Awesome / Let the Galaxy Burn

A Song of Ice and Fire meets Warhammer 40k. Of course there's awesome.

• Although it happens before the story begins, Robert Baratheon being the first person to destroy a Behemoth (think Emperor-class Titans from Warhammer 40,000) in a field battle using just ground forces certainly qualifies.
  • Another pre-story moment is Lyanna's resistance to Rhaegar raping her. Her scratching was so ferocious that even futuristic surgery is unable to repair the damage. Keep in mind, the level of medicine is sufficient to basically erase Shireen's Greyscale scars. That's right, a fifteen-year-old girl was able to inflict more damage than an infamously damaging disease. Wolf's Blood indeed.
• The Stark counter-offensive. The rebels were crushed at the battle of the Trident, though the royalists got pretty badly mauled too. So when the Lannisters intervene, things go downhill fast in the Riverlands. But the North lures their spearhead into a trap and then goes back on the offense, not only retaking significant amounts of territory, but also taking advantage of this to lay ground work for the next war.
  • The Battle of the Twins deserves special note. The Lannisters enter the system with four ships of the line, two armoured cruisers, twelve battlecruisers, twenty-four heavy cruisers, fifteen light cruisers, fifty scout cruisers, two fleet carriers, six light carriers, and twenty escort carriers; plus the transports carrying two entire armies (totaling roughly one-quarter of a million men). The Northerners (led by Roose Bolton) have one ship of the line, four armoured cruisers, six battlecruisers, thirteen heavy cruisers, about twenty light and scout cruisers, two light carriers, and nine escort carriers. The Lannister force is annihilated except for TWO heavy cruisers. The Boltons lose two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, seven scout cruisers, a couple auxiliary ships, and some fighters. Total casualties in terms of manpower: Lannister, c.380,000; Bolton, less than 17,000. For reference, that's a kill-death ratio of 22-1 in the Northerners' favor.
• The Curb-Stomp Battle Lord Serry inflicts upon the Greyjoy Fleet through the use of a missile network previously mocked by the Tyrells delivers the "shield of Missiles and Lasers" promised by the chapter title.
• After being viewed as just another Targaryen lackey up until that point, Lucerys Velaryon gets a Dying Moment of Awesome fighting with his men against Victarion Greyjoy and managing to castrate the pirate Admiral.
  Victarion: (mockingly) It's not too late to surrender, High Admiral.
  Lucerys: The Old, The True, the Brave!
  Lucerys stabs Victarion through the genitals, then is disarmed and seized in a chokehold by the agonizing, but still able to fight, Victarion.
  Victarion: You are going to suffer for this, Greenlander.
  Lucerys: " Not...like you...eunuch. My...men...are...going...to burn...Pyke.
• During the Fall of Pyke, a Green Man faces off against an Other who just beat the crap out of Euron. The Other's wights are instantly eradicated and the Other regards the Green Man as "worthy prey". And to cap it off, this Other is one of the nine that could potentially be anointed as the next Night's Queen. And the North has hundreds of these men and women.
• After an ice dragon crash lands (and gets killed by direwolves), the northerners discover a dragon egg. Which Eddard immediately plans to use, not against the Others, but against the Targaryens.
• Soon after the outbreak of the second war, Varys disappears alongside the entire Crown Intelligence Agency. He kills or incapacitates much of the Small Council on the way out, and publishes a holo-newspaper that reveals the decadence, corruption, and crimes of the Crown and those who support them. The result is massive unrest and outright insurrection in multiple sectors, including Faith uprisings who support the Sparrows, demon worshippers, and large numbers of Goldcloaks turning on the Crown.
• Brienne of Tarth leads an army to take Summerhall from the Targaryens.
• Shiera Targaryen's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Oswell Whent, who she deliberately speaks to like a child when he tries to recapture her, asking if he's really blind to the reality of what Varys' revelations mean for the already demented Rheager.
  Shiera: His. Reign. Is. Over.
• Ayric Sarring kills Ser Oswell Whent in single combat. Even Sandor Clegane bows down to the veteran soldier.
• The Second Battle of King's Landing, which marks the beginning of Viserys' coup. It's the first time two Behemoth fight each other, and it shows. Both in awesomeness and in its terrifying firepower - which levels buildings as a secondary effect of firing their guns.
• Barristan Selmy getting two successive What the Hell, Hero?/The Reason You Suck Speeches from Viserys and Sansa. The former criticizes him for squandering his chance to reign in Rhaegar, aiding him as he became a maniacal monster, and firmly stating that he doesn't want Barristan in the Kingsguard. When Barristan refuses to take the Black, Sansa then cuts into the comms mocks him for being nothing more than rape-accomplice, genocide maker and assassin in chief. Then she tells him to know that she's going to kill the king and to know that he has utterly failed his duty before blowing up the war room.
• A Northern strike team led by Sansa Stark infiltrates the Red Keep in the middle of the chaos, captures and kills Arthur Dayne and finally puts an end to Rhaegar's reign.
  Sansa: Lord Eddard Stark sends his regards.
• Operation Cataclysm, the Battle of Fawnton. Stannis gets a number of infiltrators to take over several defense stations, which they promptly turn against the Storm Lords allied to Jon Connington. In the middle of the chaos, Stannis and his allies jump in and attack the Connington allies. All of this, while, in the ground, Tysha Lannister summons R'hollor's demons, which kill the Conningtons and a good lot of the population - and then Richard Lonmouth takes his crippled spaceship and has it accelerate to crash against the planet, utterly ruining it and Tysha's plans, while killing everything else that was on Fawnton.
• Rhaenyra Blackfyre absolutely crushes the Vale Loyalist fleet with a series of traps. These traps were crafted despite her being the invader and her enemy ostensibly having the homefield advantage.
• Alysanne proves herself to be her father's daughter when she orders her brother to be taken to the Sky Cells (a prison on a mountain six kilometers high) and chained to the door to keep him from jumping (he had threatened to have their father burned with wildfire and her gang-raped so turn about is fair play).
• Despite being found out, it was quite an accomplishment that Arya was able to smuggle herself, two young dragons, and the direwolves on to a warship.
• Gerion Lannister successfully screws with Tywin by giving Brightroar to Daeron using the argument that Joffrey gets a crown and Shiera gets a dragon. It's one thing for Tywin to demand the sword from his brother (and thus someone who is supposedly his vassal), it's an entirely different thing to demand it from one of the royal family.
• Samwell Tarly and his new wife have plans that basically amount to flipping off House Tyrell in every way they can.
• Edmure Tully basically tells the other officers of the 2nd River Fleet to get the hell off his planet when they try to remove him. He then promptly declares for Viserys.
• Tyrion and Addam easily beat the fragmented Riverlanders that are preparing to attack Riverrun.
• The Blackfish returns with many of the veterans he led to the North after being dismissed by his nephew and leads a coup that places Sansa Stark as Lady of Riverrrun. She calls out for the Riverlanders to join House Stark again in overthrowing the Targaryens and fighting the Others.
  • How do the Riverlanders respond:
  THE KING IN THE NORTH!!!
• The Battle of Saltcliffe is as impressive as horrendous:
  • First, when he receives word that Victarion Greyjoy has arrived in system, Lord Saltcliffe orders a general uprising all around the planet, succeeding in driving off the occupation forces.
  • Then, Ser Lyn Corbray ups the ante with his own revelation: every city in the planet has a multi-megaton nuke hidden beneath it - and he has just activated the detonation codes.
  • After that, Victarion Greyjoy raises the dead in the planet, sending them against Corbray's fortress.
  • The Valemen (which number a few tens of thousands) proceed to hold off millions of undead for more than five days, selling every inch of terrain at a very high price.
  • Victarion Greyjoy then commands an undead kraken to open the fortress' gates, filling the outer grounds with an all-consuming darkness.
  • Reduced to about five hundred men and just the inner citadel, Lyn Corbray reveals to his men that he has activated another nuclear weapon beneath the fortress, so their bodies will not be animated after they die - and the five hundred men make their last ten minutes of life the most important ten minutes of their lives.
  • The actions in this battle are considered so awesome that the crew of a spy ship loyal to Jon Arryn (and, therefore, technically opposed to Lyn Corbray) cannot help but acknowledge it by standing to attention upon receiving the Fort's last message: Fort Forlorn still stands.
    Godric Meric: Let it be known, that on 22.09.300AAC, the Valemen under Defender-General Ser Lyn Corbray won their place by the Warrior’s Side in the Seven Heavens. The planet broke before the Vale Army did...
• The Battle of Craster's Fort easily beats the pants off Saltcliffe, because of the numbers involved and actions carried out.
  • On one side, Flotilla 805 of the Night's Watch, crewed by about 7,000 Brothers and formed by eight heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers and sixteen scout cruisers - plus several thousands of obsolete missile platforms.
  • On another side, the Exodus Fleet, formed by thousands of almost broken-down ships carrying the entire totality of the wildling civilization, numbering more than three billion people.
  • On the third side, a White Walkers' fleet formed by 130 cruisers, thirty-six battleships, twenty dragon-carriers (each having one ice dragon) and the Star Killer.
  • With numbers heavily lopsided against them and aware of the true threat, Waymar Royce orders an attack against the White Walkers, knowing that they are the only chance the wildlings have of surviving certain death.
  • The best news? They do. They manage to overwhelm the White Walkers. They destroy one hundred and forty-nine enemy ships, including all of the dragon carriers and four of the ice dragons they were transporting. They damage the Star Killer. They allow the Exodus Fleet to escape. They hurt the enemy, and forced them to pay heavily for their attack on them. And because of the overwhelming firepower sent back at them, the Others will receive next to no corpses to resurrect as wights.
• Another moment for the North comes when their Twelfth Fleet begins their long-awaited mission of vengeance at Haigh's Fort. In less than two hours, the Northerners annihilate the orbital defenses and the Riverlands's Sixth Fleet with negligible casualties. The first wave of their ground invasion is so immense it's at first mistake for an asteroid bombardment and convinces the garrison commander to surrender on the spot.
  • This victory and the subsequent taking of the Twins are so one-sided that casualty figures for the North are lower than even their most optimistic predictions.
• However the Northern victory at Haigh's Fort is nothing compared to the Dornish victory at Harvest Hall a.k.a. Operation Graveyard.
  • The massive Reach fleet (over one hundred ships of the line, two hundred battlecruisers, hundreds of escort ships and thousands of auxiliaries) moves into the system and is attacked by missile platforms hiding in a debris field. The missiles savage the ranks of the escorts and then when Reach fighters counterattack, they self-destruct, taking thousands of fighters with them.
  • Then the Dornish begin constant attacks with nova bomb mines, waves of fighters, and long-range ion cannon bombardment.
    • The end result is that only about one hundred and ten Reach ships escape. Behind them they leave two super-battleships, one hundred and two ships of the line, one hundred and ninety-seven battlecruisers, two hundred and ninety-five heavy cruisers, one hundred and ninety-two light cruisers, seven hundred and twenty-four scout cruisers, seven fleet carriers, sixty-six light carriers, one hundred and eighty three escort carriers and over three thousand, five hundred auxiliaries. All told, the Reach loses eighteen million men, including a major part of the Reach's nobility. Essentially, between this battle and the earlier attacks on the Reach shipyards, they've lost virtually all of their capacity to wage an offensive war.
• Rhaenyra achieves an impressive tactical victory against the Redfort orbital forces and then has the restraint not to attempt a costly invasion against a planet that is sure to resist her occupation.
  • However, Jon Arryn turns it to his favor since he had his fuel supplies redistributed in the days leading up to the war, meaning that her plan to end the war quickly by compromising the Vale's fuel network has been negated. Considering that up until this point the battles have mainly been one-sided affairs, it's great to see two factions that are a more even match in skill.
• Chapter 6, Part C will be remembered for one reason: Sandor Clegane (with an assist from Ayric Sarring and Bronn) finally kills Gregor Clegane, taking revenge for his sister, his father and the millions of people Gregor has brutally murdered.
• It's worth noting that is a few short weeks of competent rule, Viserys is able to almost completely secure the loyalty of King's Landing to the point that they're prepared to go down fighting against Aegon despite the likelihood of them being slaughtered due to having no orbital support.
• Dany gets a minor one whereupon being offered Braavosi support to make her own bid for the crown, her first instinct is to turn it down, knowing just how much her family has fucked over Westeros.
• Melisandre makes landfall on King's Landing and begins an arcane ritual to help breach the Walls of King's Landing; said ritual backfires, killing most of her acolytes and essentially incapacitating her. The builder of said walls? Visenya Targaryen, the Sorceress-Queen.
• Justin Massey goes out like a hero. Despite being wounded by one of Mel's shadow assassins, he single-handedly pilots his Behemoth towards a breech in the wall, intending to use it as a barricade. When that plan fails, he activates the self-destruct and takes over four hundred thousand enemies into the afterlife with him.
• According to Joanna, the Northern offense has enjoyed success beyond their wildest dreams, with their opponents so far inflicting less than one-tenth of the casualties predicted by Northern analysts. And keep in mind, this is being done with only a small portion of the Northern fleet, since the rest is bracing to fight the Others or garrisoning the planets of the Northern sector. Sansa is quite correct in saying that, had the full Northern fleet been able to deploy against the South, the entire River Sector would probably be theirs by the current point (which is less than three weeks after they began their offense).
  • Joanna gets one on a personal level when she takes up the sword Dawn and it glows in approval of its new mistress.
• War of the Ten Warlords, Chapter 7's Epilogue. Aegon's army assaults the Red Keep, and Aegon himself makes an appearance by killing Ser Baelor Staunton. That's not the awesome part: the awesome comes when Janos Slynt shoots Aegon in the neck. He even has the time to shout "I KILLED HIM! I KILLED THE KING!" before being killed himself!
• The first great battle between the North and the Others ends up with victory for the North, as they manage to destroy most of their fleet, harm the Star Killer enough that the Others are forced to scuttle it and make the Enemy retreat.
• The Reach is with its back to the wall, about to be attacked in their capital system by a Lannister fleet that surpasses them in number, and few chances of aid coming from other free systems since they must protect themselves from the east and the south. Then Margaery points out to her brother Willas (Regent of the Reach) that they do not need to destroy the Lannister fleet - they need to kill Tywin Lannister, who is the glue holding the fleet together. In a matter of days, Willas and his men come up with a Crazy Enough to Work plan that allows them to take advantage of Tywin's weaknesses (such as his inability to adapt to unexpected events) and deliver a solid victory, forcing Tywin to retreat lest he become killed.
  • But Tywin does not get to escape... because Tysha Lannister comes into Tywin's flagship's bridge and proceeds to roast all the men within the ship, finally taking her long sought revenge on Tywin by sending demons to torture the Lannister patriarch for what seems to be a very long time.
• An offscreen example happens when it's mentioned that the commander of the Varner Plains Garrison managed to drive away the invading Dornish fleet (who are incredibly high on victory and have little reason to be afraid of the Reach and its capabilities) with a bluff.
• Urrigon Greyjoy's Heroic Sacrifice, summoning magic to drive back the Others invading the Iron Sector.
• Norne Goodbrother taking the Defiant to the End path when about to be executed by one of Victorian's men, relentlessly insulting him as a war criminal who is in the service of a cowardly pretender who any idiot could see is possessed by unclean magic and who has doomed their planet to destruction. The fact that he continues to do this without showing any pain or fear as the executioner furiously stabs him again and again in vital body parts adds to the impressiveness.
• Sarring, Sandor, Asha and Bronn duelling the wight-possessed Victarion.
• Adding to the roll of Northern victories in the south, the North is able to destroy 74% of the military power (warships and orbital defense) of House Wayn in just nineteen minutes.
• Sam and Asha spend their first post-Iron Sector campaign meeting with the Tyrells emphasizing their disgust with Aegon's war crimes and demanding humiliating concessions that the Tyrells would have never dreamed of giving them a year earlier.
• Rhaenyra Blackfyre conquers Maidenpool by infecting all of their warships with computer viruses.
• Rhaenyra gets in a good Analogy Backfire when Lord Mooton calls her a vulture and she says that would make the Seven Sectors the corpse.
• Sam and Asha hand the Dornish Navy its first defeat of the entire war by luring them into a trap at New Barrel that is based on Dorne's own tactics.
• Joanna Snow gleefully takes apart the insanely valuable Targaryen war memorial they made at Kneeling Knee to mock their victories against Robert and the North.