Prologue: The Star Dragon a Valyrian SI

This fic will explore what Valyria and the world were like before the Doom. Since there is very little lore on the subject, it will be fun to expand the world and make it feel more fantastical, moving away from the low fantasy tone of the books. 

The story will focus mainly on magic and exploration.

This chapter is meant to set up the fic by providing some recent history of the Freehold.

Will continue this after The Son of Ice and Fire is finished.

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In its long and grand history, the Freehold of Valyria had weathered countless storms. The great Ghiscari Wars had tested its strength; the War of Three Flames had bathed its fields and skies in fire; the Servile Rebellions had shaken the foundations of its society; the Starfyre Heresy had divided blood and belief; the Crisis of the Nine Flames had threatened to rip its ruling houses apart.

Yet each time, Valyria not only survived but emerged fiercer and stronger, its ambition reaching beyond the smoky peaks of the Fourteen Flames. From the mouth of the River Rhoyne to the frozen edges of the Shivering Sea, the children of Valyria rode forth on wings of fire. They swept away the savage Rhoynar, took the lesser peoples as slaves, and carved a dominion the likes of which the world had never seen.

For a thousand years, the Freehold knew peace—or what passed for peace among those who rode dragons. There were no more great wars to fight, no more enemies to burn—only the slow, intoxicating rot of power unchallenged. The Forty Families, those ancient lines of dragonlords who ruled all with whip and flame, turned inward. Denied external foes, they sharpened their talents against one another.

Politics in Valyria became a blood-sport more vicious than any battlefield. Alliances sealed by marriage were betrayed by poison; whispered sorcery unmade rivals; plots and counter-plots unfolded within the white-marble halls and black-stone fortresses.

Excess became their daily bread: great feasts bloated with meats from across Essos, fountains of wine that ran like rivers, pleasures of the flesh refined to dark arts—nothing was forbidden, nothing sacred. And always, beneath the marble and gold, darker currents stirred. Some dragonlords delved into sorceries so vile they were forbidden even among their own kind: pacts with ancient spirits, sacrifices to nameless gods of fire and stone, rites whispered in dead tongues beneath the ground. Many among the Forty Families fell to depths of depravity unseen since the Dawn Age.

From the outside, Valyria was a shining titan—a state beyond the reach of mortal kings, ruled by those who bent dragons and magic to their will. But its foundations were rotting, unseen. Pride festered into arrogance; wisdom curdled into cruelty; strength ossified into decadence. And so, when the Great Upheaval came, Valyria was as brittle as old bone.

It began with whispers, as such things often do. In the dark corners of the Freehold and its colonies, a secret society arose: The Forsworn. Composed of exiled sorcerers, lowborn magicians, and minor bloodlines long wearied of bowing before the great Forty, they sought a new order. Through forbidden arts and sacrilegious rites, they crafted a ritual that allowed even those of common blood—even those not born of old Valyria—to bond with dragons. The bonds they forged were imperfect, the creatures born of their sorcery wild and unstable, but they were dragons nonetheless.

Armed with their half-tamed beasts, The Forsworn struck. Across the Freehold and its sprawling colonies, rebellion flared like wildfire. The lesser houses not of the forty  rose in revolt; ambitious Laerions—those commoners of Valyria who once could only dream of riding dragons—seized their chance. Dragon fought dragon in the skies over Valyria, and the heavens themselves seemed to burn.

Slaves who had been crushed and broken in the brutal revolts of past centuries found courage once more. Across the mines, the fields, and the forges of the Freehold, they rose in bloody rebellion, emboldened by the chaos that now tore at their masters.

Far to the east, the Golden Empire of Yi Ti—that ancient, proud realm—had watched and waited for centuries, nursing old wounds. Now, smelling blood on the wind, they struck. Massive armies, clad in lacquered armor and led by sorcerer-lords of their own, crossed the Bone Mountains into Essos, driving into the soft underbelly of Valyrian colonial holdings. Their magicians wielded spell-chains that could ground dragons from the sky, conjured typhoon storms that shattered Valyrian fleets, and unleashed towering war-beasts bred for battle against the lords of flame.

It was a dark time.

The Freehold was at its lowest point since the Second Ghiscari War. Chaos reigned across Valyria as never before. The Magisterium—the governing body consisting of the Forty Families—proved slow, divided, and useless. A millennium of unbroken peace had dulled their blades and their wits. While colonies burned and dragons fought dragons, the Forty scrambled—too proud to cooperate, too fearful to act alone. The upheaval, sudden and all-consuming, peeled back the gold-leafed façade of Valyria and revealed its crumbling, rotten foundations for all to see.

And yet, in its darkest hour, the blood of the dragon showed it was not so easily broken.

Through the smoke and slaughter, one man rose to bring order: Aldarion of House Asterion. His house was old—one of the oldest among the Forty. When the Freehold seemed beyond saving, Aldarion seized its reins. Elected Archon—the highest civil authority—the Magisterium granted him the title of First Archon, reserved only for moments of grave crisis. In all Valyrian history, the title had been invoked just four times: during the Ghiscari Wars, during the Crisis of the Nine Flames—and now again, with Aldarion.

With his newfound power, Aldarion moved swiftly. He revived the ancient Valyrian Legions, once-proud armies that had cowed the world, and opened their ranks to the Laerions, second-class citizens long hungry for glory. Nobles scoffed, but Aldarion ignored them. He promoted officers by merit, not birth, drawing bold young captains from both the lowborn and lesser dragonlord stock.

He reformed tactics, no longer relying solely on the terror of dragonfire. Infantry and dragonriders now fought as one—coordinated, relentless, devastating. Dragons seared enemy lines into ash, while disciplined legions advanced behind the firestorms, holding the ground that dragons could only scorch. Battle after battle, Aldarion’s new Valyria clawed victory back from the jaws of ruin.

The false dragonlords of The Forsworn, though numerous and emboldened, were no match for the reborn Valyrian Legions—steel and fire remade. Aldarion shattered their forces, hunted their corrupted dragonriders from the sky, and extinguished the rebellions one by one.

With each victory, Aldarion’s power grew. The new legions, born of his reforms and loyal to his vision, swore allegiance to him alone. No longer were they beholden to the Magisterium; they answered only to Aldarion, who now wielded authority unseen in Valyria since the days of its ancient monarchs millennia ago.

Within the Magisterium, Aldarion stood unchallenged—his voice the loudest, his will the strongest.

And at his side through all this was Lithiel of House Velkarion, last surviving scion of the mightiest of the Forty Families. After the false dragonlords murdered her kin, Aldarion became her guardian. He raised her, and she grew into his shadow, his right hand—his greatest asset during the crisis.

When Aldarion turned his full attention to Valyria’s writhing politics, Lithiel took up the sword. He dispatched her east, to provinces where rebellion festered and the Golden Empire of Yi Ti marched like a tide. With legions behind her and dragonfire overhead, Lithiel struck back at invaders and traitors alike. She drove rebels from their cities, shattered Yi Tish armies, and reclaimed the eastern provinces for the Freehold. Her victories burned away the shame of Valyria’s recent weakness, restoring its pride.

For a time, it seemed the Freehold had found peace again, its wounds cauterized by fire and steel. Yet beneath the triumph, something began to shift.

The rift between Aldarion and Lithiel opened slowly—too fine to see, too easy to dismiss. At first she was his shadow, his sword—cutting down rebellion while he reshaped the Freehold. She had ridden into battle at his command, fought his wars, and spoken his name with a daughter’s reverence—or, as some whispered, with the devotion of a woman to a man she loved in ways no daughter should.

But victory changes those who win it, and Lithiel was no longer the grieving girl Aldarion had found in blood and ashes. She had become a conqueror in her own right, a symbol not merely of the Freehold’s survival but of its renewal.

And symbols have power.

The Dominars—proud, ancient houses that resented Aldarion’s rise—saw in Lithiel the weapon they needed. They whispered of her birthright, of the Velkarion blood that still ran pure and strong in her veins. They spoke of tradition, honor, and of a Freehold restored to its “rightful” order—one not ruled by a man who consorted with the lesser, as Aldarion did. Flattery came first, then alliances, then promises too great for even Lithiel’s hardened heart to ignore.

Aldarion sensed the shift before others did. A master of hearts, he knew when loyalty turned cold. To him, Lithiel was still a piece of his design, a tool he had honed. He could not—would not—allow her to become a rival. So he summoned her back from the east, calling her from her triumphs, her legions, and the lands she had bled to reclaim. The summons was framed in honor, cloaked in gratitude—but beneath the silken words lay the iron will of a man determined to bring her to heel.

Lithiel came—and she did not come alone. Her legions marched with her toward Valyria itself.

Whatever love, whatever loyalty she had once held for him — the man who had saved her, the man who had raised her, the man she had once loved — withered under the insult of Aldarion’s decree.

The Freehold held its breath as another conflict loomed on the horizon.

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This is just setting up the recent history of the Freehold.

The MC hasn’t even been born yet; he will be in the next chapter.