119 replies to this topic

[Blue Roses]

Any chance that we will get any further information on the Doom of Valyria?

Perhaps if you are running with the idea of a maester's notebook we could have a couple of maps, one before the Doom and one after with the maester's notes on what was suppose to have happened, the hearsay and the myths surrounding the smoking seas? Perhaps some fragments copied from older texts giving tantalising clues to the role of dragons, Valyrian magic (and subsequent decline) and the collapse of the Freehold would be very nice as well.

[Ran]

I can't but imagine that we're going to get some info on the Doom from George. There'll definitely be some discussion of it in there, anyways. :)

[Blue Roses]

Bleed him dry! - in the nicest possible way of course.  :)

Thanks

[Hitman8D]

Blue Roses, on Sep 8 2006, 09.24, said:

Bleed him dry! - in the nicest possible way of course.  :)

Thanks

I have read and heard that the Doom and The Feakish Long Seasons are linked.  And it is a magical cause.

[Mr. Ibis]

The Doom would be better off left as this mysterious event.  We don't really need to know everything about the world, do we?  

Maybe its me but I would rather see the actual story than more plodding off into something that has nothing to do with the plot.  Unless it has something to do with the plot in which case I will happily read it.  

I will happily read whatever he writes.  As long as he gets down to writing it.

[Wolfpack]

I am basing my next role playing campaign based on this very thing.  I know its my own theory and speculation, but I think it will be fun.

Once D&D 4th Edition goes online I may even invite players from this forum to play.

[roeh61]

Blue Roses, on Sep 7 2006, 07.00, said:

Any chance that we will get any further information on the Doom of Valyria?

Perhaps if you are running with the idea of a maester's notebook we could have a couple of maps, one before the Doom and one after with the maester's notes on what was suppose to have happened, the hearsay and the myths surrounding the smoking seas? Perhaps some fragments copied from older texts giving tantalising clues to the role of dragons, Valyrian magic (and subsequent decline) and the collapse of the Freehold would be very nice as well.

I think that doing a SERIES on the Doom would be an even better idea!

[WinterRyan]

Clearly the DOOM was an Editor, who wiped the knowledge of what happened (along with the entire chapter) away with one fell swoop of their pen...

[Werthead]

Hitman8D, on Oct 24 2007, 05.11, said:

I have read and heard that the Doom and The Feakish Long Seasons are linked.  And it is a magical cause.

Nope. The Doom was only 400 years ago. The Freakish Long Seasons have been around since at least the Long Night, which was (very roughly) 8,000 years ago.

[Prince of the North]

Werthead, on May 1 2008, 09.05, said:

Nope. The Doom was only 400 years ago. The Freakish Long Seasons have been around since at least the Long Night, which was (very roughly) 8,000 years ago.

Yes, if we must have a scientific explanation of the Long Night and Freakish Long Seasons I'm with those who posit that a cataclysmic meteor strike knocked the planet off it's orbit.  Such an event could easily cause a "long night" due to particles in the atmosphere and, if a planet's orbital path could be made more erratic by such an event, then that could account for more erratic seasons.

The Doom of Valyria may be a different matter.  That seems to me to be somthing having to do with tremendous amounts of sorcery gone awry or something.  Maybe the uncontrollable magic contributed to volcanic eruptions and/or earthquakes that basically destroyed the place and made it virtually uninhabitable?  I don't know - this is all just speculation.

Or, maybe the Long Night, the Freakish Long Seasons, and the Doom of Valyria are all just "magical" phenomena and we can just leave it at that?  :dunno:

[Warlock of Quarth]

Hmmm, not too sure about a major impact event knocking the planet off it's orbit. Such an impact event would kill off every living thing on the planet, at least any advanced multicellular form of life. A smaller meteor strike could certainly cause a Long Winter, but wouldn't be enough to explain the wacky seasons.

[Zoliv]

Or maybe the orbit of the Westeros planet is not circular but elliptic ?

[Ran]

Well, that would be the norm, actually. All the planets in our solar system have elliptical orbits.

George has said that the cause of the strange seasons is primarily magical, not scientific, in explanation.

[kettleblack]

isn't it kind of a given that the doom of valyria had something to do with the dragons?

i mean, a charred smoking landscape surrounded by charred smoking seas with nothing left on the land but charred smoking ruins...

sounds like someone let a dragon get to big, especially when they supposedly grow indefinately.

[Anatole Kuragin]

kettleblack, on Jun 16 2008, 19.05, said:

isn't it kind of a given that the doom of valyria had something to do with the dragons?

i mean, a charred smoking landscape surrounded by charred smoking seas with nothing left on the land but charred smoking ruins...

sounds like someone let a dragon get to big, especially when they supposedly grow indefinately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano

[kettleblack]

fair call.

[nategator]

I could see GRRM adding more info in an official encyclopedia or short story, more likely after the series is complete.  Other than that, I think all we're going to get is snippets of information here and there like we have so far.  If Martin really wanted to he could give us more information through Sam's POV or have Maerwyn the Mage do an information dump - but both of them are probably too focused on the more immediate concern of the Long Night to spend much time worrying about the Doom.

The nice thing is that we don't really need to know more about the Doom.  It happened, it's mysterious, no one lives there, so it's mostly there for the general world atmosphere by providing a more dramatic parallel to the fall of the western Roman empire.

[Werthead]

nategator, on 06 June 2010 - 04:31 PM, said:

I could see GRRM adding more info in an official encyclopedia or short story, more likely after the series is complete.

Or perhaps the official encyclopedia (well, as near as we're going to get in the short term) that we're talking about in this very subforum?

[fionwe1987]

Any chance that whatever set off the Doom is relevant to what the PtwP has to do to push back the Others?

Maybe I'm wrong, but didn't the Targaryens give up on magic once they came to Westeros? Maybe this was because of the Doom. In which case, maybe Dany has to start using some of it to handle her problems. Maybe Marwyn will teach her how.

[Lord Varys]

I'd assume that to control dragons you need to perform some kind of magic. So the Targaryens certainly practiced magic until the death of their dragons - and apparently even after this unfortunate incident, proven by Bloodraven, the rumors about Shiera Seastar, and the attempts to get their dragons back (most of them had to be magical rituals).

But it seems that most of the real valyrian magic stuff (glass candles, for example) went out of use, or did no longer work properly after the Doom. On the other hand, if Dany's dragons triggered the reawakening of fire magic all over the world, it makes no sense to assume that the glass candles should not have worked during the first 150 years of the Targaryen reign. Maybe they used them, too. If they did, it was likely not announced to the public, and thus we may just not know.