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Heresy 193 Winterfell


Black Crow

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I keep thinking about Milisandra's explanation of how shadow babies are creatures of light and can't exist without light.  Ice and Fire could be the same way.  And if Targs and Starks are really the same, Jon being the son of both is the ultimate expression of the Targs marrying each other.

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6 hours ago, LmL said:

As to Varamyr, he's only showing us one part of the proposed process - he dies, and then goes into his wolf. Jon will do the same thing. What we need then, is for someone to come along and resurrect Jon's body, and then we'll need somebody to help facilitate the transfer of the soul back into the resurrected body. Jon probably cannot accomplish this transfer himself, just as Varamyr is stuck inside his wolf after dying and just as we learn that skinchangers who begin second life can no longer skinchange back out. In other words, he's going to need help in two different areas - someone needs to resurrect the body, and someone needs to accomplish the transfer of John's soul from his wolf back into his resurrected body. It's possible this will happen automatically when the body is resurrected, but it might not. The main part of my theory that

 

7 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

It's basically the same premise you're suggesting.  Based on the examples we've been given of fire resurrection on the one hand which eats away at the soul and memories of the resurrected person, and on the other hand the ice resurrection which results in mindless remote-controlled zombies, he's positing a third alternative -- namely, that only a skinchanger's soul can survive the resurrection process intact, by being sequestered in the 'soul jar' of the skinchanger-greenseer's wolf/tree while his body is being resurrected.  Thereafter, the soul fully cognizant and intact returns to the body, which no longer has the vulnerability of physical needs (need for food, warmth, shelter, etc.), so better suited to withstand the cold and engage in even-handed combat with the Others.

Or another alternative presents itself .I come at it from a different angle.What if Jon's body doesn't die at all and he is in a coma. I think its possible that the Wall's magic itself will preserve Jon. We have allusions of this as in the case of Maester Aemon as you recall. The wall could preserve him just as cold preserves.How many times have we had characters on the Wall say "it is cold" .Of course i don't think this saying is just a throw away comment.

To come back to my premise about Jon not having to die to go through his transformation.V6skins experiance when dying shows us a few things.

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"The white world turned and fell away. For a moment it was as if he were inside the weirwood, gazing out through carved red eyes as a dying man twitched feebly on the ground and a madwoman danced blind and bloody underneath the moon, weeping red tears and ripping at her clothes. Then both were gone and he was rising, melting, his spirit borne on some cold wind. He was in the snow and in the clouds, he was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak. A horned owl flew silently between his trees, hunting a hare; Varamyr was inside the owl, inside the hare, inside the trees. Deep below the frozen ground, earthworms burrowed blindly in the dark, and he was them as well. I am the wood, and everything that' s in it, he thought, exulting. A hundred ravens took to the air, cawing as they felt him pass. A great elk trumpeted, unsettling the children clinging to his back. A sleeping direwolf raised his head to snarl at empty air. Before their hearts could beat again he had passed on, searching for his own, for One Eye, Sly, and Stalker, for his pack. His wolves would save him, he told himself.

That was his last thought as a man.

True death came suddenly; he felt a shock of cold, as if he had been plunged into the icy waters of a frozen lake. Then he found himself rushing over moonlit snows with his packmates close behind him. Half the world was dark. One Eye, he knew. "

 

 

Up until "That was his last thought as a man" V6 was alive and outside his body.Affecting and and being apart of the environment and those in it around him. I believe as i pointed out Here the greenseers have been using the wind as a vehicle to get around and raise the dead.Their bodies are preserved some where magically cold. Could be Blooraven's (dead man in a tree) crew or another(dead man in ice),but we are dealing with the un dead raising the dead.What all have in comment i believe is the ability to skinchange and thus use the elements as conduits.Not just any elements one that can preserve so they live longer.

Where does that leave Jon.He may float in and out of Ghost,but he doesn't need to die.His body just has to remain via magical means and its linked to the Wall.I think we have a foreshadowing to that .

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Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him ... North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned his cheeks.

 

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but theres another tale I like better. The one that says hes not like tother stone men, that he started out as a statuetill a grey woman came out of the fog and kissed him with lips as cold as ice


 

There is similarities here with Bran seeing Jon dying,his body becoming hard and pale ;like a statue.Coincidentally? I don't think so.The Shrouded Lord's transformation is Jon's.

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On 12/21/2016 at 2:12 PM, Black Crow said:

I mentioned earlier in passing that it might be possible to see Winterfell as a prison. In re-reading those Bran chapters in Clash of Kings where he is serving as the Stark in Winterfell, talking to the Reeds and running as a wolf in Summer, its striking how much emphasis there is on the stone walls and iron bars serving to trap and imprison the wolves, and then we have the Reeds telling Bran that he is the winged wolf, held by stone chains and that they have come to free him and take him north to the Three-eyed Crow. Are those chains Winterfell itself? It might be easy to say that Bran can’t go to the Crow because he can’t walk but his injuries are not stone chains. Was his fall brought about so that he could eventually be freed and is he the only Stark to be held in Winterfell by those stone chains?

As a prison...I can see that and i want to go deeper in that.It also strikes me how much Winterfell is like a stone tree.We can switch roles and superimpose what we grasp when it comes to the greenseer and weirwood relationship. We had spoken of this i believe a while ago.How possibly the weirwood itself depending on how you look at the relationship can be seen as a prison for the greenseers. So maybe,like a heart tree must have its greenseer (a person of a particular blood) A Stark must be in the stone tree of Winterfell.

ETA. Its going into the weekend .Weed is legal in California, so i maybe tripping just a tinsy bit right about now.:D So i don't know if what i just said is making some kind of sense.In my head its perfect.

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Purely as a matter of logistics, I think it's pretty clear that Jon is dead. The fact that blood was welling from the first neck wound - as in, welling immediately after being sliced - indicates his jugular was cut by that first blow. We don't have many nerve endings in the front of our neck, so you don't actually feel a wound there the same as you would elsewhere - hence Jon thinking he wasn't cut very deep. But he loses feeling in his hands in only a few moments, and that again would be consistent with a jugular wound. Essentially, what I am saying is that if blood is immediately welling from a neck wound, it's almost certain that his jugular was nicked. And in that case, he's got less than a minute to live, I'd think. 

I acknowledge it's not ironclad but it's convincing enough for me. Plus his death and resurrection is foreshadowed in so many ways. 

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7 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

As a prison...I can see that and i want to go deeper in that.It also strikes me how much Winterfell is like a stone tree.We can switch roles and superimpose what we grasp when it comes to the greenseer and weirwood relationship. We had spoken of this i believe a while ago.How possibly the weirwood itself depending on how you look at the relationship can be seen as a prison for the greenseers. So maybe,like a heart tree must have its greenseer (a person of a particular blood) A Stark must be in the stone tree of Winterfell.

ETA. Its going into the weekend .Weed is legal in California, so i maybe tripping just a tinsy bit right about now.:D So i don't know if what i just said is making some kind of sense.In my head its perfect.

Are you aware of the etymology of "weir" as it pertains to a fishing weir, which is a wooden trap to catch fish built over a river? It's also called a "fishgarth," so there is a certain sense in which a weirwood tree is a garth tree, or perhaps a trap for garth people (horned lords, green men). I talked a lot about this in my Sacred Order of Green Zombies series that I just put out. It's funny you should have the same idea... yes the weirwoodnet is very much a trap fro greenseers, it would seem. It giveth and it taketh as well. My question is what was the original purpose? Did the first greenseers "invade" the weirwoodnet? Were they lured in? Were the weirwoods neutralizing a dangerous enemy, or subverting them as the cotf do by converting humans into greenseer who sympathize with the children / view things form their perspective? 

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25 minutes ago, LmL said:

Are you aware of the etymology of "weir" as it pertains to a fishing weir, which is a wooden trap to catch fish built over a river? It's also called a "fishgarth," so there is a certain sense in which a weirwood tree is a garth tree, or perhaps a trap for garth people (horned lords, green men). I talked a lot about this in my Sacred Order of Green Zombies series that I just put out. It's funny you should have the same idea... yes the weirwoodnet is very much a trap fro greenseers, it would seem. It giveth and it taketh as well. My question is what was the original purpose? Did the first greenseers "invade" the weirwoodnet? Were they lured in? Were the weirwoods neutralizing a dangerous enemy, or subverting them as the cotf do by converting humans into greenseer who sympathize with the children / view things form their perspective? 

The Old English,but again even in that etymology there a matter of perspective.Its more of an enclosure which depending on purpose could be seen as trap,protection or seal.So All could apply to Winterfell the Weirwoods depending on whatever the hell they were about.

Which brings me to the point of what was the deal with these trees. I proposed a while back and still believe in a "first contact" situation with respect to the trees and creatures like the direwolves with foundation in the music of the spheres.

I think the specialty lay in the blood of some of the people that came from Essos. Some of them could as we say "hear the music" so when the trees and creatures like the direwolves reached out in song,behold some men,heard because they could,understood and answered.

I think when the first men came with their fire and their axes that's what happened-First contact and in so doing sympathetic humans were essentially made because of this psychic link.

So i think the Weirwoods "infiltrated" the First men via those that were sensitive for the sake of securing their survival going forward  in some capacity.

Had this idea a long time just from the angle of infiltration vs trap.As i said it really depends on perspective.I mean hey living longer having godlike powers including hoping bodies thus allowing me if i was so inclined to partake in all manner of fleshly vices.All i have to do is contribute my special blood to a tree...Sweet deal to some.

I've longed believe that nature itself is the trump card in all this.The trees the wolves they are all players possibly moving pawns to their own ends.

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I'm not so sure about Jon being resurrected by fire and very mindful that we don't know what gave Coldhands that shot in the arm. What I think has been laid down as a marker in this is that both Craster's boys and the wights, who unquestionably belong to Ice, have those starry blue eyes. Melisandre and the Fire Co. have red eyes. Coldhands the Russian has neither.

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16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:
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This make me thinking to the LF's lesson as player : he confuses his adversaries by never appear as acting for his own interest. In this case, it significate that the player stay hidden by his pieces. To come back to a past-story, I mean that the "Bran" didn't kill the king to take the crown for himself, but to give it to... a wolf. And the wolf were enchained and cursed by that, and became a pawn on the chess plate, the king piece. 

I still don't understand what you mean by this?  Can you elaborate more on what you mean by 'giving it to a wolf'?!

just a parenthesis in the thread to give a concrete example : the narrative scheme I'm thinking about is quite the same of Maester Aemon's story : 

- after Maekar's death, a great counsil was convocated, the crown was offered to Aemon Targaryen, but he refused and gave it to Aegon the Unworthy. 

- And then, Aemon went to the Wall to serve as a black crow. And he has so long live that he saw all his family dying before him. The kind of fate that a greenseer as Brandon the Builder (and other brandon-greenseers) could have had. I always wondered if the black gate at Nightfort couldn't be Brandon the Builder the greenseer (the original 3-Eyed Crow, perhaps), weeping on the Stark family : 

 

 
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The face was old and pale, wrinkled and shrunken. It looks dead. Its mouth was closed, and its eyes; its cheeks were sunken, its brow withered, its chin sagging. If a man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow older, his face might come to look like that.
The door opened its eyes.
(...)
"Then pass," the door said. Its lips opened, wide and wider and wider still, until nothing at all remained but a great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles. Sam stepped aside and waved Jojen through ahead of him. Summer followed, sniffing as he went, and then it was Bran's turn. Hodor ducked, but not low enough. The door's upper lip brushed softly against the top of Bran's head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a tear.(Bran IV, ASOS)
 
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2 hours ago, GloubieBoulga said:

And then, Aemon went to the Wall to serve as a black crow. And he has so long live that he saw all his family dying before him. The kind of fate that a greenseer as Brandon the Builder (and other brandon-greenseers) could have had. I always wondered if the black gate at Nightfort couldn't be Brandon the Builder the greenseer (the original 3-Eyed Crow, perhaps), weeping on the Stark family : 

We have speculated in the past that the face in the doorway might in fact be the Nights King, condemned to block up the portal between the worlds.

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19 hours ago, LmL said:

so if there is any chance of seeing Jon resurrected, we ARE going to have to see Jon's spirit leave Ghost's and return to his body somehow

I agree he's probably dead, but I doubt he's parking his soul in Ghost for any amount of time, or that there's going to be a mystical usher to guide it back to his body.  

Reminds me a bit of the idea that Jon will experience a revelatory catabasis in which he learns of his Targaryen ancestry from Bloodraven... and awakens from his coma with silver-gold hair. (I think it was Apple Martini who popularized this chuckleworthy theory.  Not sure if she also pictures his hair with blue roses interwined in it, or if the color change also applies to eyebrows, underarms, etc.)

Jon doesn't actually have any Targaryen ancestry, of course. 

14 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

My goodness, you're sounding as incoherent as me..!

Oh, I think you're a lot more coherent.  Last year, he tried to prove to me that Rhaegar and Lyanna were together during Robert's Rebellion by pointing out that they were both at Harrenhal.  

It got a little awkward when I had to remind him that Harrenhal happened about a year before Robert's Rebellion...

11 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

I've longed believe that nature itself is the trump card in all this.

Yes, in a broad sense, I'm sure that's true.  "Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter.  The land is one." -- Jojen

8 hours ago, Black Crow said:

What I think has been laid down as a marker in this is that both Craster's boys and the wights, who unquestionably belong to Ice, have those starry blue eyes.

Well, Craster's boys are all stone dead except for Monster.  The Popsicles have starry blue eyes, though.

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On 12/29/2016 at 10:10 PM, Mace Cooterian said:

Besides; it would give us all a chance to have @JNR to provide other explanations on chess moves including the "Philidor Position"

Pawns are the soul of chess!

You're a true scholar, sir.  It would be an honor to play you sometime.

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8 minutes ago, JNR said:

 

Jon doesn't actually have any Targaryen ancestry, of course. 

 

Whilst I still have a sneaking regard for Ser Arthur Dayne's candidacy in the fatherhood question and can see a possible significance in the business of the sword, I think that on balance I'm comfortable with the notion that Rhaegar may have done the dirty deed.

Where I still take issue with the theory is over the Jon Targaryen business, because the links to the North, to Winter and to Winterfell are far too strong. There are some, of course, who argue that it is necessary for Jon to die in order to be reborn amidst smoke and salt as Azor Ahai, a.k.a. the [Targaryen] Prince that was Promised, but that's not how GRRM's prophecies work. Rhaegar is a red herring to distract us from the importance of Lyanna Stark because the horror from the north is ultimately going to be faced down in the north by a son of Winterfell - and not improbably below Winterfell.

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2 hours ago, JNR said:

I agree he's probably dead, but I doubt he's parking his soul in Ghost for any amount of time, or that there's going to be a mystical usher to guide it back to his body.  

I don't think the idea of a 'mystical usher' is that far-fetched.  In fact, we've already seen it in action, first when the 'three-eyed crow' chaperoned Bran through his 'coma dream' trip; and then when Bran appeared to Jon on some alternate plane of consciousness via three-eyed weirwood sapling avatar (that couldn't have been an actual, physical tree) and facilitated the opening of his 'third eye', to name two examples.

2 hours ago, JNR said:

Oh, I think you're a lot more coherent.  Last year, he tried to prove to me that Rhaegar and Lyanna were together during Robert's Rebellion by pointing out that they were both at Harrenhal.  

It got a little awkward when I had to remind him that Harrenhal happened about a year before Robert's Rebellion...

A healthy mix of symbolism, while not losing sight of certain vital chronology and other logistics factors, is always in order; but my teasing @LmL was meant in a good-natured way!  With the 'coherent' comment, I was actually making fun of myself for my latest 'crackpot' theory -- which LmL has christened 'Deep Impact Drogon' -- in which I've posited that Bran will skinchange Drogon and fly off into outer space in order to intercept the comet before it penetrates the atmosphere...this of course resulting in both of their deaths.  The ultimate 'long castling' move and 'checkmate' in one, he he... Yes indeed, I do like to mix my metaphors and sometimes my posts speculating on the 'yin' and 'yang' of the symbolism can come across as 'Stark raven' mad!  

I do actually understand what he's getting at with all the hilt-swapping, although I was playfully feigning ignorance.  There has to be a reason for why GRRM keeps on about grasping swords without hilts, and keeps reiterating the metaphor in various scenes both figuratively, e.g. the Wall as @LynnS highlighted is 'a sword to the east...and a serpent to the west' (fittingly the magically-charged and shady-historied Night Fort is located to the west of Castle Black); and literally e.g. Jon receives Longclaw after its hilt has been burnt and replaced with a new one.  Then Jaime is described in the Whispering Wood as being magically transformed into a weirwood and/or 'Other' without a 'helm' -- which is another synonym for a steering apparatus or handle of a weapon.  Swords are frequently personified; and vice versa, people are symbolically configured as swords.

As alluded to above, I think Bran is my number-one candidate for a sword without a hilt -- think of it, when he was figuratively struck down from the tower by lightning, losing his legs and becoming a cripple, or 'mermaid' as I like to imagine him, he lost his hilt, becoming a 'live-wire' greenseer, dependent on skinchanging others in order to exercise his power (Hodor, Summer, trees, ravens, maybe even dragons or comets...).  Perhaps that's ultimately what 'hiltlessness' is referring to, namely a predisposition to a kind of 'bodysnatching' facility, so when LmL mentioned the heads of the children being exchanged that is probably very much in the same vein (along the same lines, there's Theon's nightmare dreamt in Ned's weirwood bed, in which the boys' heads have been sewn on to direwolves who are pursuing him).  

Apropos the topic, I've just seen a fascinating post by @PrettyPig in which she references the 'Capistan stone,' a massive sentient ruby from the Marvel comics, which bodysnatches its hosts either augmenting or draining their power, for which the 'bloodstone' meteorite -- and indeed the weirwoods and greenseeing itself -- might be an analog.  If the 'host' is a sword, then the ruby grafted on to him is like fashioning a new hilt and pommel with pommel-stone.  Or perhaps it's the reverse -- the 'stone' as sword seeks out a new host as hilt, without which the stone cannot operate.

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

Where I still take issue with the theory is over the Jon Targaryen business, because the links to the North, to Winter and to Winterfell are far too strong. There are some, of course, who argue that it is necessary for Jon to die in order to be reborn amidst smoke and salt as Azor Ahai, a.k.a. the [Targaryen] Prince that was Promised, but that's not how GRRM's prophecies work. Rhaegar is a red herring to distract us from the importance of Lyanna Stark because the horror from the north is ultimately going to be faced down in the north by a son of Winterfell - and not improbably below Winterfell.

I agree.  I don't expect to see a Targaryen restoration -- they were always the usurpers of Westeros, and going by the pattern of 'inversion' emerging, Dany repeating the whole conquest a la her ancestor Aegon is probably not going to transpire in the same fashion.  As I've indicated to @Feather Crystal, it wouldn't surprise me if this time around the Targaryen kneels to the Stark, ironically the dragon coming to heel at the foot of the wolves, whom Dany derogatorily refers to as the 'usurper's dogs' (mirroring Dany kneeling to Jon would be Drogon figuratively kneeling to Bran, should he skinchange him successfully).

Although I see both Jon and Bran taming the forces of fire and ice in tandem instead of opposed to each other, it's still noteworthy that Jon has 'more of the north in him than his siblings...' as Tyrion noted.  Words are wind; and in GRRM's world 'wind' is important -- so words matter.  I expect him to be the new Lord of Winterfell -- Jon Stark -- by the end.

Please elaborate on what you envision happening 'below Winterfell'?

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17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Yes, that's why I've been saying that ice is fire in suspended animation.

Yes, Dany was ever the chipper cheerleader, regardless of the fire...(I really don't like that character, sorry...).

You should direct music videos -- with your sense of what 'looks good'.... the obsidian armor, etc. :)

My goodness, you're sounding as incoherent as me..!

Seriously, though, if his fire soul is preserved in the heart of the weirwood, then yes indeed he should be able to wield fire!

I think Jon represents a Valyrian steel blade with a ruby pommel...His heart must be rubies, not moonstones...

You know, you're quite lazy dear @LmL...you never bother providing quotes for anything...Please jog my memory...:)

I have gotten lazy about pulling quotes, mostly because I spend most of my time working on my essays and it's sometimes very difficult to squeeze in enough time for Westeros. So I end up commenting while I am standing in line at the store or something and don't have the ebooks in front of me or the time to quote grab. But here, I dug it up for you. It's from ADWD:

Ghost slept at the foot of the bed that night, and for once Jon did not dream he was a wolf. Even so, he slept fitfully, tossing for hours before sliding down into a nightmare. Gilly was in it, weeping, pleading with him to leave her babes alone, but he ripped the children from her arms and hacked their heads off, then swapped the heads around and told her to sew them back in place. When he woke, he found Edd Tollett looming over him in the darkness of his bedchamber. “M’lord? It is time. The hour of the wolf. You left orders to be woken.”

“Bring me something hot.” Jon threw off his blankets.

I don't think I need to go into detail about how Aemon Battleborn, the son of Mance Raydar, can represent the child of a fiery stag man, @ravenous reader, because you are already quite familiar with this. Similarly, Craster is a cold one with a cold smell who is playing the NK role of giving babies to the Others, with Gilly playing a "mother of the Others / Corpse Queen" role. In other words, there is already an ice and fire duality with the two babes. Then we have this line from earlier in the chapter, where Jon is bullying Gilly into doing what wants with the baby swapping:

“Do it.” Kill the boy . “Now.” Trembling, the girl reached out her hand, held it well above the flickering candle flame. “Down. Let it kiss you.” Gilly lowered her hand. An inch. Another. When the flame licked her flesh, she snatched her hand back and began to sob. “Fire is a cruel way to die. Dalla died to give this child life, but you have nourished him, cherished him. You saved your own boy from the ice. Now save hers from the fire.”

So these babies were born with an ice and fire duality, and their potential deaths represent one as well. That jibes well with this being a clue about mixing two different swords or elements together to make a sword.

And wouldn't you know it, this is the same chapter where Jon twice sees "morning light" playing on Longclaw, before and during the execution of Janos Slynt.  Beforehand, he is “watching the play of the morning light across the ripples” of its blade, and later when he lifts his sword on high to behead Janos, “pale morning sunlight ran up and down his blade.” It's also the chapter where Jon interrogates Sam about what he has found in the annals and they discuss the Last Hero's dragonsteel and how it might be V steel. So in other words, there is a lot of sword of the morning / dragonsteel ideas in this chapter. The sword which twice gleams with morning light is one made of black steel, but which has a "pale stone" pommel, a significant choice of words of course because Dawn was made from a pale stone. I've long had that suspicion, that Oathkeeper is essentially a big clue about mixing elements to make a sword. Taken together with all the other broken sword ideas and symbolism... there's definitely something here. I mean, the LH breaks his sword at the beginning of the story, but emerges at the end victorious, with dragonsteel in hand. Where did it come from? Was that a re-forging of his original sword? 

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Going back to the Winterfell discussion and whether or not it was built to keep others out or keep something in...right now I'm thinking it's to keep people from gaining access to the heart tree, because part of defeating the Others was the bit about locking them away beyond the Wall. It seems to me that a greenseer and weirwoods may be necessary ingredients in creating white walkers. I know there has been some discussion that the Black Gate may be the damned Night's King, but the Long Night supposedly happened prior to the Night's King business, therefore perhaps the greenseer responsible was once ensconced beneath Winterfell? Winterfell would then be a mighty fortress created to protect access. Perhaps it guarded the greenseer initially, but now it's to keep anyone from descending into the crypts and gain access to a weirwood throne under the heart tree. In conclusion Winterfell was built to keep people out. If it was a prison then the greenseer would yet remain with the tree, but if you ripped the greenseer out and chained the entrances, then it's meant to keep him from returning.

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3 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

I agree.  I don't expect to see a Targaryen restoration -- they were always the usurpers of Westeros, and going by the pattern of 'inversion' emerging, Dany repeating the whole conquest a la her ancestor Aegon is probably not going to transpire in the same fashion.  As I've indicated to @Feather Crystal, it wouldn't surprise me if this time around the Targaryen kneels to the Stark, ironically the dragon coming to heel at the foot of the wolves, whom Dany derogatorily refers to as the 'usurper's dogs' (mirroring Dany kneeling to Jon would be Drogon figuratively kneeling to Bran, should he skinchange him successfully).

Although I see both Jon and Bran taming the forces of fire and ice in tandem instead of opposed to each other, it's still noteworthy that Jon has 'more of the north in him than his siblings...' as Tyrion noted.  Words are wind; and in GRRM's world 'wind' is important -- so words matter.  I expect him to be the new Lord of Winterfell -- Jon Stark -- by the end.

Please elaborate on what you envision happening 'below Winterfell'?

As to the first, I really don't see a Targaryen restoration being the key to anything. There is a part for the dragons to play but we have Danaerys the Dragonlord for that, all this in the end has little or nothing to do with the wider world, whether in Essos, Asshai or anywhere else east of Dover, but is about Westeros and the old, deep magic in Westeros, long before the Targaryens.

As to the last, if we accept the proposition that Winterfell is where its ultimately going to happen then it seems to follow that whatever happens will happen in those mysterious forbidden lower levels to which Jon is drawn in his dreams.

ETA: just to complete the answer to your question, I haven't a clue. I think that there will be a confronting of the Starks' past, but as to the form of that confrontation...

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On ‎30‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 4:33 PM, PrettyPig said:

I would like to hear more about this as well.   I have a fledgling theory that there is indeed a "dragon" beneath Winterfell, just not one in the reptilian sense.   Still working out the details, but IMO George has taken the idea of Large Igneous Provinces (supervolcanoes, basically) in the real-world north - think Iceland or Siberia -  and stirred in some magic to create the Westeros North that we see today.     I realize that the more widespread view is to 'look to the skies' re: terraforming cataclysmic events, and that may indeed be true, but my findings point to the real threat being underground.   (Fwiw, in our world comets have notably been viewed as harbingers of doom and mass destruction, not necessarily the agent of destruction.  This is consistent with the wildling viewpoint of the comet in ASOIAF.)

I think this ties into underground tunnel systems, hot springs, thermal pools, non-level structures, excess basalt, all the oddities of Winterfell itself - plus the mythology of the North, the Wall (it being built with blood), the Fist, Hardhome, etc.    Even Melisandre's magic that grows oddly stronger at the Wall makes sense if viewed in this capacity - R'hllor is a fire god, and, I suspect, actually a vulcan god...so it stands to reason that Mel grows stronger the closer she gets to a "source" of her magic, regardless of where it is.  

Throw in the historical recounts of the Long Night - which sounds remarkably like a mini ice age, an event that could certainly be result of a large eruption - and the emergence of the Others during this cold and dark time, plus the inconsistencies with the date re: the Wall being built and founding of Winterfell, and I think it can all be tied into a neat package.   With magic, of course.

Anyway, I realize this will not be a popular view and will most likely be dismissed entirely, but would like to revisit those discussions on What Lies Beneath.

Hi PrettyPig.  I would love to hear your thoughts on 'what lies beneath'.  :)

My speculative thoughts are as follows.  Having identified that Winterfell is built on top of a hollow hill, I think the lower levels beneath the crypts are probably very similar to what we have seen at the other hollow hills.  Weirwood roots, winding passageways, caves/caverns, a subterranean river, and the possibility that one of these caverns may have been set up in such a way that a greenseer could utilise the magic etc…

When we are introduced to these different caverns, there are two examples that call back to Winterfell and its great hall in particular.  Here are Jon and Bran’s thoughts on the caves……

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Jon and Ygritte’s cave

The mouth of the cave was a cleft in the rock barely wide enough for a horse, half concealed behind a soldier pine….. Within the rock, the passage descended twenty feet before it opened out onto a space as large as Winterfell’s Great Hall.  Cookfires burned amongst the columns, their smoke rising to blacken the stony ceiling.  The horses had been hobbled along one wall, beside a shallow pool.  A sinkhole in the centre of the floor opened on what might have been an even greater cavern below, though the darkness made it hard to tell.  Jon could hear the soft rushing sound of an underground stream somewhere below as well.

Bran and Bloodraven’s cave

‘’Hodor.’’ Hodor plunged ahead, hurrying after the child and her torch, deeper into the earth.  They passed another branching, and another, then came into an echoing cavern as large as the great hall of Winterfell, with stone teeth hanging from its ceiling and more poking up through its floor…………  

The roots were everywhere, twisting through earth and stone, closing off some passages and holding up the roofs of others.  All the color is gone, Bran realized suddenly.  The world was black soil and white wood.  The heart tree at Winterfell had roots as thick around as a giant’s legs, but these were even thicker………….

 

If the early Stark’s were greenseers, then these huge caverns akin to the Great Hall of Winterfell would be the ideal place to set up and best use their magic. [Like Bloodraven]  In fact, in the early days of WF’s construction, any potential cave below could have acted as a Great Hall of sorts anyway.

I think one of the things we may find in the lower levels is the ‘Stark greenseer Great Hall of old’ that I feel lies beneath Winterfell, long forgotten.  So what would be in such a cave/cavern?  Well, it would most likely be huge for a start, with the potential for a weirwood throne/tangle of roots to have formed somewhere, but I would also expect to see something like the examples I give above.  Some evidence of human occupation, a fire pit, blackened walls and ceiling, perhaps carved benches and alcoves.  Plus many tunnels, an underground river, etc…

But given what we know of the First Men and the sacrifice to their gods, perhaps we could find something a bit more gruesome as well?  More bones on the floor, human bones?  Evidence of greenseer magic in some form or another?  

It’s difficult to predict, but when Bran and Arya enter these caverns beneath their hollow hills, there seems to be similarities in the text George chooses to apply….

Quote

‘’Bones,’’ said Bran. ‘’Its bones.’’ The floor of the passage was littered with the bones of birds and beasts.  But there other bones as well, big ones that must have come from giants and small ones that could have been from children.  On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them.  Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants.  All the rest were small, queerly formed.  Children of the forest.  The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. 

Then...

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A thousand faces were gazing down on her.

They hung upon the walls, before her and behind her, high and low, everywhere she looked, everywhere she turned.  She saw old faces and young faces, pale faces and dark faces, smooth faces and wrinkled faces, freckled faces and scarred faces, handsome faces and homely faces, men and women, boys and girls, even babes, smiling faces, frowning faces, faces full of greed and rage and lust, bald faces and faces bristling with hair.  Masks, she told herself, it’s only masks, but even as she thought the thought, she knew it wasn’t so.  They were skins.

 

Both examples display the skulls/faces of the dead on the walls looking/staring down at them, and are of course linked to magic.  (We hear of Clarence Crabb [another potential greenseer] doing something very similar to this at the Whisper’s.)  Perhaps the Stark’s have a collection of ancient Bolton skulls down there as the Bolton’s are reputed to have the flayed skins of ancient Stark’s?  :P  Maybe there are the bones of many a beast strewn across the floor as we see in BR’s cave?  It’s all speculative and hard to say, but I think something akin to this would not be out of the question. 

In conclusion, the previous examples we get of hollow hills may give us a good visual of what we could potentially find beneath Winterfell, and I have laid out what my rough vision of that is.  However, this attempt to link any similarities through the text does not account for the more speculative thoughts, such as a dragon.  Although I would love to hear any opinions surrounding this or any other ideas for that matter.   

Happy new year to all posters in Heresy!!  :D    

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Happy New Year to all heretics, both those confirmed in their path to perdition and those trembling on the brink, and a happy new year too to visitors.

If the New Year can't be better than the last, then may it be no worse and let us hope that the cold winds rise at last.

 

:commie: :commie: :commie:

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19 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

I keep thinking about Milisandra's explanation of how shadow babies are creatures of light and can't exist without light.  Ice and Fire could be the same way.  And if Targs and Starks are really the same, Jon being the son of both is the ultimate expression of the Targs marrying each other.

Nah, Ice and Fire may ultimately be the same but Targaryen incest doesn't come into this at all; they may be equal but they are also opposite and need to remain so in order to restore or maintain the balance.

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