The Doom of Valyria was a volcanic cataclysm that took place approximately four hundred years before the War of the Five Kings. It destroyed the empire known as the Valyrian Freehold, shattered the Valyrian Peninsula and created the Smoking Sea. Its consequences were severe and long-lasting, extending to the present day. The term refers to both the specific night when the Doom began and destroyed the Freehold, and to the ongoing volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that continue in the region to this very day.