Will bran leave the cave?

[Ibbison from Ibben]

Bran must leave the cave at some point. He can't bring Summer back to the world without leaving.

I fully agree with those that claim that the caves could not possibly be a path to a point south of the Wall. Caves are created by water flowing downhill; the idea that a natural path through caves could lead from the Cotf cave to  a point south of the Wall (much less to Winterfell) is ridiculous. Tunnels would be required, and tunnels require maintenance, which doesn't seem to be available. A more likely scenario would be that the caves connect to either the Milkwater or Antler River. The Milkwater, in particular, seems to be impervious to freezing, which would provide a convenient route to the south for Bran and Co.

Bran does not require a physical connection to a weirwood tree in order to access the weirwood net. This is definitively demonstrated in ADWD Bran III. His dreams of the past as seen through the Winterfell Heart Tree come when he is in his sleeping chamber, when he is not in contact with the weirwood roots. End of discussion. Moreover, we are told that the CotF greenseers traveled to the Isle of Faces to attend the meeting that resulted in the Pact. That would be terribly difficult to accomplish if they were permanently connected to trees.

GRRM spent a great deal of effort establishing Bran's character, very little of which can be transmitted through a weirwood connection. I strongly doubt that he wasted his time. In order to fully impact the story, Bran must appear in person as the leader of the North; as the King in the North, who he is by right. 

Bran's last POV chapter occurred at about the halfway point of ADWD. We haven't heard from him since (with the exception of his contacts with Theon through the Winterfell Heart Tree.) There is probably a reason for that. Not only will Bran leave the cave, he most likely already has. He should be nearing Castle Black as TWoW opens. 

 

 

 

 

[Lord Varys]

Ibbison,

well, if Bran leaves the cave to return south I'll consider all his chapters since the end of ACoK a huge waste of time. Why the hell couldn't George put those stupid greenseer training guy not just beneath Winterfell? He could have made the greenseer some ancient Stark and skip those irrelevant travelogue chapters we got in ASoS and ADwD, and instead focus on Bran's greenseer training throughout those two books, actually giving us some insight into his training.

How the ancient greenseers traveled we don't really know, nor do we know if there are different rules for Children and human greenseer (could be that the former remain longer mobile than the latter). It is entirely possibly that those ancient and powerful greenseers had no scruples permanently taking over the bodies of their fellow Children/First Men and then letting them believe those guys were greenseers.

Right now Bran is indeed not yet physically connected to a weirwood, but that might change soon. We also do not know what amount of power he has in his present state - watching stuff is well and good, but it doesn't make a real difference if we ignore that he could become info dump guy. Who is to say that a greenseer who actually wants to remote control the trees and use them as weapons in war can do that without being connected to them?

Not to mention that Bran physically doing anything goes completely against the present state of body - a cripple boy in the midst of the worst winter in living memory - as well as against the very nature of his magical powers. If he becomes stronger and stronger he does not have to leave the cave at all, he can be everyone and everywhere. If Hodor is just the beginning, he may eventually be able to overpower and dominate the minds of 'normal humans', too, even those who are very far away.

Why the hell should he risk his previous (and useless) physical body if he doesn't have to? I agree that there must be a reason as to why there were no additional Bran chapters in ADwD but my guess is that there are other reasons for this (especially since it seems that George had already finished a additional Bran chapter when ADwD was published).

The idea that Bran is already on his way down south makes little sense in comparison to any other POV character jump we got in this series up until this point. We always meet POV X where we can expect him or her to be if we consider the last chapter/information we have of him or her. If Bran was leaving the cave and Bloodraven his last chapter should have been similar to, say, the last Davos chapter in ADwD where George gave us a hint about his future mission/destination. In his case it would not be unlikely if the next Davos chapter showed him on Skagos (although I don't think that's going to be the case, I think the next Davos chapter will take place on the ship that's bringing Davos to Skagos).

[Damsel in Distress]

So will bran ever leave the cave?

I don't know.  It's cruel to stick him there for his lifespan but it's in keeping with the Starks all ending up dying and living in the physical form of direwolves. 

[Curled Finger]

Is it so unthinkable that there may be an actual vehicle for transporting Bran?   Let's not forget Ygritte telling Jon there may even be people living in those caves, Grendel's Children are weeping and still looking for a way back to the surface.   Wonder what cool magic those guys will have.   Perhaps they've come up with something useful to Bran.   And honestly, Meera's upset, Jojen's sulking.  Bran will do whatever he can to return them to their home if that's what they really need to do.  Hodor will do whatever Bran does.  I just can't remember if Summer is in the cave or outside the cave--with his creepy pack.   Varamyr is in the Old Wolf--he's wiley and treacherous and won't help with anything.  Where is Summer's pack? 

[All-Seeing Aye]

I'm split on this question.  On the one hand, I think it's clear that he is being groomed as Bloodraven's successor as 'the last greenseer'.  On the other hand, Bloodraven was able to live a full life outside of the cave before staying in it became his fate.

I could maybe envision a scenario where Bran and co. return to the North via Gorne's Way.  Still, having gotten to the far north it would seem somewhat of a reversal to suddenly head south again just as winter is coming.  We will need some sort of POV to keep learning about magic, warging, the greensight, the Others, and, of course, the revelation that R+L=J.  All of these revelations are unfortunately best accomplished with Bloodraven in the cave.

It's a shame, because I would really like for a full Stark reunion in person.  So I suppose I can see ways out of the cave but I'm not sure that's the sort of story GRRM is writing for Bran.

[HoodedCrow]

I think it will be awkward for Bran to remain an uberGod at the end of the books. Perhaps he will keep in touch via Meera, Hodor and summer, as they return to Winterfell via the cave system, and then do a final warging, when his mission to save the world by using his new knowledge is complete.

[Ser Hyle]

Come on folks. I am surprised that there are so many people that actually believe Bran will be stuck in the cave permanently.

The cave is his training montage. How long will it take? Well, it was supposed to take 5 years. Hence the original 5 year gap. Just like Arya's Faceless Man training was supposed to take 5 years, and Jon would have had 5 years to learn how to be a Commander at the Wall.

Now that the 5 year gap had to be scrapped, how long will it take? Martin answered it for us in Dance. Bran himself asked the question and was answered: "Mayhaps 5 years, mayhaps 1", by Bloodraven himself, if I recall correctly.

Clearly the 5 year training period went out the window with the 5 year gap, just like Cersei's intended 5 year rule of havoc in King's Landing went out in the same way, as evidenced by Littlefinger's little comment to Sansa: "I thought it would take Cersei at least 5 years to destroy the Throne, but she has done it far faster than even I imagined." Or something along those lines.

So after 1 year, Bran will be trained up, and he will make his way to Winterfell, which is where all the surviving Starks will reunite. How will he do it? Through the tunnels. Hodor will carry him, and Meera and Summer will accompany him. Probably Leaf too.

Do you honestly think that Meera, Hodor and Summer are going to be stuck in the cave forever too?

The tunnels will either take them to Hardhome, from where they will take ship to the South, or to a location close to the Wall. And if necessary, they can link up with Coldhands again to guide them the rest of the way. In fact, if they can raise Coldhands as a "good" Wight, who is to say that Bran, once he is in the fullness of his powers, couldn't raise a hundred Coldhands types to defend him all the way to the Wall?

Bran will join a tree eventually, sure. But it will be the Heart Tree in Winterfell's godswood. Then he will become the eternal Prince of Winterfell, watching over future Stark rulers for generations to come.

When's Bloodraven's training over? It's been longer than 5 years... maybe he keeps failing the final exams?

[Ser Hyle]

I have to emphatically disagree.

The idea, which I've written quite extensively about but is far from being my own, has appropriate narrative foundation.

Without completely overrunning this forum with copy-and-pasted essays on the topic, the reason that Bran will return to Winterfell is quite simply that Bran is the Fisher King, (x) (x).

The means by which he will return is Gorne's Way. Gorne's Way is a thing.

“There are hundreds o’ caves in these hills and down deep they all connect. There’s even a way under your Wall. Gorne’s Way.”-Jon, ASOS

It brings to mind a transcription of a wildling song in Maester Herryk’s History of the Kings-Beyond-the-Wall, regarding the brothers Gendel and Gorne. They were called upon to mediate a dispute between a clan of children and a family of giants over the possession of a cavern. Gendel and Gorne, it is said, ultimately resolved the matter through trickery, making both sides disavow any desire for the cavern, after the brothers discovered it was a part of a greater chain of caverns that eventually passed beneath the Wall-TWOIAF

“Men should not go wandering in this place,” Leaf warned them. “The river you hear is swift and black, and flows down and down to a sunless sea. And there are passages that go even deeper, bottomless pits and sudden shafts, forgotten ways that lead to the very center of the earth. Even my people have not explored them all, and we have lived here for a thousand thousand of your man-years.”-Bran, ADWD

 The girl child was waiting for them, standing on one end of a natural bridge above a yawning chasm. Down below in the darkness, Bran heard the sound of rushing water. An underground river.

Gorne's Way has similarities to the many other sudden "shockers", such as the Red Wedding, or Bran's fall. Carefully foreshadowed in a way that still catches off guard and is very a moving event, but doesn't just appear out of nowhere so that we don't feel cheated, as he has explained in a Vanity Fair interview.

Now, a reasonable retort to this idea is that if Gorne's Way exists, then how come Bran didn't use it to get to the Cave in the first place? Because a significant part its length is a river, and that river only goes south.

This idea is furthered by one of Bran's weirwood visions, which when analyzed carefully is revealed to be a part of the same story Ygritte told Jon of Brandon Daughterless:

This woman sounds like the Stark daughter Bael the Bard “seduced”:

There seems to be a link between the strange black pool, and the “swift black river” underneath the the Cave of the Three-Eyed-Crow. The godswood, like all of Winterfell, is warmed by hot springs, but the pool is described as “cool” even in the depths of summer. Osha playfully suggests that there might be something significant at the bottom, if there’s a bottom at all in the strictest sense:

The placement of the vision also fits in terms of time for it be the Stark daughter: before Ned’s generation and after the “A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows” who sounds like the Brandon Snow, Torrhens’s brother who wanted to use weirwood arrows and stealth to slay the dragons (”there is power in a living wood, a power as strong as fire”), thus after the Conquest. Brandon the Daughterless' title was lord, not king.

What Ygritte suggested was right: the Stark daughter didn’t love Bael, as he always boasted in his songs. He “stole” her in the classic Free Folk fashion and raped her. She hid in the crypts (or otherwise used them to return home with Gorne’s Way) and then emerged from the dark pool in the godswood and prayed that her son would avenger her by killing Bael, which is exactly what he did.

In line with Winterfell's other connections to Camelot and Avalon, the resting place of kings and their swords, its waters are a magical source of healing. The Fisher King myth supposes a supernatural connection between king and kingdom, and so long as one is ailing so does the other. Bran's fall from the "Broken Tower" broke him, which did not cause but is symbolically connected to the coming of the Winter and the ruin of the North. "Bran" is a welsh name meaning "Raven"; the first incarnation of the FK was Bran the Blessed, who after defeating an army of undead with his half brother, but was mortally wounded, and in honor of his promise to always protect the realm, ravens are kept in the Tower of London ("There must always be a raven in the tower"="There must always be a Stark in Winterfell"). Bran's last vision in the weirwood is the ultimatum that shows him what a Stark in Winterfell must do to harness the power of that "monstrous stone tree" which "belongs to the old gods". The narrator switches from calling him "the broken boy" to, for the first time, "Brandon." So, that moment where he emerges through that cool black pool in the godswood will be both a moment of coming home, the return of the lost prince, but also healing.

It will likely happen late TWOW (even in the last few chapters), or early ADWD, and the form could be somewhat different, but Bran's return and Gorne's Way will absolutely figure into the story.

This was all awesome and provided lots to think about - and thank you for that, but then you had to go and use "absolutely" right at the end. I don't even care if this ends up playing out just like you describe, there's nothing absolute about this theory right now.

[purple-eyes]

I do not think bran will stay in cave forever. 

He will go out and do stuff but eventually he will go back to that cave and remain as mystery. 

He will not merge into tree in winterfell. 

That will cause conflicts of ruling. 

[Neolaina]

Bran will come across those saucy, oft-mentioned Ice Spiders in Gorne's way.

Calling it now.

#IceShelob #CirithUnderground

[A spoon of knife and fork]

To OP: I don't give a flying patiootie about "King in the north" or any other political entity in Westeros for that matter.  What is important is for Bran to become a completely badass wizard and do something amazing in the war for the dawn.  Like warg all the wolves in westeros.  Or a dragon.  Or all the wights.  Something. 

i would be very surprised (disappointed even) if he ever goes south of the wall again.  He might leave the cave, probably using something he wargs to ride on.

[evita mgfs]

I have to emphatically disagree.

The idea, which I've written quite extensively about but is far from being my own, has appropriate narrative foundation.

Without completely overrunning this forum with copy-and-pasted essays on the topic, the reason that Bran will return to Winterfell is quite simply that Bran is the Fisher King, (x) (x).

The means by which he will return is Gorne's Way. Gorne's Way is a thing.

“There are hundreds o’ caves in these hills and down deep they all connect. There’s even a way under your Wall. Gorne’s Way.”-Jon, ASOS

It brings to mind a transcription of a wildling song in Maester Herryk’s History of the Kings-Beyond-the-Wall, regarding the brothers Gendel and Gorne. They were called upon to mediate a dispute between a clan of children and a family of giants over the possession of a cavern. Gendel and Gorne, it is said, ultimately resolved the matter through trickery, making both sides disavow any desire for the cavern, after the brothers discovered it was a part of a greater chain of caverns that eventually passed beneath the Wall-TWOIAF

“Men should not go wandering in this place,” Leaf warned them. “The river you hear is swift and black, and flows down and down to a sunless sea. And there are passages that go even deeper, bottomless pits and sudden shafts, forgotten ways that lead to the very center of the earth. Even my people have not explored them all, and we have lived here for a thousand thousand of your man-years.”-Bran, ADWD

 The girl child was waiting for them, standing on one end of a natural bridge above a yawning chasm. Down below in the darkness, Bran heard the sound of rushing water. An underground river.

Gorne's Way has similarities to the many other sudden "shockers", such as the Red Wedding, or Bran's fall. Carefully foreshadowed in a way that still catches off guard and is very a moving event, but doesn't just appear out of nowhere so that we don't feel cheated, as he has explained in a Vanity Fair interview.

Now, a reasonable retort to this idea is that if Gorne's Way exists, then how come Bran didn't use it to get to the Cave in the first place? Because a significant part its length is a river, and that river only goes south.

This idea is furthered by one of Bran's weirwood visions, which when analyzed carefully is revealed to be a part of the same story Ygritte told Jon of Brandon Daughterless:

This woman sounds like the Stark daughter Bael the Bard “seduced”:

There seems to be a link between the strange black pool, and the “swift black river” underneath the the Cave of the Three-Eyed-Crow. The godswood, like all of Winterfell, is warmed by hot springs, but the pool is described as “cool” even in the depths of summer. Osha playfully suggests that there might be something significant at the bottom, if there’s a bottom at all in the strictest sense:

The placement of the vision also fits in terms of time for it be the Stark daughter: before Ned’s generation and after the “A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows” who sounds like the Brandon Snow, Torrhens’s brother who wanted to use weirwood arrows and stealth to slay the dragons (”there is power in a living wood, a power as strong as fire”), thus after the Conquest. Brandon the Daughterless' title was lord, not king.

What Ygritte suggested was right: the Stark daughter didn’t love Bael, as he always boasted in his songs. He “stole” her in the classic Free Folk fashion and raped her. She hid in the crypts (or otherwise used them to return home with Gorne’s Way) and then emerged from the dark pool in the godswood and prayed that her son would avenger her by killing Bael, which is exactly what he did.

In line with Winterfell's other connections to Camelot and Avalon, the resting place of kings and their swords, its waters are a magical source of healing. The Fisher King myth supposes a supernatural connection between king and kingdom, and so long as one is ailing so does the other. Bran's fall from the "Broken Tower" broke him, which did not cause but is symbolically connected to the coming of the Winter and the ruin of the North. "Bran" is a welsh name meaning "Raven"; the first incarnation of the FK was Bran the Blessed, who after defeating an army of undead with his half brother, but was mortally wounded, and in honor of his promise to always protect the realm, ravens are kept in the Tower of London ("There must always be a raven in the tower"="There must always be a Stark in Winterfell"). Bran's last vision in the weirwood is the ultimatum that shows him what a Stark in Winterfell must do to harness the power of that "monstrous stone tree" which "belongs to the old gods". The narrator switches from calling him "the broken boy" to, for the first time, "Brandon." So, that moment where he emerges through that cool black pool in the godswood will be both a moment of coming home, the return of the lost prince, but also healing.

It will likely happen late TWOW (even in the last few chapters), or early ADWD, and the form could be somewhat different, but Bran's return and Gorne's Way will absolutely figure into the story.

Wow!  Great Analysis!  I never would have come up with this.

I do think Bran IS the Stark in Winterfell literally and figuratively - he is the :living magic" that animates the stone and weirwood, which are one, as ML says in AGoT.  Bran is the "heart in WF and the weirwood".

Martin writes in cycles - Bran's final POV in ADwD ends with a nod to Bran's first POV in AGoT:  Bran witnesses a beheading - he frames Bran's arc.

I wonder if Bran's POVs in TWoW will be titled "Brandon"?

Very nice work!

[Tannim]

As aside from whatever revelations that Bran learns, which might cause him to rebel against the CotF and/or Bloodraven's planned destiny for him, what other events could force Bran and Co from the caves?  A pondering later, the obvious and previously o'pinioned possibility remains.  The Other assault the caves.  They question arises as why now?  

After 1000s of years knowledge of the CotF, it's a reasonable guess the Other know of the general capabilities and limitations of the Children.  Their magic, in decline, isolationism, and perhaps resignation to fading from the world.  Why poke a foe whom aided in your previous defeat while they sleep away the millennia.  So they set wright guards as an basic alarm around any CotF cave they know, and go about their plans for southern invasion.  Why attack south now we don't yet know.

And into this picket zone wander in an awakened wright leading four humans to the very cave of the Others enemies.  In the various visions and dreams Bran experienced of the Far North, he catches sight of the Others realm and Being, though he lacks understanding.  Might the Other see Bran fly past?  Might they connect the flyby and BranCo arrival at the great weirwood tree and cave?  They'd learn the Children saved BranCo at the cave entrance eventually.

My guess, the Other would attack the cave because BranCo arrived.  They were last defeated by the CotF/Greenseers in alliance with the First Men.  Doubtful the Other would allow the possibility another Greenseer to interfere in their invasion and war once again.  Bran gets his training in, plus infodump past knowledge to us, the reader, yet just enough to prove effective beyond warging.  Not become the uber-wizard some dream him becoming.

The Other and wright cannonfodder attack tree and cave in such numbers the CotF and BR cannot hope to defeat in a standup battle.  They CotF forced to flee, as are BranCo, Jojen killed during battle or as part of rear guard, and Bloodraven left to die/join the weirwoodweb.  Chekov's Way is the obvious escape route, used, and found lacking in options for anyone whom doesn't know the way.  As previous post has stated, that underground river won't link direct to Winterfell.

Pure fanfic at this point, Bran forced to travel above ground, but with increased focus and scope of powers, they make it south much faster than north.  Also wild speculation, Bran learns how to awaken wrights he encounters, more than one, thus gains some defense beyond Hodor wielding a certain blade.  Can anyone else envision BenjenWright awakened?

Just another thought experiment.

[Falcon2908]

Bran not leaving the cave reminds me of some of us Earth humans, who spend all day at home inside the basement.

[SacredOrderOfGreenMen]

Ibbison,

well, if Bran leaves the cave to return south I'll consider all his chapters since the end of ACoK a huge waste of time. Why the hell couldn't George put those stupid greenseer training guy not just beneath Winterfell? He could have made the greenseer some ancient Stark and skip those irrelevant travelogue chapters we got in ASoS and ADwD, and instead focus on Bran's greenseer training throughout those two books, actually giving us some insight into his training.

GRRM, through TWOIAF, answers that question:

"Brandon the Builder sought the aid of the children while raising the Wall. He was taken to a secret place to meet with them, but could not at first understand their speech, which was described as sounding like the song of stones in a brook, or the wind through leaves, or the rain upon the water. The manner in which Brandon learned to comprehend the speech of the children is a tale in itself, and not worth repeating here."

Bran the Rebuilder, guys, the Fisher King of ASOIAF. The Lost Prince, the crisis of infertility, the magic castle and its forgotten powers, the lost magical race who teaches him the spells (i.e. greenseeing). It's all right there in the text.

[Good Guy Garlan]

I don't think Bran is truly destined to be a happy little tree, but that's only because I can't imagine his chapters in the next two or more books taking place inside that damn cave. 

[StarkofWinterfell]

Forever in the cave, but I think he will use Hodor as an avatar to directly communicate with the outside world.  All of his remaining family, plus Theon, will know the words are coming from Bran.

Yes, he will say "Hodor! Hodor!" when communicating through him.

But count me in on Team Forever-In-Cave also. That kid is a cripple. There is no way he is leaving unless he wargs into somebody or something