Zamettar and Yeen.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

I am sorry if this had been discussed before. If there is another thread please just post the link.

When Nymeria settled on Zamettar she sent a ship to Yeen and they found that the people of the city had vanished. She decide to leave she said "A city so evil that even the jungle will not enter.".

What do you believe that happened there? Where all those people went? Did they just abandoned the city or there is something more sinister behind their disappearance?

[hodorisfaclessman]

massive brindled men attack

[aryagonnakill#2]

It was suggested that the brindled men killed all the other species of humans in Sothoros, and we are told they even destroyed Valyrian colonies, so its entirely possible they attacked Yeen, less likely that there was no evidence of that attack. It seems likely to me that the people abandoned the city and did not want to follow Nymeria anymore.

[TheSovereignGrave]

Any multitude of things. After all, Yeen is really something straight out of Lovecraft. You could just pin it on Brindled Men or any number of the numerous things in Sothroyos that want you dead. But then where were their remains? Even if they were taken away and/or eaten there'd be traces of that. And as for the possibility of them leaving, you'd figure that there's be some who still wished to remain with Nymeria.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

Thank you for all the answers. I just thought that since Nymeria told about evil there might be something else. For me the way I read it, it reminded me of the ghost towns I have read about where the people just disappeared without reason.

[LmL]

This is one question even I think was not meant to be answered. :) I *think* it's just supposed to be really creepy, evoking the lost colony of Roanoke.

[Ser Lepus]

Cannibalistic Brindled Men's attacks.
Diseases, many diseases. It's said that 90% of the the western sailors who visit Sothoyros fall ill, and half of them die. The death toll for people actually living within the jungles must be astonishing.
Other nasty stuff like giant cocodriles and snakes, velociraptors and bugs that burrow under your skin and eat your flesh.

EDIT: Also, quicksands and piranhas.

[LmL]

There's definitely no shortage of choices as to miserable ways to die in Sothroyos. :eek:

[Mrs.Grumpy]

They are sent to an another dimension, they are frozen in time, flouting, and still conscious. They will just wait, wait, and wait....forever!

#Headcanon

[Adam de Felden]

They have entered the House of Leaves, (from Danielewski,'s novel), they fall and fall through time, deeper and deeper to the heart of the world and beyond, getting colder and colder, when they emerge they are frozen creatures, they are Other.... just joking. We shall never know what happened to them, and if we did it would spoil it for us... pure lovecraftian horror I think this is meant to be.

[Blow My Horn]

Sothroyos reminds me of:

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/this-is-australia.jpeg

[oursisthefury69]

It was suggested that the brindled men killed all the other species of humans in Sothoros, and we are told they even destroyed Valyrian colonies, so its entirely possible they attacked Yeen, less likely that there was no evidence of that attack. It seems likely to me that the people abandoned the city and did not want to follow Nymeria anymore.

I am sorry if this had been discussed before. If there is another thread please just post the link.

When Nymeria settled on Zamettar she sent a ship to Yeen and they found that the people of the city had vanished. She decide to leave she said "A city so evil that even the jungle will not enter.".

What do you believe that happened there? Where all those people went? Did they just abandoned the city or there is something more sinister behind their disappearance?

I can't imagine how anybody could genuinely believe that was included in the World Book in the fashion it was if in reality the people just up and left; Nor how they would've all decided to leave and didn't leave a trace of that, nor why they would voluntarily retreat into the abyss of the Green Hell

[falcotron]

The short version of what happened in Yeen is (from the fictional mad poet Justin Geoffrey, from a story by Robert E. Howard):

They say foul things of Old Times still lurk

In dark forgotten corners of the world.

And Gates still gape to loose, on certain nights.

Shapes pent in Hell.

The shift in style in the paragraphs discussing the sojourn in Sothyros is how Howard marked out-of-place elements in his Conan stories, borrowed from other stories by himself and his friends, especially H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Fritz Lieber did the same thing in his Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories. And both the oily black stone in Yeen and the toad statue on the Isle of Toads are elements borrowed from those stories.

The point of such borrowings is not to try to piece together all the facts and make a coherent story; if you do that, at best you get something that does not fit in with the world of the containing story at all. You're supposed to take the reference as a nod and a wink, an inside joke, and accept that the mystery of what actually happened there is unfathomable.

But if you want to try anyway, just for fun, here's something that might fit: In the times before the Dawn Times, when the races of man and even the continents were different, gods walked among men, including Tsathoggua, who looked like a squat, furry toad. His cult is one of those that survived into the Dawn Times and beyond. His followers settled an island, where they built a temple to him of great oily black stones, the center of which was a 40-foot black stone crudely carved into a likeness of their god. The followers of the more sane gods of Valyrians fell upon the insane toad worshippers and killed them, putting an end to their eldritch rituals. Thousands of years later, all of the stones but the central statue were carted off to build Yeen. The black stones gradually instilled a compulsion in the people of Yeen, and soon, every night at midnight, the entire town would awaken to dance around the central monolith. A great toad-like monster would appear on the monolith, the townspeople would sacrifice their youngest child, and he would vanish, satiated. But soon there were no more children, and within a year the townspeople had sacrificed themselves to the last man. But every mid-summer's night since then, the ghosts of the townspeople appear and summon the ghost of the great monster, a fading echo of Tsathoggua and his cult, and anyone who sees the conclusion of the dance immediately returns to dust along with the dancers. And that's what happened to Nymeria's followers.

As you can see, that doesn't fit in with GRRM's world at all. There is no cycle of ancient times before the Dawn Times, the gods do not appear on earth, the Valyrians didn't go around exterminating mad cults, that kind of magic with ghostly spirits and people turning to dust for watching them doesn't exist, and so on. Just like that can't be what actually happened when Conan came upon the ruined toad temple, or when Ningauble accidentally summoned a vision of the oily black stone and told Fafhrd that even he wouldn't want to hear what it means.

So, what actually did happen? No one will ever know, beyond "something nameless and terrible".

[Rickon will return]

It sounds to me like Sothorios has it's own version of the Other, who've taken over.

[LmL]

falcotron, one thing I will note that may give us insight to what did happen at Yeen (although I greatly enjoyed your mad-lib Lovecraftian explanation as well):

The air was wet and heavy, and shallow pools of water dotted the ground. Reek picked his way between them carefully, following the remnants of the log-and-plank road that Robb Stark’s vanguard had laid down across the soft ground to speed the passage of his host. Where once a mighty curtain wall had stood, only scattered stones remained, blocks of black basalt so large it must once have taken a hundred men to hoist them into place. Some had sunk so deep into the bog that only a corner showed; others lay strewn about like some god’s abandoned toys, cracked and crumbling, spotted with lichen. Last night’s rain had left the huge stones wet and glistening, and the morning sunlight made them look as if they were coated in some fine black oil. (ADWD, Reek)

[falcotron]

falcotron, one thing I will note that may give us insight to what did happen at Yeen (although I greatly enjoyed your mad-lib Lovecraftian explanation as well):

All of the elements in that explanation came straight out of two Howard stories, one Lovecraft story, and one Smith story, so it was just a matter of stitching things together and making obvious substitutions like Valyrians for Arabs and Dawn Times for Age of Atlantis, nothing too clever. (In fact, it's almost the opposite of the Lovecraft game of subtly weaving just the hints into the background of a story where they don't belong, a much harder game, that GRRM plays better than anyone since Lieber or maybe Moorcock.)

The air was wet and heavy, and shallow pools of water dotted the ground. Reek picked his way between them carefully, following the remnants of the log-and-plank road that Robb Stark’s vanguard had laid down across the soft ground to speed the passage of his host. Where once a mighty curtain wall had stood, only scattered stones remained, blocks of black basalt so large it must once have taken a hundred men to hoist them into place. Some had sunk so deep into the bog that only a corner showed; others lay strewn about like some god’s abandoned toys, cracked and crumbling, spotted with lichen. Last night’s rain had left the huge stones wet and glistening, and the morning sunlight made them look as if they were coated in some fine black oil. (ADWD, Reek)

Black stones (often giant, often oily, almost always ancient) are one of the major elements that Lovecraft and friends traded back and forth, starting with "The Black Stone", the Howard story (written as a direct Lovecraft pastiche) that I borrowed from. And black stones (often giant, often oily, almost always ancient) are littered all over ASoIaF and, especially, TWoIaF. So, whenever I see "black stone", my first guess is that he's playing the Lovecraft game, giving us some hints at a background story that will never be explained.

That doesn't mean he'll never make any connections between any of his Lovecraftian elements. Just that I don't expect to see him ever reveal the big mystery of the black stones itself like August Derleth would (especially in a work designed to avoid the Campbellian sin of turning magic into science); to actually tie them together would not only kill all the fun, it would run the risk of him dying screaming of no visible cause, all copies of his books disappearing except for a handful of manuscripts in locked vaults like the one in the Miskatonic library, and then who would take care of his cats?

(Meanwhile, the "black oil" standing on its own puts me more in the mind of The X-Files, a sci-fi TV show that was just introducing that plot line around the time GRRM made his transition from sci-fi TV writer to ASoIaF author... but I think that's just a coincidence.)

[LmL]

That doesn't mean he'll never make any connections between any of his Lovecraftian elements. Just that I don't expect to see him ever reveal the big mystery of the black stones itself like August Derleth would (especially in a work designed to avoid the Campbellian sin of turning magic into science); to actually tie them together would not only kill all the fun, it would run the risk of him dying screaming of no visible cause, all copies of his books disappearing except for a handful of manuscripts in locked vaults like the one in the Miskatonic library, and then who would take care of his cats?

I already figured out the black oily stone. ;) But again, terrific writing on your part.

PS that's a sarcastic, "I fully appreciate that I could be wrong" smiley face, in case that wasn't clear.