Heresy 7

[lokisnow]

just a thought on how Dragons can easily fly over the wall. How high up can large birds fly? Can those birds fly as high in frozen over areas like Canadian tundra or Siberian steppes? If there are no thermals to ride, could birds propel themselves to a height sufficient to cross the wall? Presumably Dragons would need Thermals as much--if not moreso--than birds, considering they have greater mass to shift and will rely on all the climate assistance they can get.

Regarding the wall. What if it started at night fort not as a wall (the wall in the story being the wall of the fort, now presumed to be the big ice wall). The Wall, is really a physical extension of a barrier established by the buried Weirwood of Night fort. The fort was built there as the pact that established the Night's Watch. (I have to confess bias, I've thought since I first read ASOS in 2001 that the Wall would fall when Mel burns the weirwood at the night fort, as the weirwood is the heart and strength of the wall, so this idea plays into my pet theory).

Another possibility. The Night's Watch was established during the long night, to watch for the end of winter, and the return of dawn. The first LCs served for a year, and the Night King was the thirteenth, and the year that the long night broke and dawn returned.

I wonder if Bran and Sam unwittingly fulfilled some prophecies by passing through the weirwood door.

[Black Crow]

just a thought on how Dragons can easily fly over the wall. How high up can large birds fly? Can those birds fly as high in frozen over areas like Canadian tundra or Siberian steppes? If there are no thermals to ride, could birds propel themselves to a height sufficient to cross the wall? Presumably Dragons would need Thermals as much--if not more so--than birds, considering they have greater mass to shift and will rely on all the climate assistance they can get.

I've suggested this before and had the idea turned down, but in The Ice Dragon its made pretty clear that ordinary (fire) dragons have trouble flying in cold air - especially since the mass of ice forming the Wall must be appreciably chilling down the local temperature

[Black Crow]

Another possibility. The Night's Watch was established during the long night, to watch for the end of winter, and the return of dawn. The first LCs served for a year, and the Night King was the thirteenth, and the year that the long night broke and dawn returned.

Like that idea... welcome to the Heretics.

[Eyron]

It's Old Nan who would have a more complete picture of westeros history in full that says "dragons", which could be drawing upon a much more recent Targaryen infused basis for the meaning of the comet.

Though it would be much more interesting if it meant dragons even before the Targaryen's came over...

This was so interesting!

But something to remember, Old Nan was perhaps Dunk's girlfriend :) She was in Winterfell when he and Egg visited if this is true, so she could have learnt a thing or two about dragons...

[Eyron]

dp sorry, the interwebs is behaving funny...

[Lummel]

...Where do we see the song of ice and fire being played out. Who's on the ice side and whos on the fire side. And does anyone know what the balance is that has being upset...

This is interesting.

What does the word 'song' imply to you? When you talk about sides, it sounds as though you are reading the word song as though it means the same as battle or conflict. I can imagine why you do this, because I think all readers do this, first time round, into that prologue, the royce boy killed by the white walker - it sets up the idea of conflict. But the title of the series is not 'the conflict between ice and fire' it is 'a song of ice and fire'.

To me that means we've got to put the conflict and the battle to one side and think about singing, at least for a little bit. No conclusions here, just some ideas.

OK characters. First off an easy one, an aria is a song (=Arya). Sansa is told by Sandor that life is not a song (OK so there's a conflict between reality=not a song and what we know as readers that the whole series is, at some level, a song).

A song can be balanced = harmonious. In a harmonious song all voices would be heard equally, there would be concord, so peace between different voices which can then sing together. Well that doesn't describe what we are seeing, instead there is discord and conflict and degeneration at every level.

Then there are specific, significant songs. Rhaeger's 'his will be a song of ice and fire' and leaf's those who sing the songs of the earth. So are these songs about the elements, or about the balance between the elements so that they can work together and not be discordant? Or do we have to think about a conflict between two different voices that is resolved only at the end of the song. If conflict we might ask who is fire and who is ice. The obvious in your face answer to that is the targaryens and the starks not the white walkers and men.

If not conflictual we can think of the seasons as being a song. Maybe icy winter predominates to give way to fiery summer. Each has their season, but the song continues.

Apologies for the rambling, obviously past my bed time!

[Black Crow]

Past my bed-time too, but I like this.

[Lummel]

...Regarding the wall. What if it started at night fort not as a wall (the wall in the story being the wall of the fort, now presumed to be the big ice wall). The Wall, is really a physical extension of a barrier established by the buried Weirwood of Night fort. The fort was built there as the pact that established the Night's Watch. (I have to confess bias, I've thought since I first read ASOS in 2001 that the Wall would fall when Mel burns the weirwood at the night fort, as the weirwood is the heart and strength of the wall, so this idea plays into my pet theory)...

Yeah, we were wondering something along those lines because the night's king sees his lady love and is overwhelmed by her beauty (in the immortal words of Ramsey Snow) when he sees her from the top of the wall. Well no, not unless he is warged into an eagle or the wall was very much lower. The latter is more likely because he was able to run after her and catch her.

Also this makes it easier for the other stark and joramun to combine to throw the night's king down. Co-ordinating armies is a little more tricky when they divided by a 700 foot wall held by your enemy.

With regard to Dragons, I don't think that Bran says they flew over the Wall just that the Queen and King used the Dragons to fly up to the Wall. So I think it's quite possible in story that dragons might find it too difficult to fly over the wall or might only be able to do it in certain favourable weather conditions ...or something.

[Solmyr]

I apologize for my late joining in the Heresy series; as I check the chronology, they seem to have snowballed to over 2400 posts in less than 4 months. I can't promise I'll read every single post in my 'catching up', but I shall try to cover the main points you guys have already discussed. So far I am somewhere along part1 ... nevertheless I have had my own thoughts about the entire Ice part of the series and they have remained roughly unchanged for many years:

Before I begin my argument I want to establish that I primarily work with facts, or as close to facts as we can get, based on the reliability (or lack of) of the narrators we're given. I too like to speculate on what can or might be, but the truth is that the more we start fantasizing about it, the wilder and more outrageous theories we're likely to produce. There is a small chance we may stumble upon the truth, but we will never know it anyway, until GRRM graces us with the series' end (and maybe not even then, for I believe many questions will remain unanswered or half-answered even then).

Lets start with the Wall. We know for a fact that it is a magical barrier - coldhands says he cannot pass, Others supposedly cannot pass, John cannot sense Ghost while he's on the other side, Melisandre's shadowbabies will, supposedly, fail to pass, if the Wall's magics are anything like Storm's End's (and they likely are, for Brandon the Builder and the CotF are mentioned as architects of both).

However, we have one giant contradiction: In AGoT the wights pass through the Wall. True, they are carried, but their corporeal forms pass and more importantly, after they are through, they become possessed by Others' magic once again and attempt to carry out their masters' bidding. Therefore magic can pass through the Wall and what is more important, wights in their corporeal form can be gotten through the Wall. Finally I want to point out that we cannot be certain that wights need to be un-possessed while passing through the Wall. When you think about it, they needed to appear as simple bodies so they can fool the NW into opening the gate and carrying them through. Otherwise all they could've done is bash their dead skulls in the base of the Wall to no avail, not to mention alerting the Watch of the imminent danger. It is my belief that if you left the gate through the Wall open, a wight can easily walk through on its own, blue eyes and all.

The only actual contradiction to wights passing through the Wall is what Sam told Bran that Coldhands has said (I purposefully stress that the message passes through 3 narrators before we, as readers, get it) which is that he [Coldhands] cannot pass through the Wall. This could mean several things other than the obvious - that the Wall stops all kinds of magic and magical creatures from passing through it. It could be that Coldhands and/or the forces behind him are unaware a wight can pass through; it could be that the animation techniques the Others and CotF use are different and one wight can pass while the other cannot; [most likely] perhaps Coldhands is only prevented from passing through the weirwood gate - the gate is magical itself and its restrictions are different that the Wall's. Once again, I think that Coldhands would have no problem walking through the tunnel beneath the Wall if someone opened the gates for him.

Given these facts, some of them a bit contradictory, we can establish that the Wall is indeed a magical barrier of sorts, but it is certainly not the barrier everyone believes it to be.

One final point I want to make about the Wall before I move on to other matters - fine a barrier as it might (or might not) be, the Wall does not cut Westeros shore-to-shore. Rather, there is a good chunk of un-Walled terrain to the west (check the Voyager maps for reference), which is clearly unprotected. True, the terrain there is mountainous and hard for any man, let alone an army, to pass through, but if there's no Wall what's stopping the Others and their wights of simply going around? Even the east is not well-protected - Pyke writes about "dead things in the water" and throughout the books we've heard of reports of White Walkers glimpsed ashore near Eastwatch. Seawater freezes solid enough for a man to walk at just a few degrees C below normal water, Others drop the temperature around them far below that and they are also said to be lighter than men (they leave no tracks on snow) - I see no problem for Others to simply walk on water like Jesus did in days of old.

Lets talk a bit about the Others themselves: we've only encountered them twice - in the prologue of AGoT and in Sam's first chapter in ASoS. AGoT's prologue doesn't really tell us much besides that they are good swordfighters and also honourable duelists - the Other duels Ser Weymar Royce one-on-one until first blood and only when the outcome is certain do its brethren join it in butchering the vain knight. Sam's chapter tells us much more, for we see an Other die - so lets analyze it in some detail:

The Other's first move is to extinguish the fire from Gren's torch - presumably fire alone cannot kill Others, but it "dismays" them and it is the most potent of weapons the three brothers seem to possess. Therefore it makes perfect sense for the Other to begin by eliminating the fire as a threat.

Then Paul attacks with his axe and the Other easily dispatches him. The important thing that happens is that the Other is disarmed when Paul falls down dead.

And then we have Sam, the nearly-dead-from-exhaustion fat, cowardly boy, who half rushes, half stumbles towards the Other, swinging an obsidian dagger with his eyes closed. And here we have our inconsistency: both during the duel with Ser Weymar Royce and the quick kill of Small Paul the Other is described as lightning fast and graceful in its movements. And yet such a creature gets stabbed in the neck by a blind, stumbling fat boy and with a dagger of all things. There are two logical explanations for that I can think of:

1. The swords of the Others are more than just swords. Back in the prologue of AGoT we have the line "no human metal had gone in the forging of that blade" when the blade of the Other is described. It could be that the magic used in forging these swords somehow bestows swiftness upon the wielder or enhances its battle prowess in general. We already have a somewhat similar precedent with Valyrian swords. Although it's no magic in itself, Valyrian sword wielders seem to fight with more grace, speed and alacrity. Even if this theory is correct it is unlikely that a disarmed Other would turn completely numb and defenseless to the point of being stabbed so easily.

2. If the Other could've dodged the blow and Sam altogether and yet did not choose to, then it plainly didn't fear the Slayer. You have to assume that the obsidian dagger was not identified in time, else the Other would surely have moved aside and taken extreme caution to avoid it. Nevertheless, even if the Other assumed that it was a simple steel dagger, which cannot penetrate its armour, there is little sense is simply allowing an opponent to come close enough to stab you in the neck just for the fun of watching the blow deflected and failing. The other motive could be that the Other, having been disarmed, was waiting for Sam to come in arms reach so it can kill him in some other way.

To better convey what that way might be, we need to examine the "anatomy" of the Others. When the Other Sam stabbed dies, first its armour melts and runs down around the dragonglass. Plainly enough, that would mean the armour is made of some kind of ice, magically enhanced to provide protection while remaining thin enough to allow for graceful movements and the "rippling" effect that is described. The creature itself tries to touch the dragonglass with its hands, but where its palms touch it they begin to smoke. That tells us two things - firstly, although the armour is made of ice, the creature itself plainly isn't, else the palms would be melting as well, not smoking. Secondly, we know that the armour does not cover the entirety of the Other's body - the palms at least, and presumably other parts, are exposed. Finally, the Other dissolves into fine white mist.

One way to account for such metaphysical behaviour is to assume that the Other's body is made of frozen vapour. It would make it light enough to walk on snow without leaving prints, it would explain the "dissolves into fine white mist" part - when the the magic that holds it all together is no more, the vapour would warm up to at least the temperature of its surroundings which would produce this effect. Finally it would explain how the Other meant to dispose of Sam at close quarters - simply touch him on the face with his palms. We have no idea how cold the Other's body is, for we have no account of anyone or anything besides the obsidian touching it (the obsidian was icy-cold after), but I think assuming anything between -50* and -250* C would not be unwarranted. If anything that cold touches human skin, the shock alone would kill. Now there is to consider the effect the touch would have on the Other itself - for now I will not speculate on that, for we know too little.

I had the intention to cover several other points, but this post is already growing past the point of being readable, so I will continue in another :).

[Nymeria Star-Eyes]

Been lurking the heresy threads for a while now, so I'll just butt in a with a quick observation:

One of those blinding flash moments while commenting on another thread...

If Rheagar Targaryen(Dragon)+Lyanna Stark(Ice Queen of Winter) = Jon, is indeed true, then Jon is not merely the song of Ice and Fire - standing in the middle between the two:

He is the Ice Dragon and Dany and her Amazing (Fire) Dragons are doomed!

People have mentioned before that the magic of the CotF differs significantly from the ice magic of the WW, because it's clearly nature/life magic. The warg magic the Starks have seems to be nature CotF magic, rather than ice magic, which indicates that Starks already have both ice (as kings of winter) and nature in their blood (either from First Men mixing with the CotF like the Reeds, or maybe just if the CotF taught them some magic as part of the pact).

Therefore, if Starks are already nature magic + ice magic, and Jon is Stark + Targaryen (fire magic), he's actually ice + fire + nature all in one.

No idea if this makes him an Ice Dragon or not. :dunno:

[DirtyRobes]

Great post Solmyr!

Lots of good stuff in there.

In regards to the magic contained within the wall, my thoughts were that if a WW actually tried to move through the wall whatever magic keeping them alive would be removed(for atleast as long as they are WITHIN it) this would explain how the wights would be able to be brought through, the WW lose their control over the wights until they reach the other side. Wights being of actual Flesh and not Mostly magic like the WW.

And thats why the men Jon has in the Ice cells are still "dead" because they cant be controlled within the wall.

So if the WW moved en Force through the wall they would all simply perish into mist. Which is why they tried to use Mance to bring it down. If the WW were just after men they could have slaughtered Mance's whole army while he wandering around looking for the horn.

I always thought the mountains seemed like a good way to just move all their forces past the wall, but there must be some protection up there too. Does Wall magic extend through mountains And sea?

[Black Crow]

One way to account for such metaphysical behaviour is to assume that the Other's body is made of frozen vapour. It would make it light enough to walk on snow without leaving prints, it would explain the "dissolves into fine white mist" part - when the the magic that holds it all together is no more, the vapour would warm up to at least the temperature of its surroundings which would produce this effect.

Welcome to the column (thread no longer seems appropriate) with some interesting ideas. I was thinking of doing a resume on the Wall as we did in Heresy 6 for the White Walkers and some of the other stuff and yes, there's a lot doesn't add up other than that we can be fairly sure its not as advertised.

I like the above on the physical nature of the White Walkers as it accords with my own view that they are unreal in so far as what we've encountered are very powerful wargs who can manifest themselves in this way - build their own bodies in effect - rather than inhabit a living host.

There's a lot of good stuff in the 2400 odd posts and I look forward to seeing what you make of them

[Eyron]

Regarding the wall. What if it started at night fort not as a wall (the wall in the story being the wall of the fort, now presumed to be the big ice wall). The Wall, is really a physical extension of a barrier established by the buried Weirwood of Night fort. The fort was built there as the pact that established the Night's Watch. (I have to confess bias, I've thought since I first read ASOS in 2001 that the Wall would fall when Mel burns the weirwood at the night fort, as the weirwood is the heart and strength of the wall, so this idea plays into my pet theory).

I like this, I also think the Nightfort is significant to the Wall, and that the weirwood sapling growing there could be important. For the first time, in a very long time, the Children have a tree at the Wall. I think there once were a large weirwood there, and it's roots went deep under the Wall and those are what the black gate was carved out of. I think so because the wood is alive, and I think if it was *put* there with no connection to the rootsystem, it would not be as magical, and not *alive* as it is.

I am also anticipating Mel's arrival at the Nightfort and that the sapling is in danger, she will burn it for sure. I like your theory about the Wall falling. The weirwood at the Nightfort could definitely be the source of magic in the Wall, and burning it could be the spark that destroys it completely. I think that if the old tree I believe was there before was only chopped down, it was not enough to take out the magic since the roots would still be there under the Wall, but burning it could do the trick.

[Lummel]

Hmm The Wall. Lots of interesting ideas above.

I thought that maybe the Wall was a magical barrier but the wights could pass it because of invitation - that the watch brought them through the tunnel overrode the magical barrier, but then I thought about coldhands - Sam can't bring him through the weirwood door/mouth.

But maybe the key to the problem is to assume that the Wall is multi-functional and works in different ways. For example being 700 feet high is a barrier to humans and giants - but why would height alone stop the white walkers and their ice spiders? While at the same time the magic might stop the undead or the white walkers in different ways. For instance it strikes me as potentially significant that the tunnel and the weirwood door/mouth are different. Sam has to say the oath to open the way - is there something about the oath that prevents coldhands from going through? Possibly though he might be able to go through or be carried through the tunnel (if nobody tried to burn him).

I don't know, maybe oaths are magical in Westeros and have binding power even after death so an oathbreaker might not be able to pass that door, or possibly Coldhands is excluded because he is no longer counted as being part of the realms of men?

Related - if the Wall is multi-functional maybe it is was originally designed to stop men from going north as well as to stop magical creatures from getting south or at least control access. Lets go back to ancient old heresy idea that the watch were the police of the pact on the human side. Lets say that pact broke down but the children and men decided to renew it on a tougher basis with a simple north south division with the boundary defended by a physical barrier rather than the old forest/non-forest frontier that maybe had proved impossible to maintain or to adequately police?

[Solmyr]

I see many people have different notions about how the Wall works in terms of a magical barrier. I wish to elaborate more on why I think the Wall is more of a physical than magical barrier against wights and Others:

We will start from two basic scenarios:

A) The Wall is a strong magical barrier, disallowing any wights or Others from passing through [and for the sake of argument] and around it. Therefore, as long as the Wall stands, the Others are no threat and they know it.

A-I.1) The Wall alone is magical enough to stop any amount of Others and wights from ever passing. Then why man it? Why have a sworn brotherhood that follows such a strict oath and serves for life?

A-I.2) The Wall's magic requires the Night Watch to remain intact and true as a brotherhood, otherwise its magics will fail. Therefore, if the watch is destroyed, even with the Wall remaining, the Others will be a threat. That raises several questions however:

- If a brotherhood of sworn men is all it takes to keep the magic working, why man 27 castles (thats the highest number ever manned in the history of the NW), recruit tens of thousands of men, go on ranging beyond the Wall and expend tremendous efforts to build the Wall higher: we have accounts that not so long ago every Lord Commander raised the Wall higher. Therefore it is likely that the Wall started two or three times smaller than what we have today and only the efforts and fear of men kept it growing.

- Why not simply have a few hundred brothers living snugly in one castle, 1/3 builders to repair the existing Wall and 2/3 stewards to make life comfortable - the Watch as a brotherhood would still be there and the magics will work - hence the Others are no threat and they know it.

A-II) The Wall can be destroyed with the use of magic - for the sake of what we know, lets focus on a certain horn.

A-II.1) The horn is located beyond the Wall, within reach of the Others and they are aware of its existence (else why prepare for an invasion?):

A-II.1a) The Others can blow it themselves - why haven't they in 8000 years? The argument "they just found it" is rather silly, the land beyond the Wall is not that vast and they had 8000 freakin' years to search among snow and ice, their bread and butter. Even if they just found it, this very day, by some odd happenstance, why not blow it right away? Their planned invasion has been in motion for some time, it seems rather stupid to plan an invasion and not have the tool needed to invade, instead hoping for fate to deliver this tool at the right time...

A-II.1b) The Others are incapable of blowing horns, or that particular horn. They need a man to blow it. If the horn was the horn that Mel burned, then game over Others. If it is Sam's horn, it's cracked and a thousand leagues away, unlikely to ever be blown, even if that is possible at this point. Furthermore, if blowing the horn and destroying the Wall was a critical point of the Others' plan for invasion, as soon as Mance was defeated and his people captured or scattered, they should've abandoned the invasion. The only remaining scenario is a random horn coming from nowhere, being blown by some random wildling beyond the Wall. Although not impossible, I kinda doubt GRRM would resort to such awful story-telling.

A-II.2) The horn is not located beyond the Wall and/or the Others are unaware of its existence. If they are unable to know when or if the horn would ever be blown, why plan an invasion?

I want to summarize the outcomes of all scenarios under A: If the Wall(the magical part) cannot be destroyed then the Others are no threat and never will be. If the Wall can be destroyed, the Others' invasion south still makes no sense under any of the imaginable scenarios. Even if we assume they have some other[than the horn], magical way to destroy it, why wait 8000 years?

So in conclusion, if we assume scenario A is correct then either the Others are no threat or they are invading south for no reason, hoping that the Wall's collapse will somehow coincide with their invasion (better chance of winning the lottery 10 times in a row, the Wall has been there for 8000 years).

В) The Wall is a strong physical barrier and provides some magical protection, but cannot stop Others and wights passing through in force:

- It would make sense to keep on building and make this physical barrier thicker and taller over centuries. It would make sense to man it and have castles in regular intervals along it. It would make sense to range beyond it, scout for potential dangers and identify incoming threats. Most importantly, it would make sense to arm the Watch with obsidian weapons (CotF used to supply them) so that they can fight the Others if the Wall comes under attack.

- The magical protection might be enough to stop Others' magics like dropping the temperature very low, else they could've simply walked close to the Wall, dropped the temperature and held it low until everyone on the other side died.

- The Others would still be a threat because if the Wall came under attack in many places at once and the NW has no weapons to pierce the armour of the Others, they can probably scale it (they are light and graceful and I somehow imagine climbing on ice would not be so bad for them as it is for men), fight and destroy the Watch and then raise them as wights and continue south.

One last point I want to raise. At this point Jon knows as much as any man about the wights and Others and it is plain that he perceives them as the real threat. He is willing to ally with his yesterday's enemy, the wildlings, only so he can have more man to defend the Wall while at the same time depriving the Others of corpses to animate. He is willing to risk a good part of the Watch's strength to make the expedition to Hardhome, so he can save even more wildlings, women and children mainly, so there would be fewer wights. He never considers that the Wall would be coming down, mind you, instead he prepares to defend the Wall against a full-scale invasion of wights and Others. He has already seen wights slaughtering NW men south of the Wall. Why would he do so if the supposed magic in the Wall will keep wights and Others from passing?

[hotweaselsoup]

I like this, I also think the Nightfort is significant to the Wall, and that the weirwood sapling growing there could be important. For the first time, in a very long time, the Children have a tree at the Wall. I think there once were a large weirwood there, and it's roots went deep under the Wall and those are what the black gate was carved out of. I think so because the wood is alive, and I think if it was *put* there with no connection to the rootsystem, it would not be as magical, and not *alive* as it is.

I am also anticipating Mel's arrival at the Nightfort and that the sapling is in danger, she will burn it for sure. I like your theory about the Wall falling. The weirwood at the Nightfort could definitely be the source of magic in the Wall, and burning it could be the spark that destroys it completely. I think that if the old tree I believe was there before was only chopped down, it was not enough to take out the magic since the roots would still be there under the Wall, but burning it could do the trick.

Hmm, interesting thoughts about the weirwoods. A lot of the CotF actions might be seen in light of their attempts to protect and preserve their weirwood trees. The trees are their gods, the repositories of all their history and knowledge, as well as the places they go to after they die. Some other thoughts about the ravens and the weirwood at Raventree: when the weirwood was poisoned by the Brackens, what happened to all the souls of the Children that were contained within it? Did they fly out and dissipate into the world, or are they now in the ravens that assemble there, year after year? Also, same question regarding the stumps at High Heart. Are the souls of the Children from those trees gone, or - as Eira supposes - maybe its enough that the roots of the trees remain to allow the souls to remain as well?

The idea that the trees must be protected at all costs makes me rethink the godswoods in all the northern castles and keeps. Was the castle built with a godswood at its heart to protect the tree? Also, in concert with Eira's idea, the Wall as a giant ice cocoon (ice armor) for important weirwoods - maybe THE weirwood, if there is such a thing - is making more sense to me. Could the Others, with their threat to break the Wall, be threatening the sanctuary of this tree (or trees)? On the other hand, Mel does seem to be more anti-ice/anti-weirwood than the Others at this point, so maybe she's the real threat?

Lummel, I'm thinking also that Coldhands perhaps might not be able to pass through the Black Gate not because he's dead, but because he's possibly a deserter or an oathbreaker.

[Eyron]

I'm thinking of the black gate, and why Coldhands could not (or would not for all we know) pass through it. I think its because he is dead, he is no longer a part of the Watch, he is basically the enemy, the undead, part of the darkness.

He is dead, he was a brother of the Night's Watch presumably, and he has been resurrected in a similar fashion as the wights.

He also took the oath once, so something in the oath is the code to let him pass but that seized to work when he died. We know that the brothers usually say: And now his watch has ended, when a brother is buried. So the watch ends with death, it could be more to that than just words. The ones on the north side of the Wall that dies, are not suppose to come back south of it, so the gate will not let them through.

I think that the wights would not be able to go through that gate, and that is how it's suppose to be, how the deal was from the beginning. Then they dug out new gates and those does not function correctly.

So in a way the realm beyond the Wall could belong to the dead, the undead and the Children.

I really think that the Wall also is meant to be a barrier for men to go north, and I think that could be how peace was sealed in the long night. I'm not certain that the latter idea holds up to closer inspection and I haven't worked it out in my head completely but maybe someone else have?

Solmyr, I think your post was great and I would like to see what else you will bring to our pique nique! [edit: while I was writing you posted again...]

Just a thought, on the west end of the Wall, the Milkwater gorge makes it very difficult to come south in any great numbers, that may not prevent white walkers to pass though. I have a suspicion that there is something about the water that do prevent this, and that could be possible for the sea at Eastwatch also.

There are real world myths about the ghosts and undead not being able to pass bodies of water, but that is of course no evidence, just speculation. I think that this little potentially illogical detail about the Wall should not be a mistake but be part of the idea of how the magic and the Wall works. Otherwise the Wall is pretty useless, and was so from the beginning, and I think that more unlikely.

There is also something funny about the Milkwater, it's water is white-ish. That sounds very strange to me, and I have not heard of any water looking like that in real world. Water is usually coloured by the soil quality upstream and from the riverbanks along it's way, but white?

[Lummel]

I've had white water come out of my tap - I live in a very hard water area, it's from the mineral content. I find it hard to imagine a river in nature that was so turbulent that the mineral content wouldn't settle to the bottom, but hey, it's a fantasy novel.

[Eyron]

Also, same question regarding the stumps at High Heart. Are the souls of the Children from those trees gone, or - as Eira supposes - maybe its enough that the roots of the trees remain to allow the souls to remain as well? The idea that the trees must be protected at all costs makes me rethink the godswoods in all the northern castles and keeps. Was the castle built with a godswood at its heart to protect the tree?

That is how it seems to me, but it's maybe not necessarily only to protect the tree, it could also be that the tree keeps them safe from other magic. I do think the keeps were built around existing trees. Mainly I think so because those trees seem like they are not just any garden plant that you can grow where you wish, but I also see the same thing beyond the Wall, White tree is a village with a weirwood in the centre, and Jon found the wildling group with Wun Wun at the weirwood grove north of Castle Black, it seemed like they were seeking protection there. And maybe it worked too, those dead men didn't rise as wights when they were taken back to the ice cells. But there is also the factor f the iron chains of course...

[lokisnow]

There is also something funny about the Milkwater, it's water is white-ish. That sounds very strange to me, and I have not heard of any water looking like that in real world. Water is usually coloured by the soil quality upstream and from the riverbanks along it's way, but white?

glacial runoff

***

Crazy crackpot heresy I had last night, while contemplating how the White Walkers evaporate into mist when stabbed with dragonglass: The White Walkers are frozen souls.

:devil: