Andalos

Andalos is identified in the account of the search for Princess Aerea and Balerion through a single striking report from its hills north of Pentos. Shepherds there spoke of a predatory monster, making the region a point of concern in a search crowded with rumor but short on reliable sightings.

Setting and Geographical Appearance

The account places the reported creature in the hills of Andalos, north of Pentos. It gives no further description of the region’s boundaries, settlements, or political affiliations; Andalos enters the narrative as a particular landscape within the wider area being searched along the narrow sea.

The Shepherds’ Report

The shepherds described a beast that left entire flocks reduced to bloody bones. Its appetite, they said, was not limited to sheep: people who encountered it were also killed. The report was second-hand, since those who supposedly met the creature did not survive to describe it. Its frightening details therefore carried urgency without providing a witness whose account could be tested.

The Search for Aerea and Balerion

The report reached the agents and informers charged with finding Aerea and Balerion. Other purported sightings had often proved useless, consisting of rumor, falsehood, or vague claims of having glimpsed something winged. The Andalos account stood out for the scale of the alleged killings, but none of its stories mentioned fire. Jaehaerys took that omission as evidence that Balerion might not be responsible, though he did not dismiss the possibility entirely: he sent twelve men across the narrow sea to Pentos to hunt the beast, led by Ser Willam the Wasp of the Kingsguard.

Narrative Significance

Andalos matters here as the source of an alarming but inconclusive lead. The account distinguishes the terror of the shepherds’ claims from what the searchers can actually establish: no surviving encounter confirms the creature’s nature, and the absence of reports of fire only weakens, rather than settles, the suspicion that Balerion was involved. The region’s brief appearance thus sustains uncertainty around the search instead of resolving it.