Brazen Beasts

The Brazen Beasts were the city watch of Meereen, created by Daenerys Targaryen to replace the Unsullied in patrolling the streets and to fight the shadow war waged by the Sons of the Harpy. The force was made up in equal numbers of freedmen and shavepate Meereenese, men who had shaved their heads to signal their acceptance of the new order. To protect themselves and their families from the Harpy's vengeance, the Beasts went about in dark hoods and brazen masks shaped like jackals, owls, hawks, and other beasts, keeping their true faces hidden. Their first commander was Skahaz mo Kandaq, the Shavepate, a blunt, brutal, and angry man whom Daenerys trusted despite his odious face and his reputation as the vilest of traitors to the Sons of the Harpy.

Creation and Purpose

Daenerys established the Brazen Beasts after a night when nine of her Unsullied were killed in coordinated attacks. "Pull your men back to their barracks," she commanded Grey Worm. "Henceforth let them guard my walls and gates and person. From this day, it shall be for Meereenese to keep the peace in Meereen." She ordered Skahaz to make a new watch composed of shavepates and freedmen, and when Reznak mo Reznak asked where the coin would come from to pay wages for so many men, she replied, "From the pyramids. Call it a blood tax. I will have a hundred pieces of gold from every pyramid for each freedman that the Harpy's Sons have slain." The Beasts walked the streets both day and night, and their masks served a practical purpose: the Sons of the Harpy had promised grisly death to any traitor who dared serve the dragon queen, and to their kith and kin as well.

Command and Loyalty

Skahaz mo Kandaq remained the driving force behind the Brazen Beasts even after Hizdahr zo Loraq became king and replaced him with his own cousin, the plump and pasty Marghaz zo Loraq. The Shavepate insisted that the Beasts were still his, telling Barristan Selmy, "Marghaz knows what I want him to know. The Beasts are still mine. Do not forget it." He used them to spy on Hizdahr, following the king's betrothed and taking note of all his actions. When the Shavepate conspired with Selmy to overthrow Hizdahr, he assured the old knight that the Brazen Beasts would be on their side. "We will have Marghaz in chains before he can make mischief," he said. "I told you, the Brazen Beasts are mine." The masks themselves became a tool of deception; Skahaz himself wore a cat mask when meeting Selmy in secret, saying, "Cats go everywhere. No one ever looks at them."

Significance and Fragility

The Brazen Beasts represented Daenerys's attempt to create a loyal, indigenous security force that could bridge the divide between her freedmen supporters and the Meereenese nobility. Yet the force was inherently fragile. Barristan Selmy mistrusted them, noting that half were freedmen of doubtful loyalty and the other half Meereenese of equally doubtful loyalty. "A mask can hide many things, Your Grace," he warned Daenerys. "Is the man behind the owl mask the same owl who guarded you yesterday and the day before? How can we know?" The queen replied that Meereen could never come to trust the Brazen Beasts if she did not, but the force's reliability remained an open question, especially after Hizdahr replaced Skahaz with his own cousin, a man Selmy dismissed as "fawning to his superiors, harsh to his inferiors, as blind as he was boastful and too proud by half." The Brazen Beasts were thus a mirror of Meereen itself: divided, suspicious, and caught between the old blood and the new.