Tumbleton

Tumbleton stands in the Reach, near where the Mander rises, some sixty leagues southwest of King's Landing along the road. Before the Dance of the Dragons, it lived off trade: workshops, guilds and inns crowded its streets, among them the Bloody Briars and the Whoring Badger.

A small but sturdy castle watched over the town, held in those years by a garrison of no more than forty men.

In the year 130, Tumbleton became the ground for the first of two great battles of the Dance of the Dragons. Ser Hugh Hammer and Ser Ulf the White, until then sworn to the Blacks, turned their coats and fell on the town riding Vermithor and Silverwing. Dragonflame burned much of it down to ash.

What the fire spared, the Greens took in the plunder that followed, camped as they were around the castle after the death of their commander, Lord Ormund Hightower, killed in the same battle. With no one in command, his captains fought each other for control, and thirteen of them met at the Bloody Briars to plot against the ambitions of Hugh and Ulf.

The second battle came soon after, also in 130: Ser Addam Velaryon attacked the Two Traitors to prove that not every bastard carried treason in his blood. Three dragons fought each other in the sky above the town, and what was left of Tumbleton finished burning. Maester Gyldayn wrote that the town was left in dust and embers.

Rebuilding fell to Lady Sharis Footly. She had the burned ruins pulled down, the walls raised again, and the dead buried; where the armies had camped, she had grain and turnips sown. She also ordered the skulls of Seasmoke and Vermithor cleaned and set up in the square: a penny to look at them, a whole star to touch them.

The Footlys who came after her followed her lead, but the common folk still held the place cursed, and said the new town would never reach a tenth the size of the one that had stood there before.