Nightmarefuel / Chasing Dragons

• Pick most any scene where the POV is in battle to start with.
• The sex slave school Robert finds in Pentos. We are spared full details but even after witnessing horrors at war Robert and his men are stunned and appalled by what they find there.
  • Robert brutally killing the magister who ran it is this mixed with Crazy Is Cool In-Universe.
  • Then you think about Lys, which is famous for sex slaves. This establishment was likely very small scale compared to what goes on there.
• The death of Hastron Ordello, Magister of Pentos, is one for the Magisters. Being a literal case of Turned Against Their Masters.
• Victarion's party in the Palace of Order. The author even put it in warnings.
• The massacre of the unnamed fishing village that triggers the First Slaver War. Even being out of the way and low priority will not save you this makes clear.
• Lyn Corbay's patrol on the border finds the corpses group of escaped slaves who were massacred. The state of the remains makes even Ser Lyn Corbray feel uncomfortable.
  • This event triggers the next round of the Slaver Wars.
• Mero and his sellswords crushing the Turtle River Slave Revolt with revolting ease and cruelty. It reminds us of why and how the Magisters world order has stood for so long prior to the events of this story.
• The Battle of Tyrosh introduces us to a new kind of nightmare with brutal naval warfare.
  • The Slaver Fleet's trap is this. For the Abolitionists it becomes a major defeat making their sacrifices up to that point All for Nothing. And when the trapped Braavosi hoist the Black Banner(ordering all their fleet members to fight to the death) it becomes one for the slavers facing that Last Stand.
• Everything that happens to the Qohorik Commander after he runs into the mists of the Sorrows alone after the Battle of Chorayne.
• News of Robert's engagement and the Braavosi mustering their fleet, have lead many Tyroshi to feel Your Days Are Numbered.
  • Whatever the True Myrish have planned against the Braavosi, it horrifies the Archon of Tyrosh.
• As Robert and Ned's forces advance on Tyrosh, the landowners start killing their slaves to prevent uprisings. In response, the abolitionists show no mercy and slaughter everyone they come across.
• The Night of Flames. With the mainland fallen and an attack on Tyrosh itself clearly coming, the Tyroshi massacre every slave on the island; when many of them flee to barracks and garrisons, the rioters set fire to the buildings and then cut down anyone who escapes the flames. Then they hunt down any who escaped this initial purge and kill them where they find them.
• The response to the massacres of slaves is Pay Evil unto Evil. First with the Iron Legion purging the Freeborn where they can on the mainland, but shortly Robert eds up endorsing such actions for the pending Battle of Tyrosh. The war amounts to causing two genocides in the Tyroshi territory.
• The Flash Papers describe the severe unease Ser Harry and others experience in the depopulated former city of Tyrosh after the war.
• Septon Ryman and his followers start burning accused heretics at the stake.
• Balon's attack on Lannisport fits the typical War Is Hell horror of this story with the Reaver sneak attack starting fires and seeing civilians killed or enslaved.
• The Vale is bordering on Civil War due to the Old Faith's instigations and Denys Arryn's overreactions in cracking down on them.
  • The first time Ser Harry meets an Old Faith septon, he's left deeply disturbed by the fanaticism in the man's eyes.
  • When Harry manages to help break up the Gulltown cell, the septon warns that he was a moderate leader of the movement, and that without him his followers will rise up violently against the Arryns. Worse, according to Harry's narration, this is exactly what happens eventually...
• Everything that the royalist forces do to the rebelling Iron Islands, which in-universe texts from the timeline's future specifically call war crimes. Despite Stannis' orders against doing so, many of his lords allowing raping and murder of the Ironborn's civilian population by their men, or destroying food supplies to starve them out; Tywin in particular specifically tells his men to kill children and pretend that the Ironborn did that themselves. Combined with the repressive laws that Stannis levels at the islands post-war designed to crush the Drowned God faith, the future texts specifically compare events to ethnic cleansing.
• When Sandor kills Balon and leaves his body on the Seastone Chair, said body begins to move unnaturally, with Sandor hearing a massive heartbeat coming from the throne, which only stops when he drags Balon's corpse off it. Along with the eerie feeling the Northern lords get from Nagga's Ribs, it really lends to the Cosmic Horror Story elements of the Ironborn.
• Drogo wipes Qohor off the map, enslaving or killing the entire population and burning the city to the ground. And he makes it clear that with the prestige this will give him, he intends to unite the Dothraki and do the same to Myr as well. Plus, with the city's blacksmiths now at his disposal, he has the potential to actually match Myrish armor.
  • How does Drogo get past the city's walls? Well, once the priests of the Black Goat announce their intent to sacrifice the children of the magisters in order to invoke their god against the Dothraki, the magister in charge of the Unsullied opens the gates for Drogo in exchange for his household being spared. Instead, Drogo ties the man and his family to posts and has his horde's horses trample them.
• As if canon Cersei wasn't bad enough, this version of her is now becoming a religious fanatic on top of it.
• The Riverlands devolving into chaos as paranoia over rogue septons continuing the Rymanist heresy spreads, until the already fractious River Lords are all at each other's throats, accusing each other of being heretics.
• Drogo's horde, as per their deal with Viserys, completely obliterate the Confederation of the Darkwash. Every village is wiped off the map, all adult men are killed, and all women and children are taken as slaves. It's noted that even for the violent standards of the time, this is horrifying for everyone who hears of it.
  • Barristan reflects on how he and the other Volantene forces at Fort Dagger were forced to turn over refugees to the Dothraki because of their alliance. Specifically, how they ended up having to dig a mass grave for the hundreds of bodies that the Dothraki ended up leaving to rot outside the fort after they were finished.
• The Mystical Plague that Arthur has a warlock unleash on King's Landing at the start of the Fourth Slave War. The city soon comes to a standstill as it goes on lockdown to avoid the spread of a disease that causes deadly fevers and leaves its victims coughing up blood. But no effort is enough to stop it, and soon people are dropping dead everywhere, from Flea Bottom to the Red Keep itself.
• The Old Faith's rebellion in Gulltown begins with them storming the Pearly Sept, where Gerold Arryn is being married. Of the dozens of attendants to the wedding, only two manage to escape with their lives.