Will the Port of Ibben, the summer islands and Asshai come into the story

[JamesOfHouseMurphy]

The only time you really hear about Ib is regarding Ibbenese whaling ships so they are obviously whalers but apart from that I don't know much about the people of Ib, The summer islands do get a bit of mention and are a bit more likely to come into the narrative than Ib but of the three and the one I'm hoping for the most is Asshai, Quaithe says to step into the light you must pass beneath the shadow, I think she is referring to Asshai and means Dany must travel there to find answers, the problem with Dany going there is that it is as far from Westeros as you can be, so if she were to go to Asshai it would disrupt her return. It would be great if some part of the story went to Asshai or even Ib because they are blank canvasses in terms of what GRRM can create about the people, the culture, the history of those places.

Would any of you like some part of the story to move to one of these places or anywhere else that is relatively unknown in the world of ice and fire like Sothoryos, the forest of Qohor or Yi Ti?

[Tyrus Martell]

I honestly don't think we'll see this places in the main narrative, as intriguing as they are. World-building and stuff first and foremost, not enough time.

Their people, though, we have seen, and will continue to. I love the Summer Islander culture and the few characters from there we've seen.

[JamesOfHouseMurphy]

I honestly don't think we'll see this places in the main narrative, as intriguing as they are. World-building and stuff first and foremost, not enough time.

Their people, though, we have seen, and will continue to. I love the Summer Islander culture and the few characters from there we've seen. Dyou have any thoughts on Quaithe saying to touch the light you must go beneath the shadow, I really think its telling Danaerys to go to Asshai but I agree that it would take lots of time

[Lady Blizzardborn]

We've been told we will not see Asshai, except possibly through a character remembering. Mel is from there, and Quaithe is based there, so we could get something through them.

If Dany flies over we could get some of her thoughts.

[Likely Luke]

I really want to see Ib, mostly because I enjoy the name so much...

[JamesOfHouseMurphy]

I really want to see Ib, mostly because I enjoy the name so much...

I know huh. The other good one is YiTi

[Baela of Pentos]

Doubt we have time in the remaining books to have a POV (Dany) visit one of those places...

Cold we see Asshai thru a glass candle?

[EddardsHead]

No George has to start focusing on the main plot in the story and tying up loose ends at this point if he wants to finish the story in two more novels.

[Equilibrium]

I doubt Ibben and Summer Islands but Asshai better be coming it is so hyped up.

[Taenqyrhae]

I just read that in TWoIaF it is revealed that the Ibbenese are a different species - they cannot produce fertile offspring with humans. Female Ibbenese can't even carry a Ibbenese-human hybrid to term, the only living hybrids require an Ibbenese father and a human female. This is really big, we have confirmation that there are other species of hominids on Planetos besides humans - CotF are not likely to even be primates (their description makes them seem like members of Carnivora) and the Giants, though possibly members of Primates seem too different in size and shape to be hominids or to breed with humans even if they were genetically similar enough and I strongly suspect that all the legends of human-Giant hybrids are not based on reality.

That they can't produce fertile offspring shows that they must have diverged from humanity LONG ago. Genetic and paleontological evidence shows that the various species of hominids that co-existed on Earth were able to interbreed, despite some of the lineages being separated by hundreds of thousands of years of divergent evolution, which is why most of us have Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA (and possibly even some Homo Erectus). If, as I suspect, there is some kind of connection between Planetos and Earth, either it's been going on a long time, or there's a time travel aspect, or there is some unexplained differences in the nature of time on Planetos, possibly magical (which I suspect because of lunar reasons described below). If all humans came to Planetos at roughly the same time and there is nothing accelerating evolution, there would have to be a VERY long period of isolation for humans to speciate to the point that they can't interbreed anymore - probably over a million years. But if humans had been living on Planetos for a million years, I think there would be more differences between Planetos humans and Earth humans than some unusual eye colors and hair colorations. One possible explanation is that whatever brought humans to Planetos did that once before, about at least a million years before, and that wave of hominids evolved into the Ibbenese. The time travel explanation would have humanity coming to Planetos from one starting time, but arriving at different times - one group could have come to Planetos about 50,000 years ago and evolved into the more common varieties of humans on Planetos, another may have come showed up a million years ago and evolved into the Ibbenese, another showed up 5 million years ago and evolved into the Giants, and another group showed up 15 million years ago and went extinct, but their pet housecats evolved into the CotF. :)

I think there's some deliberate clues that time does not flow at an even rate on Planetos, though - either that or GRRM is repeatedly making huge astronomical mistakes. GRRM has said that Planetos revolves around it's sun, and that it's moon revolves around Planetos at roughly once a month, just like our Earth-Moon-Sun system. However, almost every time GRRM specifies when the moon rose or set and describes the phase it is in, it is not correct. He has full moons rising at midnight, crescent moons setting at dawn, and many other combinations that are completely impossible if both Planetos and it's moon are lit by the same sun. I don't think it's likely he'd make that kind of mistake, and as a SF writer I'm sure he knows enough astronomy nerds that this was pointed out to him long ago - but it keeps happening, even in the latest books. My theory is that some kind of force, probably magical, is bending space in an uneven manner, which would effect the speed of light and the flow of time. If it takes light a couple of weeks to get from the moon to Planetos, then it would be possible to see a full moon on the horizon at midnight, because you would be seeing where the moon was a couple of weeks ago, not now. I think this localized space-time distortion is centered on Valyria based on how the moon appeared swollen and distorted when Tyrion was nearest there. I think this distortion varies greatly at times, which could explain the Long Night and man other things. I'm thinking that time has been very slow in the Lands of Always Winter for a long time, and the Others have been active but possibly on a time scale where a thousand years for the rest of the world is only a year for them, but that is changing. The reverse could have been true for Ib - consider this scenario. An island full of people is magically accelerated in time so that thousands of years pass on that island for every year in the rest of the world. They are effectively isolated from the rest of the world, even without any magical barriers. If a person from the Fast Time Island sails far enough away from it, time seems to slow down drastically for them. They won't realize this until they try to return home, and find out that everybody they ever knew died hundreds of years ago. The people on the island would eventually figure out this - if someone tries to sail too far away from home, they never return. Occasionally strange travelers show up on your island. Sometimes they don't speak any known language, but if they learn your speech they describe coming from a land beyond the sea. The people from beyond the sea must be practically immortals, because the strange traveler from last year describes the same kings and kingdoms beyond the sea as the last strange traveler who showed up a thousand years ago. Sometimes the strange travelers return to the land beyond the sea, and promise to come back to establish trade, but they never do. Sometimes there are strange travelers who claim to have been born on your island, but they speak in a strange way, and only scholars of history recognize any of the people they claim to have known before they left. Some of these people from the past claim to have left your island only a few weeks ago but they think the king is still a guy who died a thousand years ago.

This could be what it was like on Ib for a very long time. Civilizations would rise and fall over the millennia, and your society would eventually reach a very stable state of equilibrium in it's isolation, everybody living the same life as their father, grandfather, or great-great-great-great grandfather. You'd get less and less strange travelers as people would learn not to sail too far from the island, and that if you do you might as well not come back. One day, after about a million years of temporal isolation, someone sails too far from the island - but then they come back. Explorers go to the lands beyond the sea and meet the strange people who visit your island every millenia or so...strange tall people with hardly any body hair, that the Ibbenese would recognize as their distant ancestors if they knew about paleoanthropology.

[The Hempflower Knight]

^^^Whoa dude, try decaf next time! ;)

Im intrigued by the notion of other hominids as well, but just because some maester wrote it in a book doesn't mean its true. The Ibbanese thing could just be folklore. Even some of our ancestors successfully interbred with neanderthals other non sapiens, as moderns carry some archaic genes. Id think in order to not interbreed successfully, the Ibbanese would have to be almost inhuman. Closer to Tolkiens' orcs, perhaps.

[hiemal]

I would love to see both, as well as Valyria (either past or present, I'm not picky) and almost anyplace in Sothoryos but I think we might be SoL.

I've always associated the Ibbenese with the men of Ib and the inhabitants of the Plateau of Leng from Lovecraft. It's obvious GRRM has some serious lead in his pencil for the Mythos just from the nomenclature of Planetos.

[Pod The Impaler]

Asshai, maybe.

Ibben and Summer Islands, not likely.