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===The Westerlands=== The Westerlands are the Westerosi lands to the west of the Riverlands and north of the Reach. They are ruled by House Lannister of Casterly Rock, formerly Kings of the Rock. People of this region are often called "Westermen." Lannisport, lying hard by Casterly Rock, is the chief town of the region and one of the great ports and cities of Westeros. The Westerlands are rich in precious metals, mostly gold, which is the source of their wealth. As with Westerosi customs to give bastards a surname showing their origins, illegitimate children born in the Westerlands are given the surname Hill.

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====Casterly Rock==== Casterly Rock was inspired by the Rock of Gibraltar (pictured). A stronghold carved from a mountain overlooking the harbor city of Lannisport and the sea beyond, Casterly Rock is the ancestral seat of House Lannister. According to popular legend, the hero known as Lann the Clever tricked the Casterlys into giving up the Rock, and took it for himself. The Rock is renowned as the wealthiest region due to its abundance of gold mining resources, and it is one of the strongest castles of the Seven Kingdoms. It has never been taken in battle, despite attacks by the Iron Islanders and the plans of Robb Stark in the War of the Five Kings. It was held by Lord Tywin Lannister before the War of the Five Kings, but after his death, Queen Regent Cersei Lannister made one of her cousins castellan of the castle. As of ''A Dance with Dragons'', the narrative has not actually taken place in Casterly Rock, yet descriptions of it have been offered by the Lannisters in the POV chapters. West of Casterly Rock is the coastal city of Lannisport. A busy port under the governance of the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, Lannisport thrives as a protected and wealthy city. The city is also home to many lesser Lannisters and other people with similar surnames, such as Lannys. George R. R. Martin stated on his blog that he drew inspiration for Casterly Rock from the Rock of Gibraltar.

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===The Reach=== The Castle of Almodóvar del Río in Córdoba, Spain, which represented Highgarden in ''Game of Thrones'' The Reach is the most lush and fertile region of Westeros, ruled by House Tyrell from Highgarden. The Tyrells were stewards to House Gardener, the Kings of the Reach before Aegon's conquest. After the last Gardener King was killed on the Field of Fire, the Tyrells surrendered Highgarden to Aegon and were rewarded with both the castle and the position of overlords of the Reach. The wealth and power of the Reach comes from their bountiful harvests of the most sought-after wines and foods. During times of war, the lengthy distance of the Reach and its abundance of foods protects their inhabitants from initial famine and sickness. In a significant political maneuver during the civil war in Westeros and the War of the Five Kings, House Tyrell provides the starving populace of King's Landing with hundreds of carts of food, ensuring the positive image of House Tyrell foremost, and the alliance for the Iron Throne with House Baratheon as secondary. However, the Tyrells were responsible for the starvation in the first place, as part of their plan to help Renly usurp the Iron Throne. The most prominent city in the Reach is Oldtown. It is the oldest city in Westeros, home to the Maester's Citadel, and the previous seat of the Faith of the Seven. Illegitimate children born in the Reach are given the surname Flowers.

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====Oldtown==== The Hightower of Oldtown bears similarities to the Lighthouse of Alexandria (3D reconstruction pictured) Oldtown is one of the largest cities in Westeros and is by far the oldest, built by the First Men before the Andal Invasion. It survived the invasion by welcoming the Andals rather than resisting them. The city is located in the southwestern part of Westeros, at the mouth of the River Honeywine, where it opens onto Whispering Sound and the Sunset Sea beyond. Oldtown is primarily known as the location of the Citadel, home of the order of Maesters who serve as councillors, doctors, scientists, and postmasters for the Seven Kingdoms. The city's Starry Sept was the seat of the Faith of the Seven until the construction of the Great Sept of Baelor in King's Landing. Aegon the Conqueror's reign is dated from his entrance into the city of Oldtown and his acknowledgment as king by the High Septon. Oldtown is the second most important port in the Seven Kingdoms after King's Landing: trading ships from the Summer Islands, the Free Cities, the eastern cities, and the rest of Westeros constantly crowd into its harbors. The city itself is described as stunningly beautiful. Many rivers and canals crisscross its cobbled streets, and breathtaking stone mansions are common. The city lacks the squalor of King's Landing, which usurped its position as the preeminent city of Westeros. The largest structure in the city, and the tallest structure in Westeros, is the Hightower, a massive stepped lighthouse which extends some into the sky and is topped by a huge beacon which can be seen for many miles out to sea. Oldtown is ruled from the Hightower by House Hightower. Originally kings in their own right, they later swore fealty to the Gardeners of Highgarden, and became vassals of the Tyrells after the Conquest. The Hightowers are known for their loyalty and stalwartness. The current ruler of the city is Lord Leyton Hightower. Oldtown remained aloof from the War of the Five Kings, but late in the war the Ironborn under King Euron Greyjoy launched a massive raid along the coast, conquering the Shield Islands and parts of the Arbor before trying to blockade the mouth of the Honeywine. An attempt to attack the city harbor was repulsed by the city's defenders. Oldtown remains under threat from the Ironborn.

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===The Stormlands=== The Stormlands are the Westerosi areas between King's Landing and the Sea of Dorne. In the east they are bordered by Shipbreaker Bay and the Dornish Sea to the south. Before Aegon's conquest they were ruled by the Storm Kings, and afterwards by House Baratheon, bastard relatives to the Targaryens. The Dornish Marches are located within this region, and were common battlegrounds between the Stormlands and Dorne until Dorne joined the Seven Kingdoms. Illegitimate children born in the Stormlands are given the surname Storm.

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====Storm's End==== Storm's End is the seat of House Baratheon and, before them, the ancestral seat of the Storm Kings extending back many thousands of years. According to legend, the first Storm King in the age of the First Men was Durran, who married Elenei, the daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. In a rage her parents sent vast storms to shatter his keep and kill his wedding guests and family; whereupon Durran declared war against the gods and raised several castles over Shipbreaker Bay, each larger and more formidable than the last. Finally, the seventh castle stayed in place and resisted the storms. Some believe the Children of the Forest took a hand in its construction; others suggest that Brandon Stark, the builder of the Wall, advised Durran on its construction. The truth of the matter is unknown. Storm's End has never fallen to either siege or storm. Its outer defenses consist of a huge curtain wall, tall and thick on its thinnest side, nearly thick on its seaward side. The wall consists of a double course of stones with an inner core of sand and rubble. The wall is smooth and curving, the stones so well placed that the wind cannot enter. On the seaward side, there is a drop below the wall into the sea. The castle itself consists of one huge drum tower crowned with formidable battlements, and so large that it can comfortably contain stables, barracks, armory and lord's chambers in the same structure. Although never taken in battle, Storm's End has endured several sieges and battles in recent history. The last Storm King, Argilac the Arrogant, abandoned his impressive defenses to meet the Targaryen commander, Orys Baratheon, in open battle during Aegon Targaryen's War of Conquest, and lost. This led to Orys Baratheon marrying Argilac's daughter and becoming Lord of Storm's End. During the War of the Usurper, Storm's End was besieged for a year by the host of Lord Mace Tyrell, who commanded the landward forces, while Paxter Redwyne's fleet of the Arbor kept the castle cut off by sea. Stannis Baratheon, commanding the defense, refused to yield and his men were reduced to eating rats. A smuggler named Davos ran the blockade to resupply the castle and Stannis rewarded him by knighting him and giving him lands, thus founding House Seaworth, but he also cut off the fingertips of his left hand as punishment for all his previous smuggling. After the war, Stannis was furious when his brother Robert, now king, gave the castle to their younger brother Renly and placed Stannis in command of Dragonstone. This led to many years of bitterness on Stannis' part. During the War of the Five Kings, Storm's End supported Renly when he attempted to usurp the crown, and was besieged by Stannis. When the castellan, Cortnay Penrose, refused to yield even after Renly's death, he was killed by Stannis' ally, the priestess Melisandre, and the castle surrendered. Later, the castle was besieged by a strong army under Mace Tyrell, but he abandoned the siege after a few weeks to return to King's Landing after the arrest of his daughter Margaery by the High Septon. As of ''A Dance with Dragons'', the castle remains in the hands of Stannis Baratheon. At the end of ''A Dance with Dragons'' an army lands in the Stormlands led by Jon Connington and a young man claiming to be Aegon Targaryen, the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell and heir to the Iron Throne. To attract support, Aegon plans to conquer Storm's End and raise the banner of House Targaryen above the battlements. In the TV adaptation, scenes in the Stormlands were filmed in Larrybane, Northern Ireland. The scene where Stannis' red priestess Melisandre gave birth to a shadow creature was filmed in the Cushendun Caves, also in Northern Ireland.

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===The Crownlands=== The Crownlands are the lands in Westeros surrounding King's Landing, ruled directly by the crown of the Iron Throne. The Targaryen kings consolidated this as one of the nine regions of Westeros, after their conquest of the Seven Kingdoms, from sparsely populated pieces of the Riverlands and Stormlands. The Crownlands form the entire coastline of Blackwater Bay, and include the original Targaryen homeland on the island of Dragonstone, at the Narrow Sea entrance to Blackwater Bay. Besides King's Landing, which is the largest city in Westeros, the Crownlands include many towns and castles. The illegitimate children born in the Crownlands are given the surname Waters.

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====Dragonstone==== Dragonstone was once the westernmost outpost of the ancient Freehold of Valyria. A century before the Doom, the Targaryen family moved to Dragonstone. When the Doom came upon Valyria, House Targaryen survived along with the last of the Valyrian dragons. Another century later, Aegon Targaryen and his sisters Rhaenys and Visenya launched a massive campaign of conquest from the island and eventually conquered all of Westeros except for Dorne, and North of the Wall. Aegon's progeny reigned as kings of the Seven Kingdoms for centuries. Dragonstone is a massive, forbidding fortress, taking up a large portion of the island of the same name. The castle is unique in that the builders and sorcerers of Valyria carved its towers and keeps into the shapes of dragons and made ferocious gargoyles to cover its walls using both magic and masonry. The castle's lower levels are warmed by residual volcanic activity deep below the keep. There is a small port and town outside of the castle. During the War of the Usurper, before the sack of King's Landing, the Targaryen Queen Rhaella, who was pregnant, and her son Viserys were sent to Dragonstone along with part of the Targaryen fleet and a garrison of loyal soldiers. But after King's Landing fell, Robert Baratheon dispatched his brother Stannis to take the island stronghold. After a storm destroyed the royalist fleet, the Targaryen garrison tried to betray Viserys and his newborn sister, Daenerys, to Stannis (the queen had died in childbirth). But Targaryen loyalists led by Ser Willem Darry took the children away. Stannis conquered Dragonstone easily, and King Robert granted him ownership of the castle. Stannis took this a slight because his younger brother Renly then inherited Storm's End, the ancient seat of House Baratheon. Ser Axell Florent, one of the uncles of Stannis' wife Selyse Florent, acted as castellan. Upon Robert's death, Stannis declared himself King of Westeros and condemned the queen's children as bastards born of incest, as he had discovered with Jon Arryn. Dragonstone became his main seat. He returned there after the disastrous Battle of the Blackwater. His councilor, the red priestess Melisandre of Asshai, tried to convince him to let her raise the "stone dragon" of the castle through blood magic, but Lord Davos Seaworth convinced Stannis to go north to the Wall to help the Night's Watch instead. After Stannis abandoned Dragonstone, leaving the Bastard of Nightsong Rolland Storm as castellan, Queen Regent Cersei Lannister dispatched a fleet to barricade it. However, Ser Loras Tyrell, impatient to free the fleet to protect his home castle of Highgarden, attacked Dragonstone directly. He took the castle but lost a thousand men and was himself reportedly gravely wounded. As of ''A Dance with Dragons'', Dragonstone is now controlled by troops loyal to House Tyrell, and theoretically, once again under control of the Iron Throne. One scene set at Dragonstone, in which Stannis burns wooden sculptures of the Seven gods, was filmed at the beach of Downhill Strand. In Season 7 of the show, filming for Dragonstone took place at several locations in the Basque region of Spain: the islet of Gaztelugatxe in Bermeo, Itzurun Beach in Zumaia, and Muriola Beach in Barrika.

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====King's Landing==== King's Landing is the royal capital of Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms. King's Landing has an estimated population of 1 million people, making it the most populous city in Westeros. It is situated on the Blackwater river on the spot where Aegon the Conqueror landed in Westeros to begin his conquest. The main city is surrounded by a wall, which is manned by the City Watch of King's Landing, which is nicknamed the gold cloaks, after the cloaks they wear. Within the walls, the city's natural landscape is dominated by three hills, named after Aegon and his two sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya. Poorer smallfolk (commoners) build shanty settlements outside the city. King's Landing is described as extremely populous but unsightly and dirty. The stench of the city's waste can be smelled far beyond its walls. The royal castle, called the Red Keep, sits on Aegon's Hill. It is the seat of the royal court. The Keep holds the Iron Throne. Aegon commissioned the throne's construction from the swords of his defeated enemies. According to legend, he kept the blades sharp because he believed that no ruler should ever sit comfortably. Centuries later, kings still cut themselves on the throne. It is a common belief that one who cuts himself on the throne has been "rejected" by the throne and is therefore not fit to rule. The city also holds the Great Sept of Baelor, where the Most Devout convene with the High Septon. It is the holiest sept of the Seven. The slums of King's Landing are called Flea Bottom, where residents are so poor they regularly subsist on "bowls of brown", a mystery stew that can include the meat of puppies and murder victims. Martin compared King's Landing to medieval Paris or London. It was inspired by the view of Staten Island from his childhood home in Bayonne, New Jersey. The first season of the TV adaptation used Malta's former capital Mdina to represent King's Landing. "Like King's Landing, Mdina is a walled medieval city built upon a hill, but unlike King's Landing, Mdina is an inland city so the production was limited to interior shots such as side streets and the town gate, which can be seen when Ned Stark arrives. Nearby Fort Manoel doubled as the great Sept of Baelor," which can be seen when Ned Stark is executed. Various other locations around Malta represent the Red Keep, "including the real-life residence of the president of Malta, San Anton Palace. The gates of Fort Ricasoli doubled as the Red Keep's gates; Fort St. Angelo was used for the scenes of Arya Stark chasing cats; and St. Dominic monastery stood in for the scene where Ned Stark confronts Cersei Lannister in the godswood." "In season two, filming for King's Landing and the Red Keep shifted from Malta to the historic parts of Dubrovnik and the Minčeta, Bokar, and Lovrijenac fortresses in Croatia, which allowed for more exterior shots of an authentic walled medieval city." Parts of Season three were filmed there, too, as well as in nearby Trsteno. "Known as ''the Pearl of the Adriatic'', the city proved to share many characteristics with the fictional capital: it had a well-preserved medieval look, with high walls and the sea at its side. According to David Benioff, executive producer of the show, "King's Landing might be the single most important location in the entire show, and it has to look right", and "The minute we started walking around the city walls we knew that was it. You read the descriptions in the book and you come to Dubrovnik and that's what the actual city is. It has the sparkling sea, sun and beautiful architecture." Co-Executive Producer D.B. Weiss added "To find a full-on, immaculately preserved medieval walled city that actually looks uncannily like King's Landing where the bulk of our show is set, that was in and of itself such an amazing find". The Tourney of the Hand in season 1 was filmed in Shane's Castle, Northern Ireland. The Red Keep interior are filmed at Belfast's studio The Paint Hall. Set designer Gemma Jackson said, "When I was thinking about King's Landing, the whole red aspect of it, that immediately made me think of Rajasthan. The floor at King's Landing was from the Pantheon in Rome." Martin said that "Our throne room is a spectacular throne room – we actually redressed a throne room built for another film. And again, it occupied a quarter of the Paint Hall, so it's very big, but in my mind in the books, it's Westminster Abbey, it's St. Paul's Cathedral.

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===Dorne=== Castle of Zafra in Guadalajara, Spain, which portrayed the Tower of Joy in Dorne in ''Game of Thrones'' Dorne is the southernmost and least populated land of Westeros. The capital, Sunspear, is the seat of the ruling House Martell. As of the first five books, Doran Nymeros Martell is the Prince of Dorne and Lord of Sunspear. Doran's sister, Princess Elia, was married in a political alliance to Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, the Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne. They had two children, a daughter, Rhaenys, and a son, Aegon. During the Sack of King's Landing at the end of Robert's Rebellion, Princess Elia was raped and murdered by Gregor Clegane, a House Lannister bannerman (vassal). Her children were also killed in front of her. Prince Doran and his wife, Princess Mellaria, have three children, Arianne, Quentyn and Trystane. During the War of the Five Kings, Tyrion Lannister, as Hand of the King, turns the historical enmity of House Martell and Dorne into an alliance by sending King Joffrey's middle sibling and sister, Myrcella Baratheon, as the betrothed future bride to Trystane, the youngest child of Prince Doran, who is about her own age. The eldest child of Prince Doran, Arianne, is heir to House Martell, Sunspear and the rule of Dorne. The wealth of Dorne comes from their famous Sand Steeds, purebred horses of endurance, speed, and grace, and from spices, wines, fishing, fabrics, and textiles. Dorne is bordered by the Sea of Dorne to the north, the islands known as the Stepstones to the east, and stretches from the high mountains of the Dornish marches, the Red Mountains, separating Dorne from the remainder of the Seven Kingdoms by land. The two major passes though the Red Mountains that connect Dorne with the rest of the continent are the Stone Way Pass and the Prince's Pass. The Prince's Pass leads to the Reach, while the Stone Way exits the mountains near Summerhall. The southern coast of the continent is bordered by the Summer Sea. Described as tropical in climate by George R. R. Martin, Dorne has the highest temperatures kingdom in Westeros, is arid, with a rocky, mountainous, terrain that includes the only desert on the continent. Its rivers provide some fertile lands and during a long summer there is enough rain and other supplies of water to keep Dorne habitable. Inland water is almost as valuable as gold, and wells are jealously guarded. Notable locations of Dorne are Starfall, the seat of House Dayne, and Yronwood, the seat of House Yronwood, the most powerful of the Martell bannermen. Planky Town is a trade port town at the mouth of the River Greenblood. Dornishmen have a reputation for hot-bloodedness. They differ both culturally and ethnically from other Westerosi due to the historical mass immigration of Rhoynish people. They have adopted many Rhoynish customs as well, including equal primogeniture. Dorne was the only kingdom in Westeros to successfully resist Aegon's conquest, even killing one of his dragons during the war. It was conquered by Daeron I over a century after the Targaryen invasion, but rose against him leading to his death. Finally under Daeron's cousin Daeron II they joined through marriage. This accomplishment has allowed Dorne to retain a measure of independence. Lords of the ruling House Martell still style themselves "Prince" and "Princess" in the Rhoynish fashion. Unlike most of the rest of Westeros, illegitimate children born in Dorne are treated nearly the same as legal offspring and given the surname Sand, as with Westerosi customs to give bastards a surname showing their origins. According to ''A Storm of Swords'', "There were three sorts of Dornishmen .... There were the salty Dornishmen who lived along the coasts, the sandy Dornishmen of the deserts and long river valleys, and the stony Dornishmen who made their fastnesses in the passes and heights of the Red Mountains. The salty Dornishmen had the most Rhoynish blood, the stony Dornishmen the least. All three sorts seemed well represented in Doran’s retinue. The salty Dornishmen were lithe and dark, with smooth olive skin and long black hair streaming in the wind. The sandy Dornishmen were even darker, their faces burned brown by the hot Dornish sun. They wound long bright scarfs around their helms to ward off sunstroke. The stony Dornishmen were biggest and fairest, sons of the Andals and the First Men, brownhaired or blond, with faces that freckled or burned in the sun instead of browning." In the show, Dornish scenes were filmed in the Alcázar of Seville, Seville, Spain.

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====Basilisk Isles==== East of Naath, the Basilisk Isles have been a festering sore of the Summer Sea, and a safe haven for pirates, slavers, sellswords, and outlaws. Ruins have been found on the Isle of Tears, the Isle of Toads, and Ax Island. The Isle of Tears is the largest island, with steep valleys and black bogs. It was conquered by the Ghiscari and it was called Gorgai for two centuries, until the dragonlords of Valyria captured it and renamed it Gorgossos. It was used as a prison by the Freehold, a place where they sent their most despicable criminals.

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====Naath==== Naath, also known as the Isle of Butterflies, is an island off the north-west coast of Sothoryos that lies west of the Basilisk Isles. The Naathi people have dark skin and golden eyes. They practice extreme pacifism, making music instead of war and refusing to eat meat, only fruit. This makes them especially vulnerable to slavers from Essos. Daenerys' interpreter Missandei is from Naath.

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====Summer Islands ==== As indicated on a map in ''A Storm of Swords'', the Summer Islands are situated to the south of Westeros, with a local fauna of talking birds, apes, and monkeys. The novels describe the island natives as dark-skinned people who speak their own language. They wear colored feathery clothes and live on fruit and fish. From their port city named Tall Trees Town, the Summer Isles export rare goods to Westeros such as wine, spices, feathers, but also a special kind of wood from which bows are made that have a longer range than most others. People of the Seven Kingdoms call the Summer Islanders' great vessels ''swan ships'', "for their billowing white sails and for their figureheads, most of which depicted birds". Samwell Tarly, who spends two chapters in ''A Feast for Crows'' aboard a swan ship, describes the Summer Islander women as wanton, and their gods as strange; they "revered the elderly and celebrated their dead" through sexual intercourse. As a prostitute explains to Tyrion in ''A Clash of Kings'', the Summer Islanders regard their sexuality as the gods' gift to worship them through mating, and hence many of their highborn youths and maidens serve in pleasure houses for a few years to honor the gods.

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==Essos== Part of the narrative in ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' lies across the Narrow Sea from Westeros, an area comprising the large eastern continent named Essos. Being roughly the size of Eurasia, Essos has geography and climate that vary greatly. The western coastline is characterized by green rolling hills, the massive Forest of Qohor, and extensive island chains such as Braavos and Lys. The middle of the continent is covered by the flat grasslands of the Dothraki Sea and the arid lands known as the Red Waste to the east. Beyond the Red Waste lies the city of Qarth. The south is dominated by dry rolling hills and has a Mediterranean climate, with a coastline along the Summer Sea and Slaver's Bay. The north coast of the mainland is separated from the polar cap by the Shivering Sea. To the south, across the Summer Sea, lies the uncharted jungle continent of Sothoryos. Much of the fictional history of Essos relates to Valyria, a city located on a peninsula in southern Essos and the origin of House Targaryen before the destruction of the Valyrian Empire in an unspecified cataclysm. After the destruction of Valyria, the cities of Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen regained independence and ruled their respective areas as city-states. The area is known in the books as Slaver's Bay.

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===Free Cities and vicinity === Across the Narrow sea on the western side of Essos lie the nine Free Cities, independent city-states that are mostly on islands or along the coast. They are Lys, Myr, Pentos, Braavos, Lorath, Norvos, Qohor, Volantis and Tyrosh. Although most Free Cities are named early in the first novel, the books only provide a map of this region in ''A Dance with Dragons''. Mountains to the east separate the coast from the plains of the Dothraki Sea, though gaps in the mountain range provide the Dothraki people some access to the Free Cities. The Free Cities were colonies built by the ancient Valyrian Freehold, and later declared independence after the Doom of Valyria. An exception to this is Braavos, which was founded by refugees fleeing Valyrian expansion, escaped slaves and other rabble. The languages of the Free Cities are derivatives of High Valyrian. The Free Cities span an area characterized by the river Rhoyne, which the local character Yandry describes as "the greatest river in the world". Its banks are the homeland of the Rhoynar, who worship the river as "Mother Rhoyne". As mapped in ''A Dance with Dragons'', the Rhoyne originates from the conjunction of two of its tributaries, the Upper Rhoyne and the Little Rhoyne, southeast of the ruins of Ghoyan Drohe. The headwaters of the Upper Rhoyne lie in Andalos, the homeland of the Andals between Braavos and Pentos. The Rhoyne's course runs southeast to turn due south after Dagger Lake, where river pirates hide on and around the many lake islands. The Rhoyne gains in width considerably as it gets fed by more tributaries, until it opens into the Summer Sea in a delta near the Free City of Volantis.

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====Braavos==== Unique among the Free Cities, Braavos was not a Valyrian colony, but a secret refuge from Valyrian expansion. It is a city spread over hundreds of tiny islands in a lagoon on the northwestern end of Essos where the Narrow Sea and Shivering Sea meet. Braavos is home to the 'Iron Bank', one of the wealthiest banks in the known world . Braavos is also known for its swordsmen known as 'bravos', and its mysterious assassins, the Faceless Men. It is also famed for the Titan of Braavos, both a fortress and a statue. The ruler of Braavos is known as the Sealord and it is from the sea that the city's power and wealth flows. The hulls of Braavosi ships are painted purple and their merchant ships sail to many distant lands and bring their trade and wealth back home. Braavos has many moneylenders and the Iron Bank of Braavos lends money to foreign nations, especially The Crown, which has borrowed millions. Braavosi dress in flashy colors while the very rich and powerful dress in black and in blues that are almost black. Officials of Braavos, called keyholders and justiciars, wear drab coats of brown or grey. The city is also renowned worldwide for its courtesans. Every courtesan has her own barge and servants to work them. The beauty of famed courtesans has inspired many a song. They are showered with gifts from goldsmiths and craftsmen beg for their custom. Nobility and rich merchants pay the courtesans large amounts of money to appear alongside them at events, and bravos are known to kill each other in their names. The character Syrio Forel, former first sword of the Sealord of Braavos, introduces Arya Stark to a unique form of Braavosi sword fighting, called Water Dancing. The style is a refined form of fencing in which the practitioner stands sideways and wields a slender blade. Pugnacious bravos fill the city, frequently dueling to display their skill. Braavos was inspired by Venice, Italy. It was filmed in Croatian towns of Šibenik, and Kaštel Gomilica in the TV series.

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====Pentos==== The TV series filmed Illyrio's mansion in Pentos at Verdala Palace in Malta. Pentos is a major trading port on a bay of the western coast. Dominated by an architecture of square brick towers, it is headed by a Prince who is chosen by the de facto rulers of the city, known as Magisters. Khalasars occasionally make their way this far from the Dothraki Sea, but the Pentoshi are spared much of the raiding and invasions by paying tribute to their khals. Men from Pentos wear dyed and forked beards. As in many Free Cities, slavery is outlawed, but the wealthy and powerful members of the city have the ability to flout these laws by keeping servants collared in bronze. Daenerys's scenes in the pilot episode were filmed in Morocco. The television adaptation re-used the Jerusalem sets of ''Kingdom of Heaven'' near Ouarzazate, Morocco. "One small portion of the Jerusalem set, redressed and repainted, became the courtyard of Illyrio's manse where Dany first meets Khal Drogo." "When the pilot was delivered, HBO asked for extensive reshoots, including the scrapping of all the footage shot in a landlocked part of Morocco which was supposed to take place in Pentos, a fictional port city and filming it again in Malta." The exterior scenes at Illyrio's mansion in Pentos were shot at Verdala Palace, the 16th century summer palace of the president of Malta. "One of Malta's most spectacular natural attractions, the Azure Window on the island of Gozo, stood in for the location of Daenerys Targaryen's wedding to Khal Drogo." When Pentos reappeared in Season 5, it was filmed in Croatia.

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====Volantis==== Volantis is a port on the southern coast of Essos, and is the oldest and proudest of the Free Cities. A fortification known as the Black Wall protects the oldest parts of the city. The city is ruled by three triarchs, who are elected every year by free landholders of Volantis, and defended by slave soldiers called the "Tiger cloaks". Volantis is incredibly important to the slave market, and in the city there are five slaves to every free man. All Volantene slaves have facial tattoos denoting their profession: for instance, sex slaves have tears tattooed on their faces, and the tiger cloaks have tiger stripes. The worship of R'hllor is the most influential religion of Volantis, especially among slaves. The TV adaptation used locations in Córdoba, Spain.

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====Other Free Cities ==== * '''Lorath''' is a port city on a group of northern islands. The character Jaqen H'ghar poses as a Lorathi in ''A Clash of Kings'', wearing long hair dyed red on one side and white on the other. * '''Lys''' sits astride a series of southern islands. The Lysene have a tendency to be tall and fair of skin and eyes, unlike most inhabitants of the Free Cities. Lys is well known for its pleasure houses, training slaves in the arts of love and selling them as concubines and bed-slaves. Lys also frequently fights over control of the Stepstones and the Disputed Lands. There appears to be a love goddess whose worship is peculiar to Lys. Dany's handmaiden Doreah and the pirate Salladhor Saan are Lysene. * '''Myr''' is a coastal city renowned for their master lenscrafters, intricate lace, and fine carpets. The dark eyed and dark skinned Myrmen are similar to Norvosi and Pentoshi in that they are ruled by magisters that are known to pay tribute to passing Dothraki khalasars. Myr is a hub of trade in both slaves and their signature green nectar wines. Myr frequently fights over control of the Disputed Lands. * '''Norvos''' sits on the main continent in two parts, one atop a high hill and the other beside a low river. The city has three large bells, each with its own name and distinctive voice, that are rung frequently. The surrounding area is a land of rolling hills, terraced farms, and white-stucco villages. The climate is fairly mild. Norvosi can be recognized by their dyed and upswept mustaches. The city is run by a council of magisters that are known to pay tribute to passing Dothraki khalasars. It is also home to a group of bearded priests that train elite guardsmen. These guardsmen swear oaths of duty and consider themselves wedded to their distinctive long axes. * '''Qohor''' is situated on the main continent, in the vast Forest of Qohor. It is known for its fine tapestries and its smiths, who have the rare ability to reforge Valyrian steel, even directly infusing the metal with a variety of different colors. The Black Goat is a prominent god in the city. Qohor's city guard has been composed solely of Unsullied eunuch slave soldiers ever since the Battle of the Three Thousand, when 3,000 Unsullied soldiers successfully defended the city against over 25,000 Dothraki horsemen. Guardsmen tie braids of human hair to their spears to commemorate the Dothraki cutting their braids in salute to Qohor's defenders. * '''Tyrosh''', a coastal city-state ruled by an Archon, is infamous for its avarice. Traders deal extensively in slaves and Tyroshi pear brandy. The city features an abundance of pleasure houses, but they are not as highly regarded as those in Lys. Tyroshi master armorsmiths make intricate armor in fantastic shapes. Tyrosh is a popular center for the hiring of sellswords. The city is often drawn into the ongoing conflicts over the Disputed Lands and the Stepstones. The Tyroshi often wear forked beards and pointed mustaches dyed in bright colors. The character Daario Naharis is from Tyrosh.

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===Central Essos=== This section covers the Essos locations east of the Free Cities that Daenerys Targeryen passes through on her travels in ''A Game of Thrones'' and ''A Clash of Kings'' before moving on to Slaver's Bay.

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==== Valyria ==== Valyria is a peninsula in South-Central Essos, west of Slaver's Bay. Before the Doom of Valyria, it was the seat of the Valyrian Freehold, a massive empire thousands of years old. The Valyrians are characterized by their silver hair and violet eyes. Valyria was called The Freehold because every man who owned land was allowed to vote for their leaders. The Valyrians also used slaves to mine the Fourteen Flames, a series of volcanoes rich with ore. They subjugated the Ghiscari and the Rhoynar and established all of the Free Cities, save Braavos. They did this through their knowledge of dragonlore. Many Valyrians rode dragons. However, hundreds of years ago, an event known as the Doom of Valyria, apparently involving a violent eruption of the Fourteen Flames, destroyed the Freehold and made Valyria an archipelago. The Targaryens are of the blood of old Valyria, who escaped before The Doom.

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====Dothraki Sea ==== The Dothraki Sea is a vast, flat grassland on Essos. It is inhabited by the Dothraki people, a copper-skinned race of warlike nomads with their own language and unique culture. The Dothraki live in hordes called khalasars, each led by a chief called a khal. Khalasars are broken into groups, called khas, which are each led by one of the khal's captains, called kos. Each khal and his khalasar owe fealty to a ruling council of royal priestesses, called the dosh khaleen, whose members are each a former khal's consort, called a khaleesi during the reign of her husband, one who became part of the dosh khaleen following his death. Dothraki are expert riders and their horses are of prime importance in their culture, used for food, transportation, raw materials, warfare, and establishing social standing. They regularly raid other peoples. George R. R. Martin said "The Dothraki were actually fashioned as an amalgam of a number of steppe and plains cultures ... Mongols and Huns, certainly, but also Alans, Sioux, Cheyenne, and various other Amerindian tribes ... seasoned with a dash of pure fantasy. So any resemblance to Arabs or Turks is coincidental. Well, except to the extent that the Turkic peoples|historic Turks were also originally horsemen of the steppes, not unlike the Alans, Huns, and the rest." However, he also noted that "In general, though, while I do draw inspiration from history, I try to avoid direct one-for-one transplants, so it would not be correct to say that the Dothraki are Mongols." The Dothraki have only one permanent city, called Vaes Dothrak, which serves as their capital. The dosh khaleen hold the city as their seat. It is filled with statues stolen from other cities the Dothraki conquered or raided. There is a law that no Dothraki may shed blood within the boundaries of Vaes Dothrak and that those who do are cursed. Two gigantic bronze stallions, whose hooves meet midair, form an arch above the entryway to the city. For the first season of the TV adaptation, Sandy Brae in the Mourne Mountains of northern Ireland was chosen to stand in for Vaes Dothrak; the bronze stallions making up the Horse Gate as the main entrance of Vaes Dothrak were later C.G.I.ed on two pedestals erected on location.

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====Lhazar==== Lhazar is an area of the semi-arid lands south of the Dothraki Sea. A region of pastures and hills, it is inhabited by the Lhazareen, a peaceful people with bronze skin, flat faces, and almond eyes. They are predominantly shepherds, called the Lamb Men by the Dothraki, who frequently prey on them. They worship a god called the Great Shepherd and believe that all of humanity is part of a single flock. The scenes at the village of the Lamb Men that is sacked by the Dothraki were filmed in Malta, at the farming town of Manikata.

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===Slaver's Bay === Slaver's Bay is a marginal sea of the Summer Sea, lying to the south of the Dothraki Sea, to the west of Lhazar and thousands of leagues to the east of the Free Cities. The climate is very hot. After a first mention in ''A Game of Thrones'' in relation to slavery, Daenerys Targaryen conquers the three great Slaver's Bay port city-states Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen in ''A Storm of Swords''. She stays in Meereen throughout most of ''A Dance with Dragons''. The cities were built from the rubble of Old Ghis, an ancient rival of Valyria that was crushed by Valyria thousands of years before the series' events. The economies of the cities are largely based on slave labor and the slave trade. Treatment of slaves is often harsh, while citizens live in relative luxury. Professional soldiers of all three cities wear outlandish costumes and hairstyles that limit their usefulness in battle. The cities' militaries are highly dependent on additional slave and mercenary armies for the actual fighting. Present inhabitants of the bay are a mixed race that no longer speak the old Ghiscari tongue but variations of High Valyrian with a characteristic growl. The ancient folk of Ghis, who name themselves the harpy's sons in Astapor, are said to have bristly red-black hair. The Good Masters of Astapor all appear alike to Daenerys as "thick fleshy men with amber skin, broad noses, dark eyes. Their wiry hair was black or a dark red, or that queer mixture of red and black that was peculiar to Ghiscari". Only the freeborn men of Astapor are permitted to wear garments called tokars, whose fringes display their status. Many Astapori women veil their face for the dust. The Astapori are drenched in sweet perfumes.

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====Astapor==== Astapor lies on the banks of the Worm River, a wide, slow and crooked stream with wooded islands. Entering Astapor at the beginning of ''A Storm of Swords'', Daenerys experiences it as an ancient and dilapidated city that has long passed its glory days. The city is dominated by its red brick architecture, and Arstan Whitebeard explains to Daenerys that the saying "Brick and blood built Astapor, ... and brick and blood her people" refers to the slaves who make the bricks. Astapor's stepped pyramids, its fighting pits, streets, the surrounding walls and the Plaza of Pride are all made of red bricks. The so-called Plaza of Punishment at Astapor's main gates is even larger than the Plaza of Pride. The Plaza of Pride, which has a red-brick fountain and a huge bronze harpy statue in its center, serves as an open air slave market and a marshaling area for the Unsullied, elite eunuch spearmen with a renown for discipline and effectiveness. Astapor is the only city to sell Unsullied, but also sells bed slaves, fieldhands, scribes, craftsmen and tutors. The Unsullied require a huge investment in both time and money by the Astapori who raise and train them, but they earn the most profitable of returns for the Good Masters of Astapor. The Unsullied wear spiked bronze hats, and they obey at all costs, even if it demands their death. They are given new slave names each day to be reminded of their worthlessness. In times of attack, unsold Unsullied are deployed to the massive, crumbling red-brick walls that the Astapori no longer man. Daenerys decides to buy all of Astapor's trained and untrained Unsullied, over 8600 in number, and tells them to kill all adult Astapori slavers and soldiers when she leaves the city. She gives the power over Astapor to a council of former slaves led by a healer, a scholar and a priest, and tens of thousands of former slaves join her on her travels to Yunkai. A former butcher named Cleon fends off a scheme to have the Good Masters re-established, and was crowned as the King of Astapor in reward. The TV show used the coastal town of Essaouira, Morocco to film scenes in Astapor.

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====Yunkai==== The smallest of the three cities, Yunkai, like Meereen, does not trade in Unsullied but is known for its fighting pits and its pleasure houses, both of which turn out slaves at a brisk pace. The city is similar to Astapor in architecture except for its smaller size and its use of yellow brick in its buildings instead of red. The slavers of Yunkai are known as the Wise Masters. Because of the city's lack of Unsullied, it relies on a mixed professional and slave army of approximately 4,000 with at least 1,000 mercenaries. Typical for Ghiscari, Yunkai soldiers wear impractical armor and oiled hair teased into enormous shapes, limiting their effectiveness. Yunkish scenes were filmed in Aït Benhaddou, Morocco in the TV show.

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====Meereen==== The largest of the three slaver cities, Meereen has a population equaling that of Astapor and Yunkai combined. The city has architecture similar to that of its neighbors, but it is made of bricks of many colors. Its landscape is dominated by a massive pyramid, named the Great Pyramid, and the Temple of Graces, which is capped by a golden dome. Meereen is unique among the Ghiscari cities in that it is filled with many temples and pyramids. The slavers of Meereen are known as the Great Masters. They field a force of lancers equipped in traditionally extravagant Ghiscari fashion with scales of copper and lances as long as fourteen feet. It is built on the banks of the river Skahadhazan. For the HBO television series, many of the scenes in Meereen were filmed in Split and the Fortress of Klis, Croatia. In Season 5, Daznak's Pit in the city was shot in the Plaza de Toros in Osuna, Spain.

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====Red Waste ==== The Red Waste is a great desert-like area in the eastern part of Essos. Not much is known about it, since it was only briefly seen in ''A Clash of Kings'' when Daenerys Targaryen and her ''khalasar'' crossed it. The only known settlement in the region, Vaes Tolorro, is in ruins.

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====Qarth==== First mentioned in ''A Game of Thrones'', the city of Qarth has not yet appeared on any maps in the books. However, the HBO ''Viewer's Guide'' world map and the opening titles of the TV series' second season show Qarth located at a strait between the Summer Sea and the Jade Sea in the south-east of Essos. Upon Daenerys' first visit to Qarth in ''A Clash of Kings'', the warlock Pyat Pree describes his city as the center of the world and as a gateway of commerce and culture between the east and west, and the north and south. The reader learns through Daenerys's eyes that the city is surrounded by three graded walls of thirty to fifty feet in height, respectively engraved with portraits of animals, war, and lovemaking. The city's buildings are of many colors, including rose, violet, and umber. Slender towers rise throughout the city, fountains adorn every square, and thousands of colored birds, blooming trees and flowers fill the city. The TV adaptation filmed Qarth on the island of Lokrum near Dubrovnik and constructed a set at the Dubac quarry in Croatia to double for the gates of Qarth. The Qartheen are described as "tall pale folk in linen and samite and tiger fur", with the women wearing gowns that leave one breast bare, while the men sport beaded silk skirts. Daenerys perceives them as "nothing if not polite". Slaves serve their needs. The Pureborn, descendants of the city's ancient kings and queens, govern Qarth and also command the city's defenses. Three principal merchant groups battle amongst themselves and against the Pureborn for dominance of the city: the Thirteen, the Ancient Guild of Spicers, and the Tourmaline Brotherhood. Qarth's warlocks, whose lips are turned blue from a potion called "the shade of the evening", are said to brood over these factions; they are still feared although their power and prestige have waned over the years. Qarth is also home to the Sorrowful Men, a guild of assassins named so for whispering "I am so sorry," before killing their victims. Daenerys leaves Qarth again at the end of ''A Clash of Kings''.

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====Asshai and the Shadow Lands ==== Asshai and the Shadow Lands are mysterious locations in the ''Ice and Fire'' world. They are first mentioned in ''A Game of Thrones'' and were first mapped in ''The Lands of Ice and Fire'', lying on the far east of the known world. Martin is unsure if the books will ever take the readers to Asshai, but said that readers may learn more through the POV character Melisandre (who originates from Asshai) or through the memories and mentions of other characters. Jorah Mormont describes Asshai as a port city far to the south of the Dothraki sea, at the end of the known world. Asshai exports such goods as black amethysts, amber and dragonglass. At another time, Jorah Mormont tells Daenerys of great kingdoms to the east of the Red Waste, and lists Asshai by the Shadow as one of the cities full of wonders there. According to Martin, all ship travels between Westeros and Asshai go via the Summer Sea and the Jade Sea through the straits at Qarth, and that the common folk still believe the world to be flat. However, according to Martin, "Asshai is not nearly important to trade as Yi Ti, and the rich port cities of Yi Ti (and Leng) and more easily reached via Qarth." Quaithe of the Shadow prophesies Daenerys in Qarth that "To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east ... and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow." When Daenerys interprets this to mean she must go to Asshai, Quaithe says she would find the truth there. There are many tales about the Shadow Lands, though how much truth they hold is unclear. The Dothraki believe that ghost grass covers the Shadow Lands, with stalks that glow in the dark and grow taller than a man on horseback. Daenerys heard that "spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night". There are also Westerosi maesters in Asshai. The mages of Asshai teach others their healing powers, but also their spells requiring blood sacrifice. Ancient books of Asshai record the Azor Ahai prophecy followed by members of the R'hllor faith. Daenerys heard that dragons themselves originated from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea, and they possibly still live there. Bran dreams of flying Dragons in Asshai. The petrified dragon eggs Illyrio gives to Daenerys are said to come from the Shadow Lands. The "dour and frightening" Shadow Men cover their bodies in tattoos and wear lacquered wooden masks, and the appearance of the Asshai'i is described as dark and solemn. The Dothraki believe the Asshai'i to be the spawn of shadows. The Asshai'i have a language of their own.

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====Ibben==== Ibben is a collection of islands north of Essos in the Bay of Whales. The largest of these islands is Ib, which contains the cities Port of Ibben and Ib Nor. Until the Doom of Valyria, Ibben was ruled by a God-King. Now power is held by the Shadow Council, which is made up of nobles, priests, and wealthy guildsmen. Ibben is first mentioned in ''A Game of Thrones'', where Tyrion talks of rumors that mammoths "roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben". In 2002, Martin said the narrative would "probably not" take readers to Ibben, which he described as a "cold, mountainous, Iceland-sized island" (i.e. 40,000 square miles) in the Shivering Sea, with the Port of Ibben as the major city; some Ibbenese also live on smaller islands nearby or in colonies on Essos. Ibben is unmapped in the books as of ''A Dance with Dragons'', but similar to Martin's descriptions, the HBO ''Viewer's Guide'' world map gives the island's location as to the north-east of Essos. Martin said that due to a large whale population in the Shivering sea, many of the Ibbenses were whalers. The Ibbenses are known to chew whale blubber in order to maintain their metabolism in the cold climate. Several characters see Ibbenese whalers and cogs at the ports of King's Landing, Braavos, Maidenpool, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and the Iron Islands. The novels describe the people of Ibben as squat and hairy; Arya even meets an Ibbenese woman with a mustache. Tyrion and Varys meet foul-smelling Ibbenese, who "were as fond of axes as they were of each other". Arya sees "a dark brutal axeman from Ib" in her dreams. The Ibbenese are said to speak with low, raspy voices and to have their own language.

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====Yi Ti==== The novels repeatedly describe Yi Ti as a city full of wonders, lying in the far east. As of ''A Dance with Dragons'', Yi Ti has not appeared on any maps in the books, but Martin specified that "Yi Ti is to the south east of Qarth, generally, across the Jade Sea." The city is first mentioned in ''A Game of Thrones'', talking of rumors that "basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti". Sailor stories presented in ''A Feast for Crows'' mention that a grey plague has hit Yi Ti. The god of the people of Yi Ti is called the Lion of Night. Daenerys sees people of Yi Ti as bright-eyed men in monkey-tail hats in the markets of Vaes Dothrak. Martin is unsure "to what extent those peoples like of Yi Ti will ever enter this present story, however... their lands are very far away."

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====Plains of Jogos Nhai==== North of Yi Ti, the Plain of Jogos Nhai are windswept, with rolling hills. They are dominated by a race of mounted warriors called the Jogos Nhai. The Jogos Nhai live in yurts and tents, and are a nomadic people. They are short, squat, and have large heads and small faces. Men and women both have pointed skulls, a result of their custom of binding the heads of newborns. They also ride zorses, a striped mount that can withstand much more than average horse. The Jogos Nhai do not fight between themselves, and live in small clans bound by blood. They live in a state of perpetual war with outsiders. Each tribe is commanded by a ''jhat'', or war chief, and a moonsinger, who is a priestess, healer, and judge. Moonsingers are generally female, and ''jhats'' are mostly male. (Paraphrased from ''The World of Ice and Fire)''

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==Sothoryos == To the south of Essos is the continent of Sothoryos (mistakenly spelled Sothoros in early novels). Sothoryos is the third continent of the known world, and is vast, plague-ridden, covered in jungles, and largely unexplored. It is reported to be as large as Essos and described as a "land without end" by Jaenara Belaerys, a Valyrian dragonlord from before the Doom of Valyria. The continent is first named on a map in ''A Storm of Swords'' (2000), showing the cities of Yeen and Zamettar on it. The narrative itself first refers to the continent in ''A Feast for Crows'' (2005). Martin had described Sothoryos in 2002 as "the southern continent, roughly equivalent to Africa, jungly, plague-ridden, and largely unexplored". The novels provide little other information. The swampy nature of Sothoryos is briefly referenced by Victarion in ''A Dance with Dragons'', and teak from Sothoryos is said to be used to build ships. A corsair's road runs along the continent's northern coast. ''A Dance with Dragons'' refers to the diseases on Sothoryos in regards to the wealthy but sick Yunkai slave trader Yezzan zo Qaggaz. Victarion describes some people as "squat and hairy as the apes of Sothoros", and some people fighting in Daznak's Pit for Daenerys's entertainment in ''A Dance with Dragons'' are described as "brindle-skinned half-men from the jungles of Sothoros". Martin said that, unlike other peoples in the novels, the brindled men of Sothoryos were pure fantasy constructs.

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==Ulthos == The map collection ''The Lands of Ice and Fire'' also shows the north tip of a landmass named "Ulthos" to the south of Essos and east of Sothoryos. Asked whether this was another continent, Martin replied, "Well, it's a large landmass. I am a little unclear on the formal definition of 'continent' as opposed to 'big island.' Also on the size of Ulthos, which after all sits at the edge of the known world. Terra incognita and all that."

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==External links== * Wiki of Ice and Fire, Geography

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The soundtrack album for the second season of HBO series ''Game of Thrones'', titled '''''Game of Thrones: Season 2''''', was published on June 19, 2012. The instrumental music by Ramin Djawadi was performed by the Czech Film Orchestra and Choir and recorded at the Rudolfinum concert hall in Prague.

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==Reception== The soundtrack received mostly positive reviews. ''Tracksounds''s review was again mixed, describing the score as little more than adequate. Noting a lack of thematic development or dramatic momentum, the reviewer nonetheless appreciated the score's more subdued moments, which he considered less forced than the rest of the track.

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==Credits and personnel== Personnel adapted from the album liner notes. * Brandon Campbell – technical score advisor * Ramin Djawadi – composer, primary artist, producer * Stephen Coleman – orchestration * Czech Film Chorus – choir/chorus * Czech Film Orchestra – orchestra * Patricia Sullivan Fourstar – mastering * Evyen J. Klean – music supervisor, producer * Janet Lopez – music coordinator * George R.R. Martin – lyricist * The National – band, primary artist * Zdenka Pelikanova – music contractor * Robert Townson – executive producer * Catherine Wilson – technical score advisor

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"'''Battle of the Bastards'''" is the ninth and penultimate episode of the sixth season of HBO's fantasy television series ''Game of Thrones'' and its 59th episode overall. It was written by series co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, and directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton face off in a battle for control of Winterfell. Jon's force, mostly composed of Wildlings, is nearly defeated by the Bolton army, but the latter is overcome when Sansa Stark and Petyr Baelish arrive with the Knights of the Vale. The battle culminates in Ramsay's defeat and capture. Meanwhile, Daenerys Targaryen defeats the Masters in Meereen and begins making new alliances. "Battle of the Bastards" received immense critical acclaim, with several reviewers calling it a "masterpiece". and being praised as one of the series' best episodes as well as one of the greatest television episodes of all time. Critics described the battle in the North as "terrifying, gripping and exhilarating", Harington's performance received high praise, and Daenerys' reunion with her dragons at the beginning of the episode was deemed "thrilling". The eponymous battle took 25 days to film and required 500 extras, 600 crew members, and 70 horses. In the United States, the episode had a viewership of 7.66 million in its initial broadcast. It earned ''Game of Thrones'' six Primetime Emmy Awards, making it the most Emmy Award-winning episode ever. It notably won for Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing; the episode was Kit Harington's choice to support his nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor. Sapochnik also won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series for the episode. This episode marks the final appearances of Art Parkinson (Rickon Stark) and Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton).

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===In Meereen=== Daenerys, Tyrion, Missandei and Grey Worm meet with the Masters, who offer to let Daenerys return to Westeros in return for the Masters keeping Missandei and the Unsullied and killing the dragons. Daenerys counters that the meeting was called to discuss the Masters' surrender, and proceeds to ride Drogon into Slaver's Bay with Rhaegal and Viserion to burn their fleet. Missandei tells the Masters that Daenerys has ordered one of them to die as punishment for their crimes. Although they offer the lowborn Yezzan, Grey Worm kills the other two masters instead and Tyrion tells Yezzan to warn the other masters of Daenerys' power. Meanwhile, Daario leads the Dothraki to slaughter the Sons of the Harpy, who are massacring freedmen outside the city. Theon and Yara arrive in Meereen and offer Daenerys their fleet in exchange for help in overthrowing Euron and recognizing Yara's claim to the Iron Islands. Daenerys agrees to assist them if the Ironborn will stop reaving the mainland, and Yara reluctantly agrees.

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===At Winterfell=== Jon, Sansa, Tormund and Davos meet with Ramsay and his bannermen. Ramsay offers to pardon Jon for breaking his vows to the Night's Watch if he hands Sansa over. Jon counters by offering to settle their dispute with single combat; Ramsay refuses, saying that he is more certain that the Bolton army can beat the Stark loyalists than he is of beating Jon one-on-one. When Smalljon Umber proves Rickon's captivity by presenting Shaggydog's head, Sansa tells Ramsay that he will die the next day and rides off. Ramsay gloats that he has been starving his hounds in anticipation of feeding them Jon and his advisors. After Jon discusses the battle plan with Tormund and Davos, Sansa criticizes him for attacking without gathering more men and predicts that Ramsay will defeat them. Jon insists that their army is the largest one possible. When Jon asks Melisandre not to resurrect him if he dies in battle, she says that it is up to the Lord of Light. Davos and Tormund discuss their time serving Stannis and Mance and acknowledge that they may have served the wrong king all along. Davos discovers the pyre where Shireen and the wooden stag he carved for her were burned. The armies gather outside Winterfell the next morning. Ramsay brings Rickon out and has him run to Jon while shooting arrows at him. Jon rushes to intercept Rickon, but just before reaching Jon, Rickon is killed by an arrow. Jon charges at Ramsay, who orders the Bolton archers to fire and his cavalry to charge, and Davos orders the Stark force out of position to shield Jon. The ensuing battle leaves hundreds of Bolton and Stark soldiers dead, creating a wall of corpses and allowing the Bolton infantry to encircle the Stark forces. Tormund panics and sends the Wildlings towards the wall of bodies and Smalljon's forces, who easily cut them down. Jon is trampled by the Wildlings, but eventually struggles to his feet. The Stark forces appear doomed when a horn sounds in the distance and Littlefinger and Sansa arrive with the Knights of the Vale, whose cavalry sideswipe and easily smash the remainder of the Bolton army; Tormund kills Smalljon in the chaos. Ramsay retreats to Winterfell, followed by Jon, Wun Wun and Tormund. Wun Wun breaks down Winterfell's gates and the Stark loyalists overwhelm the remnants of the Bolton garrison. A mortally wounded Wun Wun is finished off by Ramsay, who tells Jon that he has reconsidered the offer of single combat. Jon blocks Ramsay's arrows with a shield, overpowers him and begins to beat him to death, but stops when he sees Sansa and orders him imprisoned instead, leaving Winterfell once more in the hands of House Stark. At night, Sansa visits Ramsay, who has been imprisoned in the kennels with his hounds. Ramsay insists that his hounds will not turn on him, but Sansa reminds him that they have been purposefully starved and, having correctly predicted they would turn on him, walks away smiling as they devour him alive.

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===Writing=== The episode was written by series co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. "Battle of the Bastards" was written by the series' creators, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Elements of the episode are based on the sixth novel in the ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' series, ''The Winds of Winter'', which author George R. R. Martin hoped to complete before the sixth season aired. In an "Inside the Episode" segment published by HBO shortly after the episode aired, Benioff and Weiss said that the final battle was primarily inspired by the Battle of Cannae and the American Civil War. According to Weiss, "We went back to the Roman fight against the Carthaginians in the Battle of Cannae where the Romans got caught in an encirclement by Hannibal and just slaughtered to the man. We used that as our model". Benioff said, "The 'Battle of the Bastards' becomes incredibly compact. All these men, all these combatants, crammed into this incredibly tight space on the battlefield. You read accounts of the battles in the Civil War where the bodies were piled so thick it was actually an obstruction on the battlefield". Episode director Miguel Sapochnik said in an interview that the Battle of Agincourt was the original inspiration but the concept was adapted to fit budgetary constraints. Weiss said that they wanted to depict a full-fledged battle, "From the beginning we knew that one thing we'd never had on the show was a true medieval pitched battle where two sides bring all the forces they can into play in some battlefield that's somehow negotiated or agreed upon and they go at each other until one of them wins and the other one loses. This is a staple of human history, and we started to look through film samples of it. There really wasn't one that both made you feel what it was like to be there on the ground and gave you a sense of the geography of the battle." According to Benioff, they also wanted to demonstrate the role luck plays in battle, "Just to feel the kind of randomness of it where there's arrows falling from everywhere, people are getting killed, people are getting trampled by horses, and so much of it is just luck. Jon Snow is a very skilled combatant, but part of the reason he survives this battle is just he gets lucky". In the "Inside the Episode" featurette Benioff said about Daenerys Targaryen's transformation during the series, "I think Dany's been becoming a Targaryen ever since the beginning of Season 1". According to Weiss, "She's not her father and she's not insane and she's not a sadist, but there's a Targaryen ruthlessness that comes with even the good Targaryens". Benioff concluded, "If you're one of the lords of Westeros or one of her potential opponents in the wars to come and you get word of what happened here in Meereen, you have to be pretty nervous because this is an unprecedented threat. You've got a woman who has somehow formed an alliance where she has a Dothraki horde, a legion of Unsullied, she's got the mercenary army of the Second Sons, and she has three dragons who are now pretty close to full grown. So if she can make it all the way across the Narrow Sea and get to Westeros, who's going to stand in her way?"

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===Casting=== "Battle of the Bastards" was the final episode for actor Iwan Rheon, who had played Ramsay Bolton since ''Game of Thrones'' third season. His first appearance was in "Dark Wings, Dark Words", as a then-unnamed "boy" who helps a captured Theon Greyjoy. Before he was cast as Ramsay, Rheon auditioned for the role of Jon Snow. In an interview, he described learning about his character's fate: "I had received half the scripts, five episodes, then I got the call. They joked, 'Isn't it great Ramsay ends up on the Iron Throne?' As soon as they said that I said, 'He's dead, isn't he?' It's cool. I've had four lovely seasons here. It's been great to be involved with such an amazing show. I think it's kind of right he goes down. Because what else is he going to do after this? He's done so many things. It's justified and it's the right thing to do. It's the right path. He's reached his peak. It's nice for the audience that he goes out on this high, if you will." In that interview, Kit Harington talked about Rheon: "I love Iwan's work. He's an incredibly detailed actor who's created a character who's remarkable and despicable." "Battle of the Bastards" was also the last episode for recurring character Rickon Stark (Art Parkinson), who had appeared since the series premiere episode "Winter Is Coming". In an IGN interview, Parkinson said that he was tipped off about his character's death: "Whenever I was told that I was coming back for Season 6, before they sent me through the scripts and stuff, they sent me through a ring just to say, 'Listen, so that you don't get a shock whenever you read the scripts, just know that you die this season. He continued, "Whenever I came back, I was excited to come back, and the scenes all seemed pretty amazing. I was so happy to re-embrace the character." According to Parkinson, he was sorry that Rickon would die but his manner of death was a compensation: "It was a cool death, and it was always going to be a good death, so at the same time, I was pretty happy." Another character departure was Smalljon Umber, played by Dean S. Jagger. In an interview, Jagger talked about his casting: "I prayed for it. When I heard I got the part my knees buckled. It was a life-changing moment." Before becoming a professional actor, Jagger dug trenches and worked at a mattress factory to pay his way through acting school and was a professional rollerblader. Ian Whyte also made his last appearance in "Battle of the Bastards" as the giant, Wun Wun; he had played Gregor Clegane during the show's second season. Special-effects supervisor Joe Bauer said about Whyte's casting as Wun Wun, "We wanted a large performer because somebody who would be 14, 15 feet tall would have more weight and mass to move around, and a person who's a normal size would have a very difficult time pulling that off".

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====Battle of Winterfell==== Miguel Sapochnik directed the episode, his third of the series. "Battle of the Bastards" was directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who had directed the fifth-season episodes "The Gift" and "Hardhome". In an ''Entertainment Weekly'' interview before the episode aired, Sapochnik said he was brought on board by Benioff and Weiss after his previous-season success; "Hardhome" won several awards, including Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. About how the episode should be shot, he said: "Every battle on ''Thrones'' is unique. I think that's why Benioff and Weiss keep doing them. In the case of 'Battle of the Bastards' – or 'BOB' as we affectionately called it in production – David and Dan wanted to do a thing of spectacle, a strategic pitchfield battle they hadn't had the resources to do back in season 1 or 2. I was particularly interested in depicting both the horror of war and the role of luck in battle." Benioff called Sapochnik's work on the episode some of the best in the series' history. It took 25 days to film, requiring 500 extras, 600 crew members and 70 horses. Benioff described the difficulty of coordinating horses in battle scenes, which is why they are rarely used except in "big budget war films". Weiss added, "Miguel's really outdone himself. Fully fleshed out medieval battles require a tremendous amount of resources and choreography to get them right. It feels like we're doing something fresh that you don't see on TV and movies very often." Four camera crews were used for the battle scene. The 500 extras were largely the Snow and Bolton armies as Wildlings, archers, swordsmen and spearmen. Each army was trained separately to create off-screen rivalry between the two groups, and visual effects were used to expand the army to thousands. Kristofer Hivju, who plays Tormund Giantsbane, said about the intensity of filming the scenes: "It was pretty intense, actually. When you have 20 people running around getting squeezed together, and you're trying to chop at another bearded guy with a sword, you are not out of danger. You're laying down in the mud, and one wrong step, you won't have a face anymore. It was very intense, and Miguel insisted on making it that muddy and messy. War is not beautiful. Sometimes you see action sequences where battles seem organized. I know that from how the Vikings fought. It's not beautiful. It's hard. It's hard work. We had to shoot moment-to-moment, chronologically. We would shoot one sequence 80 times per day." The Battle of Cannae, in the Second Punic War, was an inspiration for "Battle of the Bastards". In an interview after the episode aired, Sapochnik detailed the process of filming the battle and called Akira Kurosawa's ''Ran'' an inspiration in shooting the scenes: "I watched every pitch field battle I could find (footage of real ones too), looking for patterns — for what works, what doesn't, what takes you out of the moment, what keeps you locked in. Interestingly one of the things I noticed is that staging of these battles through the years has changed dramatically. Back in the day you'd see these huge aerial shots of horse charges and there were two big differences. First, it was all real — no CGI or digital replication. And second, often when the horses would go down, you can kind of tell they got really hurt. Nowadays you'd never get away with that, and nor would you want to." Asked about the greatest challenge in filming the battle, Sapochnik said: "Every time we charge the horses it takes 25 minutes to reset all the fake snow on the field and rub out the horseshoe prints. So how many times can we afford to charge the horses each day knowing we need to give time for a reset that's 10 times longer than the actual shot? Another thing was how to make 500 extras look like 8,000 when you are shooting in a field where there's just nowhere to hide your shortfall. It becomes a bit like a bonkers math equation. And finally: How do you get these guys riled up enough to run at each other and get covered in mud and stand in the rain and then run at each other again and again for 25 days, 10 hours a day, without them just telling you to piss off?" In an interview, he said that the single most difficult thing he was asked to depict was "having 3,000 horses running at each other, especially after we discovered that horses cannot touch each other. It’s illegal — it’s a very valid rule about protecting the horses. So the very thing we were trying to do was not allowed. And we only had 70 horses ... The solution was you would have one guy run into the frame, and then the horse rider would pull the horse, which means make the horse fall and lie down on its side. Later we would digitally superimpose another C.G.I. horse and make it seem like it had impacted the live one." According to the director, the scene was filmed on privately owned land in Saintfield, Northern Ireland, and they had only 12 days to shoot. After reading the script Sapochnik came up with a 48-day shooting schedule, which was whittled down to 25 days. The CGI of Ghost, Jon Snow's direwolf, in the episode presented difficulties; he was "in there in spades originally, but it's also an incredibly time consuming and expensive character to bring to life. Ultimately we had to choose between Wun Wun and the direwolf, so the dog bit the dust." Sapochnik said that a crucial scene was filmed off-script. After three days of rain, unable to finish filming as scripted, he suggested a scene in which Jon Snow was trampled and nearly buried alive by bodies; the director described the character pushing his way out as "rebirthing." Kit Harington compared the "rebirthing" scene to the conclusion of the third-season episode, "Mhysa", with Daenerys Targaryen. In an interview about the "rebirthing" scene, Kit Harington said that it intended to mirror the Daenerys Targaryen scene at the end of the third-season episode "Mhysa" when Daenerys is held up by freed Yunkai slaves; in "Battle of the Bastards", Jon Snow emerges from the crushing crowd of the battle: "When the crush starts happening, he slows down, and there's that thing of peace where he thinks: 'I could just stay here and let it all end.' And then something drives him to fight up, and that moment when he comes up and grasps for breath, he is reborn again, which I found weirdly reflective of the scene where Dany is held aloft at the end of season three." "Battle of the Bastards" was the first episode in which Kit Harington and Iwan Rheon filmed scenes together and met on-screen. Rheon said that he had always wanted to film scenes with Jon Snow: "Anyone who has asked me, 'Who would you like Ramsay to meet?' My answer has always been, 'Jon Snow.' He's the antithesis of Ramsay. They're almost a yin and a yang. They both come from such a similar place yet they're so different. And even though they're enemies, they've both risen so far as bastards, which is almost incomprehensible, and now they're both here facing each other. They couldn't be any more different, yet more similar." In an interview, Harington talked about the fight scene with Rheon: "I actually did punch Iwan in the face twice by accident, which he took really well. He was really nice about it." According to Rheon, "The way I see it, if you don't get hit a couple of times doing that, you're not doing it properly." A notable goof occurred during the scene where Jon Snow mounts his horse in an attempt to rescue Rickon before Ramsay's arrows can reach him. As he's climbing into the saddle, Snow's Valyrian sword Longclaw and its scabbard can be seen bending wildly, betraying its status as a rubber stand-in.

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====Battle of Meereen==== For the Daenerys scene at the beginning of the episode where the three dragons burn part of the Masters' fleet, Sapochnik credited VFX supervisor Joe Bauer and producer Steve Kullback for post-production work: "For this sequence David and Dan said that what they wanted to see was a 'demonstration' of what's to come. So I tried to approach it in the most elegant, epic, big-movie way I could." The director tried to design the shots with relative realism, inspired by footage of World War II Supermarine Spitfires in action. He based the dragon shots on wildlife footage, allowing them to break the frame: "These things should be so big and fast it's hard to keep up with them." To insert Emilia Clarke (as Daenerys Targaryen) into the scene, she rode a "multi-directional, computer-controlled hydraulic gimbal device shaped like the upper shoulders of the dragon"; Clarke was filmed separately in Belfast, Northern Ireland. "Battle of the Bastards" featured the first meeting of Daenerys Targaryen and Yara and Theon Greyjoy, and Yara's first meeting with Tyrion Lannister. Gemma Whelan, who plays Yara, talked about filming the scene: "Oh my goodness – I was so excited when I saw that I had a scene with those two Daenerys and Tyrion." About the dynamic between the two women, Whelan said: "It's clear as the scene plays out that Yara quite likes Dany. We share a lot of little looks and there's some playful language in how we talk to one another – Dany asks if the Iron Islands ever had a queen, and Yara says, 'No more than Westeros.' They recognize the girl-power undertow between the two of them."

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===Ratings=== "Battle of the Bastards" was watched by 7.66 million American households in its initial telecast on HBO, slightly more than the previous week's rating (7.60 million viewers) for "No One". The episode competed with game seven of the 2016 NBA Finals. It had a 3.9 rating in the 18–49 demographic, the highest-rated show on cable television that night. In the United Kingdom, the episode was seen by 2.450 million viewers on Sky Atlantic (the channel's highest-rated broadcast that week) and had 0.118 million timeshift viewers.

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===Critical reception=== "Battle of the Bastards" received immense critical acclaim, with many calling it one of the best television episodes of all time. Matt Fowler of IGN calling it a "masterpiece." Critics cited the size and scope of the battle in the North and Daenerys's scene with her dragons at the beginning of the episode. It has a 98% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes from 50 reviews, with an average score of 9.2 out of 10. According to the site consensus, "'Battle of the Bastards' delivered one of the greatest battle sequences in the show's history, and some savagely satisfying vengeance as well." IGN's Matt Fowler wrote in his review, "At this point, it seems like the pattern when it comes to the ninth episode of a given season of ''Game of Thrones'' is tragic death, amazing battle, tragic death, amazing battle, and so on. And this being Season 6, it was time to land on a phenomenal clash of swords and shields — and 'Battle of the Bastards' certainly delivered." He continued, "''Game of Thrones'' did not disappoint when it came to this season's great northern battle, as Jon and Sansa's differences were spectacularly highlighted in a savagely strong war chapter that saw House Stark overcome huge odds to reclaim their home. Plus, Daenerys got to soar, as her dragons quickly stopped a violent siege with fury and fire." Fowler gave the episode a top score of 10. Jeremy Egner of ''The New York Times'' also praised the episode: "As directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who also oversaw last season's terrific 'Hardhome' episode, the lengthy sequence was terrifying, gripping and exhilarating, sometimes all at once, a sweeping display of all the different ways one can die on the battlefield." Egner called Ramsay's death an episode highlight ("Ramsay Bolton's demise was arguably the most eagerly anticipated death ever on ''Game of Thrones'' and the show handled it with flair, dispatching him in a poetic, canine-fueled fashion that was no less satisfying for being telegraphed early on"), and concluded about Daenerys's scene: "Daenerys Stormborn had a few words for the slave masters who launched their attack last week. Those words included 'surrender or die' and 'thanks for the ships', as we saw another thrilling action sequence that I believe reunited the dragon triplets for the first time since they were quite young." Myles McNutt of ''The A.V. Club'' wrote in his review, "This battle works as a climactic moment for ''Game of Thrones'' as a cultural event, selling us on the scale and ambition of the producers and their production teams, all who should be commended for the accomplishments from a technical perspective." According to James Hibberd of ''Entertainment Weekly'', "Was this the show's best episode? It's hard to immediately process that question. Maybe? Probably. It's almost certainly the most exciting hour and had the most jaw-dropping battle sequence we've seen yet on TV." Ed Power of ''The Daily Telegraph'' discussed the episode's refreshing strong-women theme: "''Game of Thrones'' has been justly criticised for employing young actresses as wobbly-wobbly window dressing and, though the toplessness has been dialed back this season, it's still very much a calling card. However there are reasons for suspecting that the series is attempting to make amends — by arguing that Westeros would be far better off with women in charge. Even as Sansa was turning the tide at Winterfell, in Meereen, Daenerys and Yara Greyjoy were striking up a lady bromance — and seemingly rock-solid alliance — for the ages." Laura Prudom of ''Variety'' agreed: "After seasons of criticism over the show's misogyny (sometimes earned, sometimes not), it's thrilling to see an episode like 'Battle of the Bastards', where women like Dany, Sansa and Yara — and emasculated men (either figuratively or literally) like Tyrion and Theon — break the gears of war and the familiar patterns of violence by attempting to 'leave the world better than we found it', despite the examples set by the evil men who came before them." According to Sarah Larson of ''The New Yorker'', "Sansa watches calmly, then smiles. You've come a long way, baby. Or she's become a monster, and so have I. The women of Westeros are on the warpath."

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===Accolades=== The episode received a record six Primetime Emmy Awards, including awards for writing and direction. "Battle of the Bastards" has been nominated for 32 awards and has won 19. Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards Outstanding Make-up for a Single-Camera Series (Non-Prosthetic) Jane Walker, Kate Thompson, Nicola Mathews, Kay Bilk, Marianna Kyriacou, Pamela Smyth Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama series Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Series Ronan Hill, Richard Dyer, Onnalee Blank, Mathew Waters Outstanding Special Visual Effects Steve Kullback, Joe Bauer, Adam Chazen, Derek Spears, Eric Carney, Sam Conway, Matthew Rouleau, Michelle Blok, Glenn Melenhorst Australian Production Design Guild 3D Award for Visual Effects Design British Society of Cinematographers ACO/BSC/GBCT Operators TV Drama Award Sean Savage, David Morgan & John Ferguson Hollywood Professional Alliance Tim Kimmel, Paula Fairfield, Mathew Waters, Onnalee Blank, Bradley Katona, Paul Bercovitch Joe Bauer, Eric Carney, Derek Spears, Glenn Melenhorst, Matthew Rouleau American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Regular Series Outstanding Achievement, Character Animation in a Live Action Production Nicholas Tripodi, Dean Elliott, James Hollingworth, Matt Weaver American Cinema Editors Awards Best Edited One-Hour Series For Non-Commercial Television Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode Joe Bauer, Steve Kullback, Glenn Melenhorst, Matthew Rouleau, Sam Conway Outstanding Animated Performance in an Episode or Real-Time Project James Kinnings, Michael Holzl, Matt Derksen, Joseph Hoback – Drogon Outstanding Created Environment in an Episode, Commercial or Real-Time Project Deak Ferrand, Dominic Daigle, François Croteau, Alexandru Banuta – Meereen City Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Photoreal Project Patrick Tiberius Gehlen, Michelle Blok, Christopher Baird, Drew Wood-Davies Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project Kevin Blom, Sasmit Ranadive, Wanghua Huang, Ben Andersen Thomas Hullin, Dominik Kirouac, James Dong, Xavier Fourmond – Meereen City Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project Thomas Montminy-Brodeur, Patrick David, Michael Crane, Joe Salazar - Meereen City Dominic Hellier, Morgan Jones, Thijs Noij, Caleb Thompson – Retaking Winterfell Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing – Television Series – One Hour Ronan Hill, Onnalee Blank, Mathew Waters, Richard Dyer, Brett Voss Directors Guild of America Awards Best Sound Editing in Television, Short Form: FX/Foley Tim Kimmel, Brett Voss, John Matter, Jeffrey Wilhoit, Dylan Wilhoit, Paula Fairfield and Bradley Katona Best Sound Editing in Television, Short Form: Dialogue / ADR Best Sound Editing in Television, Short Form: Music Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form David Benioff (writer), D. B. Weiss (writer), and Miguel Sapochnik (director) British Academy Television Awards

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==External links== * "Battle of the Bastards" at HBO.com * The Real-Life Military Strategy Behind ‘Game Of Thrones: Battle Of The Bastards’ at The Huffington Post

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'''''After the Thrones''''' is an American live television aftershow that premiered on April 25, 2016, and ended on June 28, 2016. It was hosted by Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan who discussed episodes of the HBO television series ''Game of Thrones''. The talk show is executive produced by Bill Simmons and Eric Weinberger. Greenwald and Ryan previously hosted a podcast version of the show titled ''Watch the Thrones'' on Simmons' Grantland website. A similar talk show called ''Thronecast'' airs on British channel Sky Atlantic, which also discusses episodes of ''Game of Thrones''. The talk show was made available to HBO and HBO Now subscribers, and airs on the Monday following each episode of ''Game of Thrones''. After the show's cancellation, Greenwald and Ryan, along with Simmons, made a similar live stream video podcast for distribution on Twitter called ''Talk the Thrones''. Although it covers the same subject matter, it is a different production.

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==Broadcast and format== The series features hosts Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan from the upcoming sports and pop culture website, ''The Ringer'' created by Bill Simmons, discussing episodes of the HBO fantasy drama ''Game of Thrones''. Following the success of similar shows such as ''Talking Dead'', which serves as a network sanctioned discussion of the show, HBO decided to introduce its own version of the format in which the hosts provide a "lively, humorous and sophisticated look" at the previous night's episode. The show airs on the stand-alone streaming service HBO Now on the Monday following each episode of the show's sixth season, which itself airs on Sundays. Greenwald and Ryan previously hosted a similar version of the show for Simmons' now-defunct sports and pop culture website Grantland, titled "Watch the Thrones", in a podcast format. Previous "Watch the Thrones" guests Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion are also part of the show. The series began on Monday, April 25, 2016, on HBO Now, HBO Go, HBO On Demand and HBO. The stated purpose of the show is to "recap the latest episode, explaining the who, what, when and where, exploring the complicated politics and history of ''Thrones'', and offering absurd and not-so-absurd theories about future episodes." For the seventh season of ''Game of Thrones'', the after show changed its name to '''''Talk the Thrones''''' and moved from HBO to the social media site Twitter, where it will stream live every week after an episode airs. Simmons said that "We love Game of Thrones and we love the way Twitter is thinking about content right now, so we jumped at the chance to blow out our Thrones show into an interactive multimedia experience — something that reacts immediately to what just happened, almost like a postgame show in sports - Nobody is equipped to do that better than Twitter. It's the natural evolution of what we had already established with Chris, Andy, Mallory and Jason."

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===Season 1 (2016)=== These episodes discuss season six of ''Game of Thrones''. Starting from the first episode, "The Red Woman".

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==See also== * List of ''Game of Thrones'' episodes

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"'''The Red Woman'''" is the sixth season premiere episode of HBO's fantasy television series ''Game of Thrones'', and the 51st overall. The episode was written by series creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, and directed by Jeremy Podeswa. The body of Jon Snow is discovered by Ser Davos Seaworth and loyal members of the Night's Watch protect his lifeless body; Melisandre has begun to lose her faith in the Lord of Light; Sansa Stark and Theon Greyjoy flee Winterfell, Ellaria Sand and the Sand Snakes seize control of Dorne; Jaime Lannister returns to King's Landing with the body of his dead daughter; and Daenerys Targaryen is taken prisoner by the khalasar of Khal Moro. "The Red Woman" was positively received by critics who found the episode to be a satisfactory launching point for the season, and praising the scenes involving Sansa and Brienne, as well as the closing reveal with Melisandre, although the Dorne storyline was criticized once again for feeling too abrupt and deviating greatly from the books. For filming of the episode's closing reveal, the director used similar technique to the body double of Cersei Lannister in the previous episode. The episode title is an allusion to the epithet used to describe the Red Priestess Melisandre. In the United States, the episode premiere achieved a viewership of 7.94 million in its initial broadcast, and a same-day total including the streaming services HBO Go and HBO Now of 10.7 million viewers, a record for the series.

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===In the North=== At Winterfell, Ramsay Bolton mourns the death of Myranda, but commands that her corpse be fed to the hounds. Roose Bolton warns him that, despite their victory, they could be facing the wrath of the Lannisters in the future, and as such, they must secure the loyalty of the North's other nobles. Roose blames Ramsay for losing Sansa Stark, who, as a child of Eddard Stark, could have been used as a figurehead for the North. Roose implies that he will disinherit Ramsay if he cannot retrieve her and if Roose's unborn child with Walda is a son. Meanwhile, Sansa and Theon Greyjoy flee through the nearby forests. Upon being cornered by a squad of Bolton soldiers, they are rescued by Brienne of Tarth and Podrick Payne, who kill the soldiers. Brienne again offers to pledge her loyalty to Sansa, who accepts.

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===In Dorne=== Doran Martell receives news of Myrcella Baratheon's death and is aghast, but he and Areo Hotah are immediately murdered by Ellaria Sand and Tyene Sand, while the palace guards look on without intervening. Ellaria states that his people have become dissatisfied with Doran's inaction against the Lannisters. As Doran dies, he pleads for his son Trystane's life, but Ellaria vows that "weak men" will never rule Dorne again.

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===In King's Landing=== Jaime Lannister arrives in King's Landing bearing Myrcella's body, and returns to Cersei Lannister. Cersei recounts Maggy the Frog's prophecy that all her children would die before her and she would be left with nothing. Jaime promises that they will have revenge against all who have wronged the Lannisters, heightening the importance of his and Cersei's staying close. Across the city, Margaery Tyrell, who is still held captive by the Faith Militant, converses with the High Sparrow, but he refuses to give her information about her brother Loras. In his ship, still docked in the harbor, Trystane is painting stones for Myrcella's funeral. Obara and Nymeria Sand board his ship and enter his cabin, stating their intent to kill him. Despite proclaiming that he does not want to fight his family, he attempts to defend himself from Nymeria but is stabbed through the back of the head by Obara.

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===In Meereen=== Tyrion Lannister and Varys walk through the streets, which are largely empty because of Daenerys Targaryen' absence and fear of the Sons of the Harpy. Tyrion observes that Daenerys' enemies are growing, including former slaves and former masters. Varys promises that his spies will find the leader of the Sons of the Harpy. The two discover that someone has set fire to all of the ships in Meereen's harbor, and Tyrion realizes that Daenerys' forces will be unable to sail to Westeros.

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===In the Dothraki Sea=== Daario Naharis and Jorah Mormont continue to trace Daenerys' location. Jorah takes a moment to observe his worsening greyscale. They discover her ring in the middle of thousands of hoof-prints, deducing that she has been taken by the Dothraki. Daenerys is presented to Khal Moro, who has taken her prisoner. Moro initially wishes to rape her, but treats her with respect after Daenerys explains that she was Khal Drogo's wife. Daenerys asks Moro to escort her back to Meereen, but he refuses to let her leave, as widows of Khals must live out their lives in Vaes Dothrak, the Dothraki's sacred city.

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===In Braavos=== Arya Stark, now blinded, is sent to beg on the streets. The Waif suddenly appears and forces Arya to duel her using a wooden staff. Arya fails because of her blindness, and the Waif promises that she will return the following day.

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===At the Wall=== Following the murder of Jon Snow, his direwolf Ghost begins to howl as the sun rises above Castle Black, attracting the attention of Davos Seaworth, Eddison Tollett, and a few other loyalists. They release Ghost from his nearby pen and take Jon's body into a store-room. Melisandre briefly visits and is troubled, as she had experienced a vision in the flames of Jon fighting at Winterfell. The loyalists become fearful and also lock themselves in from the mutineers, with the exception of Edd, who sneaks out of Castle Black to get assistance from the Wildlings against the mutineers. Ser Alliser Thorne convenes the other black brothers and takes responsibility for Jon's murder. Several black brothers accuse Thorne and the other officers of treason, but Thorne wins them over by citing Jon's actions and stating that Jon would have destroyed the Night's Watch by letting in the Wildlings. Thorne and the other mutineers then surround the store-room and promise Jon's friends amnesty if they surrender, but threaten to attack if they don't open the door by nightfall. Elsewhere, Melisandre, who has been sullen following Stannis's defeat and Jon's death, goes to sleep in her bedroom. As she undresses, she removes her ruby necklace, which proves to be enchanted, as she is revealed to have a physical body many decades older than she normally appears.

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===Writing=== Series co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss wrote the episode. "The Red Woman" was written by the series' creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Some elements in the episode are based on the sixth novel in the ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' series, ''The Winds of Winter'', which author George R. R. Martin had hoped to have completed before the sixth season began airing. It also contains elements from the chapters "The Sacrifice" and "The Blind Girl" from ''A Dance with Dragons''. With this episode, Jonathan Pryce (High Sparrow) is promoted to series regular. The episode has the introduction of new recurring cast member Joe Naufahu, who plays Khal Moro. It was the first episode followed by ''After the Thrones'', HBO's after-show hosted by Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan. The episode had a premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre two weeks before the premier of the episode on HBO. There was a lot of speculation prior to the episode regarding whether the character Jon Snow would remain dead or return to life. Fans speculated that Melisandre would be the one to bring back Snow to life, after and before the title of the first episode was revealed to be "The Red Woman". Liam Cunningham, who portrays Davos Seaworth, spoke about the writing of the episode following its airing, and revealed how he reacted to the scene, saying "It was initially shocking. You know what I thought was my favorite bit, and I said it to David and Dan, it was at that moment when the reveal comes and you kind of go, 'Oh my God,' it puts things into context with Melisandre. It doesn't explain or blah, blah, blah. … It's confirmed like, she's a witch, but there was such a touch of humanity. When she went to the bed and got into the bed and covered herself up… it was like a really striking moment in this weird madness of humanity." John Bradley, who portrays Samwell Tarly, also spoke about the scene, saying "And what I like about that, and seeing her like that is you know then that her sexuality over the course of the last few seasons, we've seen her use as such a tool -- that's all very deliberate. She presents herself in this way as this beautiful woman because she knows the effect that that can have on people. She knows the effect that that has on Stannis, and that can make men do unadvisable things. So the fact that she did that and she uses that power in that way to have this influence on people. That puts her into context as somebody who really does know what she's doing."

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===Filming=== Carice van Houten portrays the titular character of the episode, the Red Woman Melisandre. "The Red Woman" was directed by Jeremy Podeswa. Podeswa previously directed the fifth season episodes "Kill the Boy" and "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken", the latter of which received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. The budget for the sixth season increased compared to the previous seasons as each episode had an average cost of over $10 million, totaling approximately $100 million for the full season, setting a new high for the series. For the closing reveal involving Melisandre, the director of the episode stated that a similar technique to the body double of Cersei Lannister in "Mother's Mercy" was used, with Carice van Houten wearing prosthetic makeup for the face that was then transposed onto the real body of an old woman. Podeswa stated, "The idea is there's an indefinite indeterminate quality that she could be ancient. We were limited by choosing to use a real person rather than a complete creation. Because what does a 400-year-old person look like? We don't know. So if you try to create that, then you're creating something that looks beyond our known reality. Here you feel like she's very old without putting a number on it."

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===Ratings=== "The Red Woman" was viewed by 7.94 million American households on its first viewing, which is slightly lower than number of viewers for the fifth-season premiere, 8.00 million, marking the first time in the show's history a season premiere received less ratings than the premiere and finale of the season that came before it. HBO notes that two replays later in the night and early figures from HBO Go and HBO Now push the total to 10.7 million viewers, a same-day record for the show, meaning that the episode received an increase in viewerships. The episode also acquired a 4.0 rating in the 18–49 demographic, making it the highest rated show on cable television of the night. In the United Kingdom, the episode was watched by 2.19 million viewers according to overnight ratings (2.289 million viewers over 7 days and 2.554 over 28 days), a record for the pay channel Sky Atlantic. The UK viewing figures reached an all-time high. The 2am simulcast attracted 60,000 viewers. Similarly it broke the Australian record as the most watched show on pay TV, with 721,000 viewers in the overnight figures and 1.1 million in the final tally. Over a million had downloaded the episode within 12 hours of airing, with Australia having the most illegal downloads of the episode by a single nation.

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===Critical reception=== Reviews for "The Red Woman" were very positive. The episode was praised for its humor, Brienne's reunion with Sansa and Theon, and the revelation regarding Melisandre's true age. Rotten Tomatoes assembled 38 reviews and calculated an approval percentage of 86% with an average rating of 7.6/10, and the consensus reading: "A solid season opener, The Red Woman balanced its ongoing mysteries with a bit of humor and featured Sansa's touching reunion with Brienne of Tarth." James Hunt of ''What Culture'' wrote in his review of the episode; "It was a good return to the Seven Kingdoms (and beyond), one that was filled with tension throughout, and set about re-establishing the pieces on the board." Ellen Gray of ''Philadelphia Daily News'' noted in her review of the episode; "First episodes are always difficult. So many people to check in on. Or kill. Or swear vengeance upon. Still, things are off to several promising starts." Mark W. Pleiss of ''PopMatters'' wrote in his review of the episode; "The most recent episode of HBO's Game of Thrones largely evaded the two major questions from the previous chapter, and instead lined up its sixth season to gravitate around the heroics and cunning of its female protagonists." Tim Surette of ''TV.com'' wrote that Melisandre is one of his favorite characters. In isolation from the rest of the episode, many critics were baffled by the drastic changes to the Dorne storyline. For io9, Charlie Jane Anders called it "the absolute worst" part of the episode, and criticized the Dorne storyline in general for giving Doran Martell "a grand total of ten minutes' screentime" before suddenly killing him off, given that he is alive in the novels and his major subplot from the books - that he was simply ''feigning'' a desire for peace while planning to betray the Lannisters - was not introduced at all before his departure. Alan Sepinwall from HitFix also disliked the Dorne scenes and summarized, "I'll settle for not needing to audibly groan every time the story returns to Dorne, frankly." For Vulture, Nate Jones wrote an op-ed piece specifically criticizing the Dorne storyline in seasons five and six, culminating in the changes in the season six premiere, which it felt to be bizarre and illogical - purely relying on shock value when the characters' actions don't make sense upon closer analysis. Jones was also critical of how it was altering the female characters in Dorne, saying that they were changed from the novels to be "the kind of violent, scantily clad women that emerge when creators want to pay lip service to feminism, but don't have the time or inclination to create actual three-dimensional female characters."

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"'''The Long Night'''" is the third episode of the eighth season of HBO's fantasy television series ''Game of Thrones'', and the 70th overall. It was written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, and directed by Miguel Sapochnik. It aired on April 28, 2019. It is the longest episode of the series, with a run time of 82 minutes. "The Long Night" takes place entirely at Winterfell and depicts the final battle between the Army of the Dead and the combined armies of the living, ending one of the series' primary storylines. The episode's title refers to the prolonged winter that occurred thousands of years earlier, in which the White Walkers first descended upon Westeros. The episode received mixed reviews. Critics praised the visual grandeur and scale of the battle and Arya Stark's personal storyline as its highlights. It received nine Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score) for Ramin Djawadi, and Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for Carice van Houten for her final performance as Melisandre. It was later picked by Alfie Allen and Maisie Williams to support their nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, respectively. It has so far received five Primetime Emmy Awards. This episode also marks the final appearances of Carice van Houten (Melisandre), Megan Parkinson (Alys Karstark) and Vladimir Furdik (The Night King).

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== Plot == The Armies of the Living and of the Dead meet; the Dothraki charge after Melisandre summons fire into their blades, but are quickly overwhelmed by the wights. Eddison Tollett dies after saving Samwell Tarly. Bran Stark, guarded by Theon Greyjoy and the Ironborn, waits in the godswood to lure the Night King; indeed, the Night King, atop undead Viserion, notices that Bran has warged into flying ravens. The living retreat into Winterfell while Melisandre invokes her god and ignites the trench around it. Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen engage the Night King with their dragons. Wights walk into the trench, their bodies serving as a bridge for other wights to cross and storm the castle. Lyanna Mormont stabs a wight giant in the eye with a dragonglass dagger, destroying him while he crushes her to death. Beric Dondarrion sacrifices his final life to save Arya Stark and Sandor Clegane from wights. They find Melisandre, who says Beric was resurrected for a purpose now served, and repeats a prophecy she previously told Arya ("The Climb"); that she would "shut many eyes forever", emphasizing "blue eyes". The Night King is dismounted and caught in Drogon's fire, but he is immune to it. He raises the dead Winterfell defenders and the Starks buried in the crypts. Jon is knocked off Rhaegal, as is Daenerys from Drogon. Daenerys fights wights alongside Jorah Mormont, who eventually succumbs to his wounds after the battle. Jon heads for the godswood but is blocked by Viserion. The Night King arrives at the godswood for Bran and kills a charging Theon. Arya suddenly leaps at the Night King; he grabs her by the throat and dagger-wielding hand, but she drops her Valyrian steel dagger to her free hand and stabs him, destroying him and obliterating his army. Melisandre, her purpose served, walks into the snow at dawn, removes her magical choker, and dies of old age as Davos watches.

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== Production == The episode was written by series co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.

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=== Filming === The episode was directed by Miguel Sapochnik. It was filmed in 55 night shoots over 11 weeks, and during harsh weather, at sets in Moneyglass, Saintfield and Belfast, Northern Ireland. Cinematographer Fabian Wagner described the shoot as "physically exhausting... they say don't work with animals or kids. We had everything times 100." Sapochnik studied the siege of Helm's Deep in ''The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers'' to stage the battle scenes in a way "to not have an audience feel battle fatigue", claiming that "the less fighting you can have in a sequence, the better". He also shifted the moods from scene to scene to convey suspense, horror, action, and drama. He described the battle as "survival horror" comparable to ''Assault on Precinct 13'' in its focus on a group besieged by outsiders.

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=== Casting === Country singer Chris Stapleton has a cameo appearance as a wight alongside his bass player and tour manager. Stapleton said his management contacted the show asking if he could be considered for a bit part in an episode and the producers invited him to fly to Belfast to film his scenes.

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=== Ratings === The episode was viewed by 12.02 million viewers on its initial live broadcast on HBO, and an additional 5.78 million viewers on streaming platforms, for a total 17.8 million viewers.

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=== Critical response === The episode received a mixed reception; on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 73%, based on 107 reviews, but an average rating of 8.79/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Winter has come and gone and Arya Stark may officially be the baddest woman in the land, but despite delivering some epic and emotional moments 'The Long Night' leaves a few things to be desired (lighting, anyone?) heading into the final stretch". There was praise for the direction and cinematography, with James Hibberd for ''Entertainment Weekly'' describing it as "an action epic that manages to weave character-driven stories through clear and comprehensible battle...GoT continues to make every fight unique, compelling and grounded". Arya's unexpected defeat of the Night King was also praised. Alison Herman wrote for ''The Ringer'': "That Arya was the one to seal the deal is heartening, at least...it was the woman who learned to master death and, ultimately, reject it, wielding the very weapon that caused her family so much grief". Myles McNutt wrote for ''The A.V. Club'': "What was pitched by the fandom around the show as an episode rife for death pooling became an episode about a girl who has lost her entire adolescence training for this moment facing the realization that she was not as prepared as she thought, before gaining the confidence—foreknowledge?—to strike the winning blow”, allowing “the final moment to land despite an unavoidable feeling of anti-climax". However, many criticized the handling of the White Walker mythology, the lack of catharsis, and the use of dark production lighting which was seen as gratuitous, artistically unnecessary and disorienting. Caroline Fromke of ''Variety'' wrote: "After years of underlining just how huge and terrifying and all-consuming the threat of White Walker destruction would be, plunging back into 'who gets to sit on that pointy chair' will feel very silly." Zach Kram of ''The Ringer'' called it "a strangely unsatisfying conclusion to a story line that has sustained the show from the very beginning... it seems like those most central questions will remain forever unanswered." Some critics also noted that the episode seemingly concluded the Azor Ahai prophecy arc without resolving it, as they expected Azor Ahai to kill the Night King, yet Arya Stark does not meet the prophecy's other requirements. The conclusion of the White Walker storyline and its significance to the ending of the show caused debate among commentators. Erik Kain of ''Forbes'' argued that it was a perfect ending to what was ultimately a secondary storyline to ''Game of Thrones,'' writing, "The Night King (who isn't really in the books) is pretty one-dimensional and uninteresting. More to the point, he isn't really what these stories have ever been about ... Cersei is far, far more interesting and compelling, because she's a real person with real motivations and fears and love and hate and everything in-between." On the contrary, Alyssa Rosenberg of ''The Washington Post'' called the ending an "intellectual letdown, where a big episode of ''Game of Thrones'' felt like badly shot and edited fan service rather than a genuine revelation." Beric Dondarrion's saving of Arya and subsequent death scene were generally well-received. Jolie Lash of Collider called it "an emotional and courageous ending", and said by opening his eye after death instead of closing it, the "character remained intriguing". In interviews with actor Richard Dormer, Josh Wigler of ''The Hollywood Reporter'' and Leigh Blickley of ''The Huffington Post'' noted the barricade of the hallway (which some fans have named the "Bericade") was reminiscent of Hodor's iconic death, both selflessly suffering to defend the greater good; Dormer agreed and added it was also "almost Christ-like". Jack Shepherd of ''The Independent'' felt the death was "grisly, but purposeful" and gave the performance a 4/5 rating. Ryan Grauer, an associate professor of international affairs told ''Vox'' that "the tension between good military tactics and good television came into conflict" in this episode. Mick Cook, an Afghanistan war veteran, agreed that the army of the living incorrectly placed its infantry, catapults and trench, and ineffectively used its wall defenses and light cavalry (Dothraki). Tim Goodman of ''The Hollywood Reporter'' called the polarized reaction a demonstration of the impossibility of pleasing an entire audience of a television show with the scope of ''Game of Thrones'', comparing it to the reception of the final seasons of ''Breaking Bad'', ''Mad Men'', ''The Sopranos'', and ''The Wire''. He wrote, "Fans (of television) are a combination of knowing exactly what they want from you and the story, not knowing what they want but willing to turn on you instantly if they don't get it, and some weird combination of happy but disappointed or let down, but also unwilling to trade the experience for anything ... A consolation is that memory (and opinion) fades, and you're going into the magical, mythical Hall of Fame no matter what."

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=== Awards and nominations === Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards Outstanding Hairstyling for a Single-Camera Series Kevin Alexander, Candice Banks, Nicola Mount, and Rosalia Culora Outstanding Makeup for a Single-Camera Series (Non-Prosthetic) Jane Walker, Kay Bilk, Marianna Kyriacou, Nicola Mathews, and Pamela Smyth Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score) Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup for a Series, Limited Series, Movie or Special Emma Faulkes, Paul Spateri, Chloe Muton-Phillips, Duncan Jarman, Patt Foad, John Eldred-Tooby, Barrie Gower, and Sarah Gower Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour) Tim Kimmel, Tim Hands, Paula Fairfield, Bradley C. Katona, Paul Bercovitch, John Matter, David Klotz, Brett Voss, Jeffrey Wilhoit, and Dylan T. Wilhoit Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour) Onnalee Blank, Mathew Waters, Simon Kerr, Danny Crowley, and Ronan Hill

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'''''A Game of Thrones: The Card Game''''' (or '''''AGoT''''', for short) is an out-of-print collectible card game produced by Fantasy Flight Games. It is based on ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of novels written by George R. R. Martin. The first set was Westeros Edition and was released in August 2002. It has since won two Origins Awards. The game's primary designer is Eric Lang, the lead developer is Nate French, with Damon Stone serving as associate designer. In the game, players assume the leadership of one of the great houses of Westeros vying for control of King's Landing and the Iron Throne. To accomplish this, players launch military attacks against their opponents, undermine their opponents’ plans with intrigues of their own, and make power plays to win the support of the realm.

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==Factions== Each house represents one of the main factions involved in the struggle for the Iron Throne emulated by the AGoT LCG. Each house provides different strengths and weaknesses, allowing for various play styles to interact within the same game. Certain cards are restricted to one or two houses, giving each house a unique flavor. Currently, there are eight playable factions in the AGoT LCG. Each is identified by a shield bearing the arms of the house, located in the upper right corner of the card.

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===Great houses=== * House Stark, the honorable rulers of the cold North. The Stark shield is a grey direwolf on an ice-white field. Prominent Stark characters include Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Catelyn, their son Robb, as well as Maester Luwin, Ser Rodrik Cassel, and Brynden "The Blackfish" Tully. Common game mechanics include direct kill, deck searching, and improved defense. Many Stark effects are themed around military challenges. * House Lannister, the rich and treacherous residents of Casterly Rock. The Lannister shield is a gold lion on a crimson field. Prominent Lannister characters include Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion Lannister, as well as Ser Gregor Clegane, Ser Addam Marbrand, and Grand Maester Pycelle. Common game mechanics include card draw, kneeling effects, and trait manipulation. Many Lannister effects are themed around intrigue challenges. * House Baratheon, the royal blood of King Robert, rulers of Dragonstone and Storm's End. The Baratheon shield is a black crowned stag on a gold field. Prominent Baratheon characters include Robert, his brothers Stannis and Renly, as well as Melisandre, Ser Davos Seaworth, and the Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers. Common game mechanics include power manipulation, standing effects, and retrieval of cards from the dead and discard piles. Many House Baratheon effects are themed around power challenges. * House Greyjoy, the rulers of the Iron Islands and the Ironborn raiders who prey on the rest of Westeros. The Greyjoy shield is a gold kraken on a black field. Prominent Greyjoy characters include Theon, Asha, and their father Balon Greyjoy, as well Balon's brothers Euron Crow's Eye and Aeron Damphair. Common game mechanics include location control, the ability to save characters, event cancels, and boosting the strength of attacking characters. Many house Greyjoy effects are themed around winning unopposed challenges. * House Targaryen, the exiled descendants of Aegon the Conqueror and their exotic followers. The Targaryen shield is a red on black, three-headed dragon representing Aegon and his sisters. Prominent Targaryen characters include Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons, Khal Drogo, Ser Jorah Mormont, and Grey Worm. Common game mechanics include attachment manipulation, strength reducers and kill effects on strength 0 characters (frequently referred to as "burn" effects), and playing characters outside of the marshalling phase. Many Targaryen effects are themed around winning or losing challenges by 4 or more strength. * House Martell, rulers of the desert realm of Dorne, the southernmost region of Westeros. The Martell shield is a red sun pierced by a golden spear, on an orange field. Prominent Martell characters include Doran Martell, Oberyn Martell the Red Viper, his daughters the Sand Snakes, and his niece Arianne Martell. Common game mechanics include icon manipulation, discard effects, stealth, and card draw. Many Martell effects are themed around losing challenges, leading to such effects being referred to as "revenge" effects.

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===Other factions=== Some great houses featured in ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' are not represented as individual Houses in the ''AGoT'' LCG, but still appear in the game. House Tully is present in the game as a subset of their allies, House Stark. House Lannister and House Baratheon both feature numerous House Tyrell cards, and several significant House Tyrell characters were featured as promotional cards. House Tyrell also features prominently in the ''A House of Thorns'' expansion, as does House Bolton to a smaller extent. Other lesser houses also appear in the game, in service to the Great Houses to which they are sworn. Several House Frey cards also make an appearance, primarily as neutral cards. House Arryn is a prominent theme in ''A House of Talons''. In addition to the noble houses, the ''AGoT'' LCG also features many other factions present in ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' as part of a particular theme. Example: The Wildlings are featured in ''Winter Block'', while the Asshai'i have been a sub theme over many expansions.

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==Cards== Each player supplies his or her own deck to play the game. A deck consists of a ''House Card'' or ''Alliance'' to represent the player's faction, an optional ''Agenda'' that modifies his faction, a plot deck that consists of exactly seven ''Plot'' cards, and then a main draw deck of at least 60 cards consisting of ''Characters'', ''Attachments'', ''Locations'', and ''Events''.

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===House cards=== Each House card represents one of the main factions involved in the War of the Five Kings. Each House provides different strengths and weaknesses, allowing for various playstyles to interact within the same game. The House card selected will often restrict cards allowed in the remainder of the deck, by limiting cards that are marked as being allowed solely for another House. Characters, Locations, and Attachments often have a House affiliation, and often are used in decks running a matching House card. Some cards have no House affiliation, and such neutral cards may be used freely in any deck. Cards with House affiliations other than the chosen House card may be used, providing the card itself has no restriction, but require an extra expenditure of resources to bring them into play.

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===Agenda cards (optional)=== Introduced in Valyrian Block, any deck using a House card (but not an Alliance card) may use one Agenda card. Agenda cards either modify the rules for building the player's deck, or grant an in-game advantage, typically at the cost of some other disadvantage such as requiring extra power to win, reduced card draw, or limiting claimed power.

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===Plot cards=== Plot cards are generally regarded as the defining feature of ''A Game of Thrones: The Card Game''. Unlike the shuffled and randomly drawn resource deck, at the beginning of each round, each player chooses a new plot card to be revealed, which will have an effect on the round to be played, allowing for a strategic element to an otherwise random game. Plot cards indicate the base amount of gold available for the player to use to bring new cards into play during his ''Marshalling'' phase (indicated by a number within a gold coin), a base initiative value to determine the order of play for the round (indicated by a number within a diamond), a base claim value to determine the scope of the effect that player winning a challenge (indicated by a number in a silver disk), and a text box detailing any other effects or restrictions on the plot card, including any ''traits'' that it might have. Most plot cards are designed with built-in trade-offs, sacrificing high claim for low income, or some other game mechanic drawback.

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===Character cards=== Character cards represent the unique characters from the ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' novels, such as Eddard Stark, as well as generic individuals and massed groupings (such as armies) that can be found there. Generally, characters are the main focus of a deck as they are the principle card type used to participate in challenges, and thus collect the power tokens necessary to win. Attributes of a Character card consist of a gold cost (generally represented by a number overlaid on a gold coin in the upper left corner), a name across the top that may be preceded by a black flag if the character is unique and/or an infinity symbol if the character is ''endless'', a House affiliation (represented by one or more House shields in the upper right corner, although neutral characters will have a blank shield), artwork depicting the character in the top half of the card, a strength value (represented by a number on a stylized tapestry or a nondescript shield in the middle of the left side), zero to three challenge icons (a red axe represents Military, a green eye represents Intrigue, and a blue crown represents Power) arrayed in the bottom half of the left side, and a text box in the lower half of the card. Within the textbox may be ''traits'', ''keywords'', other game effects or icons, and flavour text from the novels. Traits are bold and italicized words at the top of the textbox, and usually represent roles or groups within the world of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', such as Lords or Dothraki. They have no game function themselves, but instead are used to group characters together in order for other game effects to be used by or against varied groups of characters. Keywords are game mechanics defined in the rules that affect that character, such as No Attachments, which prevents any attachments from being placed on that character.

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===Attachment cards=== Attachments are cards that are used exclusively to modify other cards. An attachment may not be in play unless it is attached to the proper type of card, typically a character card unless the attachment itself says otherwise. Attributes of an Attachment card consist of a gold cost (generally represented by a number overlaid on a gold coin in the upper left corner), a name across the top that may be proceeded by a black flag if the attachment is unique and/or an infinity symbol if the attachment is ''endless'', a House affiliation (represented by one or more House shields in the upper right corner, although neutral attachments will have no shield), artwork depicting the attachment in the top half of the card, and a text box in the lower half of the card. Throughout the Winter block, some cards were printed with a black crow icon in the bottom left corner to indicate the attachment is ''Doomed''. It is unknown if such attachments will appear again. Within the textbox may be ''traits'', ''keywords'', other game effects or icons, and flavour text from the novels. Traits are bold and italicized words at the top of the textbox, and usually represent types of enhancements, such as skills or titles. They have no game function themselves, but instead are used to group attachments together in order for other game effects to be used by or against varied groups of attachments. Keywords are game mechanics defined in the rules that affect that attachment such as Setup, which allows the attachment to be played at the beginning of the game unlike normal attachments. Occasionally, game effects can cause cards to become face-down attachments attached to specific other cards. These function the same as normal attachments, except they are treated as having no names, no text, no gold costs, no House affiliations, and are discarded if they are ever forced to leave play.

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===Location cards=== Location cards represent the unique places in the setting of the ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' novels, such as King's Landing, generic regions such as fiefdoms, and even mobile locations such as sailing vessels and warships. Many locations are used to supply additional ''income'', ''influence'', but a wide variety of effects are present. Attributes of a Location card consist of a gold cost (generally represented by a number overlaid on a gold coin in the upper left corner), a name across the top that may be preceded by a black flag if the location is unique, a House affiliation (represented by one or more House shields in the upper right corner, although neutral locations will have no shield), artwork depicting the location in the top half of the card, and a text box in the lower half of the card. Within the textbox may be ''traits'', ''keywords'', other game effects or icons, and flavour text from the novels. Traits are bold and italicized words at the top of the textbox, and usually represent regions within the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, such as Westeros or Dorne. They have no game function themselves, but instead are used to group locations together in order for other game effects to be used by or against varied groups of locations. Keywords are game mechanics defined in the rules that affect that location, such as Limited which restricts the player to playing one such card per round.

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===Event cards=== Event cards represent special actions or happenings from the ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' novels that can be used in the course of the game. Certain events may be restricted so that they may only be played by a specific House, and some may only affect cards of a particular House affiliation. Event cards generally have a play restriction or a cost of some type which may be paid in influence, gold, or possibly by modifying the game state of one or more characters, locations, attachments or house card. Attributes of an Event card consist of a name across the top that may be preceded by a black flag if the event is unique and/or an infinity symbol if the event is ''endless'', artwork depicting the event in the top half of the card, and a text box in the lower half of the card. Within the textbox may be ''traits'', ''keywords'', but primarily will be one or more game effects, and flavour text from the novels. Traits are bold and italicized words at the top of the textbox, and usually represent specific types of events such as ''Small Council''. They have no game function themselves, but instead are used to group events together in order for other game effects to be used by or against varied groups of events. Keywords are game mechanics defined in the rules that affect that event, such as Deathbound directing a used event to the dead pile instead of the normal discard pile.

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===Deck building=== Each player participating in an A Game of Thrones game uses two decks: 1) a 7 card ''plot'' deck and 2) a 60+ (40+ for draft) card ''draw'' deck of ''characters'', ''attachments'', ''locations'', and ''events''. During play the ''draw'' deck cards will often end up in other game play areas including the ''discard pile'' (cards discarded from play) and the ''dead pile'' (cards that were killed or are marked with the Deathbound keyword). Typically, players are only allowed three copies of any particular card (as determined by the card name, regardless of card type or game text similarity) in their ''draw'' deck, and only one copy of any particular card, by name, in their ''plot'' deck, but these restrictions can be modified by some other cards, such as the Twins agenda.

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===Winning conditions=== A player must earn 15 power tokens between their House card and characters in play to win A Game of Thrones. Numerous cards in the game can change the amount a player or his opponent are required to earn in order to win. Generally, power tokens are earned by winning challenges against an opponent, but some cards allow a player to directly claim power for his House card or characters in other ways.

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===Setup=== At the beginning of the game, each player shuffles their ''draw'' deck, and draws the top 7 cards, with an option for a ''mulligan'' given to each player to shuffle and draw a new hand. From this initial hand, each player is able to select up to 5 gold worth of characters, locations, and attachments with the Setup keyword, but no more than 1 card of any type with the Limited keyword, from their hand; these cards are placed face-down until all players are ready to reveal their initial cards in play. Once all cards are revealed, players draw cards again until they each have 7 cards in their hand again.

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===Rounds and phases=== The game is played through repeated rounds until one or more players meets the winning condition, or all but one player has met the elimination condition. Rounds are divided into 7 phases, with each phase allowing players to alternate actions that affect the game state in some way. The first phase every round is the ''Plot'' phase. Each player selects one unused plot from his ''plot'' deck, and all players reveal their chosen plots simultaneously. Initiative values from plot cards and other resources are tallied, and the player with the highest initiative chooses which player will go first in each phase of the current round. The textbox effects of plots are then resolved in the order chosen by the first player. In the second phase, the ''Draw'' phase, each player is allowed to draw two cards from their ''draw'' deck. Although divided into turns for each player, the ''Marshalling'' phase is a single phase for all players. At the beginning of each player's turn in the Marshalling phase, the player counts all income from plot card and any other resources available. The player is then able to bring new resources in the form of characters, locations, and attachments into play by spending the gold. Some events and other triggered effects also require the payment of gold, and unused income is not carried over into other rounds, so resource management is important. The fourth phase is the ''Challenge'' phase. As with the ''Marshalling'' phase, each player has a turn to initiate challenges against other players. Generally, players may initiate one each of ''Military'', ''Intrigue'', and ''Power'' challenges each round, but several cards can allow exta challenges to be initiated or deny certain challenges at all. Also, in a multiplayer game, he can either use all his challenges on one opponent or divide them among his adversaries. He doesn't have to use all of them. Challenges can be initiated in any order, and require a player to ''kneel'' one or more characters with an icon matching the challenge type to begin the challenge. Then, the player being attacked may kneel one or more characters to attempt to oppose the challenge. Once all player actions are taken, the player with the highest total strength in the challenge wins. If the defending player wins, nothing special occurs, but if the attacker wins, then the defender suffers losses depending on the type of challenge initiated. * Military - if the defending player loses, he must ''kill'' a number of characters he controls equal to the claim value on the attacker's plot. * Intrigue - if the defending player loses, he must randomly discard a number of cards from hand equal to the claim value on the attacker's plot. * Power - if the defending player loses, he must remove a number of power tokens from his House card equal to the claim value on the attacker's plot, and place them on the attacker's House card. In the fifth phase, the ''Dominance'' phase, each player counts the total strength of all controlled characters that are still ''standing'', plus the amount of gold still remaining in his possession (unspent). The player with the highest total wins dominance that round, and claims 1 power token for his House, taken from the power common pool. In the ''Standing'' phase each player changes each ''kneeling'' card to ''standing''. With the LCG format came a new phase, the ''Taxation'' phase, in which each player returns unspent gold to the common pool (in the CCG format, players could not use gold outside of their turn in the Marshalling phase).

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===Common game terms and rules=== ''Kneeling'' and ''standing'' are the two possible game states for each card in the game, although there is a special ''moribund'' state that's further explained in the faq on FFG website. ''Standing'' cards are upright, and are ready for use to pay for effects, or to initiate or defend challenges. ''Kneeling'' cards are rotated 90 degrees to the side, to indicate that they've been used to pay for an effect, or to initiate or defend a challenge. Some game effects are able to ''kneel'' cards (changing them from ''standing'' to ''kneeling'') or ''stand'' cards (changing them from ''kneeling'' to ''standing'') in order to manipulate the resources a player has available. ''Unique'' cards represent the special individuals, places, items, and happenings in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. Unique cards may not be played if the player already has a copy of that card in play, or if a copy of that card can be found in the player's dead pile. Unique characters, locations, and attachments may be placed with copies that are already in play to serve as ''duplicates''. Duplicates may be discarded to save the unique card from being killed or discard. ''Triggered Effects'' are a type of game effect that a player chooses to use in order to change the game state in some way. Triggered effects are indicated by a bold name of a phase (one of ''Plot'', ''Draw'', ''Marshalling'', ''Challenges'', ''Dominance'', or ''Standing'') or ''Any phase'' to indicate when the effect may be used. Another timing word that may precede a triggered effect is a bold ''Response'', which indicates that the effect may only be used in response to another occurrence in the game. ''Triggered abilities'' are a subset of triggered effects, and are specifically triggered effects that are written on cards currently in play. ''Passive Effects'' are game effects that have no bold timing restriction indicated, but instead happen whenever certain prerequisites are met, such as a character coming into play. ''Constant Abilities'' are game effects written on cards in play that have an ongoing effect on the game state. ''Influence'' is indicated on various characters, locations, and attachments in the game by a number on a scroll in the textbox of the card. In the Valyrian block, influence was introduced as an additional resource to manage, requiring players to kneel one or more cards with a specific total amount of influence to pay for an effect. Normally, once a game effect has been initiated, it fully resolves without an interruption. However, once an effect is begun, there is a chance for specific effects to ''Cancel'' the initial effect. If the effect is cancelled, all costs stay paid, use limitations remain, but the effects do not occur. ''Kill'' means removing a character from play, and placing that character in the ''dead pile''. Kill effects only work on characters, including other cards that are currently functioning as characters, but other cards can be placed in the dead pile through various game effects, such as the Deathbound keyword. ''Discard'', when occurring without the modifier ''from hand'', means to take a card that is in play, and place it in the ''discard pile''. Generally, whenever an effect targets a card to be killed or discarded, players are given a chance to ''Save'' the card from the effect, either by discarding a duplicate of the targeted card or by using another game effect. If a card is saved, it is not removed from play, and it is not considered killed or discarded.

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===Night's Watch=== Fantasy Flight Games has an official group of volunteers that organize sanctioned tournaments for A Game of Thrones. The Night's Watch are named after the guardians of The Wall in northern Westeros in the fictional setting of ''A Song of Ice and Fire''. These volunteers organize tournaments, arrange demonstration games for new and interested players, and hand out promotional materials provided by FFG.

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===Prizes=== * '''Gold dragons''' are a form of loyalty points that were awarded for purchases and playing in tournaments. The packaging for booster packs, starter decks, and premium starter decks all have an image of a gold coin with a number representing the number of gold dragons earned, being one, two, and five respectively. Players could also earn certificates of eighty, forty, and twenty gold dragons for placing first, second, or third (respectively) in a sanctioned tournament. Gold dragons were redeemable to FFG for older promotional cards, booster packs, and other specialized AGoT products, such as card binders, stone house cards, and house-specific power tokens. The Gold Dragon redemption program officially ended on June 30, 2008. * '''Promotional cards''' were frequently provided to Night's Watch volunteers by FFG to be given to participants of sanctioned tournaments. Sometimes these cards follow a special theme for the tournament, but that is not always the case. Usually the cards can legally be included in any deck, but some are marked with a skull icon to indicate they cannot be included unless special rules are in effect for that tournament.

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===Tournaments=== There are several different official tournament types sanctioned by FFG. In the ''Classic'' format, players bring their own decks, which may include cards from any set, as long as the card is not on the banned list. In ''Standard'' format, players bring their own decks, which may only include cards from the most recent blocks. , only cards released since Valyrian block are legal in Standard format. In ''Limited'' format, players instead build their decks at the tournament, using provided draft packs (in ''Limited - Draft'') or starter decks (in ''Limited - Sealed Deck'') and booster packs. Aside from the restrictions on usable card pool, FFG places no limits on how Night's Watch volunteers organize the tournaments. Thrones-Tournaments.com tries to provide a central list of all international and local store tournaments, to help gamers find play to compete in.

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===World and Continental Championships=== The A Game of Thrones World Championships were held yearly at Gen Con Indy until 2012, when they moved to Fantasy Flight's Event Centre in Minneapolis, with Gencon being redesignated North American Championships. Part of the winner's prize is the opportunity to design their own card. + '''Previous world champions and cards designed''' Set card was included in (CCG) Andrea Gualdoni (European Joust) House of Dreams (1E)/The House with the Red Door Martí Foz Hernandez (European Joust) Grégoire Lefebvre (European Melee) Dan Seefeldt (North American Overall) Michael Pandorf (North American Melee) Stefano Montanari (European Joust) Istvan Cserdi (European Melee) Steven Simoni (North American Overall) The Iron Bank Will Have Its Due Miguel Tarin (European Joust) Vincent Teulé (European Melee) Jonathan Andrews (North American Overall) Jakob Hultman (European Melee) The Brotherhood Without Banners Donovan van Beek (European Joust) Patrick Reynolds (North American Joust) Brian Aurelio (North American Melee) Sam Braatz (War of the Five Kings 2E) Jesus Valdez Gaspar (European Joust) Chris Schoenthal (North American Joust 2E) Luiz Bretas (European Melee 2E) Florian Maas (European Joust 2E) Reinhard Schefcik (European Joust 2E) Alex Black (North American Joust 2E) The 2003 world champion Casey Galvan was later hired by FFG to serve as lead developer, a position he occupied until fall of 2005. He now has a consulting role at FFG. The runner up in that tournament, Nate French, came on as lead developer in Spring of 2006 and continues to this day.

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==Podcasts== There are a number of podcasts focused on the ''A Game of Thrones: The Living Card Game'', such as the weekly Beyond The Wall, 2 Champs and a Chump, Great Beards of Westeros and the Spanish language 2 Maestros 1 Pupilo.

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==Sets and expansions== When it was released, A Game of Thrones was introduced as a CCG. The cards for the AGoT CCG were organized into numerous sets and expansions that could be mixed together and used interchangeably. A ''block'' consisted of a ''base set'', up to two ''expansion sets'', a ''premium starter'', and often one or more promotional cards. Typically, a base set consisted of 240 cards available in either starter decks, consisting of a mix of fixed cards and a random assortment of other cards, or booster packs, consisting of 11 randomly sorted cards, of which 1 is rare, 3 are uncommon, and 7 are common. Booster packs were generally shipped in groups of 36, creating booster boxes. Expansion sets typically contained 150 cards, and were only distributed as booster packs similar to those of a base set. Premium Starters consisted of two or three pre-built decks of fixed cards, typically reprints from earlier sets, but also introducing 10 new cards as well. Within a base set and expansion set, the cards were divided into groups based on their frequency of appearance, with rare cards being included the least frequent, uncommon cards slightly more frequent, and common cards being the most frequent. Also available in regular and premium starters were a specific number of fixed cards that always appeared in that packaging. Also available were ''draft packs'' which consisted of 1 ''draft'' card, 5 ''plot'' cards, 6 ''house'' cards and 8 ''locations'' that are generally useful to any deck, and allow for a more level competitive field during ''draft'' tournaments. In late 2007, the A Game of Thrones CCG was converted to the A Game of Thrones LCG (Living Card Game), which ended the random booster packs in favor of fixed packs, called Chapter Packs, released on a roughly monthly basis. Chapter packs consist of 60 fixed cards - 3 copies of 20 cards. The Core Set consists of 4 preconstructed decks consisting of Stark, Lannister, Baratheon, and Targaryen, and is marketed as a starting point for a new player. It will also include a game board, power tokens, gold tokens, as well as game pieces to use for the multiplayer titles. Along with the switch to the LCG, there has also been more of a focus on the multiplayer aspect of the game, now referred to as Melee, rather than the head to head play, now referred to as Joust. + '''A Game of Thrones CCG card sets''' Introduced House Stark, House Lannister, and House Baratheon Included three pre-built decks for House Stark, Lannister, and Baratheon Ice and Fire Premium Starters Included two pre-built decks for House Greyjoy and Targaryen Introduced Influence and Agendas. Included two pre-built decks for Houses Stark\Baratheon and Lannister\Martell Included two pre-built decks for House Greyjoy and Targaryen Introduced new card templates and multiplayer titles. New mechanics include crests, and dual house cards. Themed around House Tyrell and Bolton. Iron Throne Edition Legacy Pack Pack of 55 Fixed Cards, 45 reprints and 10 new cards. Themed around House Arryn and the Clansmen. + '''A Game of Thrones LCG Core Set and Expansions''' Kings of the Sea (Out Of Print) Set contains 60 cards and Greyjoy Resin House Card. Introduces the rules for the "Kingsmoot" multiplayer variant. Princes of the Sun (Out Of Print) Set contains 120 cards, two copies of 60 different cards. Introduces the rules for the "Civil War" joust variant. Set contains 165 cards, three copies each of 55 different cards. Two deck building themes, the "Wolves of the North" and the "Tullys of Riverrun". Set contains 165 cards, three copies each of 55 different cards. Two deck building themes, "Power Rush" and the "Knights of the Realm". Kings of the Sea (Revised Edition) Set contains 180 cards, three copies each of 60 different cards. The Greyjoy Resin House Card is no longer included. Princes of the Sun (Revised Edition) Set contains 180 cards, three copies of 60 different cards. Includes the rules for the "Civil War" joust variant. Set contains 165 cards, three copies each of 55 different cards. Two deck building themes, "Fire and Blood” and “Hosts of the True-Queen". Set contains 165 cards, three copies each of 55 different cards. + '''A Game of Thrones LCG chapter packs''' last chapter pack with black bordered cards Introduced the Seasons mechanic Introduced the Shadows mechanic last of the 40 card chapter packs start of the 60 card chapter packs Introduced the "Joust" and "Melee" keywords Introduced the naval enhancement Introduced the "Prized X" keyword Promotional cards are usually provided as prizes for participating in FFG registered tournaments, by attending certain conventions, or buying other A Game of Thrones promotional packages.

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==Industry awards== The game's first base set - ''Westeros Edition'' - won the 2002 Origins Award for ''Best Trading Card Game of 2002''. The second base set - ''Ice and Fire Edition'' - followed next year and won the 2003 Origins Award for ''Best Card Game Expansion or Supplement of 2003''.

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==External links== * agameofthrones.com - Official website

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'''Tyrion Lannister''' is a fictional character in the ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' series of epic fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin and its television adaptation ''Game of Thrones''. He is a prominent point of view character in the novels, having the most chapters out of all at 49. Based on an idea that came to Martin while writing the 1981 novel ''Windhaven'', Tyrion has been called one of the author's finest creations and most popular characters by ''The New York Times''. Martin has named the character as his favorite in the series. Introduced in ''A Game of Thrones'' (1996) and subsequently in ''A Clash of Kings'' (1998) and ''A Storm of Swords'' (2000), Tyrion was one of a few prominent characters that were not included in ''A Feast for Crows'' (2005) but returned in the next novel ''A Dance with Dragons'' (2011). The character will also appear in the forthcoming volume ''The Winds of Winter''. The popularity of the character led Martin and Bantam Books to publish ''The Wit & Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister'', an illustrated collection of Tyrion quotes from the novels, in 2013. Tyrion is a dwarf and member of House Lannister of Casterly Rock, one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the fictional continent of Westeros. In the story, Tyrion uses his status as a Lannister to mitigate the prejudice he has received all of his life, even from his own family, especially his father and sister. Knowing that no one will ever take him seriously, he soothes his inadequacies with wine, wit and self-indulgence. As the peaceful rule of King Robert Baratheon begins to decay, Tyrion sees how ill-equipped his family are at holding everything together. He first saves his own neck from the vengeful Catelyn Stark and her sister Lysa Arryn, and then is sent by his father Tywin to impose order on the capital of King's Landing, as well as his nephew Joffrey, the new king, as civil war begins. Tyrion struggles to strengthen and protect the city and family who hate him and refuse to see the peril they are in; when his father returns, Tyrion becomes vulnerable to the wrath and machinations of the self-serving courtiers who surround Joffrey, including Tyrion's own scheming sister Cersei. Tyrion escapes death again but at great cost and in fleeing Westeros finds himself in even more danger and without his usual Lannister resources. The character is portrayed by Peter Dinklage in the HBO television adaptation ''Game of Thrones'', a role for which he has received significant and widespread critical acclaim. In 2011, Dinklage won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and later the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for his portrayal of Tyrion in the HBO series. He won the Emmy again in 2015,2018 and 2019. Among other accolades, Dinklage has been nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016.

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