When did The Others 'activate'?

[Mick of House Guinness]

GRRM has said there is a magical explanation to the irregular seasons. The Others are magical beings, connected with winter. They arise at the end of the longest summer in living memory, perhaps the longest since the seasons went out of whack. Could there be a connection there?

[The Sword of the Evening]

31 minutes ago, The Sword of the Evening said:

I read a really good theory that explained and mapped out the timing of what happened immediately prefacing the series. The theory concluded that the Others began their movements roughly around the same time that Bloodraven disappeared north of the Wall. If someone can find a link to this theory please post.

From the post I was talking about:

A Timeline of Northern Aggression

Now we don’t know exactly when the Others began their aggression (the show puts Mance gathering the wildlings for southern migration at 20 years, but we can’t necessarily take that as gospel). We have pretty good reason to believe that the free folk began feeling an immediate and impending threat at some point which required them to migrate south, and this happened before the actual return of dragons, before there were no more Starks in Winterfell, and before the red comet most recently showed itself. That said, the last major wildling invasion before out story was by then King-Beyond-the-Wall Raymun Redbeard around 72 years before the start of the story, and that seemingly was as a result of the dwindling Night’s Watch, and so the return of the Others as a threat likely occurred after that, since Mance had to unite the Wildlings again. So, the Others didn’t start coming back when the Hardhome tragedy occurred 600 years ago (in the books this was a different tragedy involving fire), or when dragons came to Westeros with Aegon the Conqueror 300 years ago, or when the Nightfort and Snowgate were abandoned and first night was abolished in the North during the reign of Good Queen Alysanne, or even when the dragons died in Westeros around 150 years before the story begins. Whatever brought them back, they didn’t actually start coming back till some point in the last 72 years. So what awoke them? What made them start coming south? Could Bloodraven and the Children of the Forest get the Others to invade? Well the timeline certainly fits.

The timeline indicates the return of the Others seemingly coincides with Bloodraven’s disappearance, as they don’t seem to have come back around any major events prior to that, and all of the major events in our story in the last 72 years which could believably concern them seem to be after Bloodraven took the Weirwood throne. Furthermore, considering we know Craster and the Others have an arrangement where he supplies them with children, the 48 years since Bloodraven’s disappearance also fit with the apparent age of Craster. Though the possibility that Bloodraven began working his scheme because he saw the Other’s coming exists, there is seemingly no event in the 30 some years before his disappearance while still after the last wildling invasion, which would bring the Others. If Bloodraven had seen the White Walkers beginning to gather their forces while he was Lord Commander, you’d think he would send word to Aegon V. (yes that is the King who exiled him, but that should not have stopped him from warning the realm. Yet Aegon the Unlikely seem hell bent on bringing back dragons to enforce pro small folk reforms. It appears Aegon V wasn’t warned of the Others.

Furthermore, though the Others appear an inherently hostile and ominous force, we have to bear in mind thatthe Others have kept to their side of the wall for thousands of years when our story begins, and neither the comings nor going to men or dragons in Westeros seems to have provoked them south as of yet. In fact, historically there is zero evidence of the Other’s gathering forces to march south at any time after the Long Night, so we don’t have any actual indication that there are any expansionist tendencies or southward manifest destiny among wight walkers. They seem to have started their aggression only during Bloodraven’s reign as the last greenseer.

 

This is from: https://weirwoodleviathan.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/ii-bloodraven-and-the-greatest-evil-2/

[Shierak Qiya]

14 hours ago, House Cambodia said:

Is there any information in the canon as to when the Others first 'awoke' this time around?

 

To rephrase the question, is there any evidence at all to contradict my hypothesis that they awoke at the birth of Daenerys? I want to pursue the theory that they have arisen to fight the antichrist, the mother of dragons, Azor Ahai who has come to herald the second Long Night.

 

Thanks.

False.  The Others were always active.  The coming winter will allow them to travel southwards and expand.  That is their reason for advancing. 

Actually, the Mother of Dragons is the hero who will save mankind from the Others.  It is the constant fighting among the Starks, Lannisters, Boltons, and Baratheons that have weakened mankind's defense.  The Starks of all people should know better.  They preach, "Winter is Coming" and yet they go south and starts playing the game of thrones.  And then their son, Jon, who was supposed to lead the defense agains the Others betrayed the Night Watch for the sake of his little sister.  I think you have it wrong.  The Mother of Dragons will be the savior of mankind.  She has already liberated hundreds of thousands of people in Slaver's Bay.  That is the strongest evidence and the finest example of a good deed in the story.

[blckp]

On 2016-5-21 at 7:18 AM, Aegonzo The Great said:

Those 3 events all happened well after the Others were seen. We're trying to figure out if there was an event that "woke them up", so to speak.

wasnt that around same time when daenerys started to experiment with dragon eggs?

[YOVMO]

18 hours ago, Cz-99 said:

What if it's all one big coincidence?

If we are going to start suggesting that every little tiny detail isn't somehow worthy of a ponderous amount of scrutiny and everything has some kind of meaning which can be sussed out and then linked in to a greater overall theory then we might as well just pack up our bags and go home.

[kimim]

this era is special in two ways:

• Dragons have been extinct for a fairly short time--only a couple of centuries. Walkers don't like dragons.
• A very long winter is coming, probably the longest winter Planetos has experienced since the demise of the dragons. Walkers like winter.

There is also no Stark in Winterfell, though there was one when beginning of GoT. Dragons are coming back, too, but then maybe the Walkers don't have prophets, or maybe their prophets suck as badly as Melisandre.

 

[House Cambodia]

1 hour ago, blckp said:

wasnt that around same time when daenerys started to experiment with dragon eggs?

No, that happened after the prologue when Waymar's scouting party was nobbled.

[House Cambodia]

Just now, kimim said:

this era is special in two ways:

• Dragons have been extinct for a fairly short time--only a couple of centuries. Walkers don't like dragons.
• A very long winter is coming, probably the longest winter Planetos has experienced since the demise of the dragons. Walkers like winter.

There is also no Stark in Winterfell, though there was one when beginning of GoT. Dragons are coming back, too, but then maybe the Walkers don't have prophets, or maybe their prophets suck as badly as Melisandre.

 

It seems pretty clear that the coming of the worst winter in thousands of years is not a purely natural event; it is surely connected to the first Long Night with its mythic explanations. That's why I'm convinced that there is a 'mystical' cause of the onset of this winter and that there must therefore be a link with the rise of the Others. From the responses I think it's clear that we can't know the exact correlation with the information we have - hopefully GRRM will give us clues or revelations in TWOW.

I suspect the the Others do have 'prophets' - likely to be COTF 'greenseers', maybe 3EC/Bloodraven.

[House Cambodia]

4 hours ago, Franklin VI said:

False.  The Others were always active.  The coming winter will allow them to travel southwards and expand.  That is their reason for advancing. 

Actually, the Mother of Dragons is the hero who will save mankind from the Others.  It is the constant fighting among the Starks, Lannisters, Boltons, and Baratheons that have weakened mankind's defense.  The Starks of all people should know better.  They preach, "Winter is Coming" and yet they go south and starts playing the game of thrones.  And then their son, Jon, who was supposed to lead the defense agains the Others betrayed the Night Watch for the sake of his little sister.  I think you have it wrong.  The Mother of Dragons will be the savior of mankind.  She has already liberated hundreds of thousands of people in Slaver's Bay.  That is the strongest evidence and the finest example of a good deed in the story.

Ha, well I suspect we'll find out within 2 or 3 weeks via the TV show which one of us is on the right lines!

[chrisdaw]

They've always been there. They're more active now because they know the Long Night is coming, they're preparing, gathering their strength, but they still haven't made a big move South because they need the Long Night. The Long Night is a literal thing, the sun will stop shining on Westeros, most likely the days will grow shorter then there will be no days, and in the cold and dark the Others can move.

[chrisdaw]

4 hours ago, Franklin VI said:

False.  The Others were always active.  The coming winter will allow them to travel southwards and expand.  That is their reason for advancing. 

Actually, the Mother of Dragons is the hero who will save mankind from the Others.  It is the constant fighting among the Starks, Lannisters, Boltons, and Baratheons that have weakened mankind's defense.  The Starks of all people should know better.  They preach, "Winter is Coming" and yet they go south and starts playing the game of thrones.  And then their son, Jon, who was supposed to lead the defense agains the Others betrayed the Night Watch for the sake of his little sister.  I think you have it wrong.  The Mother of Dragons will be the savior of mankind.  She has already liberated hundreds of thousands of people in Slaver's Bay.  That is the strongest evidence and the finest example of a good deed in the story.

Hah, so when Dany comes to Westeros she won't fight for the throne against any Westerosi but will just take her dragon(s) north and kill the Others?

[House Cambodia]

1 hour ago, chrisdaw said:

They've always been there. They're more active now because they know the Long Night is coming, they're preparing, gathering their strength, but they still haven't made a big move South because they need the Long Night. The Long Night is a literal thing, the sun will stop shining on Westeros, most likely the days will grow shorter then there will be no days, and in the cold and dark the Others can move.

We need to take one step further back. Yes, there is definitely a direct causal relationship between the onset of the Long Night and the rise of the Others, but what has CAUSED that? There is a 'magical' source, but what triggered it?

Thanks, Sword of the Evening - that looks bang on what I need to investigate.

Where is the reference that says Mance began to gather his Wildlings force 20 years before the NW knew of it? Does Ygritte say that?

Twenty years - pretty much the same time - maybe half a dozen years before - the births of Jon, Daenerys or quite possibly Bran (I need to look into that idea more). That fits.

I think I can accept a period of say 10-20 years before that of the Others slowly awakening in the Far North before they became an existential threat to the Wildlings, enough for them to stop fighting each other as they had done since time immemorial. That raises another intriguing event that I need to delve deep into via SotE's link - the 'conversion' of Bloodraven from LC of the NW to last of the greenseers.

[House Cambodia]

35 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

Hah, so when Dany comes to Westeros she won't fight for the throne against any Westerosi but will just take her dragon(s) north and kill the Others?

I'm saying there will be a power vacuum in Westeros after Tommen dies leaving no heir, and Cercei has caused the entire monarchic system to implode. I think the iron throne itself will literally have melted in a wildfire conflagration. Yes, Daenerys will find herself ruler of all she surveys - a wasteland. Go North, young woman!

[chrisdaw]

So the whole second dance is not going to happen?

[House Cambodia]

6 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

So the whole second dance is not going to happen?

Why not? I don't rule out a Dany v fAegon clash, but I don't see fAegon as ultimately central to the climax. More significantly, if R+L=J is true, then the clash is the apocalyptic AA v TPTWP, Dany v Jon. If you want more literalism, other fans have theories re. ice dragons that I have thought through myself yet.

[Vastet]

The first time chronologically that we have any evidence of the Others is Osha's story about her husband. But I can't recall if that story was told in the books. If it was, then that incident almost certainly happened before the prologue. But not all that long before. If it wasn't, then the prologue is all we have until a wildling or the COTF or Bloodraven speaks up about it.

I have to assume they woke up at least a year or two before the prologue in any case. If there was so little evidence of them that the entire realm thought them gone forever, they had to be sleeping a good distance from the wall. Yet in the prologue they aren't very far away from the wall. Close enough that a band of wildlings were being hunted by that patrol, which implies they were raiding. I would think the Others wouldn't be so far South unless they'd been awake for some time.

[House Cambodia]

Yes but you're missing something. They only came to the attention of the NW as 'our story' opens, so we can say that they've only moved near to the Wall in the last couple of years - but that's not my question. Thanks to Jon's ranging undercover, he discovers that further north Mance had been gathering Wildling tribes in unprecedented numbers for the purpose of moving south to flee from the Others, and he'd been working on that for allegedly c.20 years. Exactly when and why, in the far frozen north, did they arise?

I'm going to have to explore what we tentatively know of the first Long Night from the lore of the First Men to get any answers.

[Vastet]

I thought it was 20 years previous that Mance abandoned the Watch, not that he immediately began conscripting wildlings.

Although, it makes perfect sense if he abandoned the Watch because he saw some sign of the Others. Noone in Castle Black ever discusses what happened when he left. It's like a taboo subject. That could imply that he tried to warn the Watch and was ignored. With nowhere else to turn, that would be more than sufficient justification for abandoning his vows and attempting to gather the wildlings together. Afterall, he'd be watching the Watch ignore their very purpose. What value is your vow when all your brothers ignore theirs?

[kimim]

16 minutes ago, House Cambodia said:

Yes but you're missing something. They only came to the attention of the NW as 'our story' opens, so we can say that they've only moved near to the Wall in the last couple of years - but that's not my question. Thanks to Jon's ranging undercover, he discovers that further north Mance had been gathering Wildling tribes in unprecedented numbers for the purpose of moving south to flee from the Others, and he'd been working on that for allegedly c.20 years. Exactly when and why, in the far frozen north, did they arise?

I'm going to have to explore what we tentatively know of the first Long Night from the lore of the First Men to get any answers.

Mance couldn't have been working at uniting the wildlings for as long as 20 years, as he says that he was still a crow when Jon was a child:

 

Quote

You were just a boy, and I was all in black, one of a dozen riding escort to old Lord Commander Qorgyle when he came down to see your father at Winterfell.

Jon is either 15 or 16 when Mance tells him this. The "twenty years" remark is from the show, where everyone is aged up.

 

 

[House Cambodia]

That's all good - there has to be a numbers of years, decades even, for the Others to rise in the frozen wastelands and gradually move south. The time of Mance abandoning the NW, the birth of Dany, Jon and Bran all fit within that timescale. It would allow Bloodraven c 30 years to develop his 'bloodmagic' abilities to animate the Others.