Heresy 117

[Black Crow]

Welcome to Heresy 117, this week’s chapter in the popular thread that takes a sideways look what’s really going in the Song of Ice and Fire.

Heresy started off by questioning the widely-held assumptions that the Wall and the Nights Watch were created to keep the Others at bay - and that its all going to finish up with Jon Snow being identified as the lost Targaryen heir and Azor Ahai rolled into one and riding a fire-breathing dragon to victory over the icy hordes intent on destroying all life. More than two years on we still have our doubts – if the white walkers are Craster’s sons they’re not an invading army - and in general terms Heresy has expanded to encompass the whole business of Ice and Fire [as distinct from the Game of Thrones], striving to understand the conflict as a whole.

Nevertheless we still largely concentrate on the Wall and what lies beyond, and the Stark connection to Winter. We can also claim to know more than anybody else on the board about the Others/white walkers and warging/skinchanging.

Beyond that there is no such thing as a heretic view on a particular topic, rather heresy is about questioning common assumptions and discussing the various possible outcomes, based either on clues in the text itself, or in identifying GRRM’s own sources and inspirations, ranging from Celtic and Norse mythology all the way through to Narnia. Nor is it a matter of agreeing a particular viewpoint and then defending it against all comers, and in fact the fiercest critics of some of the ideas discussed on these pages are our fellow heretics.

At first sight, stepping into our world might at first appear confusing, but what we are really engaged in is an exercise in chaos theory. While most threads concentrate on a particular issue or theory, we range pretty widely and more or less in free-fall, to try and reach an understanding of what may be happening through the resulting collision of ideas.

In the run-up to HERESY 100 Mace Cooterian very kindly organised a Centennial Seven project, looking at seven major topics in Heresy, featuring a specially commissioned introductory essay followed by a whole thread concentrating on that one topic. A link to Heresy 100 follows, in which will be found updated essays on the Seven, with a bonus essay on the Crows: http://asoiaf.wester...138-heresy-100/. Links are also provided at the end of each essay to the relevant discussions, and for those made of sterner stuff we also have a link to Wolfmaid's essential guide to Heresy: http://asoiaf.wester...uide-to-heresy/, which provides annotated links to all the previous editions of Heresy. Don’t be intimidated by the size and scope of Heresy. It has been running for over two years now but we’re very good at talking in circles and we don’t mind going over old ground again, especially with a fresh pair of eyes, so just ask.

Otherwise, all that we do ask of you as ever is that you observe the house rules that the debate be conducted by reference to the text, with respect for the ideas of others, and above all great good humour.

[TheTowerOfJoy]

So just to pick up where I left off with Urrax, I'm going to put my reply here to carry forward the conversation:

Once again, if an Other leaves no prints in the snow and evaporates when stabbed with obsidian, how can he have been created by placing the spirit of a disembodied Old God/Greenseer within an ice preserved human body? Or are the creatures (popsicles) we have met in the books not in fact Others, but their servants? Sort of intermediaries between the real Others and the wights?

I think the Others are the disembodied spirits themselves, they are just finding an "anchor" if you will in the body of a human "sacrifice", much like they did in the weirwood trees themselves. However, "Sir Puddles" for instance was an Ice Golem created by one of these spirits to give it a presence to interact safely with the world. The obsidian only destroyed it's body of ice, not the spirit that was controlling it.

So the Others or "Neverborn" are the disembodied spirits themselves. Their semi-permanent home is within the possessed body of a skin-changer (which I believe has to be replaced from time to time), and the ice golems are the physical manifestation that travels beyond the Heart of Winter to interact with the world, as babies crawling around at the feet of a horde of zombies wouldn't be incredibly terrifying or useful.

So when the Night's King gave his soul over to the "Ice Queen", what it meant is that he allowed a disembodied spirit to anchor to his body.

[Melifeather]

Carrying on from the last thread...

I agree.

I'm also slowly being won over by the idea that Craster's tradition was started by leaving an unwanted baby exposed to the cold. Someone saw the White Walkers pickup the child and then mistook them for gods. It was an accidental inoculation that became deliberate. I know I haven't won anyone over yet with my stone men analogy, but it would be the same as if someone knowingly exposed a baby or adult to greyscale thinking the drowned dragonlords were gods. And just like the fog is blamed for greyscale, the cold mist is blamed for wights.

Feather in what you said , is what I've always lay and I'll take it further. The problem is the Fog execept it is Supernatural.The WWs are said to be the Mist/white cold/fog just as the Fog is blamed on the Shrouded Lord.These people can't explain what they don't understand so they made scapegoats to explain.

The connection in both cases link the Fog/mist White Cold not to the Shrouded Lord or the WWs but to the Stone Wights and the Ice Wights.

Yeah that was "exposure" that turned into something else .

I'm thinking the only difference between us, Wolfmaid, is that I do believe the White Walkers and the Drowned Dragonlords are the cause of their respective "infectious" conditions. Water magic was used on both enemies (First Men and Dragonlords) and it radiates outward infusing whatever it touches with it's respective magic. The ice magic used to create White Walkers infects the dead, and the fire magic used on the Dragonlords infects the living.

[wolfmaid7]

Just to touch on something TOJ said with the original name of the WWs as being called "The Neverborn" so are we going to discuss that because that's a big wrench in the WWs being the product of human babies being transformed seeing as they would have to "be born" in the first place. I'm just saying.

[Harlan]

GRRM's magic does work logically. I can't see the logic in a random feature like no tracks.

I disagree. Magic in this series is super hand-wavy, not logical. For example, why was Dany fireproof? She didn't say any spells, and no sacrifice was made to grant her the power. She just needed to be Fireproof because the plot needed to be fantastical. Why does Mell need to have sex to make a demon? Do you think sex is somehow a fair payment for Shadow assassins? How come Mell/faceless men can keep glamours going indefinitely at no apparent cost. How the hell does skinchanging work? Do skinchangers have a magical Neural antennae in their bran that lets them pick up other organisms brain activity? How could such an antennae possibly communicate commands to another organism? Why do Shadow demons come from Vaginas, rather than any other place? How does anyone climb a latter made of fire? Fire has incredibly low denisty, so how could it support any weight at all? We've seen magic quite alot, but we have never been given any logical underpinnings of magic, and no such logic is likely to exist per GRRMS following statement....

I think if you’re going to do magic, it loses its magical qualities if it becomes nothing more than an alternate kind of science. It is more effective if it is something profoundly unknowable and wondrous, and something that can take your breath away.

Courtesy: http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/2007/05/24/george-rr-martin-on-magic-vs-science/

....Its actually a very good Q&A that discusses how GRRM uses magic in his writings, in general, and ASOIAF specifically. But the central idea is that magic doesn't make sense and it isn't ever going to be logical. There will be 'explanations', but the explanations won't really explain anything....

[Harlan]

I'm thinking the only difference between us, Wolfmaid, is that I do believe the White Walkers and the Drowned Dragonlords are the cause of their respective "infectious" conditions. Water magic was used on both enemies (First Men and Dragonlords) and it radiates outward infusing whatever it touches with it's respective magic. The ice magic used to create White Walkers infects the dead, and the fire magic used on the Dragonlords infects the living.

If I remember the World book passage, the stone men weren't created by fire magic but were instead created by water magic. Didn't the Roynar call upon the mother river and cause a huge flood that destroyed the valley? Doesn't that sound awfully similar to the childrens 'Hammer' which was a great mass of water destroying the neck/dornish land bridge?

[King of Winters]

Just to touch on something TOJ said with the original name of the WWs as being called "The Neverborn" so are we going to discuss that because that's a big wrench in the WWs being the product of human babies being transformed seeing as they would have to "be born" in the first place. I'm just saying.

I took it as the WW were never properly born but made instead from Craster's and other's babies.

[Amoracchius]

I disagree. Magic in this series is super hand-wavy, not logical. For example, why was Dany fireproof? She didn't say any spells, and no sacrifice was made to grant her the power. She just needed to be Fireproof because the plot needed to be fantastical. Why does Mell need to have sex to make a demon? Do you think sex is somehow a fair payment for Shadow assassins? How come Mell/faceless men can keep glamours going indefinitely at no apparent cost. How the hell does skinchanging work? Do skinchangers have a magical Neural antennae in their bran that lets them pick up other organisms brain activity? How could such an antennae possibly communicate commands to another organism? Why do Shadow demons come from Vaginas, rather than any other place? How does anyone climb a latter made of fire? Fire has incredibly low denisty, so how could it support any weight at all? We've seen magic quite alot, but we have never been given any logical underpinnings of magic, and no such logic is likely to exist per GRRMS following statement....

I think if you’re going to do magic, it loses its magical qualities if it becomes nothing more than an alternate kind of science. It is more effective if it is something profoundly unknowable and wondrous, and something that can take your breath away.

Courtesy: http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/2007/05/24/george-rr-martin-on-magic-vs-science/

....Its actually a very good Q&A that discusses how GRRM uses magic in his writings, in general, and ASOIAF specifically. But the central idea is that magic doesn't make sense and it isn't ever going to be logical. There will be 'explanations', but the explanations won't really explain anything....

I tend to agree, but even if none of this were true and everything magical needed to work within a logical framework, I still don't see what is illogical about the Others, who "can do things with ice that we can't imagine and make substances of it," not leaving tracks in the snow.

[Melifeather]

Just to touch on something TOJ said with the original name of the WWs as being called "The Neverborn" so are we going to discuss that because that's a big wrench in the WWs being the product of human babies being transformed seeing as they would have to "be born" in the first place. I'm just saying.

I guess it depends upon why GRRM decided to not use the name "Neverborn". Perhaps the final creature no longer fit the name? And it could be a case where the original White Walkers are different than the ones made with Craster's sons. If they only use the baby for blood sacrifice, the resulting creature is something created from the baby's lifeforce and not through transformation.

I disagree. Magic in this series is super hand-wavy, not logical. For example, why was Dany fireproof? She didn't say any spells, and no sacrifice was made to grant her the power. She just needed to be Fireproof because the plot needed to be fantastical. Why does Mell need to have sex to make a demon? Do you think sex is somehow a fair payment for Shadow assassins? How come Mell/faceless men can keep glamours going indefinitely at no apparent cost. How the hell does skinchanging work? Do skinchangers have a magical Neural antennae in their bran that lets them pick up other organisms brain activity? How could such an antennae possibly communicate commands to another organism? Why do Shadow demons come from Vaginas, rather than any other place? How does anyone climb a latter made of fire? Fire has incredibly low denisty, so how could it support any weight at all? We've seen magic quite alot, but we have never been given any logical underpinnings of magic, and no such logic is likely to exist per GRRMS following statement....

I think if you’re going to do magic, it loses its magical qualities if it becomes nothing more than an alternate kind of science. It is more effective if it is something profoundly unknowable and wondrous, and something that can take your breath away.

Courtesy: http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/2007/05/24/george-rr-martin-on-magic-vs-science/

....Its actually a very good Q&A that discusses how GRRM uses magic in his writings, in general, and ASOIAF specifically. But the central idea is that magic doesn't make sense and it isn't ever going to be logical. There will be 'explanations', but the explanations won't really explain anything....

I had suggested before that if the spirit dwells inside the bones the skinchangers then have spirits that aren't restricted...their spirits are not imprisoned by bones but can leave the body at will. They are free to slip into the skin of another being as long as their original body yet lives.

If I remember the World book passage, the stone men weren't created by fire magic but were instead created by water magic. Didn't the Roynar call upon the mother river and cause a huge flood that destroyed the valley? Doesn't that sound awfully similar to the childrens 'Hammer' which was a great mass of water destroying the neck/dornish land bridge?

I'm sorry if I'm not being clear, because I am definitely agreeing that water magic is involved. The dragonlords were originally infected with greyscale through water magic and it trapped them underwater. However, it is also these dragonlords that are infecting others creating the stone men. The magic binding them is radiating outward.

To clarify, there are two separate entities. The stone men parallel the wights, but the dragonlords parallel the White Walkers. Their trapped fire is still smoldering under the water and causing the fog/mists, which is why I'm linking the fog/mists with fire.

For some reason, the dragonlords didn't get a different name like the White Walkers did, because they certainly need to be separated from all the stone men. Now anyone touched by the fog/mists or a stone man makes another stone man. And north of the Wall, the cold mists and the touch of a White Walker creates more wights.

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

Just to touch on something TOJ said with the original name of the WWs as being called "The Neverborn" so are we going to discuss that because that's a big wrench in the WWs being the product of human babies being transformed seeing as they would have to "be born" in the first place. I'm just saying.

No - I think it fits with the template we have for bloodmagic in ASOIAF. Old powers (aka, old gods) are strengthened and empowered by the sacrifice of life's blood. The old power, perhaps, is "neverborn" - and the vitality of the sacrificed life is used somehow to allow these powers to act and influence the physical world? Just thinking/typing out loud, here...

ETA: As in... [somebody's] death pays for [somebody else's] life. Though it may be truer to say that a life beyond death is never purely human life - but is, rather, a life shared in some respect by the power that preserved it.

ETA2: Hmm. I actually like that idea of the "shared" life... it sort of makes sense, and fits with the sort of bargaining (pacts) often made with the fae folk. "If I save this life, then I claim half of it as my own," that sort of thing. Resulting, perhaps, in the unfortunate circumstance of Lady Pole - or the oddly half-human Patchface?

[wolfmaid7]

I took it as the WW were never properly born but made instead from Craster's and other's babies.

If i squint...maybe i can see it but it could have different meanings .

I guess it depends upon why GRRM decided to not use the name "Neverborn". Perhaps the final creature no longer fit the name? And it could be a case where the original White Walkers are different than the ones made with Craster's sons. If they only use the baby for blood sacrifice, the resulting creature is something created from the baby's lifeforce and not through transformation.

I had suggested before that if the spirit dwells inside the bones the skinchangers then have spirits that aren't restricted...their spirits are not imprisoned by bones but can leave the body at will. They are free to slip into the skin of another being as long as their original body yet lives.

I'm sorry if I'm not being clear, because I am definitely agreeing that water magic is involved. The dragonlords were originally infected with greyscale through water magic and it trapped them underwater. However, it is also these dragonlords that are infecting others creating the stone men. The magic binding them is radiating outward.

To clarify, there are two separate entities. The stone men parallel the wights, but the dragonlords parallel the White Walkers. Their trapped fire is still smoldering under the water and causing the fog/mists, which is why I'm linking the fog/mists with fire.

For some reason, the dragonlords didn't get a different name like the White Walkers did, because they certainly need to be separated from all the stone men. Now anyone touched by the fog/mists or a stone man makes another stone man. And north of the Wall, the cold mists and the touch of a White Walker creates more wights.

First to touch on your last statement which is in line perfectly with what im saying about "The cold" "there is something in the mist" and it is it, that is doing the transformation.Always carried by the cold wind that rises always accompanying the Wights.We as of yet can't proove the WWs are somehow touching everything that dies North of the Wall and raising them. We can't proove as of yet that the WWs are responsible for the "White Cold/mists/fog"( Various names people call it). That to me is yet to be seen,the characters haven't deduced anything except that they are to blame.

To go back to the "Neverborn" i don't know,it just seems to be that the name is telling and explicit and true it could mean many things.Ok the WWs are the Neverborn,but what does that mean in context?

No - I think it fits with the template we have for bloodmagic in ASOIAF. Old powers (aka, old gods) are strengthened and empowered by the sacrifice of life's blood. The old power, perhaps, is "neverborn" - and the vitality of the sacrificed life is used somehow to allow these powers to act and influence the physical world? Just thinking/typing out loud, here...

Snowy i just had a flashback of look at a Salvador Dali painting or talking to the Arcitect form the Matrix. :unsure: .I don't know.Could be nothing in the name at all,i just found the possible connotative meaning behind it intriguing.

[Melifeather]

My theories are evolving, so bear with me....

What if we're looking at this all wrong? The common denominator between White Walkers/wights and trapped dragonlords/stone men are water magic. Maybe the White Walkers were invaders that practiced ice magic, just as the dragonlords practiced fire magic? Water was used in both instances to surround, capture and subdue the magic?

[Urrax2]

.... So the Others or "Neverborn" are the disembodied spirits themselves. Their semi-permanent home is within the possessed body of a skin-changer (which I believe has to be replaced from time to time), and the ice golems are the physical manifestation that travels beyond the Heart of Winter to interact with the world, as babies crawling around at the feet of a horde of zombies wouldn't be incredibly terrifying or useful....

So you make a distinction between Original Others, who are anchored to a solid body, and Popsicles, who are vehicles for Original Others' spirits when they go a-roaming? Well, I think I follow it. I don't agree with it, but I think I get it.

[Urrax2]

I disagree. Magic in this series is super hand-wavy, not logical. For example, why was Dany fireproof? She didn't say any spells, and no sacrifice was made to grant her the power. She just needed to be Fireproof because the plot needed to be fantastical. ...

Bad choice of words, sorry. I mean that magical events have rational/logical functions in the story, not that the magic itself is depicted as rational, logical, or scientific.

[alienarea]

So just to pick up where I left off with Urrax, I'm going to put my reply here to carry forward the conversation:

I think the Others are the disembodied spirits themselves, they are just finding an "anchor" if you will in the body of a human "sacrifice", much like they did in the weirwood trees themselves. However, "Sir Puddles" for instance was an Ice Golem created by one of these spirits to give it a presence to interact safely with the world. The obsidian only destroyed it's body of ice, not the spirit that was controlling it.

So the Others or "Neverborn" are the disembodied spirits themselves. Their semi-permanent home is within the possessed body of a skin-changer (which I believe has to be replaced from time to time), and the ice golems are the physical manifestation that travels beyond the Heart of Winter to interact with the world, as babies crawling around at the feet of a horde of zombies wouldn't be incredibly terrifying or useful.

So when the Night's King gave his soul over to the "Ice Queen", what it meant is that he allowed a disembodied spirit to anchor to his body.

Don't know how often I posted this:

White Walkers are Ghosts in the Snow.

[Black Crow]

I took it as the WW were never properly born but made instead from Craster's and other's babies.

:agree:

They are not born in the sense of a daddy white walker giving a mummy white walker a special hug so that she can grow a baby white walker in her tummy....

[Black Crow]

I guess it depends upon why GRRM decided to not use the name "Neverborn".

I doubt if he ever intended using that name. The way that text reads is that it reflects GRRM's own sales pitch not to readers but to his publisher.

"I have a great book mapped out... its going to include this mysterious lot in the snow, something like the Neverborn in that book by..."

[alienarea]

:agree:

They are not born in the sense of a daddy white walker giving a mummy white walker a special hug so that she can grow a baby white walker in her tummy....

A baby White Walker would be a White Crawler?

[Black Crow]

Gives a whole new meaning to not eating yellow [or brown] snow...

[wolfmaid7]

:agree:

They are not born in the sense of a daddy white walker giving a mummy white walker a special hug so that she can grow a baby white walker in her tummy....

That would be the point I'm making they were "neverborn" , hence the name.Though I think your right about GRRM not ever using the name.