The Sunset Sea

The Sunset Sea separates Westeros from whatever lies beyond it. Its waters touch the Reach, the Westerlands, the North, the Iron Islands, the Riverlands and the frozen coasts north of the Wall.

Swordfish, seals and whales swim through it, and along the Iron Islands and other stretches of coast entire communities live off the fish and shellfish it provides. Whether the sea dragons of old tales are real is something nobody has confirmed; they may be nothing more than stories.

King Brandon Stark, known as the Navigator, sailed west into the sea and was never heard from again. What he found, if he found anything at all, nobody knows.

Centuries later, Queen Rhaenys Targaryen wanted to try the same thing from the air, riding her dragon to fly out over the sea and see what lay beyond it. She died before she got the chance, killed at Hellholt during the First Dornish War.

At the last kingsmoot of the ironborn, Lord Gylbert Farwynd offers to lead them to lands he claims exist on the other side of the Sunset Sea, beyond the Lonely Light.

He would not be the first to try: archmaester Haereg writes in his History of the Ironborn that Lord Alton Greyjoy once tried to conquer new land past that point. So far, no one has managed to cross the sea and come back.