Since it's always interested me (i have a weakness for overgrown stone ruins and water), here's my summation of The Sorrows.

(notice Tyrion on the roof)

Tyrion's journey

Originally named Chroyane or the Festival City, it contains what was once a huge palace said to be ten times the size of the Red Keep and a hundred times more beautiful where people from all over would come to be married called the Palace of Love. Now it lies a desolate ruin shrouded in fog and is called the Palace of Sorrow. Vines, moss and tumbled stone covers much of the once opulent palace and it's broken statues.

Almost the entire area is concealed in a thick fog that is tied to an ancient legend.

The city was once ruled by Prince Garin called Garin the Great because he assembled an army of 250,000 men to fight back a vastly more powerful invading army of the Valarians and Volantenes. He could not defeat them but he did give them pause. (From Westeros.org) The men of Volantis and Valyria hung Garin in a golden cage and mocked him as he called upon Mother Rhoyne to destroy them. That very night the waters rose and drowned the invaders of Chroyane. From that they, the spirits of the fallen conquerors remained beneath the waters, and their breath rises from the murk to make the fogs that infest the ruined city". This fog makes men's voices echo. This comes up later.

Greyscale and the mysterious fog are known as Garin's Curse.

Some believe that Garin rose from his watery grave and became the Shrouded Lord. Some, like Duck, think the Shrouded Lord was a statue at first, and a grey woman from the fog kissed life to it with lips as cold as ice. Now the Shrouded Lord is believed by many to be a corsair from the Basilisk Isles.

The area is inhabited by people who have contracted the greyscale that poisons these waters. It is basically a leper colony. They are known as "Stone Men" for the grey cracked dead flesh that typifies this deadly disease and the lifeless way they shuffle around in the mist. They are barely human anymore. Volantis sends food to the area three times a year to feed the stricken people.

These men attacked Tyrion and the not-so-mysterious crew of the Shy Maid near the Bridge of Dreams after the Shy Maid seemed to flow back upstream after passing the area once or maybe they floated around the island causing them to pass it again. Tyrion did seem to think the buildings looked oddly familiar just prior to the attack at the "second bridge" leading me to think there is some magic at work here. There is something strange about the attack at this bridge. After they passed it the first time, the crew seemed to relax a little. This is when Tyrion revealed that he suspected Young Griff of being Prince Aegon. The pole boat then gets attacked from the bridge and the water by stone men. Jon Connington and Tyrion go overboard, only JonCon gets greyscale. This is a referenced often in the Tyrion = Targ theories. Did Garin/The Shrouded Lord only bewitch the boat/bridge because he overheard Tyrion's suspicions about Aegon through the fog echos?

In any case, it's a pretty cool chapter.

This post was edited on 5/23/13 at 8:17 am