Yunkai

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Yunkai is located in Slaver's Bay
Yunkai
The Slaver's Bay and the location of Yunkai
Yunkai emblem

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. 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]

Yunkai can field an army of roughly five thousand men, all slaves.

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]

Generals

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 40 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: [4]

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 3 miles, the Yunkai’i have fallen 2½ 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. [4]

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.[5] They provided the Windblown, and presumably their other sellsword companies, with a chart for the rotation.[6]

Recent Events

A Storm of Swords

When Daenerys Targaryen marched on the city, they supplemented this force with sellswords.[2] Daenerys Targaryen defeated the city, turning both sellsword companies in their service to her side.[2] After Yunkai's surrender, Daenerys marched on Meereen.[7]

A Dance with Dragons

After Daenerys's departure, Yunkai began preparing for the next conflict by hiring sellswords, such as the Long Lances, the Windblown and the Company of the Cat. There 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 Targaryen. Yunkai besieged Astapor in an effort to topple the regime that had come into power after Daenerys had sacked that city.[8] A force of a hundred soldiers is commanded by the Girl General.[9]

Quotes

Ours is the blood of ancient Ghis, whose empire was old when Valyria was yet a squalling child.[2]

- Grazdan mo Eraz

With their generals, it’s a wonder they don’t march into the sea.

- Beans, on the aptitude of the Yunkai generals

References and Notes