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Drink from the Deep Well


Silas Barbarossa

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A Song of Ice and Fire is one of the best fantasy series ever written. George RR Martin is a master of creating compelling characters and weaving rich, descriptive imagery with political intrigue, magic, and even cosmic horror. Best of all, the deeper one dives into the background details of the stories, the more rich it becomes. Thousands of theories have been spawned from the interwoven details that George masterfully builds his world upon.

In appreciation of this richness, and to seek more information about the world of Terros, I have begun the exploration of the influences on A Song of Ice and Fire, and in doing so I discovered that George has borrow liberally from a deep well: the powerful shared literary universe created by HP Lovecraft and his friends, which he called the Yog-Sothoth, but is known better as the Cthulhu Mythos.

Huge fan of the Mythos

It’s important to understand that George RR Martin is a huge Lovecraft Mythos fan, in all its many and varied forms. The strong and early influence of HP Lovecraft and his collaborators on fantasy as a genre, and on George in specific, can be traced back to the first fantasy book George ever read.

According to a great essay he wrote in his “Starter Kit” collection of stories, his love of fantasy began in 1963, when he purchased Swords and Sorcery, edited by the famous writer and polymath, L. Sprague de Camp. With a story of Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard, bundled with other stories of fantasy and terror by Poul Anderson, Henry Kuttner,Clark Aston Smith, C.L. Moore, Lord Dunsany, and H.P. Lovecraft (emphasis mine on writers who both borrowed and extended the Mythos), this first fantasy series inspired his great love for the genre. It also influenced A Song of Ice and Fire, especially the terribleGods of Terros.

Themes of the stories

Throughout the fabulous, fun, and sometimes boring stories of the Cthulhu Mythos, there are multiple reoccuring themes that resonate strongly throughout A Song of Ice and Fire.

Terrible Gods

Snake gods, toad gods, gods of fire, gods of cold, gods of cruelty and revenge, gods of darkness and chaos: these are the terrible gods of the Yog-Sothoth or Cthulhu Mythos. Throughout the varied stories by the Friends of HP (Lovecraft himself, Derleth, Smith, Howard, Bloch, Camp and more), the gods are ancient and terrible cosmic demons who care nothing for humans and little for their worship. These human worshipers, craving power and understanding little of the true nature of the gods, invoke their presence with secret rites designed to capture their power. However, the humans usually find out that they can’t control what they call, with terrible results.

There was a later divergence from the strong trait of cosmic indifference by these beings after the death of Lovecraft in 1937, when August Derleth introduced a controversial morality as he published and expanded Lovecraft’s works posthumously. This did not reduce the sheer terror that the Outer Ones, the Great Old Ones, and the Elder Ones, induced in humans.

Gods and man interacting

Because the “gods” are cosmic demons who inhabit Earth when it was younger, they interacted directly with humans. While (most of) the gods are now sleeping or banished into outer space, and can’t interact with modern humans, these ancient interactions and demonstrations of the powers of the gods spawned human religions. Humans, unable to control their lust for power, worked mysterious and ancient rites to borrow the power of the gods, without understanding the true nature of the space demons they are invoking.

Ancient and lost civilizations and continents

Atlantis, Hyberborea, Thule, Lemuria: these are all famous mythical lands with lost civilizations that are used throughout the stories of the Mythos to both set the stage of the story and root them in lost ages that are beyond the memory of modern man.

A Homeric reference, Hyberborea was a mythical place to the ancient Greeks where a paradise awaited “beyond the North Wind” (the literal translation of Hyperborea). It was said to be a warm, winterless place in the midst of the winds and snows of the north. It has been associated with Greenland, as well as mythical lands north of Ireland and Britain. Famous Atlantis was first described by Plato in ancient Greek times, but became famous through the writings of the Romantics of the 19th century. Thule was a mythical land in the far north of classical cartography, identified at times with Norway or the Shetlands but mainly indicating a land beyond the borders of the known world. Lemuria was a later addition to the mythical cartography, an Indian Ocean continent that was lost in the ancient past.

Conan the Barbarian and the love of fantasy

Conan the Barbarian was George’s first love, and its worth a refresher on the story to see how Howard developed Conan and drew from the Mythos to create his world and gods, and the peoples that worship them. The time is ancient and the place is a mystical land full of peoples both similar and different than modern humans. Known as the Hyborian Age, it is a violent Iron Age setting with swordsmen, mysterious sorcerers, and religions with terrible gods that demand blood sacrifices, set 10,000 years or more before Caesar (though some editors placed it even further back to before the last Ice Age).

Hyborians

The Hyborian Age began after the sinking of the ancient civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria, which set back humanity to a primitive state “hardly above Neanderthal”. These people, the Hyborians, escaped the destruction of the ancient civilizations and fled to the north, where they fought a race of snow apes. Defeating the snow apes and driving them north of the Arctic Circle, they adapt to the land and multiply. Eventually, the Hyborians begin return to lands south of them, and wars between the dispersing tribes of Hyborians became frequent.

A thousand years having past, the snow apes of the Arctic Circle had become fair-haired and tall men, who return to attack the Hyborians, setting the stage for the stories of Conan the Barbarian.

Conan the Cimmerian

Conan was a Cimmerian, one of the many peoples of the Hyborian Age. Based on Celtic and/or Gaelic influences, the Cimmerians descended from the Hyborians and are a hard people with black hair and gray eyes (and are probably white, as most of these early — and recent — fantasy stories tended to be). They are located about where Ireland or Scotland would be in the map of the world developed by Howard.

Born the son of a blacksmith, he eventually becomes a great warrior and even the King of Aquilonia. No man is stronger, and the giant man uses his strength and his cunning to improve his lot in the hard world. He speaks many languages and is a born leader, with a humor and wit streaked with “grim” irony.

His great love was the woman Valeria, a pirate and adventuress and a member of the Red Brotherhood of pirates. She is a superior swordswoman who can even best Conan, being faster and more agile. She is his love in the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian.

Gods of the Hyborian Age

There are a great many gods worshiped by the many cultures of the Hyborian Age. They are at war with each other, just like the gods of Terros. These wars take form through their followers and through direct intervention by the gods, to destroy the territories of the followers of rival gods.

The major gods of the Hyborian Age were a mix of mythical ancestors such as Crom for the Cimmerians and Bori for the Hyperboreans, figures of sacrifices, and evil demons and snake gods. This is linked to the ancient gods of the Nordics and/or the Celtics by geography and rituals. Crom is seen to judge warriors before they are allowed into Valhalla in later stories.

In the major kingdoms of Aquilonia, Argos, Nemedia, and Zingara were Mitra and Father Set. The diety called Mitra is worshiped as a cross between a Christ-figure and Mitra/Mithras of the Zoroastrian and Vedic, and later Roman, mythos. Mitra even speaks directly to a love interest of Conan’s to help her and him defeat their enemies and lead Conan to become King of Aquilonia. Notably, there are no blood sacrifices to Mitra, and his adherents spread his religion to other lands at great personal peril.

Father Set is a seven-headed snake god, mainly worshiped in the dark lands of the Stygians. His dark followers offer Set human sacrifices “and sorcerous obscenities”. In previous ages (discussed below), Set created a race of Serpent Men to serve him, but they were defeated by humans and disappeared. Even so, his worship continues and was even featured in the first Conan movie.

Father Set is identified with the Great Old One Yig, and was either directly borrowed by Howard for Conan or was a major influence on Set.

Naga the Sea Snake

In the Marvel Comics version of the Conan universe, there is a sea man/snake god known as Naga. First published in 1969, Naga is the ruler of the Homo mermanus or water-breathing merpeople who live in the remains of Lemuria, which had sunk into the sea before the Hyborian Age. He finds in the ancient ruins of Lemuria the ancient Serpent Crown of the followers of Set. Through this crown, Set controls Naga though he has been banished to another dimension. Nageis transformed into a snake-like merman, with green, scaly skin instead of the blue skin common to the merpeople. Naga gains immortality and control over his people, whom he converts to the worship of Set. Naga’s people become green in color and also have scales.

The idea of the Nāga is an ancient one that dates back even to the Mahabharata of India, but the best story of the Nāga is from Cambodia:

In a Cambodian legend, the nāga were a reptilian race of beings under the King Kaliya who possessed a large empire or kingdom in the Pacific Ocean region until they were chased away by the Garuda and sought refuge in India. It was here Kaliya’s daughter married an Indian Brahmana named Kaundinya, and from their union sprang the Cambodian people. Therefore, Cambodians possess a slogan “Born from the naga”. As a dowry, Kaliya drank up the water that covered the country and exposed the land for his daughter and son-in-law to inhabit and thus, Cambodia was created.

Other Gods

Multiple other gods, from the Cthulhu Mythos or inspired by it, appear throughout the Conan stories. Nyarlathotep is one of the gods worshiped in the mythos of the Hyborian Age. Dagon, a Fish or Water God with a long history, was added to the Conan universe by Marvel in the 1970s. He can raise the dead as zombies and uses them as servants - a common motif in Mythos stories.

Tsathoggua

Tsathoggua, the Toad God, or Seven-Eyed Tsathoggua, makes an early appearance (1932) in the Conan stories, where he forms an alliance with Set and his minions. Conan is his enemy, or one of them, but Tsathoggua has his worshipers as well. In the Conan stories, he carries all of the back story from the Mythos, where he is related to Cthulhu and other Great Old Ones. Tsathoggua was created by Clark Ashton Smith, who created the Hyperborean Cycle discussed below.

Development of Conan

Robert E. Howard wrote 21 short stories and 1 novel about Conan the Barbarian before his suicide in 1936.

After Howard’s unfortunate death, the copyright passed to a few different men. L. Sprague de Camp, the editor of the Swords and Sorcery anthology that welcomed George to the world of fantasy, was one. Another was Lin Carter, who became one of George’s editors and friends in the 1970s.

Howard’s original stories had more direct relationship to the Cthulhu Mythos, but many of the references were removed in the reworking and rewriting of the material by the later editors. However, these editors borrowed liberally for place names from the Hyberborian Cycle by Clark Aston Smith and kept many of the references to Mythos Gods.

The crossover was not one direction. Lovecraft mentions “Crom-Ya, a Cimmerian chieftain” in The Shadow Out of Time in 1924.

A great amount of development of the world of Conan also took place in the Marvel Comics version of the Hyborian Age. This should not be dismissed as an influence as it’s clear that George has had a love affair with comics that might still be ongoing.

Other writings by Howard

Howard wrote other stories that were similiarly set in a familiar fantasy setting.

Thurian Age

The Thurian Age was set in the epoch before the cataclysm that destroy Atlantis and Lemuria. It is, like A Song of Ice and Fire, a mixture of a fantasy Iron Age setting with Lovecraftian gods. Kull, an Atlantean barbarian, is one of the main heroes of the stories.

Thuria is the dominant continent, home of the “Seven Empires”. There are six kingdoms in the Thurian Age: Commoria, Grondar, Kamelia, Thule and Valusia. Together with a seventh, unnamed kingdom, these kingdoms form the “Seven Empires”.

There were three main tribes of “barbarian” men: Atlantis, Lemuria, and the Pictish Islands. Each represents an area in the “real” world, and the current inhabitants of those regions are the descendents of these ancient peoples.

The Atlanteans, based mainly on a small continent to the west of Thuria, have colonies on Thuria. Lemuria is a large island chain east of Thuria.

Valusia was founded and ruled initially by the Serpent Men. Finally overthrown by their human slaves, the Serpent Men tried to regain rule for centuries but were finally defeated by Kull the barbarian.

The Thurian Age Cataclysms

As mentioned above, marking the end of the Thurian Age was a great cataclysm that sunk the lands of Atlantis and Lemuria. This brought about the barbarism of the Hyborian Age and the stories of Conan:

Following the cataclysm that destroys the Thurian Age, Atlantis sinks beneath the sea. The survivors on the Thurian continent are forced back into the stone age by lack of resources but become skilled in this medium and develop an artistic culture. They soon enter a war with the surviving Picts and lose to their superior numbers and stone-age military technology. The survivors of the war devolve back into apes. They eventually re-evolve into humans to become the Cimmerians of the Hyborian Age. In turn the Cimmerians become the Celts, Gaels and Scythians of modern, real world, history.

A great cataclysm ends the Thurian Age some time after the Kull stories. Several countries sink into the sea, others rise from it, and the rest is devastated by earthquakes and volcanoes. Civilization is destroyed and the survivors attempt to build a new culture but warfare and a Lesser Cataclysm strike, creating the Hyborian Vilayet Sea and destroying any last remnants ofThurian society.

Basis of the Thurian Age Cataclysms

The Kull stories in the Thurian Age reflect many of the lost continent theories that were popular in the early 20th century. Tales of Atlantis were ancient, certainly, and the loss of its fabled civilization has been discussed for centureis. Lemuria is a later invention of early paleo-biology, a lost continent used to explain the presense of primates (especially the Lemurs of Madagascar) on continent far apart.

Red Sonja

Red Sonja was developed from an original story by Howard called “The Shadow of the Vulture”, published in 1934. She was added to the Conan Universe in 1973 by Roy Thomas, a writer for Marvel Comics. Red Sonja was recast as a warrior woman from Hyrkania, an ancient, eastern land of steppes and forest, placed in modern day Ukraine. This Hyrkania is based on the real-world kingdom of Hyrcania that was located at the southern tip of the Caspian Sea.

Bran Mak Morn

Howard’s King of the Picts, Bran Mak Morn, was written about in 5 of his stories. Stories of the Picts overlapped with the Thurian Age and Hyborian Age stories, but the Bran Mak Morn stories borrow more from the “real” world. Throughout all of the stories, the Picts are seen as analogous to the Native Americans as well as ancient Celtic tribes. They are given the role of the noble savage, who lost technological know how with the fall of Atlantis. In some of the stories, the Picts are closer to a cave-man archetype than the noble savage. Their priests are known to burn people alive, a desire born of a twisted revenge mindset that takes place after they are driven from their original lands to the current Pictish territories.

Notably, many Pictish warriors are werewolves. They could change into wolves of their own free will.

Bran Mak Morn is a Pict but is less savage than his peers. He desires a peace with the other tribes of Briton, to create an alliance against the invading Romans. His name derives fromBrennus (the Gaul who sacked Rome) and from the Brittonic word meaning “Raven.”

Mentions of Lovecraftian gods and locations are included throughout the Bran Mak Morn stories, and Lovecraft himself references Bran Mak Morn in The Whispers in the Darkness.

Other stories in the Swords and Sorcery anthology

L. Sprague de Camp’s Swords and Sorcery contained other stories that are even more deeply involved in the Cthulhu Mythos. Clark Aston Smith’s “The Testament of Athammaus”, set in fabled Hyberborea and concerning the outlaw Knygathin Zhaum. The Doom that Came to Sarnath, by HPL himself, describes the return of a Great Old One and the doom that commenced. C.L. Moore, one of the first women writing fantasy at the time, contributed “Hellsgarde”. While other early fantasy writers such as Poal Anderson and Lord Dunsany made strong impressions, the contributions by Lovecraft, Smith and Howard opened the door to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Hyberborean Cycle

Clark Aston Smith’s collections of Mythos stories are known collectively as the Hyperborean Cycle. With a solid Mythos universe background, Smith expanded the universe greatly to include important Great Old Ones such as Tsathoggua. Like the stories of Conan, they also portray an Iron Age setting with layers of cosmic horror. In the continent of Hyperborea, terrible gods demand blood sacrifices and prey on humans.

Right there in Swords and Sorcery, that first fantasy collection, was one of the Hyberborean stories: The Testimony of Athammaus. It concerned the city of Commoriom, the capital of Hyberborea. An evil, outlaw descendent of Tsathoggua and a snake god is found and beheaded, only to return again and take what he desired. Eventually, due to the evil of the outlaw Knygathin Zhaum, Commoriom must be abandoned.

Other Humanoids

In Smith’s writings, he details two other humanoid peoples that have fought against humans in the past: the Voormi and the Gnophkeh.

The Voormi, who were fleshed out much later by Lin Carter (one of George’s editors), are described as three-toed, umber-colored, fur-covered humanoids who communicate by dog-like howls.

The Voormi live on the continent of Hyberborea, in caves deep within the Eiglophian mountians, under the extinct volcano called Mount Voormithadreth. Worshipers of Tsathoggua, they built a civilization on the surface of Hyberborea but it came to its demise through constant warfare with the Gnophkeh. Later, they were hunted by humans for sport and driven to the Eiglophian mountains.

The Gnophkeh are their great enemy, especially before humans encroach on their land. Cannibals covered in hair with large noses, the Gnophkeh fought against the Voormi and later the humans. Pushed by war with the humans to the far north, they encounteredIthaqua, the Great Old One known as the Wind-Walker or Wendigo, and began to worship him instead of their original god, Rhan-Tegoth.

The Gnophkeh were finally destroyed when Ithaqua and the god of the Cold Flame, Aphoom-Zhah, brought about the Ice Age.

Sarnath and Bokrug

One of the earliest short stories by Lovecraft is The Doom That Came to Sarnath, published in 1920. It’s a clear influence on The World of Ice and Fire and the main story, and it concerns an ancient war against inhuman beings who worship one of the Great Old Ones, Bokrug. It too was included in Swords and Sorcery.

It concerns the people of Sarnath, a race of shepherd people who live along the river Ai in the land called Mnar. In a search for more lands, the people pushed their borders to a vast lake at the heart of Mnar. There they built the crowning glory, the metropolis of Sarnath. It was there that they encountered the people of Ib, a strange people who lived across the lake.

The people of Ib were green of skin, with bulging eyes and curious ears and other odd features. They remind me of the people of the Thousand Islands in far Essos.

Eventually, the people of Sarnath destroyed the city of Ib, and killed all its inhabitants. They also stole a statute from Ib, a sea-green stone idol of Bokrug (the great water lizard who was said to inhabit the lake) to celebrate their victory over both the people, and the old gods, of Ib.

That night, something terrible happened. The next morning, the idol was gone, and the high priest of Sarnath was found dead in the scrolled “DOOM” on the temple floor. No murderer was ever found, nor was the idol. The incident was hushed-up and forgotten over time, though some priests of Sarnath swore they saw strange lights in the lake from their high tower.

Ten centuries later, the civilization of Sarnath is at its height. To celebrate the conquering of Ib, one thousand years previous, the king of Sarnath has a grand celebration. Giant lake fish was served on plates inlayed with rubies and diamonds. Caravans of princes came from far and near to celebrate the glory of Sarnath.

But strange shadows came down from the moon, and a green mist hovered over the lake. The foreign princes were allowed to escape, and as they left madness showed on each shocked face. A terrible and ancient being had returned to Sarnath. Did Bokrug come from another dimension or from the bottom of the lake - or both?

Sarnath was subsumed by the nameless lake, and the King of Sarnath and feasters were turned into people with green skin and bulging eyes. The idol of Bokrug, thought forever lost, appeared again along the lake. These transformed residents of Sarnath, resembling the original inhabitants of Ib, began to worship Bokrug, the giant water lizard. The doom, long promised to Sarnath, had come.

My Conclusions and Suppositions

The role of the Cthulhu Mythos plays in A Song of Ice and Fire is still to be determined, but it is obvious that there are many great connections between the Mythos and a Song of Ice and Fire. Both the gods and the humanoid peoples of Terros are borrowed liberally from the Mythos.

Influences on A Song of Ice and Fire

It would be hard to recount all of the obvious influences of the Cthulhu Mythos upon A Song of Ice and Fire, but a few deserve to be highlighted explicitly.

Cymmeri People of Essos

In the World of Ice and Fire, the Cymmerians are included as an ancient people of Essos, who banded with the Tall Men of Sarnath, also known as the Sarnori. Known as the first people to work iron, the Cymmeri married into the Sarnori when the daughter of their king became one of Huzhor Amai’s three wives.

Huzhor Amai

Huzhor Amai (the Amazing) was said to be the first king of the Sarnori, and the descendent of the Fisher Queens. The Fisher Queens ruled the ancient inland sea that covered what is now the grasslands of the Dothraki Sea. Only three lakes remain of the Silver Sea, the great ancient inland sea, another sign that Terros is much drier than it used to be in the past.Huzhor bound together three tribes through his marriages, the Cymmeri, the Gipps, and the Zoqora, and battled the Qaathi and Old Ghis.

The people of Ib

While the people of Ib in HPL’s story of Sarnath sound a lot more like the Deep Ones than the people of Ib in A Song of Ice and Fire, the name was obviously borrowed directly from HPL.

The Patrimony of Hyrkoon

The Patrimony of Hyrkoon is closely related to the stories of Hyrkania from both the Thurian Age stories and the Conan stories. They are located in roughly the same place in the world (east of the main kingdoms) as the Patrimony, and are even related to the ancient real-world civilization of Hyrcania, south of the Caspian Sea.

Lemuria, Lemurs, and Little Valyrians

Curiously, there is a lemur of the Forest of Qohor that is described in the World of Ice and Fire. Said to resemble Valyrians because of their silver hair, the lemurs are known as the Little Valyrians. A stuffed Little Valyrian is housed at the Citadel, where the students have rubbed it (for good luck) until the silver hair fell out.

This is an interesting inclusion by George, and it makes me think that there could be a connection between the Valyrians and the Lemurians of the Thurian Age.

The Gnophkeh and the Voormi

While the Voormi change in description from their early appearances in the Clark Aston Smith stories, their form in the Lin Carter stories resembles the Children of the Forest: three-toed, fur-covered, and umber-colored. However, this itself is not a strong connection, though their residence in the cave system of the Eiglophian mountains reminds me strongly of the Children (the Children also have some similarities to the Picts of the Mythos). The Voormis sound more like mole people than the Children do. The Children do have some of the elements of the mythical Picts of the Thurian and Hyborian Ages.

The Gnophkeh, on the other hand, are a dead ringer for the Giants of Westeros, as described in the World of Ice and Fire. Covered in hair, with large protruding ears and a “proboscidean” noses, the Gnophkeh were hunted by man and forced from their original lands. Similarly, the Giants are covered in hair and have large ears and noses. Hunted by man, they only exist in the far north and are a dying, nearly mythical species.

The Hyborians and the Thenns

The Hyborians sound a lot like the wildings of the North, specifically the Hyberborian tribe, who sound a lot like the Thenns. If you compare a map of the Hyperborean Cycle lands with a map of the North, it looks a lot like the lands beyond the Wall. In fact, The Frostfangs strongly resemble the Eiglophian mountians, and this comparison is bolstered by the presence of the vast cave system of the Children.

The valley of the Thenns, a warm valley in a land were there should not be such a valley, is very reminiscent of the idea of Hyberborea (and of Thule), which were both ancient lands in the far north romanticisied by ancient writers.

Red Sonja and the women of Hyrkoon

It’s easy to sea a relationship between the Hyrkania of Conan and Red Sonja and the warrior women of the Patrimony of Hyrkoon in far Essos. Red Sonja will only love or have sex with a warrior who can defeat her in battle. Similarly, the warrior women of the Patrimony geld 99 of every 100 men born, with only the most powerful keep whole to mate with the warrior women.

Mitra and Mithras

The strong Mithraic symbolism that runs throughout the story arcs of Jon Snow and Bran was influenced by the religon of Mitra in Hyboria, and of real-world Mithraism. This symbolism is covered in great detail by a favorite writer of mine, Lucifer Means Lightbringer, and I can’t add much more too it. Check it out if you haven’t already.

The Fisher Queens were Deep Ones or even Giant Water Lizards

The Fisher Queens (who “were favored of the gods”, according to Maester Yandel), sound like hybrids of the god Bokrug (the giant water lizard) from the Lovecraft story, “The Doom of Sarnath”, and Deep Ones. These Queens might be the result of the couplings between the gods and human woman, like the warrior women of Hyrkoon.

If Maester Yandel thinks that kings and other heroes visited them for their wise counsel, it makes me suspicious, as do all Citadel-inspired views on these ancient rulers.

Cymmeri and Andals?

The working of iron, and the similarity of the name Hugor (of the Hill) to Huzhor (Amai), and even to Mazor (Alexi), last king of the Sarnori, makes me suspect that there is some relationship between the Cymmeri and the Andals.

Huzhor Amai and the Bloodstone Emperor

Like the Bloodstone Emperor, Huzhor Amai was the last of a long line of royalty that descended from ancient rulers. Also, the similarities between Huzhor Amai (and Mazor Alexi) to Azor Ahai is really hard to dismiss. I’ll have a major follow-up to this theory in the future.

Necromancy is commonplace in the Mythos

Many of the stories in the Mythos involve the raising of the dead. Sometimes, depending on the perspective of the character we are experiencing the story from, this sounds almost normal, and just something that is a part of their culture, while others they encounter are fearful of this power.

This makes me think that the raising of the dead by the White Walkers has a completely different context to them then to the humans of Westeros, and by extension, we the readers.

Continents and islands, lost or found

Throughout these stories there are instances of islands or even whole continents sinking beneath the sea, or rising from it. These cataclysms set the stage for later action and remove whole civilizations and their technological progress from history, making barbarism dominant.

This reminds me greatly of the Hammer of the Waters, which caused the land bridge from Westeros to Essos to be subsumed by the Narrow Sea, as well as the submersion of the Neck.

Naga the Sea Dragon?

The stories of Naga, king of the Homo mermanus, remind me so much of the stories of Nagga the Sea Dragon on the Iron Islands, as well as the mythical Nāga of East Asia lore. The Nāga is a snake that can be a human or marry one to produce a people from a land that used to be under the sea.

The fact that Naga was a selkie or merman is very telling about the origins of the Ironborn. They are not just worshipers of the Drowned God - they might be his descendents, much like the Cambodians. Did a nāga drink up water to expose the land for its people? Or try to drown the land somehow?

I also wonder if the Nāga and Nagga the Sea Dragon are related to the idea of the Uktena, the Horned Serpent. In my theory The Dead Direwolf, I suppose that the direwolf mother that died in Bran I of Game of Thrones was not killed by a stag, but was instead killed by a uktena, which can turn into a man, and that there is a relationship to Garth the Green, who was a green-horned man like the greenmen of the Isle of Faces. Check it out, it’s a fun read.

Sothoryos and the Yog-Sothoth

Sothoryos, which sounds like south and therefore seems to fit nicely into the Westeros/Essos naming scheme, is not named after the direction. It is instead named after the Yog-Sothoth, which is the name that Lovecraft himself gave to the Cthulhu Mythos (a name later coined by Derleth).

George is using Sothoryos as a literary Africa, where these fantastic beings and ideas are born.

Bran Mak Morn

The King of the Picts, Bran Mak Morn, has some deep influences on the character of Bran Stark, even beyond the name. The ability of the Picts to turn into wolves is one strong connection, and the psuedo-historical relationship of the Picts to real ancient Britons, especially as they resisted the Roman invaders, reminds me strongly of the First Men of the North. Overall, the joy that Howard took in writing about the Picts and Bran Mak Morn should be counted as a powerful influence on readers like George.

The Gods of Terros are Eldritch Deities

The Gods of Terros, worshiped by the people of Terros in its various religions, are all based on the terrible gods of the Cthulhu Mythos known as the The Great Old Ones. All, of course,except for the Old Gods of the Forest. They will be approached in an upcoming essay, which will discuss the role of August Derleth and L. Sprague de Camp in furthering the work of Lovecraft, and in introducing the idea of a war between the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods.

These eldritch deities are born of cosmic horror, and care little or nothing for the humanoids that worship them. In the current age, these monsters are mostly sleeping (like Cthulhu), or banished to outer space (like Hastur). Only Nyarlathotep roams the Earth, enacting the will of the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods. But all have their worship, even Tsathoggua, who is worshipped on the Isle of Toads.

The Drowned God of Ironborn, the Lord of Light, the Great Other, the Great Shepherd, and the Toad God of the Isle of Toads, among others, are all versions of these eldritch monsters. These Gods of Terror are not going to stay sleeping or banished forever. Instead, they will return, and humanity will suffer.

George loves the Mythos

George loves the Mythos, and his embrace of it is encoded deeply within A Song of Ice and Fire. From the very beginning of his love for fantasy writing, the Cthulhu Mythos and its many writers helped shaped what he expected from fantasy, and what he produced of it. The Lovecraftian elements in Terros are clearly not just homage; instead, these themes and characters are used intentionally to flesh out the background of the books, and to help guide the powers and magic that each god can access. The roles of magic and the gods from which it derives on the past, present and future of Terros are shaped deeply by the powers described in the Mythos.

However, George, like all of the other Mythos writers, uses the shared universe as a starting point, and adds many details to flesh out both the gods and their roles. It’s not a paint-by-numbers operation; instead, George has used this set of ideas and characterizations that help guide the stories.

We can, however, make a lot of use of this background within our theories, as the framework of the Mythos helps to guide our guesses. With this understanding of the deep literary universe that George is both borrowing and expanding, we can better understand what he is planning to do with our favorite characters.

(Note: this is cross-posted from my blog, Gods of Terror)

 

 

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2 hours ago, Silas Barbarossa said:

Calling out to some people who enjoyed earlier Gods of Terror posts - @YOVMO,  @Lucifer Lightbringer, @The Dew, @mediterraneo, @King Merrett I Frey, @Maelys I Blackfyre, @Arya_Stupid!, @M_Tootles.

 

If nothing else, this background is fascinating and might help your theories in the future. Hope you all enjoy!

 

good stuff! thanks!

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Again, I loved the read. Really enjoy all of this talk of creepy gods and whatnot. It is something interesting to think about and consider, especially when reading through World of Ice and Fire and some of the mysterious Essosi cultures the book hints at. Great work, I'm looking forward to whatever you post next!

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