Why do ships that travel to Valyria fail to return and why does Dragonbinder or the hellhorn bind dragons to the owners will?

Potential Spoilers Below

The Wheel of Time: Ships that sail west, vanish

“What I require of you is not onerous,” Rand said. He had thought about this since deciding to come. “When I want ships to carry men or supplies, the Sea Folk will give them. I want to know what is happening in Tarabon and Arad Doman, and in the lands between. Your ships can learn — will learn — what I want to know; they call in Tanchico and Bandar Eban and a hundred fishing villages and towns between. Your ships can travel farther out to sea than anyone else’s. The Sea Folk will keep watch as far west in the Aryth Ocean as they can sail. There is a people, the Seanchan, who live beyond the Aryth Ocean, and one day, they will come to try to conquer us. The Sea Folk will let me know when they come.”

Rand al'Thor

A Sea Folk Man

A Sea Folk Windfinder harnessing the wind at sea

A Sea Folk Windfinder apprentice

“You require much,” Harine muttered bitterly. “We know of these Seanchan, who come from the Islands of the Dead, it seems, from which no ship returns. Some of our ships have encountered theirs; they use the One Power as a weapon. You require more than you know, Coramoor.” For once, she did not pause at the title. “Some dark evil has descended upon the Aryth Ocean. No ship of ours has come from there in many months. Ships that sail west, vanish.”

Utilizing the One Power

The Islands of the Dead is the Sea Folk name of the Seanchan continent.

The Sea Folk refuse to cross the Aryth Ocean and only refer to what lies on the other side as the Islands of the Dead, "from which no ship returns." One known reference exists to "lands under the Shadow, beyond the setting sun, beyond the Aryth Ocean, where the Armies of Night reign."

The Game of Thrones: Most who travel to Valyria never return

At long last, Father? Valyrian steel blades were scarce and costly, yet thousands remained in the world, perhaps two hundred in the Seven Kingdoms alone. It had always irked his father that none belonged to House Lannister. The old Kings of the Rock had owned such a weapon, but the greatsword Brightroar had been lost when the second King Tommen carried it back to Valyria on his fool’s quest. He had never returned; nor had Uncle Gery, the youngest and most reckless of his father’s brothers, who had gone seeking after the lost sword some eight years past.

Brightroar

The Summer Sea, the heartland of the now extinct Valyrian Freehold and the location of its capital city, Valyria. Partially destroyed in the Doom, with many islands formed and low-lying areas flooded, becoming the Smoking Sea.

Valyrian Freehold

The Doom of Valyria

The Valyrian Peninsula was shattered in the Doom. Vast amounts of land fell into the sea, with the surviving remnants becoming islands separated by water. Volcanic activity continues even four centuries after the original eruptions, with the water often turning poisonous and giving off fumes which can kill.

Valyrian Peninsula

The city of Valyria itself remains on the central island. Though ruined, it is still somewhat intact and a tempting target for looters and treasure-seekers. However, raiding the ruins is extremely hazardous and most who travel to Valyria never return.

The Wheel of Time: Slavery

Slavery has a long history in the Seanchan empire. Slaves are known as da'covale, or "those who are property." The majority have menial jobs as maids, cooks, etc. However, not all slaves hold low rank in Seanchan society. Those that hold powerful positions as servants to the High Blood or the Empress make up a subclass of slaves called so'jhin, and are considered to have higher rank than free men and women.

The Game of Thrones: Slavery

The Valyrians used thousands of slaves from across the continent in the blisteringly hot mines underneath the Fourteen Flames to find gold and silver. Slave revolts were common in the mines, but the Valyrians were strong in sorcery and were able to put them down. When there was war, the Valyrians took thousands of slaves, and when there was peace they bred them.

“The tale of our beginnings. If you would be one of us, you had best know who we are and how we came to be. Men may whisper of the Faceless Men of Braavos, but we are older than the Secret City. Before the Titan rose, before the Unmasking of Uthero, before the Founding, we were. We have flowered in Braavos amongst these northern fogs, but we first took root in Valyria, amongst the wretched slaves who toiled in the deep mines beneath the Fourteen Flames that lit the Freehold’s nights of old. Most mines are dank and chilly places, cut from cold dead stone, but the Fourteen Flames were living mountains with veins of molten rock and hearts of fire. So the mines of old Valyria were always hot, and they grew hotter as the shafts were driven deeper, ever deeper. The slaves toiled in an oven. The rocks around them were too hot to touch. The air stank of brimstone and would sear their lungs as they breathed it. The soles of their feet would burn and blister, even through the thickest sandals. Sometimes, when they broke through a wall in search of gold, they would find steam instead, or boiling water, or molten rock. Certain shafts were cut so low that the slaves could not stand upright, but had to crawl or bend. And there were wyrms in that red darkness too.”

 Jaqen H'ghar a faceless man

Brasvos and The Titan of Braavos

The Wheel of Time: Fly around on Raken

A raken has a body considerably longer than a horse and is about equal in girth, with leathery gray skin and large powerful wings much like those of a bat. While the raken is not used as a weapon, it will often lash its tail in anger when perched or on the ground. It normally crouches rather than standing erect, and stands erect only when alarmed or preparing to fly. Raken are omnivorous, but are content with an all-plant diet.  They are roughly equal to a horse in intelligence.

They are ideal mounts for scouting and/or sending messages, as the raken can fly at approximately three to four times the speed of a running horse, and can actually be ridden up until the point it dies. A morat'raken is a Seanchan flier who rides the raken, and three out of four morat'raken are women.

A morat'raken on a raken

The Game of Thrones: Fly around on Dragons

A Field of Fire

Dragons are magical creatures, which existed on the continents of Westeros and Essos, and up until recently were considered to have been extinct for over one hundred and fifty years. The only remaining traces of the dragons were skeletal remains and dragon eggs which were thought to have turned to stone, until DaenerysTargaryen managed to hatch three of these dragon eggs.

Dragon Eggs

Daenerys and her Dragons

Dragons are scaled, reptilian creatures, with two legs and two wings. They use their wings as forelegs like bats.  They have sharp teeth and claws, leathery wings and long necks and tails, with spiny crests running down their backs. As hatchlings, they are around the size of a cat, but continue growing and can reach sizes large enough to swallow a mammoth whole. The polished skulls of the Targaryen dragons look like glittering onyx, and their teeth like curved daggers of black diamond. Their bones are black due to their high iron content. Dragonbone is a highly sought after crafting material

A dragon's scales are largely but not entirely impervious to flame; they protect the more vulnerable flesh and musculature beneath. As a dragon ages, its scales thicken and grow harder, affording even more protection, even as its flames burn hotter. Whereas the flames of a hatchling can set straw aflame, the flames of Balerion and Vhagar at their prime melted steel and stone.

Balerion

The Targaryens used Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes to conquer and forge the Seven Kingdoms.  The Targaryens continued to use their dragons in military conflicts. Dragons were used in the First Dornish War, which caused the death of Meraxes in 10 AC.  Over the course of one hundred and fifty years the Targaryens rode their dragons as symbol of power. 

Dragons lay large, scaled eggs to reproduce.  Over the eons un-hatched eggs can become fossilized.  Dragons have no fixed gender differentiation - according to Maester Aemon dragons are “but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame” presumably meaning that they are able to change from one sex to the other for whatever reason. This knowledge was later lost, with many maesters doubting that was true.

Maester Aemon

The Wheel of Time: The Domination Band

Domination Band

The Domination Bands are a male version of the a'dam, a ter'angreal for controlling men who can channel. They take the form of a finely jointed collar and two bracelets of dull black metal. The Domination Bands are made of a form of cuendillar and are nearly impossible to destroy.

The bracelets were recovered in Tanchico, in the Panarch's Palace, by Nynaeve al'Meara and Elayne Trakand after following a lead from a Darkfriend prisoner.  They gave them to Egeanin Sarna and Bayle Domon to drop into the ocean.

Elayne trakand

Bayle Domon and Egeanin Sarna

Egeanin and Domon were stopped by the Seanchan, however, before they were able to dispose of the bracelets. They were turned over to the High Lady Suroth Sabelle Meldarath who, in turn, raised Egeanin to The Blood.  They were subsequently copied and six sets were recovered after an abortive attempt to capture Rand.  It is unknown whether any other copies remain in Seanchan hands.

High Lady Suroth Sabelle Meldarath

The Game of Thrones: The DragonBinder

Dragonbinder or the hellhorn is a large dragon horn with Valyrian glyphs written upon it.  When the horn sounds, the glyphs glow red-hot and then white-hot.  The horn is 6 feet (1,83 meters) long. It is made from the horn of what must have been an enormous dragon. It has a black gleam, and is banded with red gold and Valyrian steel. When touched the horn feels warm and smooth. Its surface is shiny and reflective, though the reflection depicted is somehow twisted. 

The Wheel of Time: The Domination Band was used.  What happened?

One set was possessed by Cadsuane Melaidhrin until it was used by Semirhage in an attempt to capture Rand and the following takes place:

Cadsuane Melaidhrin

Semirhage

Something cold clicked around Rand’s neck.

Rand immediately raised his hand to his neck, spinning. The serving woman stood behind him, but her form was shimmering. She vanished and was replaced by a woman with dark skin and black eyes, her sharp face triumphant. Semirhage.

Rand’s hand touched metal. Too-cold metal that felt like ice, pressed against his skin. In a rage, he tried to pull free his sword from its black, dragon-painted sheath, but found that he could not do so. His legs strained as if against some incredible weight. He scratched at the collar—his fingers could still move—but the metal seemed to be a single solid piece.

At that moment, Rand felt terror. He met Semirhage’s eyes anyway, and she smiled deeply. “I’ve been waiting for quite a long time to get a Domination Band on you, Lews Therin. Odd, how circumstances occur, isn’t—”

Lews Therin

Something flashed in the air, and Semirhage barely had time to cry out before something deflected the blade just barely—a weave of Air, Rand could only assume, though he could not see weaves made from saidar. Still, Min’s knife had left a gash on the side of Semirhage’s face before passing by and burying itself in the wood of the door.

“Guards!” Min cried. “Maidens, to arms! The Car’a’carn is in danger!”

Maidens

Semirhage cursed, waving a hand, and Min cut off. Rand twisted anxiously, trying—and failing—to seize saidin. Something blocked him. Min was tossed off the bed by weaves of Air, her mouth locked shut. Rand tried to run to her, but again found that he could not. His legs simply refused to move.

Unaware to Semirhage Rand has access to the True Power and this happens:

Semirhage looked utterly shocked. “But . . . that’s impossible . . .” she said. “I felt nothing. You can’t—” She looked up, staring at him with wide eyes. “The True Power. Why have you betrayed me, Great Lord? Why?”

Rand raised a hand and, filled with the power he did not understand, wove a single weave. A bar of pure white light, a cleansing fire, burst from his hand and struck Semirhage in the chest. She flashed and vanished, leaving a faint afterimage to Rand’s vision. Her bracelet dropped to the floor.

Elza ran toward the door. She vanished before another bar of light, her entire figure becoming light for a moment. Her bracelet dropped to the floor, as well, the women who had held them burned completely from the Pattern.

What have you done? Lews Therin asked. Oh, Light. Better to have killed again than to do this. . . . Oh, Light. We are doomed.

Rand savored the power for a moment longer, then—regretfully—let it drop away. He would have held on, but he was simply too exhausted. The vanishing of it left him numb.

Or . . . no. That numbness had nothing to do with the power he’d held. He turned around, looking down at Min, who coughed quietly and rubbed her neck. She looked up at him, and seemed afraid. He doubted that she would ever see him the same way again.

He had been wrong; there had indeed been something more that Semirhage could do to him. He had felt himself killing one he loved dearly. Before, when he’d done it as Lews Therin, he had been mad and unable to control himself. He could barely remember slaying Ilyena, as if through a clouded dream. He’d realized what he had done only after Ishamael had awakened him.

Ishamael

Finally, now, he knew precisely what it was like to watch as he killed those he loved.

“It is done,” Rand whispered.

“What?” Min asked, coughing again.

“The last that could be done to me,” he said, surprised at his own calmness. “They have taken everything from me now.”

“What are you saying, Rand?” Min asked. She rubbed her neck again. Bruises were beginning to show.

He shook his head as—finally—voices sounded in the hallway outside. Perhaps the Asha’man had sensed him channeling when he’d tortured Min.

Asha'man

“I have made my choice, Min,” he said, turning toward the door. “You have asked for flexibility and laughter from me, but such things are no longer mine to give. I am sorry.”

Once, weeks ago, he had decided that he must become stronger—where he had been iron, he had decided to become steel. It appeared that steel was too weak.

He would be harder, now. He understood how. Where he had once been steel, he became something else. From now on, he was cuendillar. He had entered a place like the void that Tam had trained him to seek, so long ago. But within this void he had no emotion. None at all.

Tam al'Thor

They could not break or bend him.

It was done.

The Game of Thrones: The DragonBinder is used what happened and what further will happen?

Dragonbinder is brought to the kingsmoot by Euron Greyjoy when the ironborn elect a new king. Euron claims to have found amongst the smoking ruins that were Valyria. The horn's noise silences all and ends the possible fight between the supporters of Victarion and Asha Greyjoy.

Greyjoy contenders at the kingsmoot

Euron Greyjoy

Victarion

Asha Greyjoy

The horn's noise sounds like the screaming of a thousand souls and it seems to listeners as if their very bones are aflame and searing their flesh from within.  Cragorn, the man who blows the horn for Euron, collapses with blisters on his lips, and the tattoo he has of a bird on his chest is bleeding.

Euron wins the kingsmoot by promising the ironmen that they will conquer Westeros with dragons. When Asha argues that there are no more dragons, Euron tells her that there are three, and he knows where to find them. He does not mention that the dragons belong to Daenerys Targaryen.

Cragorn dies later. When a maester cuts him open to examine the cause of death it is discovered his lungs are charred black as soot.

 “And so shall we,” Euron Greyjoy promised. “That horn you heard I found amongst the smoking ruins that were Valyria, where no man has dared to walk but me. You heard its call, and felt its power. It is a dragon horn, bound with bands of red gold and Valyrian steel graven with enchantments. The dragonlords of old sounded such horns, before the Doom devoured them. With this horn, ironmen, I can bind dragons to my will.”

That night, for the first time, he brought forth the dragon horn that the Crow’s Eye had found amongst the smoking wastes of great Valyria. A twisted thing it was, six feet long from end to end, gleaming black and banded with red gold and dark Valyrian steel. Euron’s hellhorn. Victarion ran his hand along it. The horn was as warm and smooth as the dusky woman’s thighs, and so shiny that he could see a twisted likeness of his own features in its depths. Strange sorcerous writings had been cut into the bands that girded it. “Valyrian glyphs,” Moqorro called them.

Moqorro

That much Victarion had known. “What do they say?”

“Much and more.” The black priest pointed to one golden band. “Here the horn is named. ‘I am Dragonbinder,’ it says. Have you ever heard it sound?”

“Once.” One of his brother’s mongrels had sounded the hellhorn at the kingsmoot on Old Wyk. A monster of a man he had been, huge and shaven-headed, with rings of gold and jet and jade around arms thick with muscle, and a great hawk tattooed across his chest. “The sound it made … it burned, somehow. As if my bones were on fire, searing my flesh from within. Those writings glowed red-hot, then white-hot and painful to look upon. It seemed as if the sound would never end. It was like some long scream. A thousand screams, all melted into one.”

“And the man who blew the horn, what of him?”

“He died. There were blisters on his lips, after. His bird was bleeding too.” The captain thumped his chest. “The hawk, just here. Every feather dripping blood. I heard the man was all burned up inside, but that might just have been some tale.”

“A true tale.” Moqorro turned the hellhorn, examining the queer letters that crawled across a second of the golden bands. “Here it says, ‘No mortal man shall sound me and live.’ ”

Bitterly Victarion brooded on the treachery of brothers. Euron’s gifts are always poisoned. “The Crow’s Eye swore this horn would bind dragons to my will. But how will that serve me if the price is death?”

“Your brother did not sound the horn himself. Nor must you.” Moqorro pointed to the band of steel. “Here. ‘Blood for fire, fire for blood.’ Who blows the hellhorn matters not. The dragons will come to the horn’s master. You must claim the horn. With blood.”

Summation:

Rand tells the Sea Folk that the Seanchan exist and that one day they will come and try and conquer us.  They tell him they know of them and that ships that sail west vanish.  They then tell him that they know of the Seanchan Continent or Islands of the Dead as the "lands under the Shadow, beyond the setting sun, beyond the Aryth Ocean, where the Armies of Night reign."  Valyria then becomes the Seanchan Continent and the dark evil that has descended upon the Aryth Ocean becomes the Doom and Valyria becomes a series of islands.  Aegon does indeed invade Westeros and using dragons he conquers their continent.  You then create a mysteriousness to it and any ship that travels there never returns.  The "lands under the shadow" becomes Asshai by the shadow.  It's not hard to see how balefire becomes Balerion's Fire or dragon fire which could melt steel or stone.  The Domination Band which is used in an attempt to control the "Dragon Reborn" is morphed into Dragonbinder or the hellhorn which is said to bind "dragons" to the owners will.  How hard is it then to see that when the Domination Band is used that Rand used balefire and struck Semirhage in the chest and burned her from the pattern that this event translated into the events that took place at the kingsmoot.  Cragorn blows dragonbinder and it is seen that his chest bleeds and he dies.  When they open him up they discover that his lungs are charred black as soot.  So what could be in store when Victarion gets on the scene.  Maybe Dany will get to Victarion and bind him to her or when he has the three men blow the horn once each that the dragons will already be hers.  Maybe it will have something to do with the fact that she unknowingly knows the secret speech of dragonkind, as possibly given to her as mentioned in the House of the Undying, and it has come out like the “Old Tongue” did for Mat as a gift he received while he was in the Tower of Ghenjei.

House of the Undying

Mat

Tower of Ghenjei

Comments encouraged.  Love to hear the idea’s of others.  Most believe that since I present my idea’s as “fact like” I’m not open to change my viewpoints which is far from the truth.  I simply look at the information presented and go from there.  If you can shine a light on another way of thinking that opens the door to debate.