Yi Ti

Yi Ti is a distant land in the east, paired with Leng among the far eastern shores of Essos in accounts of the world’s breadth. For Westerosi sailors and scholars, it stood at the far end of competing imaginings: a destination that might be reached by sailing west, and a place Corlys Velaryon later visited by voyaging east.

Place in the Known World

The learned agreed that the world was a sphere, but not on how large it was. Some archmaesters believed the Sunset Sea too vast to cross; others thought it might be no wider than the Summer Sea between the Arbor and Great Moraq. If the smaller estimate was right, a westward passage could open a route to the silks and spices of Yi Ti and Leng, promising great wealth to the captain who found it.

That commercial possibility was not the only vision attached to the lands beyond the Sunset Sea. Elissa Farman, known as Alys Westhill, rejected the idea that a westbound voyage would simply reach familiar eastern markets. Even as a child, she believed the world was “far larger and far stranger than the maesters imagine.” She envisioned other lands and seas between Westeros and the far eastern shores of Essos and Ulthos: another Essos, another Sothoryos, another Westeros. In that geography, Yi Ti marked a distant shore beyond a vast, still-unknown expanse, not the limit of discovery.

A Destination Reached from the East

Corlys Velaryon’s voyages gave Yi Ti a place in the record of Westerosi exploration. On his first great voyage aboard the Sea Snake, he sailed beyond the Jade Gates to Yi Ti and the isle of Leng, returning with a wealth of spice, silk, and jade. The riches were so great that House Velaryon became, for a time, the wealthiest house in the Seven Kingdoms.

On a later voyage Corlys went farther east, becoming the first Westerosi said to have reached Asshai-by-the-Shadow. The contrast between these journeys and Elissa Farman’s unfinished westward expedition is central to Yi Ti’s significance in the account: Corlys reached its region by sailing east, while Elissa hoped that a westward course might reveal the lands lying between the known continents.

The Unfinished Western Passage

Elissa Farman sailed the Sun Chaser west in search of the lands she believed lay beyond the Sunset Sea, but the ship vanished and was never seen again. Years later, in Asshai’s harbor, Corlys glimpsed an old, weathered ship that he swore could only have been the Sun Chaser. The sighting remains uncertain, and it does not establish where Elissa’s voyage ended. Yi Ti thus belongs to a geography partially reached and richly described, while the western passage toward it—or toward the other lands Elissa imagined—remains unresolved.