The Start of the Conquest

Victor was not going to take part in the conquest in person, but he designed a war room in the estate in Canahs. He built sand tables of the three islands to be conquered. There are all occupied by pirates, who get supported by different interest groups. Some from noble families of Dorne, some from merchants of Tyrosh and even some noble families of Westeros. But Victor was going to cut through the mess with a 'blitzkrieg', attacking three islands at the same time. The Di Natale family would invest 50 large ships and 3000 soldiers in this conquest. The Nahohr and Maar family would invest sailors and artisans to build foundations and ports on the three islands as soon as possible.

Each of the three armies would be commanded by a special talent trained by Victor himself and 20 elite soldiers each. Except for the guardians of the family House Di Natale would invest pretty much all their private army in this conquest. Victor was expecting an overwhelming win, if no natural disaster was happening.

On February 18th 279 AC the war started. Ships started sailing from the port of Canahs and the military base in Redwater to attack the three goals. They used ballista to attack scouting ships from afar, which meant they could attack the three islands by surprise early in the morning.

They first used large trebuchets on the ship to attack fortifications. Fire attacks disrupted enemy formations and led to panic before the fight even started. Disciplined Di Natale forces attacked the larger pirate groups systematically.

Within a couple of hours, the three islands were taken down and all the pirate leaders were captured. Some of the 'pirates' were later identified as mercenaries mostly hired by Tyrosh. Nearly 350 family soldiers died and over 800 were injured to varying degrees. The casualty was mostly caused by traps and the mercenary regiments hidden in between the pirates. Overall, roughly 3500 pirates died and another 13000 were captured. Additionally, they were another 35000 slaves on all three islands combined. Most of them in miserable conditions, even worse than on the islands captured before.

The soldiers also turned in a lot of wealth they looted from the pirate and mercenary headquarters. As the islands were used as their base of operation, they hid nearly all their wealth here. The combined wealth was astonishing and paid not only for all the expenses of the conquest but also pretty much all the pensions of the deceased and injured soldiers.

After Victor got the three war reports three days later, he was actually very surprised at how smooth this war went. In the end he had to congratulate himself on his successful strategy of forbearance for many years. All the interest groups of the Stepstones were convinced that House Di Natale and the other nobles of Lys were satisfied with controlling a quarter of the Stepstones. They couldn't even imagine the free state of Lys having the guts to attack them so violently in such a short period of time. Without any time to respond they lost three islands in one go. Victor was sure it would take them another week to even realize that something went wrong with their control over the islands. By that time the many artisans of House Maar would already rebuild the fortifications and the blacksmiths of House Di Natale would place ballista and trebuchets on the important defense locations. If they had enough incendiary bombs no force could ever attack the islands with wooden ships. This put Victor in a very confident position strategically. Victor was quite confident he could easily defeat a combined fleet of various interest groups if they could even pull that off. Victor was even wishing for it to happen, as this would show the whole Known World that house Di Natale was not to be messed with.

Just one month later Victors wish turned into reality. A combined fleet of Tyrosh, Myr, Pentos and even some nobles of Westeros was preparing to attack The Veiled Isle, the largest island that Victor captured in his recent conquest. Victor knew about this alliance a week before it even assembled, due to the many spies he planted in the free states. They gathered roughly 100 ships in total and wanted to attack the island with roughly 5000 soldiers. When Victor saw that news, he wanted to laugh out loud. The number of ships and soldiers seems a lot when attacking a single island, but they choose the Veiled Island as attack point. They probably chose this island because it was largest and especially because the location was very close to Westeros and Bloodstone, the largest island of the Stepstones overall. If House Di Natale could establish his influence at the Veiled Isle many people would not be able to sleep at night.

Unfortunate for the alliance army the Veiled Isle, as the name suggests, is filled with deep fog all year, and surrounded by high cliffs. Attacking this island with wooden boots and a mixed mercenary army without combined command control is simply even worse than suicide. It was just throwing away your life while gifting your enemy everything you own.

And nothing different happened to what Victor expected. After crossing into the proximity of the Veiled Isle the sight of the alliance army was slowing full of fog. Shortly after fire arrows were flying down the sky and igniting at least half of the ships and parts of the ocean. The alchemist fires showed their real horror for the first time. A few minutes later ships of House Di Natale were slowly surrounding the few still intact ships and targeting them with ballista. The fight was a pure blood bath. Only 8 ships were captured, and all the rest sunk to the bottom of the sea. Nearly 4500 people, 9 out of 10 soldiers, died in the waters of the Veiled Isle, making the fog even more disturbing to the mind of the survivors.

After the news of the sea battle on the Stepstones was known, and it spread like a wildfire, everybody was deeply afraid of House Di Natale and the nobles of Lys. They realized that the siege equipment combined with the incendiary bombs, designed by the alchemists of Lys, were an incredible threat for all major fortifications close to the sea. Especially House Martell at Sunspear was getting a little nervous, as the relationship with the Di Natale family has worsened slightly after Oberyn's return three years ago.