The Secret Founding of Braavos

Braavos alone of the nine Free Cities was founded not by Valyria but from her. A great slave fleet bound for Slaver's Bay rose against its masters in mid-voyage, and the freed slaves — men and women of a hundred lands and a hundred gods — sailed not for home, where the dragonlords would hunt them, but north to the end of the world. In a fog-shrouded lagoon behind a wall of pine-clad islands they hid their city, the Secret City, forbidding any ship to lead outsiders to it, and there they raised the Sealord's palace and temples to every god the founders had carried with them, that none might be set above another. The moonsingers had foretold the refuge and were honoured above all. For over a century Braavos grew in secret, unknown to Valyria and all the world, while its people turned from escaped slaves into sailors, traders, and bankers.