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Refuge south of the wall for the people?


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I read a passage on the Westerlands recently. 

"The Westerlands are a place of rugged hills and rolling plains, of misty dales and craggy shorelines, a place of blue lakes and sparkling rivers and fertile fields, of broadleaf forests that teem with game of every sort, where half-hidden doors in the sides of wooded hills open onto labyrinthine caves that wend their way through darkness to reveal unimaginable wonders and vast treasures deep beneath the earth.
These are rich lands, temperate and fruitful, shielded by high hills to the east and south and the endless blue waters of the Sunset Sea to the west. Once the children of the forest made their homes in the woods, whilst giants dwelt amongst the hills, where their bones can still occasionally be found. But then the First Men came with fire and bronze axes to cut down the forests, plow the fields, and drive roads through the hill country where the giants made their abodes. Soon, the First Men's farms and villages spread across the west "from salt to stone," protected by stout motte-and-bailey forts, and later great stone castles, until the giants were no more, and the children of the forest vanished into the deep woods, the hollow hills, and the far north."

Im personally of the belief there are loads of underground areas south of the wall, more than I originally thought, and they are ex-strongholds of the CoTf.

Any chance they are warded by the same magic that keeps BR's cave safe? Possible safe house for thousands south of the wall?, be handy if another long night happened and thousands of people could seek refuge underground and not add to the wight army by being turned upon death. 

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Far from possible I think this is genuinely probable. However do they have enough time/supplies to house people underground considering how little time it seems they have? Who will discover these caves and tunnels? How long could people survive down there and how many people could they hold.

The offshooting questions of this are interesting and definitely worth discussing further

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1 hour ago, Raven_Osiris said:

Far from possible I think this is genuinely probable. However do they have enough time/supplies to house people underground considering how little time it seems they have? Who will discover these caves and tunnels? How long could people survive down there and how many people could they hold.

The offshooting questions of this are interesting and definitely worth discussing further

It may not need to be as long term as It seems implied, I meant maybe more like a means to hiding mass amounts of people so that the Others do not gather a larger number of dead wights. Because if the Others do head south, long night style, then surely there will be battle, death etc (regardless of if the Others are truly evil or not), and every dead body= a risen Wight possibly if it's not burned or hacked to bits.

As to who will discover them, well they are being discovered already. Check out WoW chapters that are available to read. 

Spoiler

Arianne II has info on one of these strongholds. 

Also, the hollow hill under High heart is an old CoTf stronghold I believe. 

Bran is possibly In a good position to pass messages to people through dreams etc concerning these possible safe houses to hide in until the trouble passes. 

The big question I have is would all the cotf's ancient strongholds have the same kind of magic warding them from harm? And while they ward off Wights of all shape and form, would they actually ward off the Others themselves?.

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i always thought it was cool to imagine members of house reyne surviving tywinns wrath by exploiting these caverns to escape..i cant help but feel some reyne is going to jump out of the woodwork somehow and the hollow hills and caves of the westerlands makes this possible...

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2 hours ago, house of dayne said:

i always thought it was cool to imagine members of house reyne surviving tywinns wrath by exploiting these caverns to escape..i cant help but feel some reyne is going to jump out of the woodwork somehow and the hollow hills and caves of the westerlands makes this possible...

Not sure there's much chance of that happening and how it would benefit the story much. Tywin is dead and gone. But hey at least it bumped my thread back up :D

While we're deviating from the thread, I'll point out the coolest thing about the quote on these Westerlands hills I left is it shows three things that are of interest i think.

1. The topic at hand. Are they possibly part of a massive complex network of underground passages that could serve as refuge for the people of Westeros during Long night 2.0, and save them turning into Wights giving the Others a bigger army. But do the cave networks have the same magic spells south of the wall as the one North of the wall does? Interesting to find out. 

2. The quote confirms that there were Giants dwelling in the Westerlands hills. Well I'm pretty sure that there were Giants in most hills around Westeros but when we think of the Clegane Lands that are located south and east of Lannisport, and look at the detailed maps, that is a mountainous area, so it's interesting to speculate that somewhere along the line there was breeding between a human and a female giant which mingled the blood a bit to later produce the man that became the first Clegane. 

3. This part of the quote personally just makes me think of one thing. 

"where half-hidden doors in the sides of wooded hills open onto labyrinthine caves that wend their way through darkness to reveal unimaginable wonders".

Very interesting stuff, but sadly talking of 'doors' and caves takes us all into forbidden territory where you get a slap on the wrist. 

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