The Five Forts

los Cinco Fuertes

The Five Forts are a line of walled strongholds cutting across northeastern Essos between the Mountains of the Morn and the Bleeding Sea, on the edge of the Golden Empire of Yi Ti.

No one knows for certain who raised them or why, but their purpose seems plain: to seal off the path toward the continent's most remote and feared lands, cutting places like K'Dath and the Bone Mountains' City of Bones off from the known routes.

Chapter 1

A wall four hundred yards high

Books only

The westernmost fort stands by the Bleeding Sea, while the easternmost, well inland, crowns a mountain range. Between them, the full line cuts off K'Dath and the City of Bones to the southwest, places already shielded by features such as the Grey Waste and the Dothraki Sea's Arid Chasm.

Each stronghold can hold up to ten thousand men behind a stone wall rising nearly four hundred yards, a scale that alone explains why they are counted among the greatest fortifications of the known world.

Chapter 2

Older than the Golden Empire

Books only

The Five Forts predate the Golden Empire of Yi Ti itself, and their origin has been lost to scholarly argument. One tradition credits the Pearl Emperor, said to have raised them to keep the Night's Land and its demons away from the lands of men.

Others point to their walls of fused black rock, cast in a single block, and see in them a Valyrian hand, given their resemblance to works of the Freehold of Valyria. The objection is simple: the forts stood before Valyria itself rose to power, and nothing suggests its people ever ventured so far east.

The physical world

Su función es desconocida, pero con los fuertes al suroeste, K'Dath y la Ciudad de los Huesos quedan aisladas gracias a los accidentes geográficos que las rodean, como el Desierto Gris o el Abismo Árido.

What it is like · The Lands of Ice and Fire

Cada una puede albergar a diez mil hombres y cuenta con una sólida muralla de casi cuatrocientas varas de alto.

What it is like · El Mundo de Hielo y Fuego, Más allá de los Reinos del Ocaso, Los Huesos y más allá.

According to the Hielo y Fuego Wiki · Cinco Fuertes · 2026-07-30

Where each datum comes from
Position
centre of the reassembled label fragments
English name
reassembled fragments verified against the raster
Spanish name
name from the published Spanish edition
Label on the base map
589
Symbol
castle
What was read
THE FIVE
Fragments
THE FIVE,FORTS
Base map
atlas-known-world-2019.png · Adam Whitehead, Atlas of Ice and Fire

Entry written on .