Is "In the House of the Worm" the same story of the Others and Men, endgame theory (HotW spoilers)

[The Snark of Winterfell]

This is not my theory and I'm guessing it has been proposed on this board before even though I could not find it.

Preston Jacobs, who receives a lot of hate on this board, more or less started a movement to read GRRM's other works that takes place in a universe known as 1000 worlds.  There are all sorts of planets, human and alien.  A lot if not most had the capability of space flight at some time.  There was a period of interreggnum, that put a lot of places back tot he stone age.  So you are left with a world where humans and aliens have advanced technology and others may be stuck in a midevil period.  There are even worlds that have multi year winters, due tot he presence of multiple suns/stars affecting the weather. 

I don't always buy Preston Jacobs, usually I am on board on the first video in his series then it gradually digresses into madness based on faulty foundations, but I find a lot of it really good.  Preston points to a lot of similarities or even concepts which really parallel the human relationship with the others in the Story in the House of the Worm.  It's not too long and there is even a comic book retelling that I haven't read, but hear is more or less accurate.

The story of in the house of the Worm starts with a what appears to be a kind of feudal Society.  Bloodlines matter and their technology is more or less Bronze Age, except for the fact that they are very capable of certain genetic engineering and complex surgery.  Their religion is terrible.  Essentially they worship the great white worm and to show their homage their leader is maimed periodically so that they remove his arms, legs, and eventually head to make him more wormlike over years with maiming him and keeping him alive through surgery. These people are known as the yaga-la-hi. (described as more or less human). They have gone through a fallout of some sort, whether nuclear or the dying of their sun, they live in chambers of obsidian and get certain glipses of their dying sun for light.  They have eyes and and need light to see, they use torches.  Their sigil is a golden theta.

There is another species that is subterranean known as the groun.  The groun have 6 appendages 4 arms, two feet or whatever.  They don't have eyes or they are very small and they do not need light.  Light scares them.

Our protagonist is Annelyn, is a golden haired handsome man, that is brash and arrogant and thinks he knows what he doesn't know.  He is dismissive of others, he is very Jamie Lannister.  Not a good guy.  At a ball he is hoping to court a hot chick named Caralee.  Before that happens a man known as meatbringer bring the carcass of a groun for the yaga-la-hi to feast on.  Meatbringer is more or less human but he has some differences in height, his nose and other features.  Meatbringer straight up laughs at and disrespects Annelyn and then bangs Caralee in the middle of the dance floor.

In the subterranean levels there is no light, people are scared of grouns and meatbringer is the only guy who really goes down there hunts grouns and presents them as food for the yaga-la-hi at this present moment.  Annelyn and two friends devise a plan to follow meatbringer, learn his secrets of how he kills the grouns and then to kill him.  However, all three of them figure they will chicken out before they get there.  However, there is a knight, Groff, that was sent by the powers that be to kill meatbringer as well.  This stops the protagonist from chickening out.  They find that the grouns have been pushed to way further depths than they ever imagined.

They find meatbringer and find that he can see in total dark.  They find out that he kills both yaga-la-hi and grouns.  He feeds each society the other people and is a person of both races.  Most likely he is a mixed breed I believe.  He also states, you should be eating each other, you should be mating with each other.  He mates with both grouns and yaga-la-hi. (He also stays in what looks like an operating room, with metal wheeled tables and whatnot) This pisses off Groff who charges at meatbringer, who kills all of Annelyns friends save Annelyn who escapes down an air vent.

Annelyn eventually discovers ridiculously huge worms, eater worms and various other stuff which presumably is what pushed the grouns deeper.  He also notices evidence that the yaga-la-li were once at levels deeper than he imagined in the subterranean space.  He eventually discovers a wall of glass, where behind there are various genetic stages of the groun and the worms alike.  The earliest of the grouns had eyes and wore a helmet, but still had 6 appendages. The sigil of these grouns and the genetic engineers at the subterranean level is a silver theta. The helmet allowed Annelyn to see, he befriended the grouns bey saving one from a worm and then eventually kills meatbringer because he can see with his helmet.  When he goes back to the yaga-la-hi he tells the people that they should be mating with the grouns, not eating them and is largely dismissed, the end.

The grouns are clearly human and there genetic engineering is more than implied.  Also the theta is a symbol for genetic engineering/biological science in his other stories.  The theta was something that existed before the histories we got and may have dictated a lot of the evolutionary paths that people went down.

 

Ok, so how does this relate.

Pact

I am one who believes that the Long Night ended in a pact.  Why?  The histories of the LN are all inherently not trustworthy as there was no writing then and what we got is more or less passed down through oral traditions that the Maesters put to paper thousands of years later.  The only old history from that period I trust is from old nan.  When she tells the story of the LH/LN to Bran she is cut off.

"Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms of the First Men, who had taken those lands from the children of the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods, the children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills, and the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched until he despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders big as hounds.."

Old Nan is then interrupted by Maester Luwin.

A Game of Thrones, Chapter 24, Bran IV.

I believe that was purposeful.  We are told the cotf save the last hero, they build a wall and everyone is happy. I don't believe that.

We are told that these WW who ravaged the realms, had mothers suffocating their children to avoid the cold and WW.  The realm is in bad shape.  We are to believe that Others who smelled the LH's blood and trailed him silently while mounted on creatures just got their ass handed to them by the cotf is a quick sweep and it was over.  Then they built a wall of ice to keep out ice monsters.  I think a pact makes more sense.

We know the Others are capable of reaching agreements, i.e Craster.  Sacrifice your children and we won't bother you.

So what was the pact.

Well I believe the last hero was the NK.  (this is a popular theory) The 13th LC of NW was the NK.  I think he took the moniker of 13th LC because of his 12 friends that died in their search of the cotf.

I believe part of their pact was a marriage pact between the NK and the female other.  As marriage pacts are ingrained in the asoiaf society, first men, andals, rhoynar.

The Night's Fort was the alter for sacrifice to the Others for continued peace, whether they give the children of the NK and the female other or just other Northern bastards.

Back when Queen Alasayne closed the Night's Fort as the center of the Watch, ended the Lord's right of the first night, and gave the lands just south of the Wall to the NW was an effort to end the realms relationship with the Others or to stop the sacrificing.  (I know not a lot to support this at all)

This is what spurred the Others to mobilize.

The Pact with the Others was violated, no more sacrifices, no children being given to them from the watch, unlike Craster.

The humans also violated the Pact with the cotf, which was more or less the cotf will get out of their way, humans have to worship the old gods and maintain the Weirwood net so they can keep an eye on us.  This was wiped out by the Andals, so the cotf and the Others were left with nothing (as an aside)

To tie in with hotw, I think the Others are humans that went down a different evolutionary path to suit themselves to harsh climates.  I think they are human because the NK mated with an Other.  I think the endgame is make love to the others, not war, but the feudal society too concerned with bloodlines and realm politics are too stupid to realize it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ser Leftwich]

No.

[Melisandre's White Pubes]

I too saw a lot of similarities between ItHotW and ASoIaF, especially the situation with the Others/Grouns.  What a creepy story!  One thing that's interesting is that the character who sees the solution is disregarded as being a fool - I see something like that happening in ASoIaF - it would be typical GRRM writing to have a character realize that a peace could be made with the Others, only to be disregarded, probably bringing on mankind's extinction.

I also like the connection between the Meatbringer and the Night's King, especially if the theories that the Watch used to sacrifice human infants to the Others.

[The Snark of Winterfell]

1 hour ago, Melisandre's White Pubes said:

I too saw a lot of similarities between ItHotW and ASoIaF, especially the situation with the Others/Grouns.  What a creepy story!  One thing that's interesting is that the character who sees the solution is disregarded as being a fool - I see something like that happening in ASoIaF - it would be typical GRRM writing to have a character realize that a peace could be made with the Others, only to be disregarded, probably bringing on mankind's extinction.

I also like the connection between the Meatbringer and the Night's King, especially if the theories that the Watch used to sacrifice human infants to the Others.

Yea it's a pretty nasty story, the yaga-la-li are clearly a misguided society. Their religion is so fucked up.  I think the fact that the others and humans can mate in asoiaf is a big deal.  In the ithotw, it is pretty is blunt that these people are diverging races to the point where 1 has 6 appendages and no eyes (through genetic engineering and evolution) but they can mate with each other and reproduce. 

It would be very unGRRM that the others are just his unrelenting evil set to conquer the realm.

[Melisandre's White Pubes]

I see another interesting parallel with the priests and worms, and the R'hillorists and dragons…

In ItHofW, humanity has diverged into two directions due to genetic engineering, long ago.  The sun is dimming, and some have been modified to live deep in the ground without light, which seems to me to indicate that the past civilization knew the future fate of their star and were preparing for it.  They have extra limbs for some reason.  There are also the worms, which are dangerous to everyone, but especially the underground people.  The unmodified people above try to imitate the worms today with a primitive surgical technology, by making themselves have even less limbs.

In ASoIaF, humanity has diverged into two directions, long ago.  Some have been modified to live in the extreme cold without need of warmth.  There are also dragons, which are dangerous to everyone, but especially the cold adapted Others.  The unmodified humans use some kind of magic to make themselves more like the dragons, by making themselves hot on the inside with smoking blood.

It's a direct analogy, if you equate humans/yaga-la-li, Others/grouns, worms/dragons, with temperature instead of number of limbs.  Could it be that in the distant past, someone realized that Planetos would one day be completely frozen and made a race of humans who would survive, while some of the misguided unmodified priests are moving in the wrong direction by using magic to make their insides hot like the dragons, just like the yaga-la-li are pointlessly making their priests have no limbs like the worms?