Asshai by the Shadow is dying!

[Kyll.Ing.]

Asshai best serves its purpose by just being "that freaky, mystical place at the end of the world".

If somebody ever went there in a POV, some of that mysticism would be lost, and there would - realistically speaking - be talks of what lay on the other side of Asshai. I wouldn't believe for a second that Martin would write about a city where extremely far-off locations such as Westeros or the Free Cities were frequented by travellers, whereas nobody would have a clue on what was going on just a couple hundred kilometres east. Asshai would necessarily cease to be "the end of the world", further requiring Martin to come up with even more exotic, eastern lands and cities. And then we'd create threads wondering what was going on around there.

Asshai isn't meant to be explored. It's meant to be faraway, exotic and intriguing. And to be honest, I think the statements about the city being awfully big, all black and without children don't serve any narrative purpose but to make it more mysterious.

[ummester]

It seems like every culture that controls dragons turns into a wasteland before long.

Yep.

Also, I'm pretty sure Asshai is where the first dragons came from, as Bran dreamed way back in the first book. The moon breaking and subsequent long night as well as re-occurring heavy winters and comet showing up are all directly related to it. I'm betting the first dragons were made in fire with human blood somehow, possibly even some kind of mating between some otherworldly demons and people or something and it all happened in Asshai and led to the world becoming unbalanced.

As for passing under the shadow - I still think it is possible that Ulthos is what remains of Planetos South Pole (or currently southern polar region).

[ummester]

Ulthos seems to be an equatorial continent though, as it is right beside sothoryos which is a jungle continent

An old idea I haven't fully given up on - that Planetos is not environmentally consistent with Earth and that the maps we have seen (that are drawn with the approximate skill and knowledge of a medieval cartographer) do not show the relative directions between places accurately. It wasn't until the 16th century that we had maps on Earth that were even close to accurate as far as continental shapes and relative distances went.

[Waters Gate]

Asshai is a city full of of giant tombs. That a conclusion i drew from another thread, more details can be rea in the oily stone thread. Asshai seems to be litterally on the path to the underworld, symbolism abound. And i figure that the tombs in Asshai are those of great people from the past, kings and emperors for ex. , Asshai being basicly a graveyard for the superrich and powerfull.

Thats why you have those shadowbinders there and why Asshai exports precious metals and gems. The Tombs are simmilar to ancient pyramids, like they have some traps and labyrinths inside, and i suspect that the work of the "mazemakers" reall was making tombs that were hard to break into, the more so because likely these tombs were also filled with treasure like the Egyptian ones. The shadowbinders of Asshai bind the shadows of reat people of the past, this gives them important knowledge but also possibly information about hidden cache's of treasury yet not found.

[Man of Many Faces]

I wish we would get a first hand POV character in Assahi by the Shadow, but sadly we will have to live with flashbacks and memories. Maybe the TV show will take us there, D&D said the show will spoil things for book readers, while GRRM said he will have something completely different in the books then they have in the show. So maybe someone will travel there in the show, or we will at least get a visual flashback to see it.

[thiago greyfalcon]

Asshai was create by a proto-citiziens that ruled the world, the same that create Yeen,Five Forts, not humans. Ya they have dragons, but they lived with miasmas that can kill the most of the people human.

[cgf]

I don't think that there's anyone who's still alive in asshai. Like the lands of always winter it is probably populated by non-human magical creations like Mel. That's why there are no children in asshai and why the others need craster's sons.

[Krusty Kraken]

I don't think that there's anyone who's still alive in asshai. Like the lands of always winter it is probably populated by non-human magical creations like Mel. That's why there are no children in asshai and why the others need craster's sons.

You might be on to something here... I like this

[Steelborn]

Asshai was create by a proto-citiziens that ruled the world, the same that create Yeen,Five Forts, not humans. Ya they have dragons, but they lived with miasmas that can kill the most of the people human.

I agree with this. Asshai is such a big city, yet it seems that people don't "live" there as the city is only known for its magical practices. I can only assume the city was the capital of the beings who created the oily black stones. For some reason, they ceased to exist... or did they?

How cool woud it be if a new race of Aliens invaded Westeros now? :lol:

[Mrs.Grumpy]

I believe the original race of people who built asshai are still alive.

The green skin people of sothoryos with webbed hands, the green skin people from thousand islands are a result of interbreeding of human and green reptilian humans.

The shrykes beyond the five forts are also described having green reptilian skin.

As far as we know there is no green-skinned people in Sothoryos. Toad Islanders have webbed hands and feet but we don't know their skin color.

I'm sure that Thousand Islanders are hybrids of Deep Ones and humans.

Shrykes are lizard men, not fish men q.q

[oursisthefury69]

Radioactivity,guys.The whole city stinks of radioactivity.

ya def not anything to do with magic

[ummester]

ya def not anything to do with magic

I watched an interview with D&D where they said the only type of fan theory they find silly and amusing for how the saga will conclude is the Planet of the Apes type ending.

It's Earth, Damn you all to Hell!!!!!!!!!!!!

Depending on how seriously you take D&D, radioactivity is either extremely silly, or it is exactly the type of theorizing that will solve the entire series :D

[oursisthefury69]

I watched an interview with D&D where they said the only type of fan theory they find silly and amusing for how the saga will conclude is the Planet of the Apes type ending.

It's Earth, Damn you all to Hell!!!!!!!!!!!!

Depending on how seriously you take D&D, radioactivity is either extremely silly, or it is exactly the type of theorizing that will solve the entire series :D

How is that a response to what you quoted/ a post at all

[ummester]

How is that a response to what you quoted/ a post at all

Man - sometimes I feel like I have to explain how I get from A - B - C too much.

Some posters think D & D don't know what they are doing with the the story and are taking it to all the wrong places (lets call this camp A), others think they are doing a fine enough job (lets call this camp B ). If D&D say Planetos being Earth (Planet of the Apes ending) is silly and you are from camp A, then a Planet of the Apes ending is probably this best type. If you are from camp B, you would agree that ending is silly.

Put really simply - if you think D&D are misinterpreting ASoIaF, then Planetos could well be Earth. The reason for the Long Night and so on could be a cataclysmic event created by humans on our planet - the extra moons could be space stations or something.

Now, I don't subscribe to a theory like this at all but, the way ASoIaF is written (because GRRM seems to favor keeping readers guessing over giving them answers) it is impossible to rule out. You cannot accurately apply a process of elimination to ASoIaF, only varying degrees of interpretation. It makes it fine and valid art but nothing anyone is likely to agree upon any time soon.

[John Suburbs]

Extra moons? I don't remember seeing or reading anything about extra moons in the books or the show, other than that old Dothraki legend about two moons and one hatching the dragons.

[DarkSister1001]

Extra moons? I don't remember seeing or reading anything about extra moons in the books or the show, other than that old Dothraki legend about two moons and one hatching the dragons.

I think that's the only place it's mentioned. There's a interesting topic here about the two moons, Nissa, NIssa, etc. I haven't finished it all bc it's so detailed, but I think there might be something to it.

[ummester]

I thought there was an extra moon before the Long Night, possibly before the first ever dragons - so a long, long time ago in ASoIaF history and that something cataclysmic occurred that either destroyed the moon or ejected it from the planet's orbit.

Personally, I think that the comet is what remains of the moon and that whenever the planet gets close to it magic gets stronger because magical power is still hanging around in the portion of space. This also means that it was magic and toying with it (possibly to create dragons) that broke the planet in the first place.

It's not a stretch to think that the 'magic' may have been people pushing technology too far. Then it's not a stretch to see Planetos as Earth and ASoIaF as something millenia in Earth's future, like the Sword of Shannara series.

[oursisthefury69]

Man - sometimes I feel like I have to explain how I get from A - B - C too much.

Some posters think D & D don't know what they are doing with the the story and are taking it to all the wrong places (lets call this camp A), others think they are doing a fine enough job (lets call this camp B ). If D&D say Planetos being Earth (Planet of the Apes ending) is silly and you are from camp A, then a Planet of the Apes ending is probably this best type. If you are from camp B, you would agree that ending is silly.

Put really simply - if you think D&D are misinterpreting ASoIaF, then Planetos could well be Earth. The reason for the Long Night and so on could be a cataclysmic event created by humans on our planet - the extra moons could be space stations or something.

Now, I don't subscribe to a theory like this at all but, the way ASoIaF is written (because GRRM seems to favor keeping readers guessing over giving them answers) it is impossible to rule out. You cannot accurately apply a process of elimination to ASoIaF, only varying degrees of interpretation. It makes it fine and valid art but nothing anyone is likely to agree upon any time soon.

Your surprised you have to explain your line of thinking whilst predicating your post on irrelevant references of the (awful) show writers and planet of the apes

[oursisthefury69]

Extra moons? I don't remember seeing or reading anything about extra moons in the books or the show, other than that old Dothraki legend about two moons and one hatching the dragons.

"I dont remember reading anything about extra moons in the books, except for that time i read about a legend involving an extra moon in the books" (not a dothraki legend either, but you could only misinterpret it as such if you dismembered it within its context- indicative of having literally read it yourself and not simply coming by it elsewhere)

You read your own post? Its a debate in an of itself

[ummester]

Personally I think there were two comets that moved closely together, one of them struck the first moon destroying it. The other comet is the red star we see in the sky

Different details but the same basic idea - that when Planetos reaches a certain place in space, based on orbital variations in it's Platonic year (procession of it's equinox) it becomes astronomically aligned for specific physical and magical effects. This also ties into earlier discussions re the planets axial tilt and the current theory/discussion on astronomy - it's all connected.

I don't think GRRM will explain it in detail because

1) His POVs have fairly non-technical understandings for their world, so they would have no basis for comparison or explanation

2) He has promised a magical explanation

What I do think is that he has factored in are enough hints or leads for readers to speculate over how well certain astronomical and physical models may fit So, we will get a magical explanation, that eludes to a certain level of physical and astronomical reason.