The Origin of the Free Folk

[Dorian Martell]

On 9/14/2016 at 4:30 AM, MinotaurWarrior said:

We know they were active decades ago when Craster started his deal, and we 'know' they were active as far south as the wall ~104 years ALN. So, at most there's been like 8,800 years of inactivity. But we also hear of ice river clans that worship the cold gods, Sam reads reports of them from the historical era, and also they've got stealth armor.

Either way, they are not "ruling" anyone north of the wall.  And so what? if a clan worships a cold god. that still doesn't show that the others were actively ruling north of the wall and harvesting people.  Sam has reports written down, but nothing of contact. Also, their stealth armor is not an indication of them ruling beyond the wall and harvesting people 

[Runaway Penguin]

Yeah for sure they are not ruling. They are around, in limited numbers, as a limited threat (though maybe even benefit - "we sacrifice to you and you do not snow on our parade, deal?). 

 

I do not think they are immortal - they however may not reproduce. They may need sacrifical babies from time to time. They may need far mroe of them now - hance Craster.

Free folk meet them here and there. so do rangers. Sometimes it is just spotting... Sometimes it may be deadly. But there are no meat puppets - why would they need them? Meat puppets spoil and may be too control-intensive. So people N of the Wall know of Others kinda like they would of Yeti... 

[MinotaurWarrior]

3 hours ago, Dorian Martell said:

Either way, they are not "ruling" anyone north of the wall.  And so what if a clan worships a cold god. that still doesn't show that the others were actively ruling north of the wall and harvesting people.  Sam has reports written down, but nothing of contact. Also, their stealth armor is not an indication of them ruling beyond the wall and harvesting people 

Sure, there's nothing saying that they were ruling north of the wall, and nothing confirming that they were in hibernation or whatever. We don't know what they were doing. It's a mystery. 

Speculating that they operated a vast number of "keeps" with setups like that of Craster's is speculation and extrapolation, as are all claims about what they've been up to. We don't know.

[Dorian Martell]

4 hours ago, MinotaurWarrior said:

Sure, there's nothing saying that they were ruling north of the wall, and nothing confirming that they were in hibernation or whatever. We don't know what they were doing. It's a mystery. 

Speculating that they operated a vast number of "keeps" with setups like that of Craster's is speculation and extrapolation, as are all claims about what they've been up to. We don't know.

Hybernation is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis as they have not been seen for over 8000 years. Them ruling, as well as operating a series of keeps like craster's is far less reasoable because they have not been seen for 8000 years. 

[MinotaurWarrior]

On 9/14/2016 at 9:40 PM, Dorian Martell said:

Hybernation is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis as they have not been seen for over 8000 years. Them ruling, as well as operating a series of keeps like craster's is far less reasoable because they have not been seen for 8000 years. 

You are going against the text by proposing that they have not been seen for over 8,000 years. The LN is supposed to have been 8,000 years ago, the night king was 13 LC's (with an average 8 years per LC) after that, craster was decades ago, and Sam's reports were within the literate era.

A multi-millennia hibernation is possible (say, 2000 Before AC to 280AC), but AFAIK never directly supported by a credible source.

Ned agrees with you, In Catlyn I AGoT, 

Quote

"There are darker things beyond the Wall." She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts.

His smile was gentle. "You listen to too many of Old Nan's stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one."

"Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either," Catelyn reminded him.

... after beheading an eyewitness to an attack by the Others. This is one of our first subtle hints that Ned Stark is incredibly thick and ultimately wrong about everything, because we know the Other's aren't gone. Otherwise all I recall us getting is that it's been long enough for the Night's Watch to have "forgotten." A long hibernation of less than 8,000 (or, really, 4,000) years wouldn't directly contradict any of the evidence, but nor can I find any credible affirmative support for it.

On the other hand, Craster's keep exists, people in the far north worship what seem to be the same cold gods as Craster, and we don't have a history for the people of the far north far beyond the wall that says they've positively removed all Others, so nothing contradicts there being more keeps in the extreme north.

Also, nothing contradicts the Others actually having the ability to walk underwater and chill out with the merfolk for millennia. All we know is that they have stealth armor and ice swords, laugh together, kill in groups, attack with the cold and the undead, did the craster's keep thing, and are part of several legends.

[Dorian Martell]

1 hour ago, MinotaurWarrior said:

You are going against the text by proposing that they have not been seen for over 8,000 years. The LN is supposed to have been 8,000 years ago, the night king was 13 LC's (with an average 8 years per LC) after that, craster was decades ago, and Sam's reports were within the literate era.

A multi-millennia hibernation is possible (say, 2000 Before AC to 280AC), but AFAIK never directly supported by a credible source.

Ned agrees with you, In Catlyn I AGoT, 

... after beheading an eyewitness to an attack by the Others. This is one of our first subtle hints that Ned Stark is incredibly thick and ultimately wrong about everything, because we know the Other's aren't gone. Otherwise all I recall us getting is that it's been long enough for the Night's Watch to have "forgotten." A long hibernation of less than 8,000 (or, really, 4,000) years wouldn't directly contradict any of the evidence, but nor can I find any credible affirmative support for it.

On the other hand, Craster's keep exists, people in the far north worship what seem to be the same cold gods as Craster, and we don't have a history for the people of the far north far beyond the wall that says they've positively removed all Others, so nothing contradicts there being more keeps in the extreme north.

Also, nothing contradicts the Others actually having the ability to walk underwater and chill out with the merfolk for millennia. All we know is that they have stealth armor and ice swords, laugh together, kill in groups, attack with the cold and the undead, did the craster's keep thing, and are part of several legends.

the point is that they haven't been around for a very long time, and not ruling or running people farms all over hte north. Be it 8000 or 4000 or whatever runic number sam finds, the point is they have not been around. Their return is recent in the grand scheme of things
the problem with the "Nothing contradicts there being all sorts of things where we haven't seen" is just Just that. I mean, if we are going by an absence of info we can say that Megatron Optimus Prme are in a domestic partnership and living in the lands of always winter and their bastard child is the great other. I mean, nothing directly contradicts it so it must work right?   If there were people farms all over the place, why didn't the watch hear anything about it? 
there is one huge thing that lends me to believe that the others cannot move through water. That is the wall. Why wouyld hte wall stop them if they could just walk around it?  

[Roose on the Loose]

Ygrette seems to have a deeply cultural belief in genetic diversity.   She holds up Craster as an example of poor genetic diversity, and uses it as a justification for daughter stealing.  When Davos met some Wildlings as a young man, they stole their Cabin Girl.  It's definitely a thing with them.  But I think they see it as symbolic of freeing women from the likes of Craster.

 

Btw by the custom if the Free Folk, Rhaegar married Llyanna, Jon married Ygrette, Sam married Gilly, and Arya has 2 husbands.

[GyantSpyder]

Here's a ton of speculation on this topic for no particular reason!

I tend to think the First Men did not win the war against the Children of the Forest, and that the Pact was a very drastic sort of agreement, one which put humans in Westeros under the power of the weirwood hive mind, in exchange for peace, and for a form of access to it - and thus a form of immortality - and which accepted as a cost - voluntarily or through a cruel trick - the worship of the Old Gods and human sacrifice to them.

Prior to the Pact, the stories have the general direction of the war backwards - it was not the humans advancing north against the children, it was the children advancing out from the Isle of Faces, pushing back humans in all directions. At the time, humans had more advanced magic/technology (not really a difference in the context of times so distantly past) than they do "now" - it was humans who broke the Arm of Dorne, it was humans who built Moat Cailin (defending against approach from the south, not the north) and attempted to make the Neck impassible - all trying to contain the Children of the Forest - specifically, trying to contain the spread of the trees that were the source of the Children of the Forest's power over people's minds.

Eventually humanity tried (and failed) to build an impregnable fortress in the far north - a blasted frozen landscape inhospitable to most life, a giant wall of ice that blocked the children's magical powers - these people were the ancestors of the Free Folk - the people who "would not kneel" as more of humanity on Westeros fell under the influence of the Children. But the Children and their allies managed to seed the Haunted Forest north of the wall, and the Haunted forest spread the influence of the Children beyond the Wall as well.

This is where the rule comes from that you're supposed to chop down any tree that grows too close to the Wall - my guess is it was originally a rule to prevent trees from the south from spreading north, not the other way around - and it's also why the Fist of the First Men exists amid the Haunted Forest, with similar layout to the ancient fortress atop Casterly Rock. And this is why the structures attributable to Bran the Builder - notably Storm's End - are on the fringe of Westeros and impervious to magic - they were build as defensive magical fortifications against the advancing magic of the Children of the Forest.

By the way, this is why there are Giants north of the wall, but not south of it, and why the Free Folk are friends with Giants - because they were both driven out of the rest of Westeros by the alliance of the Children and the First Men.

So, these high-powered free folk ancestors deployed the Others, who were a creation of humanity, not of the Children (Or else why do they ride horses and carry swords? Only humans do that.), as a genocidal weapon against humans and Children alike. They blacked out the sun (screwing up the season) to try to kill the trees - sort of like what happened in The Matrix and the solar-powered computers. And they swept south and just wrecked face.

This was when the rise of the Starks happened - as the Starks holed up in Winterfell and protected humans of the North, warming them with the hot springs. By the end of it, all humans were worshipping the Old Gods anyway, but it's possible the Starks came out of the Free Folk ancestors who unleashed the Others - the Kings of Winter - "Winter is Coming."

But the war was so horribly bloody and costly and terrible, and in the end like all wars it seemed so pointless, so it was resolved - just like the war between the Children and the First Men, not by conquest, but by a Pact. And this was some sort of marriage or reproduction pact - maybe the Others took matters into their own hands and decided they wanted what the Children had - to be sacrificed to and worshipped as Gods. And so the Others retreated far back beyond the Wall, people like Craster kept the Pact with the Others the way people like the Starks kept the Pact with the Children, and the sun came back out again. Although the seasons were effed up permanently.

And of course the Andals came in and did the same thing everybody else did, which was commit genocide through a long and bloody continental war, destroying tons of human and nonhuman cultures, until they decided to stop and settle down in various places, also often by pacts and marriages. They have a religion where the images of people are worshipped as Gods as a condition for their domination - the Faith of the Seven - and they demand various sorts of obedience and sacrifice, though not blood sacrifice.

And that's when the population of the Children in Westeros became so concentrated north of the wall. Before that they mostly lived in the south. Ironically, the Kings of Winter, the descendants of the people who tried to kill the Children and humanity alike saved the Children of the Forest and their gods by turning back the Andals at Moat Cailin (yeah, this is really deep speculation and basically fan-lore at this point).

And then the dragonlords came and did the same thing.

Now what is happening is that now that the all these sides of these various conflicts as well as others from around the world are remobilizing to abandon their pacts and renew their ancient wars, all at once. Rhaegar got it into his head that he was part of this and got involved without understanding what he was doing - same with Daenerys. The Children are trying to recruit powerful wargs and greenseers and rebuilding the weirwood net - the Others are on the move again because somebody broke their pact with them - or because somebody woke them up to provoke them to attack somebody else (like Mance looking to wipe out the Southern lords) - the dragons are back and they're going to kill lots of people - the Faith Militant is back and they're purging people all over the place too.

And you also have Euron and the Shrouded Lord and the Lord of Light and whatever else is happening - with the eventual consequence of a huge bloody war in the winter that will kill tons of people, and won't be resolved by victory, but will instead be resolved when people figure out that unless they come up with a new sort of solution, they are either all going to die, or they are all going to sign on to yet another Pact of subjugation to yet another self-styled god-figure.

Valar morghulis

Valar doehaeris

[Roose on the Loose]

If the Others just woke up, 5 minutes before the epilogue of A Game of Thrones, then I wonder where they found their ginormous army of the dead.  Mance had 100000 fighters and he didn't want to meet the wights in combat.

[Red Man Racey]

11 hours ago, Roose on the Loose said:

If the Others just woke up, 5 minutes before the epilogue of A Game of Thrones, then I wonder where they found their ginormous army of the dead.  Mance had 100000 fighters and he didn't want to meet the wights in combat.

Because Free Folk have been dying of natural (and not so natural) causes for millennia.

[Runaway Penguin]

Do not think Others can wake long time dead. On the other hand it is repeatedly mentioned that the Wildlings tried to fight beck and lost more and more men... And the dead became meat puppets.

 

Mance's host was 100,000. Easy to get several thousands or even tens of thousands meat puppets, especially since we do not know how long the Others are building up. A year? Two? Ten? Did they start to unfreeze before Bloodraven was called to the cave? They do not seem to be in a hurry - might be caused by their numbers, might be that the feats we know of - raising dead, commanding armies of dead - are not everyday thing, but rather a rather exhausting thing. 

[Roose on the Loose]

Without a coffin or embalming fluid I would expect a human body to rot back into the earth in a couple of years.

An army of the dead has to be much bigger than the human host it faces, because wights are slow and clumsy.