[WoIaF Spoilers] Oily Stone: Yeen, Asshai, The Wall, 5 Forts, Hinges of the World

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

Hey Beth, I wanted to come back and follow up on your ideas here. 

As for big swords, when Robert dons his "horned god" hat, he becomes a giant. I think the Green Men (horned lords) were "giants" in the sense that they were tall - probably like the Lengi and Sarnori and Lorathi - 7-8 feet or so. So giant swords might not be an issue at all.

As for father-son and brother-brother conflicts, we have precedents for both, and at the Wall. Brandon the Breaker might have been the NK's brother, it's said (iirc), while the Bael the Bard and 79 sentinels stories give us father-son issues. Jon and Robb are set up for implied rivalry a few times, with Robb the King of Winter archetype and Jon the combined Lord Snow / AA archetype. Jon dreams of usurping Robb, of course, and their dynamic is compared to Stannis being in Robert's shadow. The three Baratheons give us brotherly rivalries also. 

I could definitely see either one applying. And the LH could be any damn person. NK? AA? BtB? Really hard to say. I'm keeping my mind open with that. 

As for the Ghost Grass I think it's probably just a reader clue to connect Dawn to the GEotD. The GG is like a field of Dawn swords - hard to think of a practical link there. "Dawn is just a common blade of grass at Asshai!" Probably not. But the ghost grass glowing with ghost light speaks of loss, almost like they are glowing tombstones to the lost people and magic of the GEotD. Separately, he notion of conparing Dawn to a plant might reinforce the idea that some amount of weirwood went into the sword. 

I have been collecting quotes about anything that shares the same symbolism with Dawn: the actual sunrise, the Wall, the Others, the Ghost Grass, weirwoods, the prophecy of the SWMTW, as well as the Eyrie trifecta of Alyssa's Tears, the Giant's Lance, and the Eyrie proper. I even have all these things organized into a big table, with a row for each set of shared symbols. I'm trying to figure out what George is saying to us with all of it - there are clues about Dawn coming from the GEotD, but also clues about Dawn coming from the North and being associated with icy things and Stark things. Not sure what to make of it yet. I may end up writing an either or theory, and presenting both lines of evidence. 

According to my idea Dawn came from both places: first from Dawnia and then becoming original Ice in the North. I agree it's got heavy symbol/imagery connections to both.

Damn, a spreadsheet? I do well to keep my notes semi-organized in folders. :-P

"LH could be any damn person" - haha, yeah, pretty much. I like BtB b/c of the built in CotF connection, but yeah, could be SSE or even AA. Who knows. 

 

[LmL]

According to my idea Dawn came from both places: first from Dawnia and then becoming original Ice in the North. I agree it's got heavy symbol/imagery connections to both.

Damn, a spreadsheet? I do well to keep my notes semi-organized in folders. :-P

"LH could be any damn person" - haha, yeah, pretty much. I like BtB b/c of the built in CotF connection, but yeah, could be SSE or even AA. Who knows. 

 

On top of that, the symbolism of someone dying and being reborn as an undead person and dying and being reborn through their children is almost exactly the same... sometimes "AA reborn" is a resurrected person, sometimes a child who carries on the legacy of their parents. Very confusing.

We also have dead babies, just to muddle things further. I'm actually going to do a whole section on dead babies, stillbirths, and abortion, because I think it's an important aspect of the Lightbringer / AA archetypal family. 

I made the table just the other day because I was just comparing so many things side by side... it makes it easy to see how closely two stories match. 

[Kushluk of Skagos]

I am currently re-reading The World of Ice and Fire, and re-examining the hypothesis that Deep ones were a previously existing race in Westeros, that for some reason, retreated from it to wherever they came from. From the text of the book, we can see numerous examples of their existence across the known world, and their seeming persistence in the Hundred Isles, where the inhabitants seem to be locked into some sort of subservient relationship to them. It is therefore possible that the the surges and retreats of this Deep One race are one and the same with those of the Others, the CoTF and Giants. 

BTW, I am extremely pleased that many forum posters are equally fascinated with this topic. There is certainly some weird stuff going on in this world, and it turns out the most normal stuff is the stuff on Westeros!

[Falcon2908]

5 hours ago, Kushluk of Skagos said:

I am currently re-reading The World of Ice and Fire, and re-examining the hypothesis that Deep ones were a previously existing race in Westeros, that for some reason, retreated from it to wherever they came from. From the text of the book, we can see numerous examples of their existence across the known world, and their seeming persistence in the Hundred Isles, where the inhabitants seem to be locked into some sort of subservient relationship to them. It is therefore possible that the the surges and retreats of this Deep One race are one and the same with those of the Others, the CoTF and Giants. 

BTW, I am extremely pleased that many forum posters are equally fascinated with this topic. There is certainly some weird stuff going on in this world, and it turns out the most normal stuff is the stuff on Westeros!

I wonder where the Westerosi deep ones are? Beneath the Iron Isles, in the Drowned God's watery halls?

[LmL]

5 hours ago, Kushluk of Skagos said:

I am currently re-reading The World of Ice and Fire, and re-examining the hypothesis that Deep ones were a previously existing race in Westeros, that for some reason, retreated from it to wherever they came from. From the text of the book, we can see numerous examples of their existence across the known world, and their seeming persistence in the Hundred Isles, where the inhabitants seem to be locked into some sort of subservient relationship to them. It is therefore possible that the the surges and retreats of this Deep One race are one and the same with those of the Others, the CoTF and Giants. 

BTW, I am extremely pleased that many forum posters are equally fascinated with this topic. There is certainly some weird stuff going on in this world, and it turns out the most normal stuff is the stuff on Westeros!

Yeah, totally agree, fishy people on the Isle of Toads, Thousand Islands, Three Sisters, Ironborn myth, and merlings and selkies myths all over lower east and west coast of Westeros. Also at Lorath. Seems clear there is SOME kind of fishy humanoid... the question is, will they come up in the main story, apart from references to folktales? The one sign of that is "dead things in the water" in Cotter Pyke's letter. 

Should be interesting to find out. And ditto on the weird stuff.

[TheReal_Rebel]

On August 12, 2015 at 8:14 AM, Free Northman Reborn said:

Someone recently referred to Martin's previous series Tuff Voyaging in another thread. I've never paid attention to his non ASOIAF works before, but went to the Wikipedia page on the Tuff series. And I was amazed at its major storyline.

 

Basically, from what I could gather from the overview, it is all about some space trader who finds a bio-engineering Seed ship and travels from planet to planet making various bio-engineering adaptations to native species on various worlds. He does so for a variety of reasons, from combatting sea monsters that threaten the land based species on one planet, to breeding some type of cat-hybrid fighting pit monsters for the noble families of another planet, who measure their prestige by who has the most fearsome fighting pit creature, to other reasons like combatting a star that periodically brings a plague to a certain world every certain number of years (sound similar to periodic abnormal seasons to anyone?)

 

The point is, we have seen ample evidence of ancient bio-engineering on Planetos. The World Book is rife with it. From hybrid men in Sothoryos, to hybrid creatures from the Sea threatening the Mazemakers of Lorath, to hybrid Deep Ones creating the Black Stone monuments, to the most important of all - hybrid wyverns and firewyrms creating dragons.

 

In one of the Tuff stories - I think the one where they breed hybrid cat monsters for noble houses' fighting pits - the monsters eventually become so powerful that they wipe out prey animals on the planet, thus leading to their own extinction. Again, this is quite similar to the idea that Dragons soon became the dominant species of Planetos, to the point where the Long Night was needed to wipe out their prey animals thus leading most dragons to starve to death.

 

In any case, to me the evidence is overwhelming that Planetos's prehistory is based on rampant bio-engineering gone mad, to the point that it led to some type of catastrophe. Maybe the Long Night was needed to wipe out all the unnatural creatures borne from the competing bio-engineering arms races of the elder civilizations. And the only creatures that seem interested in preserving nature's balance, are the Children of the Forest - who may well have had a hand in causing the Long Night to counter the mad bio-magic of the Asshai'i, Deep Ones and other elder races.

 

To me, Martin may have replaced bio-technology with bio-magic, but the result was the same. An out of control process of tampering with nature, creating monstrous hybrid species and tipping the natural balance to the point of needing some kind of Long Night to set it right again.

 

 

What is being balanced when you have the beginning of a new Long Night in first Chapter of ASOIAF while the world is mostly made of humans, a few Giants and CotF and three dragons?

I'd say our present day could use some White Walker balancing, and are likely to get one.

[Kushluk of Skagos]

15 hours ago, LmL said:

Yeah, totally agree, fishy people on the Isle of Toads, Thousand Islands, Three Sisters, Ironborn myth, and merlings and selkies myths all over lower east and west coast of Westeros. Also at Lorath. Seems clear there is SOME kind of fishy humanoid... the question is, will they come up in the main story, apart from references to folktales? The one sign of that is "dead things in the water" in Cotter Pyke's letter. 

Should be interesting to find out. And ditto on the weird stuff.

The "dead things in the water" always confused me in a way that caused me to simply ignore the sentence. Let's think about it for a minute with what we knew while reading up to Dance. 

1. Others make wights, which are undead. Wights, it seems, cannot pass the wall simply by walking through it. They are not animated while they are inside the wall.

2. By the time the Night's Watch goes north, there are a lot of wights. They seem to be directed by the Others to a degree, but also they are just dangerous zombies that will generally kill anyone they encounter. They are generally headed south.

3. No data shows if they can swim, or if they can just walk beneath the sea. Logic seems to argue they cannot, since if they could, the Others could just accompany them underneath the waves and ignore the wall. In fact, the whole building of the wall in the first place would be pointless, since the Others/Wights are essentially amphibious. 

4. Cotter Pyke has seen wights. He may well have just said wights in the water, but no, he rather said things, indicating they are not humanoid or he didn't recognize what they were. 

OK. So wights in the water can be tentatively rejected as a hypothesis of "Dead things in the water." So now we must look at more exotic possibilities.

5. The dead things are krackens. I considered this first because Cotter Pyke is an Iron islander and it makes sense for him to be keen enough to keep his eyes on the water and notice unusual activity. Krakens get mentioned a lot, and exist as giant squid, etc. in the real world. It is not a leap to believe Westeros has them too, just maybe larger or more threatening. What is significant is that the "things" are "dead." Okay, so that means he saw zombie Krackens? The Others kill krackens and zombify them? They others can zombify other species that are not human and bend them to their will? This is very strange.

6. The dead things in the water may be any of the other sporadically mentioned sea-dwellers, such as mermen or selkies, but we know very little about these races, and any affinity or emnity they may have towards others, should they exist. That said, for the reasons outlined above, it does seem Others fare poorly inside liquid water. In fact, the hammer of the waters may not have been meant to keep humans out, but keep Others in. . .

Now we have new data from The World of Ice and Fire, which allows additional speculation.

7. Evidence strongly supports the existence of some amphibious race in various areas of Planetos, expecially Lorath, the Thousand Isles, and the Isle of Toads. For whatever reason, these waterfolk retreated to the depths or died out. Perhaps they are the reason why others cannot freely pass the sea to westeros, not so much because they are magically barred from doing so, but because these realms are strongly guarded by their own elemental races with their own Kingdoms and societies that prohibit it. As a result, the others are simultaneously at war with the seafolk as they seek to push south and exterminate organic life. As a resulk, what Cotter Pyke saw and did not recognize was not a dead kracken but a dead fishfolk, killed in one of the battles between the others, perhaps testing a sea route, and the sea peoples who want nothing to do with them.

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Kushluk of Skagos said:

3. No data shows if they can swim, or if they can just walk beneath the sea. Logic seems to argue they cannot, since if they could, the Others could just accompany them underneath the waves and ignore the wall. In fact, the whole building of the wall in the first place would be pointless, since the Others/Wights are essentially amphibious. 

Just because the wights can traverse the water doesn't mean the Others can. I suspect that having their army swim long distances to mount an invasion just isn't any more practical for the Others than it is for humans. 

[Kushluk of Skagos]

29 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Just because the wights can traverse the water doesn't mean the Others can. I suspect that having their army swim long distances to mount an invasion just isn't any more practical for the Others than it is for humans. 

I agree with you, but I guess my answer is: Why? They don't seem to need to eat or breathe, since they are all semi-undead, so the practical explanation is out. What's next is that it is a magical barrier for them, or that they will be opposed by forces too strong for them to easily overcome. As an army, they will strike at the targets that are the weakest link: humans on land rather than sea beasties. 

Many people have also wondered why they don't just freeze whatever part of the sea they need to cross. This might be for the same reason, they expect some opposition, are magically blocked from doing so, or their magic is simply not powerful enough (yet). 

Edit: I am reminded of that patchface quote: "Malegorn: Lord Snow, who will lead this ranging?Jon: Are you offering yourself, ser?
Malegorn: Do I look so foolish?
Patchface: I will lead it! We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh."

I dunno, something going on underneath the sea that is more complex than animated wights. I think the others are able to wightify sea-dwellers in a manner similar to what they do to Humans and CoTF. 

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

Has anyone else thought that oily black stone might not be stone per se, but the petrified wood of the black Shade of the Evening trees?

[hiemal]

6 hours ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

Has anyone else thought that oily black stone might not be stone per se, but the petrified wood of the black Shade of the Evening trees?

Not until you mentioned it, but that would be AWESOME! The symmetry it would bring and its explanatory power definitely make it worth thinking about.

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

15 hours ago, hiemal said:

Not until you mentioned it, but that would be AWESOME! The symmetry it would bring and its explanatory power definitely make it worth thinking about.

Yeah it just occurred to me while I was responding to you on my other thread...it would really explain a lot, I think.

Possible symmetry connection:

Euron, who drinks Shade of the Evening - grew up around the OBS Seastone Chair and Drowned God worshipping family - missing one eye - blue eye & black hair - possibly tapped into a "dark weirwood net" / vs / Bloodraven, also missing one eye - red eye & white hair - grew up around weirwoods and Old Gods-worshipping family - tapped into the weirwood net and has presumably drunk the weirwood version of Shade of the Evening as Bran has.

 

[hiemal]

8 hours ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

8 hours ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

Yeah it just occurred to me while I was responding to you on my other thread...it would really explain a lot, I think.

Possible symmetry connection:

Euron, who drinks Shade of the Evening - grew up around the OBS Seastone Chair and Drowned God worshipping family - missing one eye - blue eye & black hair - possibly tapped into a "dark weirwood net" / vs / Bloodraven, also missing one eye - red eye & white hair - grew up around weirwoods and Old Gods-worshipping family - tapped into the weirwood net and has presumably drunk the weirwood version of Shade of the Evening as Bran has.

 

I like it. Euron is clearly the "champion" of whatever power works its will through OBS.

One possible alternative to the original hypotheses, however:

What if, instead of OBS being fossilized Shade-of-the-Evening wood, Shade-of-the-Evening grew from trees grown in soil tainted by the OBS? The issue of quantity is the only stumbling block I can think of for your idea- as much as I hate to give up the symmetry of a second fossilized wood thrown into the alchemical equation I can't think of way to produce it in sufficient quantites to account for some of the massive structures we've been teased with.

 

[LmL]

One thing I noticed while researching my new podcast episode is that the House of the Undying "drinks the morning sun," just as the oily black stone of Asshai "drinks the light." And just as Oathkeeper and Widow's Wail "drink the sun" from the coloring, and just as the moon meteors "drank the fire of the sun." Oh and just as Lightbringer drank Nissa Nissa's blood and soul. And then there those black, soul-drinking weapons of the ancient Ironborn. Even the Dornishman's black blade has a bite like a leech, which sucks blood.

Thirsty swords, thirsty stone. 

But speaking of the HOTU specifically, they are shadows themselves living in a palace of shadows. Their building drinks the light, which I think is a tip-off of the inverted fire magic that comes from the black meteors and Asshai by the Shadow. The idea of the Warlock trees being poisoned by meteors makes a certain amount of sense... hard to say but basically "drinking the light" or "drinking the sun" means shadow magic of some kind. Which is exactly how I am seeing the black moon meters and the oily black stone.

My working theory is that the oily black stone can be either moon meteor stone directly, or perhaps pre-existing earth stone which was burned in a fiery moon meteor impact. Comet impacts can cook the air at over 10,000 agrees, hot enough to melt metal. It's really fucking gnarly, worse than people realize. I think Asshai was built before the Long Night moon disaster, and it was poisoned somehow... whether by a moon meteor upriver in the shadowlands, or by firestorm such as I was just describing. It seems too big to be built from meteor stone.

Here's the world's largest found intact meteor was 66 tons from Namibia:

Not enough to build a castle out of really. 

[LmL]

Theoretically I guess there could be a very large meteor at the bottom of the ocean, one that didn't smash apart because it landed in the sea (the sea dragon which drowns whole islands, of course). 

Of course, since we don't know of any type of humanoid that can go down to the--

Oh my god. The squishers were the first freemasons. 

[sciteacher]

1 hour ago, LmL said:

Theoretically I guess there could be a very large meteor at the bottom of the ocean, one that didn't smash apart because it landed in the sea (the sea dragon which drowns whole islands, of course).

 

The ocean would have to extremely deep to cushion the impact enough to make any difference. It's not the meteor striking a surface that causes the crater indentation, it's the air wave moving ahead of the meteor. When the meteor actually strikes the crater in the earth/ocean it shatters and particles of ground and meteor are thrown into the air.

(Of course GRRM can have asteroids in his universe work however he pleases).

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

Shade trees as poisoned or otherwise tampered-with weirwoods makes a lot of sense IMO.

I mean, white trees with red leaves are an actual real thing in this world; black trees with blue leaves are obviously unnatural.

Perhaps, as heart trees are fed and activated with fresh red blood, Shade trees are fed with "black blood,"/poisoned blood/bloodstone/"moon blood" as @LmL has been theorizing about? Giving moon meteorites and Shade wood similar properties?

I also thought, perhaps there is a Shade grove under the sea near the Iron Islands. Re-reading the Aeron chapter I noticed the emphasis on driftwood cudgels, that the priests are "armed by the sea". Which brings up the idea of wood that was in/under the sea being purposely given up onto the shore as a sacred thing. The cudgels are noted to be very hard, perhaps pointing to petrification--which would be quite difficult underwater for natural wood. I don't think the color of the cudgels is noted.

We know sea levels have changed since the Dawn Age. perhaps a drowned Shade grove--perhaps a drowned weirwood grove that was Shade-ed by a meteorite--is functionally the Drowned God? Makes an interesting parallel with the Old Gods. Old Gods being largely about harmony and balance, Drowned God very violent/greedy/expansionist.

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

12 hours ago, hiemal said:

I like it. Euron is clearly the "champion" of whatever power works its will through OBS.

One possible alternative to the original hypotheses, however:

What if, instead of OBS being fossilized Shade-of-the-Evening wood, Shade-of-the-Evening grew from trees grown in soil tainted by the OBS? The issue of quantity is the only stumbling block I can think of for your idea- as much as I hate to give up the symmetry of a second fossilized wood thrown into the alchemical equation I can't think of way to produce it in sufficient quantites to account for some of the massive structures we've been teased with.

Re: quantity

We don't actually know how common Shade trees may have been in the past. IMO the Undying are holding on to certain elements of the Great Empire of the Dawn. Weirwoods and Shade trees might actually have been very numerous in Dawnia, but were destroyed. If they were a source of power it would make sense to target them. (And I do wonder if the ghost grass marks a spot where weirwoods once grew--a very large area if so.)

The things built of OBS are very ancient, and may not have been built at the same time. And it doesn't really make more sense for it to be meteorite stone, or stone that was enchanted with sacrificial kingsblood (that would be thousands of gallons of kingsblood). At least wood is a renewable resource. Really it's hard to imagine *what* kind of material could be had in sufficient quantities to build Asshai.

Yeen is tricky because the stone is described as massive blocks that would take a dozen elephants to move. Hard to imagine wood in single chunks that large. But if Shade trees could be made to grow, say, as large as a redwood tree...and the blocks of wood petrified...it's not impossible.

 

I could be wrong. The quantity and chunk-size issue certainly bears thinking about. Hard to say without knowing more about how numerous/large Shade trees were in the ancient past.

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

PS I think it's also worth noting that Harrenhall was built with a large amount of weirwood used as beams. And it has a very evil reputation, said to be haunted (like Yeen) and outsized proportions reminiscent of Asshai.

This may speak to weirwood having the ability to become darker and Shade-like in nature after being cut and used for building.

[LmL]

1 hour ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

Shade trees as poisoned or otherwise tampered-with weirwoods makes a lot of sense IMO.

I mean, white trees with red leaves are an actual real thing in this world; black trees with blue leaves are obviously unnatural.

Perhaps, as heart trees are fed and activated with fresh red blood, Shade trees are fed with "black blood,"/poisoned blood/bloodstone/"moon blood" as @LmL has been theorizing about? Giving moon meteorites and Shade wood similar properties?

I also thought, perhaps there is a Shade grove under the sea near the Iron Islands. Re-reading the Aeron chapter I noticed the emphasis on driftwood cudgels, that the priests are "armed by the sea". Which brings up the idea of wood that was in/under the sea being purposely given up onto the shore as a sacred thing. The cudgels are noted to be very hard, perhaps pointing to petrification--which would be quite difficult underwater for natural wood. I don't think the color of the cudgels is noted.

We know sea levels have changed since the Dawn Age. perhaps a drowned Shade grove--perhaps a drowned weirwood grove that was Shade-ed by a meteorite--is functionally the Drowned God? Makes an interesting parallel with the Old Gods. Old Gods being largely about harmony and balance, Drowned God very violent/greedy/expansionist.

I would really love to get the Patchface or Aeron POV of the drowned forest, that would be fucking wicked. 

I have been interpreting the idea of the Ironborn being armed from the sea as referring to those black soul drinking weapons they ancient Ironborn were said to have. The Grey King supposedly carried a burring brand from the sea, and the burning brand has been used as a falling star symbol (Jon's ACOK chapter where he climbs the Skirling Pass). George is creating a wood / meteor parallel on the Iron Islands - the pale stone of Nagga's ribs are really weirwood, and the real "sea dragon" is a moon meteor... but he's also created the idea of boats as sea dragons, on multiple occasions. Therefore, the bones of the sea dragon can refer to either petrified wood or moon meter stone. Even better, the kings of the Ironborn have two thrones - the Grey King's throne of Nagga's fangs - again, this could refer to weirwood as Nagga's bones do, or to a throne made of a sea dragon meteor. The other throne is the seastone chair, an oily black meteor (according to my hypothesis).  So, with both thrones, moon meteors are implied. They parallel each other.  Grey King wore a crown of Nagga's teeth - which could be seen as a weirwood crown, implying greenseer status.... but later Iron Kings wore black iron crowns sometimes, and driftwood (in imitation of the weirwood crown) at other times.  

So, the Grey King has a burning brand, the Ironborn have driftwood cudgels "as hard as iron," and the ancient Ironborn had foul black soul-drinking weapons (which must have been iron or meteorite iron, one or the other... soul-drinking makes me think of Lightbringer, which drank Nissa's soul). The Grey King possessed Nagga's fire as a thrall - does this refer to burning weirwoods, or to possessing the fire of the black meteors, which makes sense of the Ironborn have something to do with Azor Ahai's migration / invasion from the east? Again and again, trees and meteors are conflated on the Iron Islands. I've been interpreting this to mean that greenseers took down the moon, as is implied in the official story of the Hammer of the Waters. I already believe that Azor Ahai was a greenseer - a corrupted or naughty greenseer if you will. I also think it implies that greenseers used black meteor stone to transform themselves by fire, kind of like Mel is doing. That's why the thunderbolt of the Grey King sets a tree ablaze, and why burning trees and burning wood seems to constantly create the illusion of fiery dancers and sorcerers. The fire transforms the wood or trees (greenseers) into fiery sorcerers, that's the picture I am seeing. So that's two ways that trees interact with the meteors - greenseers caused the disaster, then transformed via fire with the resulting meteors. 

But of course, I could be wrong about some of that, and maybe there's some other aspect to the relationship between wood and fire. I'm certainly interested in hearing ideas about that. I've seen bunch of instances of fire transforming trees, like I said, but I'm not sure I've seen that transformation depicted in a way that makes me think of the Warlock trees - it's always fiery sorcerers, not shadowy sorcerers which are produced. 

There is a black wood theme going on which does apply to greenseers, and maybe this is where we should look. Lord Blackwood sits in a black wood chair (throne), as does Walder Frey. Jaime's chair in the LC chambers atop the white sword tower is the one thing in the room that is not white, and it is from under this black wood chair that he grabs Oathkeeper to give to Brienne. Again, I've been interpreting black wood (and black stags) to refer to undead greenseers or corrupted greenseers, which isn't too far from meteors creating shade trees through toxic magic. I suspect that the shade trees themselves are actually not that important, and simply act as symbols to tell us about the corrupt greenseers, which are more important. The Undying are blue shadows, kind of like the Others are white shadows, so maybe the message is that corrupted greenseers have something to do with the Others... an idea which I already subscribe to. It's always a trick to figure out if something - like the Warlcok trees - are themselves important, or if they are really just telling us about something more important. The Warrior's Sons, for example, don't really matter, but they are packed with clues about the Others. I suspect it's the same with the shade trees, but I'm far from certain. 

In any case, the HOTU drinks the light, and Oathkeeper and WW drink the light. Oathkeeper is tied to the black wood via Jamie's chair, while the HOTU is full of black wood. The HOTU building is stone that looks like a serpent, implying a meteor dragon; OK & WW are dragon swords which symbolize moon meteors. Now, lots of things have some version of this set of symbols, so we have to consider the HOTU and the two swords made from Ned's Ice within the wider milieu of symbols, but the point is, black wood is a part of that set.