Unsullied
The Unsullied are elite eunuch slave-soldiers, trained in the slave city of Astapor in Slaver's Bay and counted among the finest and most disciplined infantry in the known world. They are renowned for their absolute obedience, their fearlessness, and their iron discipline -- qualities beaten and bred into them from earliest childhood through a regimen of unimaginable cruelty.
An Unsullied wears a spiked bronze cap and fights with spear, short sword, and shield, standing in unbreakable ranks. He feels neither fear nor fatigue as ordinary men know them, and he will hold his ground and obey his orders unto death.
Training
The making of an Unsullied is a process of deliberate dehumanization. Boys are bought young, gelded entirely, and subjected to years of brutal training designed to strip away all individuality and weakness. To harden them past the point of mercy, each is made to commit acts of calculated atrocity, and on the day a recruit earns his spiked cap he is sent to a market to buy a newborn slave and kill it before its mother's eyes.
Their masters strip them even of names. Each Unsullied draws a new name daily by lot, a token of vermin -- Grey Worm, Red Flea, and the like -- a constant reminder that he is nothing and owns nothing.
History
The Unsullied are bought and sold by the Good Masters of Astapor as the ultimate commodity of war. Their fate is transformed when Daenerys Targaryen comes to Slaver's Bay. She purchases the entire force of Astapor at the price of one of her dragons -- and then turns both dragon and army against the slavers, sacking the city and freeing the Unsullied. She offers them their liberty, and bids them choose for themselves whether to follow her. They choose to stay.
Notable Members
- Grey Worm, their chosen commander after their liberation
- Daenerys Targaryen, who freed them and won their loyalty as freedmen
Significance
The Unsullied become the disciplined core of Daenerys Targaryen's growing army, the steel with which she topples the slaver cities. Once the perfect instruments of slavery, they are remade as free men who serve by choice -- a living emblem of her crusade against the bondage of Slaver's Bay.