Durran Durrandon Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 in the book ice dragon. the ice dragon fights off three normal sized dragon's at the same time. ice dragons would destroy dany's face off. To be fair, the ice dragon does die in the same combat. Still 3-1 is a good ratio.I still question whether The Ice Dragon can be considered cannon. If it can be, It confirms that there was a civilization before the Long Night when seasons were mostly normal and there were many more dragon being used in warfare than we ever saw during the Targaryan reign. Is the a SSM on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joluoto2 Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 To be fair, the ice dragon does die in the same combat. Still 3-1 is a good ratio.I still question whether The Ice Dragon can be considered cannon. If it can be, It confirms that there was a civilization before the Long Night when seasons were mostly normal and there were many more dragon being used in warfare than we ever saw during the Targaryan reign. Is the a SSM on this?I have been pondering on whether the Ice Dragon short story is cannon or not the last few months and gone back and forth on whether it is. Right now I think it's not. The wolrd of the Ice Dragon is a proto Westeros, a world in GRRM's mind that later morphed into the Westeros of the ASOIAF universe. Thus it has many similarities with Westeros. AND GRRM is just saying Ice Dragon creatures such as the one in the short story exist on Planetos, but it doesn't mean the novella happened in the same world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
239JMFL34109 Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 I have been pondering on whether the Ice Dragon short story is cannon or not the last few months and gone back and forth on whether it is. Right now I think it's not. The wolrd of the Ice Dragon is a proto Westeros, a world in GRRM's mind that later morphed into the Westeros of the ASOIAF universe. Thus it has many similarities with Westeros. AND GRRM is just saying Ice Dragon creatures such as the one in the short story exist on Planetos, but it doesn't mean the novella happened in the same world. yeah i feel at best it's an in universe story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkstarViserys Posted February 8, 2015 Share Posted February 8, 2015 There are no ice dragons. Oily stones are also bs and unimportant as with anything from TWOIAF. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Falcon2908 Posted February 8, 2015 Share Posted February 8, 2015 There are no ice dragons. Oily stones are also bs and unimportant as with anything from TWOIAF. They are not confirmed to be there or not yet. Oily stones remains a mystery. I think they were built by some aliens who travelled all the lands to build a shrine/city/forts to defend themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mithras Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Clearly something fishy is going on up in the Shivering Sea. Those mermaids up there look like wighted mermaids and I take them as the dead things in the water. Sailors, by nature a gullible and superstitious lot, as fond of their fancies as singers, tell many tales of these frigid northern waters. They speak of queer lights shimmering in the sky, where the demon mother of the ice giants dances eternally through the night, seeking to lure men northward to their doom. They whisper of Cannibal Bay, where ships enter at their peril only to find themselves trapped forever when the sea freezes hard behind them. They tell of pale blue mists that move across the waters, mists so cold that any ship they pass over is frozen instantly; of drowned spirits who rise at night to drag the living down into the grey-green depths; of mermaids pale of flesh with black-scaled tails, far more malign than their sisters of the south. Of all the queer and fabulous denizens of the Shivering Sea, however, the greatest are the ice dragons. These colossal beasts, many times larger than the dragons of Valyria, are said to be made of living ice, with eyes of pale blue crystal and vast translucent wings through which the moon and stars can be glimpsed as they wheel across the sky. Whereas common dragons (if any dragon can truly be said to be common) breathe flame, ice dragons supposedly breathe cold , a chill so terrible that it can freeze a man solid in half a heartbeat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muggle Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 In terms of the short story: The Ice Dragon re-release wasn't GRRM, it was the publisher looking to milk the Game of Thrones cow.It's not set in the same world, it's a story that he wrote decades before ASOIAF. There's nothing to suggest it's related in any way to ASOIAF other than by implication (again, heavily promoted by the publishers). Honestly I dont not know how you can say the stories are not in the same universe. The descriptions of the Ice dragon in both stories are 100% identical. We have the land of always winter. We even have Adara who seems to be some pseudo WW. You can look the TWOIAF for answers. People of Westeros speculate that if you keep going north you will get past the frozen lands and find a new warm lands. Who is to say The Ice Dragon does not take place on a continent opposite of Westeros on the globe? Some race had to build the black stone foundation at Hightower. Who is to say it was not Dragon Riders from this supposed continent setting up an out post. Before the first "known" humans the first men traveled the arm of Dorne. Obviously what I suggest is massive speculation but to many pieces fit for the stories to not be connected. Even down to Adaras birth its said a "chill" touched her. When its pretty obvious that the "cold" is what makes wights not the WW them selves. I doubt when GRRM wrote the Ice Dragon he had the story of GOT thought out. But I believe he took that short story and built off of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Pepsi_Cupps Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 But I believe he took that short story and built off of it.I'm not sure if he ever mentions that, and he's spoken in some detail about how the first chapter of ASOIAF just came to him while he was writing an unrelated novel, and spiralled from there.ASOIAF and The Ice Dragon are clearly the product of the same mind, but I guess you could also look through his other works and start appropriating similar things into the ASOIAF universe... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Durran Durrandon Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 Honestly I dont not know how you can say the stories are not in the same universe.Well, the seasons are annual in The Ice Dragon, so if it is in universe it would have to have taken place before the Long Night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The silver dragon Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 Well, the seasons are annual in The Ice Dragon, so if it is in universe it would have to have taken place before the Long Night. or potentially after if the second war with the wight walkers ends with the seasons returning to normal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The silver dragon Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 To be fair, the ice dragon does die in the same combat. Still 3-1 is a good ratio.I still question whether The Ice Dragon can be considered cannon. If it can be, It confirms that there was a civilization before the Long Night when seasons were mostly normal and there were many more dragon being used in warfare than we ever saw during the Targaryan reign. Is the a SSM on this? against normal dragons. as a dragon gets older it gets stronger. (vhagar destroying arrax's face. balerion raping quick-silver) dany's dragons are like 4 years old and can still be hurt be normal weaponry. and any ice dragon would probably be old as dirt, and thus far stronger than dany's dragons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hrulj Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 Well they are to be expected, honestly. Considering some characters have a dragon, regular one, on their side, and seem unlikely to join the others, some balancing might be needed after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muggle Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 Well, the seasons are annual in The Ice Dragon, so if it is in universe it would have to have taken place before the Long Night. Why? The reason the seasons are so out of wack is due to magic or so we believe. Do you presume this magic is some how effecting the orbit of the whole planet it self? Thus the whole planet experiences the same length in seasons? Is it not more logical to think the wacky seasons of westeross and co are locally located to that hemisphere? Leaving the rest of the planet to normal weather patters. I dont have textual evidence to support my next idea or tbh the previous one. But I believe I saw a thread saying the winter storm in the north that is causing massive snow falls actually started in Winterfel and then spread out from there engulfing the region in a blanket snow storm. Point is the Weather / Climate there is odd. I also want to draw attention to the Ice Lizzards from The Ice Dragon. They are living ice reptiles. We have reports of living ice spiders also. To me personally there are just to many similarities and connections to separate the two stories. GRRM has said Dragons existed in Westeros before humans ever thought about arriving there. We have reports of dragons in Assashi and reports of dragons / cousins of the dragons way in the south, So its not to farfetched to think that Dragons can exist on the other side of the planet. Several people in Westeros have speculated there are lands to the west of Westeros. And they have speculated if you keep going north you would reach new lands also. As I said this previously this could be the place The Ice Dragon takes place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Durran Durrandon Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 Why? The reason the seasons are so out of wack is due to magic or so we believe. Do you presume this magic is some how effecting the orbit of the whole planet it self? Thus the whole planet experiences the same length in seasons? Is it not more logical to think the wacky seasons of westeross and co are locally located to that hemisphere? Leaving the rest of the planet to normal weather patters. I can't argue with that based on text. It would appear that the seasons span both Westeros and Essos, as did the Long Night. Intuitively, I would presume they are global, but I would agree that since they are magical, they might not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Pepsi_Cupps Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 I can't argue with that based on text. It would appear that the seasons span both Westeros and Essos, as did the Long Night. Intuitively, I would presume they are global, but I would agree that since they are magical, they might not.You can argue with it based on new info from TWOIAF - it's implied the seasons are a planetary thing. The maesters talk about the length of days as the indicator for seasons, meaning winter is indeed accompanied (we would say caused) by shorter days and summer by longer days (just like in real life, only the days shorten and lengthen in an irregular cyclical pattern). GRRM said the wacky seasons were magical, so to say that they are only confined to Westeros/Essos is to say that the magic is able to move the sun lower on the horizon (and thus shorten the day) in an irregular cyclical pattern only there, but not for the rest of the planet. That seems to be unnecessarily far fetched, even for a magical explanation, especially in a story that really only uses magic very sparingly.Also, GRRM could have kept the explanation wholly "magical" - winter comes when things get mysteriously colder, and summer comes when things equally mysteriously heat up. Instead, bringing the length of the day into it (which is much more likely to be a global thing than only confined to a part of the planet) suggests that the magic is somehow actively affecting the tilt of the planet. Or maybe the magic isn't currently active, but the tilt anomaly is a consequence of using powerful magic, to cause a massive earthquake or bring down the second moon for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muggle Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 GRRMS long night / long winters are obviously flawed. 10 year winters would not leave a whole lot left after words. There would be no grain to feed the livestock etc... Honestly Humanity would be hard pressed to survive. Even in the 3/4 year winters. And still be able to produce the population numbers that exist. I think trying to put logic to it is a mistake and we just need to accept it for what it is. All I was trying to do is give a reason as to why The Ice Dragon did not have to take place 2/5 k years before the story of GOT or after the second battle for the dawn. Just mere speculation with no textual evidence to back it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mithras Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 GRRMS long night / long winters are obviously flawed. 10 year winters would not leave a whole lot left after words. There would be no grain to feed the livestock etc... Honestly Humanity would be hard pressed to survive. Even in the 3/4 year winters. And still be able to produce the population numbers that exist. I think trying to put logic to it is a mistake and we just need to accept it for what it is. All I was trying to do is give a reason as to why The Ice Dragon did not have to take place 2/5 k years before the story of GOT or after the second battle for the dawn. Just mere speculation with no textual evidence to back it up. Well, unlike earth, they also have years of Summers and Springs and Autmuns. They get multiple harvests over and over again before the winter comes. And that is why all of them have to keep large winter supplies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Pepsi_Cupps Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 Well, unlike earth, they also have years of Summers and Springs and Autmuns. They get multiple harvests over and over again before the winter comes. And that is why all of them have to keep large winter supplies.We not only get a glimpse of that during the Harvest Feast in ACOK, but also just logistically multi-year summers would probably allow for 2 harvests every calendar year as opposed to just one.That said, winters would still be awful. The whole story of older Northmen "going out hunting" in winter is based on what actually happened in certain parts of Europe, and that's with only a 3 month winter. The unpredictability of when winter would end would make rationing really hard, because you'd have to assume it would be a long one - lots of people dead from starvation / malnutrition.One of the many reasons why they start having kids at 14... Who knows if you'll be around later! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mithras Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 Well, of course. In the absence of deep freezes and refrigerators, the amount of food that can be stored is severely limited (except the Wall :) People will eventually lack fruits and there will be sicknesses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Pepsi_Cupps Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 Well, of course. In the absence of deep freezes and refrigerators, the amount of food that can be stored is severely limited. People will eventually lack fruits and there will be sicknesses.Food spoilage is not a problem surely... it would be so cold outside.The fresh fruit thing is a stronger point of course, as well as chronic vitamin D deficiency, one assumes.Although I'm still unclear as to how bad the winters get South of the Neck..Also, they could import some food for the nobles/soldiers from the parts of Essos that are able to grow food even during winter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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