Astapor

Astapor, on Slaver’s Bay, is presented through two starkly different but connected scenes: a fighting pit where a wing-shorn beast is made to entertain a crowd, and a slave market from which Lysaro Rogare buys a thousand Unsullied to secure his power. Together, these accounts depict a city whose trade turns both spectacle and military discipline into commodities.

The Fighting Pits

A report reaching King Jaehaerys’s council described a dragon displayed in Astapor’s fighting pits. The beast, its wings shorn, was set against bulls, cave bears, and groups of enslaved people armed with spears and axes, while thousands watched and roared. The account made Astapor a place where a creature presented as wondrous was instead forced into violent entertainment.

Septon Barth rejected the claim that the beast was a dragon, identifying it instead as a wyvern, the kind of creature from Sothoryos that people unfamiliar with dragons might mistake for one. The report therefore leaves the animal’s identity disputed: Astapor’s spectacle fuels the rumor, while Barth’s explanation places it within a more ordinary, if still savage, account of misidentification.

The Unsullied Trade

Astapor also appears as the source of Lysaro Rogare’s armed protection. Seeking to secure himself amid the deaths of rivals, Lysaro bought one thousand Unsullied from the city’s slavers. They were renowned as the world’s finest foot soldiers and trained to obey absolutely, making them guards whose masters need not fear defiance or betrayal.

The purchase underlines the connection between Astapor’s slave trade and political power beyond the city. Lysaro surrounded himself with the Unsullied before securing election as gonfaloniere and pursuing ambitions that eventually led him to divert money from the Rogare Bank. Astapor is thus associated not only with violence staged for spectators, but also with disciplined force deployed to protect a would-be ruler.