The Velvet Hills are part of Andalos, north of Pentos. In the account, they enter the history of Jaehaerys I Targaryen’s reign through reports of a dangerous creature and the failed attempt to investigate it. The hills’ remoteness and uncertain dangers made them a place where rumor could take hold—and where a search for a dragon could end in an ambush by men.

Setting and Reports of a Beast

Shepherds in the hills spoke fearfully of a creature that attacked flocks and people. The reports drew attention because Princess Aerea and Balerion had disappeared, and the court was searching for them. Yet the accounts from the hills did not describe fire, a detail Jaehaerys took as evidence against Balerion’s involvement. He nevertheless sent a dozen men across the Narrow Sea to Pentos to investigate, under the command of Ser Willam the Wasp of the Kingsguard.

The Search Party’s Fate

The expedition’s guide, a local who claimed to know where the beast could be found, instead led Ser Willam and his men into a trap somewhere in the Velvet Hills. Brigands attacked them. The king’s men fought back, but were outnumbered and killed; Ser Willam was said to have been the last to fall. His head was returned to an agent of Rego Draz in Pentos, confirming the expedition’s destruction without establishing that any monster existed.

Rumor, Explanation, and Memory

After hearing what had happened, Septon Barth concluded that there was no monster: men were stealing sheep and spreading frightening stories to keep others away. Jaehaerys declined to punish Pentos for the crimes of outlaws, and the matter was set aside. Ser Willam’s fate was entered in the White Book of the Kingsguard, while Ser Lucamore Strong received the white cloak in his place.

The hills remained part of the wider mystery surrounding Aerea’s disappearance. In his later account, Barth explicitly rejected the speculation that Balerion had been the beast believed to haunt the Velvet Hills, grouping it with other stories about the missing princess and her dragon as fables. The location thus preserves a distinction central to the episode: the reports were real, and the men who pursued them died, but the dragon explanation was never substantiated.