This is not intended as a definitive essay it's more of a musing out loud something that could give more complexity to the journey of the Ten Thousand Ships and adds yet another element of horror to British imperialism. It can be assumed the Rhoynar were likely inspired by India based off the Mother Rhoyne and the river Rhoyne having a surface level resemblance to Ganga Mata and the river Ganges. On that note I introduce the taboo of kala pani (black water) crossing oceans to places the sacred Ganges is not connected to severing them from everything that matters spiritually and socially speaking, the cycle of reincarnation and one's caste. It's a bit more complicated than that, it did diminish with time and air travel, but I'm aiming for brevity. The World of Ice and Fire gives us this sad detail from Ten Thousand Ships: "In the Summer Isles, they settled on an uninhabited rock off the eastern shore of Walano, which soon became known as the Isle of Women, but its thin stony soil yielded little food, and many starved. When the sails were raised again, some of the Rhoynar abandoned Nymeria to follow a priestess named Druselka, who claimed to have heard Mother Rhoyne calling her children home...but when Druselka and her followers returned to their old cities, they found their enemies waiting, and most were soon hunted down, slain, or enslaved." Canon doesn't give us anything about the Rhoynar's religious practices the way it has the Old Gods, and the Seven, or the Lord of Light but it's probably not stretch to assume the river Rhoyne had a significance to them beyond their livelihoods and the affection one has for home. And it hurt being severed from that, enough to risk death and enslavement.
"How can you be orphans if you have mothers and fathers?" the girl asked.
"They are the Rhoynar," Arianne explained, "and their Mother was the river Rhoyne."
Further: "On the day they wed, Nymeria fired her ships, so her people would understand that there could be no going back. Most were glad to see those flames, for their voyagings had been long and terrible before they came to Dorne, and many and more had been lost to storm, disease, and slavery. There were a few who mourned, however. They did not love this dry red land or its seven-faced god, so they clung to their old ways, hammered boats together from the hulks of the burned ships, and became the orphans of the Greenblood. The Mother in their songs is not our Mother, but Mother Rhoyne, whose waters nourished them from the dawn of days."
This isn't world building or an attempt at world building just concept(s) to consider if anyone wants to try writing something about Nymeria, the Rhoynar and the Ten Thousand Ships. I'm incapable of practicing a religion, but those of you who do imagine your place of worship, your holiest site forever gone from you. Could go back to it but you'll be killed or suffer enslavement before you could even resume worship again maybe before you even reach it.
