Yunkai
Yunkai, dubbed the Yellow City, is a city on the eastern coast of Slaver's Bay. To the west lies the island of Yaros.[1] North of Yunkai is no-man's land. Its main export is slaves. Its main trade is in bed slaves.
Contents
The City
- See also: Images of Yunkai
The city is made of yellow bricks, with crumbling walls and tall, stepped pyramids. Their emblem is a harpy; a woman's torso, wings of a bat instead of arms, legs of an eagle and a scorpion's tail. Its talons grasp a whip and an iron collar. They are ruled by slavers, called the Wise Masters. They speak a dialect of Valyrian.[2]
Slavery
Yunkai can field an army of roughly five thousand men, all slaves. In Yunkai, eunuchs are made by only cutting the testicles off.[3] Yunkai is known for training bed slaves, not warriors. A slave in Yunkai learns the way of the seven sighs and the sixteen seats of pleasure.[2]
Recent Events
A Storm of Swords
When Daenerys Targaryen marches on Yunkai, they supplement their defence with sellswords.[2] Daenerys defeats the city in the Battle of Yunkai, turning the Second Sons and the Stormcrows in their service to her side.[2] After Yunkai's surrender, Daenerys marches on Meereen.[4]
A Dance with Dragons
After Daenerys's departure, Yunkai begins preparing for the next conflict by hiring other sellswords, such as the Long Lances, the Windblown and the Company of the Cat. Their envoys travel to Qarth and other free cities spreading false tales about Daenerys in order to gain support to cast her down. Grazdan mo Eraz travels to Volantis to persuade the Triarchs to send their fleet against Daenerys. Yunkai besieges Astapor in an effort to topple the regime that had come into power after Daenerys had sacked that city.[5] A force of a hundred soldiers is commanded by the Girl General.[6]
The Yunkai'i do not lack for commanders. After the Siege of Astapor, on the march to Yunkai to re-supply, the Windblown observe the Yunkish lordlings scuttling everywhere. Yurkhaz zo Yunzak has the supreme command; he comes and goes in a palanquin so huge it requires forty slaves to carry it. Half of the generals have similar sounding names and telling one Ghiscari name from the other is an art few of the Windblown have mastered, so the Windblown give them mocking styles of their own devising: [7]
- The Yellow Whale - Yezzan zo Qaggaz
- The Girl General - Malazza
- The Little Pigeon - Paezhar zo Myraq
- The Clanker Lords: (Chezdhar zo Rhaezn, Maezon zo Rhaezn and Grazdhan zo Rhaezn)
- Lord Wobblecheeks - Ghazdor zo Ahlaq
- The Drunken Conqueror - Morghaz zo Zherzyn
- Pudding Face - Gorzhak zo Eraz
- The Rabbit - Faezhar zo Faez
- The Charioteer
- The Beastmaster
- The Perfumed Hero
Every one of the generals is wealthy and arrogant, and everyone is a captain and commander, answerable to no one but Yurkhaz zo Yunzak. They are disdainful of mere sellswords and prone to squabbles over precedence that are as endless as they are incomprehensible. In the time it takes the Windblown to ride three miles, the Yunkai’i have fallen two and a half miles behind. According to Beans they are:
A pack of sinking yellow fools [who] still ain't managed to puzzle out why the Stormcrows and the Second Sons went over to the dragon queen. [7]
Once encamped outside of Meereen Yezzan zo Qaggaz stands foremost amongst the Yunkish lords who favour honouring the peace with Meereen. Most of the other lords are only biding their time, waiting for the armies of Volantis to arrive. A few want to assault the city immediately, lest the Volantenes rob them of their glory and the best part of the plunder. Yezzan would have no part of that, nor would he consent to returning Meereen’s hostages by way of trebuchet – as the sellsword Bloodbeard had proposed.
Later, after the sudden death of Yurkhaz zo Yunzak, Yezzan zo Qaggaz has the most support for supreme command but he then dies of the pale mare. The council of masters have been unable to agree who their new commander should be so presently the Wise Masters are rotating the supreme command amongst themselves with the generals taking a turn each day.[8] They provide the Windblown, and presumably their other sellsword companies, with a chart for the rotation.[9]
Quotes
With their generals, it's a wonder they don't march into the sea.
– Beans
Astapor was complacent and vulnerable. Yunkai is forewarned.[2]
– "Arstan Whitebeard", to Daenerys Targaryen
I spared Yunkai before, but I will not make that mistake again. If they should dare attack me, this time I shall raze their Yellow City to the ground.[10]
– Daenerys Targaryen, to Xaro Xhoan Daxos
Chapters which take place at Yunkai
References and Notes
- ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Map of Valyria
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 A Storm of Swords, Chapter 42, Daenerys IV.
- ↑ A Storm of Swords, Chapter 23, Daenerys II.
- ↑ A Storm of Swords, Chapter 57, Daenerys V.
- ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 6, The Merchant's Man.
- ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 47, Tyrion X.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 25, The Windblown.
- ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 59, The Discarded Knight.
- ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 60, The Spurned Suitor.
- ↑ A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 16, Daenerys III.
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