House Vaith of the Red Dunes

House Vaith arrived with the Andal invasion, when so many other Dornish houses put down new roots over the old rock of the First Men.

They built their stronghold in the hills, at the spot where two streams meet and form the watercourse that would later carry their name: the river Vaith.

When Queen Rhaenys Targaryen flew over the sands of Dorne during the War of Conquest, she also stopped above Vaith and demanded, as she had elsewhere, that its lords submit.

There was no one left to give her an answer: the castle stood empty, abandoned before her dragon's shadow ever touched it.

During the First Dornish War, Lord Harlen Tyrell marched out of Hellholt with his army, set on taking Vaith. The desert swallowed them whole, and neither the castle nor the army were ever found.

Not long after, in what Dornishmen remember as the Dragon's wroth, that era's lord of Vaith died for the bounty the Iron Throne had placed on every Dornish lord's head.

The next generation's lord of Vaith bent the knee to King Daeron I Targaryen when Sunspear submitted, during the conquest of Dorne.

Generations later, at the start of Aerys I's reign, the house was headed by Lady Cassella Vaith, by then very old and thought mad by those around her: she clung to the idea of meeting again with King Aegon IV, who had once been her lover.