First vs. Essos-First
The total population of Westeros, then, is in the same ballpark as that of the Free Cities, and by all accounts should be larger (though food import makes this not entirely obvious). Nonetheless, thanks to Aegon I, while the Free Cities have been nine independent states since the Doom, Westeros has been united under a single monarch for 300 years. And Viserys happens to have an excellent claim to that crown.
With that in mind, one might question why we're not content with Westeros, or at least with retaking Westeros before we think of conquering anything else. I'm honestly undecided on this point. I know I disagree with Azel's megalomania regarding Yi Ti. But the southern Free Cities are a region we can actually hold, and if we can establish peace we can use it as a base for our war in Westeros. And there's reclaiming Valyria - whatever form that may take - to consider.
Regardless, I really don't get the preference for murderhoboing as a campaign style. In character, Viserys will reconquer Westeros or die trying (possibly both, given that death has gotten a lot cheaper recently).
But if we do wage a war of abolition, the Three Daughters (Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys) are the natural target. They're the closest to us, for one. For another, they're close enough to each other that we can manage all three. And we will need to.
5. Avoiding Canon!Daenerys's mistakes (and copying her successes)
Daenerys's situation in Meereen, at the end of aSoS, was nowhere near as precarious as ours would be if we went and conquered just Tyrosh. Myr and Lys would, for one, instantly unite against us. Naval defense is all well and good... but you need to get food from somewhere, and for Tyrosh that's its not-as-disputed corner of the Disputed Lands. (Okay, magic can solve a lot of that, but I don't believe we actually have the ability to feed 500 thousand people.)
With all three cities under our control, we still have potential enemies to all sides, but they're relatively far away, giving us time to try and reestablish order. Moreover, we have potential allies. To the other side of Volantis is Mantarys under the archons (and
in Volantis is Benerro). To the other side of Pentos is Braavos, which nominally still holds some amount of overlordship over it. As to Westeros, we'll have to try and do our best to delay the situation, especially since Westeros has their own reasons for war and will not want to join a slaver alliance... but if worst comes to worst, Robert Baratheon will have to launch a
naval invasion, unlike any potential enemies in Essos.
Hopefully he dies before then.
Unlike canon!Daenerys, we are not so far from Westeros as to be unable to hold the three cities in question from the Iron Throne. Also unlike canon!Daenerys, we have magic. In particular we have Teleport, which allows us to be in all three cities on the same day. How to handle restructuring society is a thorny question; the good news is that utility magic can help with that as well.
That said, canon!Daenerys did win victories in Slaver's Bay that we should really not understate. One of her major advantages was shock. No one saw her as a threat, the dragons being only a future resource, and then suddenly Astapor had been sacked by its own Unsullied. At this point, the Free Cities do not see us as a threat; we want to maintain this illusion for as long as we can. Ideally, up until the people seeing us as a threat are no longer much of a threat to us.
6. So....
I've talked a lot about the implications of conquering the Three Daughters. So how, you ask, might we actually do it?
Well, honestly, part of it is that we don't know the situation enough to be sure. We've been to Tyrosh and Lys what - once each? We're nowhere near as familiar with their political landscapes as we are with those of Volantis and Braavos.
But here's something like how I would expect us to go about the matter.
* Start by waiting. Gather intelligence, send Azema and Glyra to cause chaos, plan the revolutions. Go to Bloodraven and get Rhaella Targaryen and Elia Martell resurrected. Build up Sorcerer's Deep. Et cetera.
* At a point when the Three Daughters are sufficiently unstable, have one half of the present party incite a slave rebellion in Lys while the other secures the palace-equivalent.
* The next day, before news can travel, do the same in Tyrosh (having prepared a sub-party there to do it). The day after that, in Myr.
* Frantically scramble to restore order in all three cities.
* Reach agreements with Braavos and with Mantarys. Try to do the same with Pentos.
* It's very possible Volantis will seek to march against us, but it will take them a long time to mobilize. But keep in contact with Benerro - if there is slave unrest, show up and help (and teleport back once enough party members are in; we have other people who can fight, but we'll probably remain needed to prevent chaos). Even if we don't actually control Volantis afterwards, having an ally instead of an enemy at our backs when we go to Westeros is a huge deal.
Easy? No. Doable? Maybe. The emphasis, I feel, needs to be on taking the cities 'from within', as opposed to a siege or assault. And that means acting faster than the speed of ship.