Tyroshi Stepstones

The Tyroshi Stepstones are a chain of rocky islands between Dorne and the Disputed Lands of Essos. Their importance comes less from their intrinsic wealth than from their position: they command sea lanes to and from the narrow sea, and ships passing through those waters have long been vulnerable to raiders based among the islands. The Stepstones repeatedly become a point where local piracy, commercial passage, and the ambitions of larger powers collide; control of them is difficult to secure and, as Daemon Targaryen’s campaign showed, harder to keep.

Geography and Early Reputation

For centuries, the islands served as a refuge for outlaws, exiles, wreckers, and pirates. Their inhabitants preyed on merchant shipping, though these depredations were once regarded as a nuisance rather than a threat demanding a major war. The islands’ strategic position gave even a scattered chain of rocks influence over traffic through an important maritime corridor. That imbalance—limited intrinsic worth, substantial power over passage—made the Stepstones attractive to whoever could impose order there, and profitable to those who could disrupt it.

The islands also figured in the plans of Dorne’s Prince Morion Martell. Seeking allies for his intended invasion of the Seven Kingdoms, he drew on pirates from the Stepstones, alongside sellsails from Myr and corsairs from the Pepper Coast. It took nearly a year for the ships to arrive; Morion then loaded his spearmen aboard and equipped the fleet with crossbowmen and large scorpions, weapons intended to threaten dragons. The Stepstones thus appear not only as a destination for conquest but as part of a wider network of maritime fighters available to a ruler with gold and an ambition. The evidence records this coalition in connection with Morion’s disastrous expedition, rather than as a settled alliance or lasting power over the islands.

The Triarchy’s Conquest

The balance changed after Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh set aside their rivalries to fight Volantis. Following their victory, the three Free Cities formed the Triarchy, governed by a council of thirty-three magisters, and turned their combined armies and fleets westward toward the Stepstones. Their campaign brought the islands under a power substantially greater than the pirates who had previously dominated them. The Myrish prince admiral Craghas Drahar commanded the operation and acquired the name Crabfeeder after having captured pirates staked out on wet sands to drown as the tide rose.

Triarchic control did not end the conflict over passage; it changed who profited from it. The Triarchy imposed tolls on ships using the sea lanes, and those charges were raised repeatedly until merchants who had once paid sought ways around its galleys. Complaints cast Drahar and his Lysene and Tyroshi co-admirals as rivals in greed. The new rulers’ attempt to turn strategic position into revenue therefore undermined the acceptance of their rule: merchants treated the toll-taking power much as they had treated the pirates, looking for a way past it. The islands’ command of trade routes made them valuable, but the cost of exercising that command helped make the Triarchy’s position unpopular.

Daemon and Corlys’s Campaign

Corlys Velaryon, whose fleets made him one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the Seven Kingdoms, resolved to end the Triarchy’s rule over the Stepstones. He found a partner in Daemon Targaryen, who sought the gold and glory a victory might bring. The two made their plans at High Tide on Driftmark while the royal court attended King Viserys’s wedding. Their division of responsibilities matched their resources: Corlys would command the fleet, while Daemon led the land forces. Though they would be greatly outnumbered by the Triarchy, Daemon brought Caraxes, whose fire gave the expedition a force the enemy could not match simply by counting soldiers and ships.

The private war began in 106 AC. Daemon assembled an army of landless adventurers and second sons, and won a series of victories during its first two years. In 108 AC he met Craghas Crabfeeder and killed him himself, cutting off his head with Dark Sister. King Viserys supported Daemon’s campaign with regular infusions of gold, despite its unofficial character and the king’s evident willingness to have his troublesome brother occupied by war. By 109 AC, Daemon’s army controlled all but two of the islands, while Corlys’s fleet held the surrounding waters. The campaign had driven the Triarchy from nearly all its island positions, but had not eliminated its capacity to counterattack.

A Contested Hold

At the height of this success, Daemon declared himself King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea, and Corlys placed a crown upon his head. The title made the campaign’s ambitions explicit: its object was not merely to defeat the Triarchy’s forces but to establish a new authority over the islands and adjoining waters. Yet the near-complete conquest was insecure. The following year the Triarchy sent a fresh invasion force under the Tyroshi captain Racallio Ryndoon, and Dorne joined the war as an ally of the Triarchy. Fighting resumed, demonstrating that possession of most of the islands had not settled who would rule them.

The Tyroshi Stepstones consequently recur as a test of maritime power rather than as a stable kingdom. Pirates used their position to prey on shipping; the Triarchy turned that same position into a system of tolls; and Corlys and Daemon used fleet, army, royal money, and dragonfire to challenge that system. Their campaign won control of most of the islands and gave Daemon a crown, but the renewed invasion exposed the gap between declaring sovereignty and securing it. In the history presented here, the islands’ defining feature is precisely this instability: whoever controls the Stepstones can threaten or regulate passage, while rivals have strong incentives to contest that control.