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Skull's Bay

Skull's Bay · The full story

The chain, broken twice

A pirate cove where a masked assassin broke the harbour chain to free a hold full of slaves — and came back years later, a queen, to break its captain's stubbornness instead.

The place

Same bay, two very different women.

Skull's Bay is the harbour city of the Dead Islands archipelago, ruled by the pirate Captain Rolfe — a lawless port of taverns and slavers behind a great chain across the harbour mouth. Celaena first came here in The Assassin's Blade, masked, on a pretext of buying into the slave trade; she came back in Empire of Storms as Aelin Galathynius, chasing an alliance. Same bay, two very different women. It smells of salt-spray and storm and rum-warm rooms, and at its centre is The Sea Dragon tavern, named for Rolfe's flagship, where most of the trouble gets started.

What happened here

She robbed this place blind twice.

The first time, she and Sam Cortland toured the slave pens, couldn't stomach them, and turned Arobynn's contract into a rescue — Sam bringing a watchtower catapult down onto the great harbour chain so the freed slaves could seize the ships and run, then forcing Rolfe at knifepoint to sign the bay into a sanctuary. The second time she came for his armada: leaning on the humiliation of that first visit, using Lysandra as a body-double, ringing the bay's bells with a magical tremor, and finally winning Rolfe over when a Valg fleet with sea-wyverns attacked and Lysandra rose from the water as the jade sea dragon of Mycenian prophecy.

What it means

Where Aelin's two lives shake hands.

Skull's Bay is where the girl who freed the slaves and the queen who needs a navy turn out to be the same person, and Rolfe finally has to admit it. It's also a bet paying off: the sanctuary she strong-armed out of him as a teenager becomes the base of the alliance she strong-arms out of him as a monarch. She hands him an admiralship, the whole archipelago, and a reborn Mycenian people — and takes his firelance-armed fleet north. Piracy, but make it statecraft.

The history

The chain, broken twice

The cove she robbed as a teenager and recruited as a queen, in order.

  1. The masked assassin arrives

    Two months after Ben's death, Celaena and Sam Cortland come to Skull's Bay under a slaving pretext, meet Captain Rolfe over dinner, and start scoping the pens.

  2. Breaking the harbour chain

    Sickened by the slave hold, they turn the contract into a rescue — Sam fires a watchtower catapult into the great chain so the freed slaves can seize the ships at dawn.

  3. Rolfe signs the sanctuary

    Celaena duels Rolfe and forces three signed letters from him: out of the slave trade, Skull's Bay a sanctuary for escaping slaves, and his armada turned against Arobynn if he ever trades in flesh.

  4. The queen comes back

    In Empire of Storms Aelin returns for Rolfe's fleet — Lysandra doubling as her, the leverage of that first humiliation, the bay's bells rung by a magical tremor.

  5. The sea-dragon prophecy

    Rolfe's tattooed map reveals the Wyrdkeys and the Lock; Aelin invokes the exiled Mycenians, and Lysandra fulfils the prophecy by rising as a jade sea dragon.

  6. The Valg fleet attacks

    Eight Morath ships and two poison-tailed sea-wyverns hit the bay; Lysandra fights them as the sea dragon and is left near death before Aedion's kill saves her.

  7. A goddess nearly levels it

    A goddess hijacks Aelin's body through a Wyrdkey and almost destroys the harbour, until Rowan and Fenrys break the possession and turn the divine fire onto the Valg ships.

  8. The alliance and the Mycenian rebirth

    Rolfe takes the deal: admiral of the fleet, lord of the Dead Islands, and the city of Ilium reborn for the Mycenian people — his armada sailing north for the war.

Landmarks

What stands in the bay

The pirate town, in the parts that matter.

  • The harbour chainThe great chain across the bay mouth — dropped once by Sam's catapult to free a hold of slaves, the moment that made Rolfe both hate and respect Celaena.
  • The Sea DragonRolfe's tavern, named for his flagship — where the alliance gets argued out over rum while a Valg fleet closes in.
  • Rolfe's mapThe tattoo across his hands that tracks ships, the Lock and the Wyrdkeys — bought, we learn, at the cost of his mother and sister.
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