They did not think someone buying slaves would have a beef against slavers. You kill the slavers then all of the sudden all those slaves you capture with your nifty new army are now worthless. They saw themselves as an integral part of the cycle for anyone buying an army.
Her boat apparently could only buy like 100 slaves? 200? So to buy them all you’d need like 80 boats? I think it’s unlikely anyone has ever come in with an offer to buy enough to kill the rest that are under the masters’ command.
Well, like the piano when you were 11, you just never applied yourself. Now you know, don’t you?
I view it liking walking into a gun store, buying a gun and ammo, then killing the store owner with your new purchases.
“You can’t do that.”
“Wrong.”
Also remember last episode when Margaery was with Joffrey explaining why she did not consummate her marriage with Renly , Joffrey said Renly was a deviant and he might make that punishable by death. Margaery seamed to give an “oh shit I may just have killed my brother” look, so maybe they are also trying to give a good cover story for Loras by marrying Sansa, amongst other things.
With a dry, cool wit like that I could be an action hero.
You don’t have to hate slavers to do it, though. We’re talking about essentially trading two of the most valuable things in the world for each other - an entire small army and one of three dragons that have existed for hundreds of years. The value involved is staggering - the generational economic output of a city for something priceless. Imagine leaving the deal with both - it’s so tempting that it would override the value of any continued economic relationship. Selling thousands of untrained captured/slaves back to Astapor wouldn’t come close to the value of having both parts of the deal.
Maybe they figured “she’ll have an army but we’ll have a dragon”.
It’s funny how the event that is the title of this episode gets hardly a passing mention. I found the goings-on in the North fun and scary last season. This season seems only slightly less disjointed than Theon’s doings.
Consider, though: Who in their right mind would buy an army of super soldiers that would also take orders from the guys who sold them? They’d be useless. One command and poof, they refuse to fight just as you are about to engage the enemy. Or they murder you in your sleep. Or they capture your city and sell all of you back to the slavers.
Astapor would be out of the army-selling business permanently after pulling that trick once.
Of course, I never made it big in the slave trade, either.
The North storyline has always bored the crap out of me, although I have to admit it was a pleasant change this episode, if only because at least it’s something new, something happened.
It’s ironic that the wildling army is organized and cohesive under Mance Rayder, but the Night’s Watch is now wild and out of control. I guess there are some downsides to creating an army of criminals.
I’m worried we’ll see more of Sam and Gilly and I will be forced to slam my head against the wall for it taking up valuable time that could be spent on interesting things.
I think there would still be a market for slaves with that extra “Thou Shalt Not” programmed into them.
Even if such a rule was known to exist, there would still be a market for the slave army. Sure, the Astaporians could have them murder you in your sleep, but that sort of thing gets out and they would, as you say, never sell another army. Therefore, each customer can reasonably conclude that the risk of such a threat is infinitesimal. So long as they don’t attack Astapor, they know they’re safe.
Secondly, there’s no reason to suppose that the slaves would have to follow any order from Astapor. They could just be programmed to never attack Astapor itself, or the masters within it. If that were the case customers would not have to fear the slaves turning on them, but would also be aware that siccing the army on the city would be fruitless.
I know I’m overthinking this, but I wish that plot point had been fleshed out a little more.
I noticed that the transaction occurred outside of the walls of Astapor, and after frying the slavemaster, the dragon made it a point to spray the inside of the walls. I just assumed the inside walls were loaded with guards to prevent such a sacking, and nobody reckoned on such a relatively small dragon being much of a threat.
It’s plausible that they never programmed them with a secret directive never to attack Astapor because they’ve probably never sold more than 10% of their Unsullied at a time, they’d always have too many remaining forces to defend against the ones they’d sold.
But yeah, I mean, their indoctrination is extensive, it would be pretty easy to sneak in “never attack Astapor” into their training.
But if that was in the training and it was found out that woudl reduce the alue of ghe unsullied , there big selling point is " they do exactly as you mr guy in need of an army says". When you start to add caveats and hidden rules the unsullied become less valuable to a potential buyer , after all what other hidden rules are there in there?
Besides, they are not actually robots. You can’t just tinker with their complete obedience programing a little and make yourself immune.
I disagree - if you are completely indoctrinating children from a young age and have total control over their lives, instilling them with “1) Always listen to your master no matter what 2) Except never attack Astapor” is a pretty simple/plausible set of rules.
When Theon confessed to killing those two farmboys, and then said that he “burned everything down,” the other guy said, “Not everything” and then showed him the X-frame. So was that a hint that Theon is being held at Winterfell?
Theon would have known if they were going to Winterfell, he lived there for like ten years.