13 replies to this topic

[Master of Coin]

Okay I'm a stamp philatelist from way back, and I particularly enjoy old letters and writing, so the whole thing with the phrase.  "My Lord, there's been a raven."  brings to mind just excactly... what?

Okay so a raven's a big bird, and we suppose that in Westeros the ravens are a bit more...  mmm... tameable than our local fellows. At least to the point where you can get them to fly someplace. Now if it were pigeons you've still got to transport the pigeons on the ground so they can fly back to the roost. But presumably these rookers have managed to train ravens to fly to predetermined locations. Certainly they will get food but maybe also some shiny trinkets or some such? (How do you train a raven?) Maybe Westerosi ravens are simply a domesticable subspecies that we don't have here.

In any case, somehow the training problem is overcome and now you want the raven to physically carry a note for you.  For pigeons they made these little metal tubes that tied onto the pigeon's leg. A raven is a larger bird and could carry a correspondingly larger tube. How big though?

The scrolls that people are shown reading onscreen (HBO version) seem too big to me. A raven is not going to want to carry around a thing that big. I'm thinking the tube will hold a scroll maybe 2 1/4" long ( 57mm or so) and up to perhaps 1/2" (13mm) in diameter.  So there would be special strips of paper the right width that would be prepared ahead of time for use in sending raven messages. And then some special adhesive stamps or seals to keep prying eyes from the message until it reaches the right person.  And there must be space for an addressee. So it would be small but not ridiculously small.

And what would it cost? Goodness gracious, the infrastructure of training and feeding the ravens would involve a small group of several individuals at each post! Perhaps a castle could stand that cost as a basic service of the keep, but ordinary citizens could not, though they might occasionally wish to send such a message. If private parties... say shippers or tradespeople... wished to know relative prices of commodities at different ports around Westeros, they would certainly be willing to pay handsomely for this service... akin to Express or Overnight mail service. Communications is such a basic need that there would inevitably arise an entire infrastructure around the Raven Post. [img]http://www.shirepost...-4s-05.jpg[/img]

Could be fun!

[Ser_Niall]

The ravens of Westeros most likely have the same skill as real life homing pigeons.  They have a natural ability to always come home.  In the wild, they return to their nests; once domesticated, they can be trained to go back and forth between castles.  It might be the case that newborn ravens are taught by the adults the route to fly, therefore you only needed to train one generation.  I also imagine that each castle's maester kept ravens in separate cages that go to specific castles.  So, in Winterfell, Maester Luwin would have a cage of ravens trained to fly to King's Landing, another cage trained to fly to the Wall, etc.  All castles probably didn't keep ravens to fly to every castle, most likely just to their bannermen, the wall, and King's Landing.  Maester Aemon seemed to have an unusually large rookery, which makes sense since the Night's Watch would need to warn all of the Seven Kingdoms of attacks from north of the wall.

I imagine GRRM used ravens instead of carrier pigeons because ravens sound cooler

Edited by Ser_Niall, 20 July 2012 - 12:14 PM.

[Valyrian-Steel]

You'll recall the ravens behaving like pigeons in scenes such as after the attack by the others when samwell tries to get them off. They're not trained to fly a route, because the rangers were on the move. They were trained to fly home, to castle black.

[Reznak mo Reznak]

sure you can overthink this, but why? Dragons and magic aren't realistic either, and neither are a bunch of other things. But it makes for a great story.

[Ser_Niall]

Valyrian-Steel, on 20 July 2012 - 08:08 PM, said:

You'll recall the ravens behaving like pigeons in scenes such as after the attack by the others when samwell tries to get them off. They're not trained to fly a route, because the rangers were on the move. They were trained to fly home, to castle black.

This is true.  If ravens are the quivalent of carrier pigeons, then each castle would have other castle's pigeons on hand in the rookery so that they can send messages there.

Reznak, overthinking things is what makes us rabid fans

[Master of Coin]

A group of people sitting in a circle in a church basement....

Hi, my name is Tom and I'm an overthinker.

The group murmurs:  "Hi Tom"

I'm here because I can't help myself. Stories are not "just stories" to me. As I read I build a model in my head and I have to know how things work. If there's no map I have to draw one. If there are special artifacts in the story I have to buy or make them. If there are passages that imply the existence of complex infrastructure, I want to know how it works. If nobody tells me, I have to work it out for myself. It's my curse. I don't believe in magic. It's too easy to just say... "oh it's magic". What we call "magic" is simply the result of a technology that we don't understand.

Sauron's ring? That's an easy one...  that would have to be an extremely advanced nano-deposited megalayer electronic device with neuronal interface capable of interdimensional energy transferrence.

Daeny's ability to withstand fire? That's a bit tougher... A genetic mutation, conserved by natural selection and present in the Targaryen bloodline as a recessive trait, in which a proportion of carbon atoms in organic molecular structures may be replaced by silcon, forming pseudosilicones with higher vaporization temperatures. Combine with the abilty to shed excess heat by radiative cooling through the micropores in the hair or portalic transferrence.

Westeros Ravens are such an easy one by comparison. We don't even have to work hard to overthink that one! Some guys go around with crates of ravens and drop them off at castle rookeries from time to time. People come in and write their notes on slips of paper. The cost of service is based on the not-insignificant effort it takes to transport the ravens and maintain the infrastructure. Powerful people can bear the cost but most people can't afford it.

But I'm not here to try to quit my addiction. I'm an overthinker and proud of it. The day I stop overthinking will be the day I die.

Edited by Master of Coin, 21 July 2012 - 08:24 AM.

[Ser Kennos of Kayce]

Your trains of thought are perfectly logical, IMO, because they help solve basic logistical problems and also help to further explain the real world mechanics of GRRM's complex and growing fantasy realm. He does the same thing with his own world-building techiniques in order to add cultral depth and immersive background, something that his detractors complain about "because its just unnecessary padding" to their (very) limited way of viewing his realm of the fantastic. (To the Seven Hells with them all.)

But GRRM doing just that kind of thing has inspired others here to do real things: a couple or ardent fans began replicating the foods of ASoIAF in real world terms, and voila, all of us now have a website and a nifty new cookbook that allows each of us to sample a taste of the imaginary Westeros, and beyond. The exact same thing inspired a guy to replicate the weapons of Westeros to further expand his and our connections to Martin's world, because food, weapons and, yes, (need I say it?) your very own tactile coins are all fun things to own--becuase they're all touchstones in keeping us connected, via our imaginations, to GRRM's world.

So you just keep overthinking stuff, Tom, and keep on producing imaginary coinage (and anything else that strikes your and GRRM's fancy), because anything that adds a little more to your enjoyment here in the real world will keep *our* imaginations fired in our shared experience with ASoIaF.

Edited by Ser Kennos of Kayce, 27 July 2012 - 12:45 AM.

[larrytheimp]

In the Theon WoW sample chapter there are some logistical insights into the raven post, namely that for the most part each bird is only trained to fly to one castle, although a few extra smart ravens are capable for flying to multiple locations.

[Gillio]

and, i cant remember where i read it, they used to be able to speak the messages, till the magic left the world

[Master of Coin]

Thanks Larry and Gillio! I had not heard those details. Very interesting. I'm trying to work out the message format and security protocols.  My first tries seem a little too easy for prying eyes to open, read, and re-seal. I'm trying to avoid the need for wax seals but it might be necessary. Paper seals only work if there can be a clearly tamper-visible "tie" with pen or rubber-stamped markings that cross the flap. But a clever individual with a little bit of "flaps and seals" training can easily defeat such by carefully aligning the flaps before resealing and using the right sort of glue. I've made a few of these... would be happy to send one to the first six people that PM me with a name and physical mailing address and who are willing to make comments about it on the forum after examining it. I'm trying to keep it simple but it might have to get a bit more complex to be fully tamper-evident. (Tamper-resistant is impossible without a locked chest... tamper-evident just means that you should be able to tell if someone has opened the message before you)

Edited by Master of Coin, 30 July 2012 - 03:43 PM.

[Gillio]

Master of Coin, on 30 July 2012 - 08:49 AM, said:

Thanks Larry and Gillio! I had not heard those details. Very interesting. I'm trying to work out the message format and security protocols.  My first tries seem a little too easy for prying eyes to open, read, and re-seal. I'm trying to avoid the need for wax seals but it might be necessary. Paper seals only work if there can be a clearly tamper-visible "tie" with pen or rubber-stamped markings that cross the flap. But a clever individual with a little bit of "flaps and seals" training can easily defeat such by carefully aligning the flaps before resealing and using the right sort of glue. I've made a few of these... would be happy to send one to the first six people that PM me with a name and physical mailing address and who are willing to make comments about it on the forum after examining it. I'm trying to keep it simple but it might have to get a bit more complex to be fully tamper-evident. (Tamper-resistant is impossible without a locked chest... tamper-evident just means that you should be able to tell if someone has opened the message before you)

Well, I'm excited to advise that the raven post arrived safely, and apparantly un-tampered with!!

Thanks so much.

[scurvy]

Gillio, on 29 July 2012 - 01:40 AM, said:

and, i cant remember where i read it, they used to be able to speak the messages, till the magic left the world

I think BR the Children of the Forrest may have told that to Bran.

[Master of Coin]

Gillio, on 10 August 2012 - 06:27 AM, said:

Well, I'm excited to advise that the raven post arrived safely, and apparantly un-tampered with!!

Thanks so much.

Good to hear it's arrived! I didn't expect it to be tampered with in the real-world mails. What I'm interested in... is whether you can open it and read it and then reseal it without leaving any obvious clues. If it's too easy to reseal then it's not sufficiently authentic.
Tom

[Gillio]

Well, I opened it really carefully cos i was scared i'd tear it, so the stamp part is still slightly attached and acts as a hinge, so everything stlll lines up when i re-close it. I guess it could re-seal pretty well.

Maybe a perforation along the middle of the stamp? Though then you'd spoil the raven bit.

This thing is so cool!!

Edited by Gillio, 11 August 2012 - 10:22 PM.