Arya Stark cat warging

[Ygrain]

1 hour ago, Daena the Defiant said:

I think that the temporary blindness of her FM training "forced" her wargness into an unexpected direction - that is, being able to see through another set of nearby eyes. 

Quite possible, yes, that it sort of forcibly opened up her potential which she had not been able develop due to her separation from Nymeria. Reminds of the way that body trauma allowed Bran or Jojen tap into their abilities.

[Ice Turtle]

20 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

Quite possible, yes, that it sort of forcibly opened up her potential which she had not been able develop due to her separation from Nymeria. Reminds of the way that body trauma allowed Bran or Jojen tap into their abilities.

 

That is questionable, I tent to favour the interpretation that it is not necessarily related. The whole passage goes:

When the milk came, Arya drank it down. It smelled a little burnt and had a bitter aftertaste. “Go to bed now, child,” the kindly man said. “On the morrow you must serve.”

That night she dreamed she was a wolf again, but it was different from the other dreams. In this dream she had no pack. She prowled alone, bounding over rooftops and padding silently beside the banks of a canal, stalking shadows through the fog.

When she woke the next morning, she was blind.

AFFC

And then:

On the day she had woken blind, the waif took her by the hand and led her through the vaults and tunnels of the rock on which the House of Black and White was built, up the steep stone steps into the temple proper.

ADwD

From the following quotes it's clear that three things happened after each other in this order:

1, Arya drank something which would made her blind, but did not get blind immediately

2, Arya dreamed she was a cat, so she technically warged other animal than Nymeria

3, Arya woke up blind.

The trauma of being blind did not cause Arya to warg the cat because the first step of warging happened before Arya was aware that she was blind. The blindness likely quickened the process but IMO it would have happened anyway in time even without it. Arya had already established connection with cats or at least one of them and unlike her wolf, they were close.

 

 

 

[Ygrain]

1 minute ago, Ice Turtle said:

 

That is questionable, I tent to favour the interpretation that it is not necessarily related. The whole passage goes:

When the milk came, Arya drank it down. It smelled a little burnt and had a bitter aftertaste. “Go to bed now, child,” the kindly man said. “On the morrow you must serve.”

That night she dreamed she was a wolf again, but it was different from the other dreams. In this dream she had no pack. She prowled alone, bounding over rooftops and padding silently beside the banks of a canal, stalking shadows through the fog.

When she woke the next morning, she was blind.

AFFC

And then:

On the day she had woken blind, the waif took her by the hand and led her through the vaults and tunnels of the rock on which the House of Black and White was built, up the steep stone steps into the temple proper.

ADwD

From the following quotes it's clear that three things happened after each other in this order:

1, Arya drank something which would made her blind, but did not get blind immediately

2, Arya dreamed she was a cat, so she technically warged other animal than Nymeria

3, Arya woke up blind.

The trauma of being blind did not cause Arya to warg the cat because the first step of warging happened before Arya was aware that she was blind. The blindness likely quickened the process but IMO it would have happened anyway in time even without it. Arya had already established connection with cats or at least one of them and unlike her wolf, they were close.

Well, yes, but until that point, she had only been dreaming animal dreams (do I recall correctly that she had had Nymeria dreams prior this, as well?). Only after she got blind, she became able to actually see through the cat's eyes. 

[239JMFL34109]

5 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

Well, yes, but until that point, she had only been dreaming animal dreams (do I recall correctly that she had had Nymeria dreams prior this, as well?). Only after she got blind, she became able to actually see through the cat's eyes. 

I think it very clear were when she is asleep she goes into nymeria. It the same here except it with a cat instead of the wolf. 

I do think she could have done this before she want to see and for the first time she look through the eyes of animal when she was awake. 

[Clegane'sPup]

I’m, gonna play devil’s advocate here so don’t beat up on me too much. I’m not including Rickon because there is not enough information other than him & Shaggy are a bit wild.

There is evidence that warg relates to wolves in the DwD prologue.

Skinchanger relates to other animals, also in the DwD prologue. A skinchanger feels the pain the animal feels.

Bran, Jon and Arya have wolf dreams. I don’t remember mention of Robb or Sansa having wolf dreams, but that doesn’t mean it’s not in the books somewhere.

Bran is a warg. He makes a conscience decision to leave his physical body to run with Summer. He makes a conscience decision to skingchange  a raven while he is in BR’s cave.

The reason I bring this up is the “Only one man in a thousand is born a skinchanger and only one skinchanger in a thousand is born a greenseer.”

Taking those snippets into consideration if Arya actually saw through the eyes of the cat, does that make her a warg and a skinchanger? I am genuinely curious.

 

Dogs were the easiest beasts to bond with; they lived so close to men that they were almost human. Slipping into a dog's skin was like putting on an old boot, its leather softened by wear. As a boot was shaped to accept a foot, a dog was shaped to accept a collar, even a collar no human eye could see. Wolves were harder. A man might befriend a wolf, even break a wolf, but no man could truly tame a wolf. "Wolves and women wed for life," Haggon often said. "You take one, that's a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on, and you're part of him. Both of you will change."

Other beasts were best left alone, the hunter had declared. Cats were vain and cruel, always ready to turn on you. Elk and deer were prey; wear their skins too long, and even the bravest man became a coward. Bears, boars, badgers, weasels … Haggon did not hold with such. "Some skins you never want to wear, boy. You won't like what you'd become." Birds were the worst, to hear him tell it. "Men were not meant to leave the earth. Spend too much time in the clouds and you never want to come back down again. I know skinchangers who've tried hawks, owls, ravens. Even in their own skins, they sit moony, staring up at the bloody blue."

Not all skinchangers felt the same, however. Once, when Lump was ten, Haggon had taken him to a gathering of such. The wargs were the most numerous in that company, the wolf-brothers, but the boy had found the others stranger and more fascinating. Borroq looked so much like his boar that all he lacked was tusks, Orell had his eagle, Briar her shadowcat (the moment he saw them, Lump wanted a shadowcat of his own), the goat woman Grisella …

[Maester of Valyria]

5 minutes ago, Clegane'sPup said:

Snip

I think it's a bit more like 'All wargs are skinchangers, but only skinchangers who use wolves/direwolves are wargs'. But that's just my take on it.

[Ice Turtle]

2 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Well, yes, but until that point, she had only been dreaming animal dreams (do I recall correctly that she had had Nymeria dreams prior this, as well?). Only after she got blind, she became able to actually see through the cat's eyes. 

Until the cats she wasn't in close proximity to animals she warged. Jon senses what Ghos does even awake only when the wolf is close.

Arya has her first wolf dream at the beginning of ASoS when she hunts down Bloody Mummers as Nymeria and GRRM stated that she controlled her wolf when she took Cat's body from the river.

I would argue that she was close to warging even sooner for examle when she heard wolves no one else did before Amory Lorch attacked Yoren's group. 

She must have slept, though she never remembered closing her eyes. She dreamed a wolf was howling, and the sound was so terrible that it woke her at once. Arya sat up on her pallet with her heart thumping. “Hot Pie, wake up.” She scrambled to her feet. “Woth, Gendry, didn’t you hear?” She pulled on a boot.

All around her, men and boys stirred and crawled from their pallets. “What’s wrong?” Hot Pie asked. “Hear what?” Gendry wanted to know. “Arry had a bad dream,” someone else said.

“No, I heard it,” she insisted. “A wolf.”

“Arry has wolves in his head,” sneered Lommy. “Let them howl,” Gerren said, “they’re out there, we’re in here.” Woth agreed. “Never saw no wolf could storm a holdfast.” Hot Pie was saying, “I never heard nothing.”

“It was a wolf,” she shouted at them as she yanked on her second boot. “Something’s wrong, someone’s coming, get up!”

Before they could hoot her down again, the sound came shuddering through the night—only it was no wolf this time, it was Kurz blowing his hunting horn, sounding danger.

ACoK

 

[239JMFL34109]

48 minutes ago, Maester of Valyria said:

I think it's a bit more like 'All wargs are skinchangers, but only skinchangers who use wolves/direwolves are wargs'. But that's just my take on it.

I think warg is like the old tongue word for it and skinchanger newer languages word for it. 

Think of it like the pork vs pig, commence vs start or etc..and all the doublets in the english language that came from the time of the norman's conquest of england. 

[Maester of Valyria]

20 hours ago, 239JMFL34109 said:

I think warg is like the old tongue word for it and skinchanger newer languages word for it. 

Think of it like the pork vs pig, commence vs start or etc..and all the doublets in the english language that came from the time of the norman's conquest of england. 

In truth, the legends of the skinchangers are many, but the most common—brought from beyond the Wall by men of the Night's Watch, and recorded at the Wall by septons and maesters of centuries past—hold that the skinchangers not only communicated with beasts, but could control them by having their spirits mingle. Even among the wildlings, these skinchangers were feared as unnatural men who could call on animals as allies. Some tales speak of skinchangers losing themselves in their beasts, and others say that the animals could speak with a human voice when a skinchanger controlled them. But all the tales agree that the most common skinchangers were men who controlled wolves—even direwolves—and these had a special name among the wildlings: wargs.

 

- The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Dawn Age

 

[239JMFL34109]

6 minutes ago, Maester of Valyria said:

In truth, the legends of the skinchangers are many, but the most common—brought from beyond the Wall by men of the Night's Watch, and recorded at the Wall by septons and maesters of centuries past—hold that the skinchangers not only communicated with beasts, but could control them by having their spirits mingle. Even among the wildlings, these skinchangers were feared as unnatural men who could call on animals as allies. Some tales speak of skinchangers losing themselves in their beasts, and others say that the animals could speak with a human voice when a skinchanger controlled them. But all the tales agree that the most common skinchangers were men who controlled wolves—even direwolves—and these had a special name among the wildlings: wargs.

This from the World of ice and fire book? 

[Clegane'sPup]

13 minutes ago, Maester of Valyria said:

In truth, the legends of the skinchangers are many, but the most common—brought from beyond the Wall by men of the Night's Watch, and recorded at the Wall by septons and maesters of centuries past—hold that the skinchangers not only communicated with beasts, but could control them by having their spirits mingle. Even among the wildlings, these skinchangers were feared as unnatural men who could call on animals as allies. Some tales speak of skinchangers losing themselves in their beasts, and others say that the animals could speak with a human voice when a skinchanger controlled them. But all the tales agree that the most common skinchangers were men who controlled wolves—even direwolves—and these had a special name among the wildlings: wargs.

Thanks for posting that. It matches up fairly close to what is said in the prologue and various places throughout the books.

 

[Maester of Valyria]

50 minutes ago, 239JMFL34109 said:

This from the World of ice and fire book? 

Yes, sorry I had to run off, didn't have time to post references.

 

38 minutes ago, Clegane'sPup said:

Thanks for posting that. It matches up fairly close to what is said in the prologue and various places throughout the books.

 

Welcome

[239JMFL34109]

2 minutes ago, Maester of Valyria said:

Yes, sorry I had to run off, didn't have time to post references.

 

Welcome

It makes me wonder of the first skinchangers where stark wargs and after all skinchangers get called wargs even if it really means skinchanging with wolves? 

I knew were the word came from but i thought that it was just an easter egg to fantasy fans.