Heresy 193 Winterfell

[Black Crow]

33 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

I'm a believer that all the Stark kids are "green" seers and i will throw in Dany as well. Greenseer is what the little tree huggers call their shaman or person who can skinchange AND have prophetic dreams.There are just degrees in ability when it comes to them.

But yet greenseers are so few and far between. The children of Winterfell are wargs certainly, and Bran is becoming a greenseer, but not the others. Being a powerful warg does not a greenseer make.

[Black Crow]

37 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

This is of course plausible, but our different opinions on the Stark's being human greenseers is going to be our stumbling block.    I just don't think they need to use the children, as they have already taught BtB .  A family could just as easily be bound to a human greenseer rather than a singer/greenseer, and if they were living for hundreds of years like the legends of Westeros do, then it's likely they will live to see the next of their line born with the gift and pass on that knowledge.  Still agreeing to disagree I suppose.      

'fraid we will indeed need to differ. As I say, greenseers are a rare and precious thing and while its possible to construct an argument that Bob the Builder may have been a greenseer, we don't know that and we have no legends suggesting that any other Starks were greenseers. 

What they do have is the wolf blood and the question which remains is the true cost of that blood.

[LynnS]

58 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Hi LynnS. 

Yes, it seems that all the castles along the Wall have that underground access and tunnels etc...It's mentioned that they have to have this access as sometimes the snows get too deep to walk above ground.  There is also a huge cave system that runs beneath the Wall as we see with the tale of Gendel and Gorne.  I think it's likely that some if not all of these castles at the Wall have access to that cave system, the steps running below the Nightfort certainly went a lot lower than the Black Gate.

Indeed, the Night's Fort at least must have an underground living capability to survive the winter.  It's the first castle built and I expect all the castles along the Wall were chosen for the same accommodations.  The story of Gendel and Gorn does point to extensive cave systems.  

 

 

[Melifeather]

We never quite hear the rest of the Last Hero story. Bran just says something to the effect that "the Children helped him". Couldn't we speculate  that the definition of helping was to make the Last Hero a greenseer? There are locations around Westeros where it appears there once was a greenseer or at least something that had been dug up or destroyed, from the cave where Beric and his men hung out to the dead weirwood at Raventree Hall to the Seastone Chair. Are these not evidence that there were other greenseers in history?

 

[Armstark]

The Targaryens built their castle on a hollow hill as well and bury the ashes of their dead deep underground, only accessible through a well with a circular staircase...

 

The Targaryen role in things to come is too easily dismissed in heresy for my taste. They might be new to Westeros but their knowledge is old.

 

[Melifeather]

30 minutes ago, Armstark said:

The Targaryens built their castle on a hollow hill as well and bury the ashes of their dead deep underground, only accessible through a well with a circular staircase...

 

The Targaryen role in things to come is too easily dismissed in heresy for my taste. They might be new to Westeros but their knowledge is old.

 

IMO the knowledge of the Targaryens is quite deep. The study of prophecy and whether someone is a reader, warrior, or septon shows an acknowledgement of a recycling of history as well as notating the red comet in conjunction with events. 

[Brad Stark]

Didn't it say somewhere that the Children interbred with humans?  I always assumed there were no human greenseers, except those who inherited the gift from the children.

[Matthew.]

6 hours ago, Armstark said:

The Targaryen role in things to come is too easily dismissed in heresy for my taste. They might be new to Westeros but their knowledge is old.

To be fair to the thread, that dismissal is coming mostly from just a handful of posters that are unable (or unwilling) to set aside their personal biases, unable to engage in good faith discussions of certain aspects of the story.

As you say, not only is the knowledge/power that House Targaryen has inherited old, but more broadly speaking, I can't fully shake a nagging suspicion that all of this fire magic business is not just some eastern magic intruding upon Westeros. What, for example, was the nature of the Last Hero's blade of "dragonsteel," and how did he acquire it? Is there a significance to Beric taking up residence near a network of weirwood roots, in the context of his resurrections? I think it goes back to Jojen's comment about how the land is one--it's probably a mistake to impose Melisandre's dualistic view of ice and fire onto the CotF, and Westerosi magic.

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

Didn't it say somewhere that the Children interbred with humans?  I always assumed there were no human greenseers, except those who inherited the gift from the children.

No. The nearest we get to it is an adding of two and two to get five. We're told that after one of the Starks defeated the Crannogmen, he married the Marsh King's daughter. There was for a time a theory that the Children and the Crannogmen were related and therefore that made the connection. The argument of itself is dubious with little if any textual evidence and to my mind also comes late in the day. I remain unconvinced that Bob the Builder was a greenseer, but even if he were he seems to come too early in the story to be a product of interbreeding.

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, Matthew. said:

To be fair to the thread, that dismissal is coming mostly from just a handful of posters that are unable (or unwilling) to set aside their personal biases, unable to engage in good faith discussions of certain aspects of the story.

As you say, not only is the knowledge/power that House Targaryen has inherited old, but more broadly speaking, I can't fully shake a nagging suspicion that all of this fire magic business is not just some eastern magic intruding upon Westeros. What, for example, was the nature of the Last Hero's blade of "dragonsteel," and how did he acquire it? Is there a significance to Beric taking up residence near a network of weirwood roots, in the context of his resurrections? I think it goes back to Jojen's comment about how the land is one--it's probably a mistake to impose Melisandre's dualistic view of ice and fire onto the CotF, and Westerosi magic.

I'm not sure how widespread the "knowledge" might actually be within House Targaryen. What we seem to get a lot of is half understood scraps of family lore leading to things going badly wrong, whether its Brightflame burning very brightly or Summerhall getting tragic, or to put it another way I think the problem might be that there is something there, but like the Starks, they have forgotten too much.

[Black Crow]

As to the dragonsteel, I think that this is a different matter and one which raises far more fundamental problems than the antecedents of House Targaryen. The dragonsteel is mentioned in a context of contradictions - and contradictions expressly laid out in the text per the line about stories of knights when there were no knights.

So is the same true of dragonsteel? Is it just another story of knights before there were knights, just as the Arthurian knights of Tennyson's poetry wear plate armour of the High Middle Ages?

Or is there something really screwed about the timelines?

[Armstark]

 

6 hours ago, Matthew. said:

To be fair to the thread, that dismissal is coming mostly from just a handful of posters that are unable (or unwilling) to set aside their personal biases, unable to engage in good faith discussions of certain aspects of the story.

As you say, not only is the knowledge/power that House Targaryen has inherited old, but more broadly speaking, I can't fully shake a nagging suspicion that all of this fire magic business is not just some eastern magic intruding upon Westeros. What, for example, was the nature of the Last Hero's blade of "dragonsteel," and how did he acquire it? Is there a significance to Beric taking up residence near a network of weirwood roots, in the context of his resurrections? I think it goes back to Jojen's comment about how the land is one--it's probably a mistake to impose Melisandre's dualistic view of ice and fire onto the CotF, and Westerosi magic.

I agree. Most people forget that dragons were once native to Westeros and yet there are conspicuously absent from Westerosi history, Leaf doesn't even mention them:

Quote

"Gone down into the earth," she answered. "Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us."

What about the dragons?!  Both Maesters and CotF seem to have purged dragons from history, with only a few folk tales surviving (Selwyn of the Mirror Shield, Dragon slain on Battle Isle). To what end? 

 

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

As to the dragonsteel, I think that this is a different matter and one which raises far more fundamental problems than the antecedents of House Targaryen. The dragonsteel is mentioned in a context of contradictions - and contradictions expressly laid out in the text per the line about stories of knights when there were no knights.

So is the same true of dragonsteel? Is it just another story of knights before there were knights, just as the Arthurian knights of Tennyson's poetry wear plate armour of the High Middle Ages?

Or is there something really screwed about the timelines?

I think it's neither. It's not a story of knights before there were knights because it's not even called the same (Valyrian steel), Sam and Jon both don't know the term dragonsteel although it is self evident what it means. It is what those swords were called before there was Valyria.

And no matter how you rearrange the timeline the Last Hero always comes before Valyria.

The best explanation is simply that the Last Hero had such a sword but that the knowledge to forge one was lost or rather suppressed likely because it involves sacrifices and dragons.

[Black Crow]

6 minutes ago, Armstark said:

 

I agree. Most people forget that dragons were once native to Westeros and yet there are conspicuously absent from Westerosi history, Leaf doesn't even mention them:

What about the dragons?!  Both Maesters and CotF seem to have purged dragons from history, with only a few folk tales surviving (Selwyn of the Mirror Shield, Dragon slain on Battle Isle). To what end? 

 

I think it's neither. It's not a story of knights before there were knights because it's not even called the same (Valyrian steel), Sam and Jon both don't know the term dragonsteel although it is self evident what it means. It is what those swords were called before there was Valyria.

And no matter how you rearrange the timeline the Last Hero always comes before Valyria.

The best explanation is simply that the Last Hero had such a sword but that the knowledge to forge one was lost or rather suppressed likely because it involves sacrifices and dragons.

I'm not so sure that dragons in Westeros present a problem. As you note they are conspicuous by their absence in Leaf's recital and since what we're talking about is dragon-slaying men I'd suggest that if they really existed, the dragons in question were not native to Westeros but were interlopers like the later Targaryen ones.

I agree, on the other hand, that swords made of what is now known as Valyrian steel may have predated the rise of Valyria, just as Damascus steel actually originated in India long before the Caliphates.

As to the timelines, I'm beginning to wonder whether they are actually far more screwed than we realise. I'd like to save serious discussion until we move on to the timeline topic, but I'm beginning to wonder whether there is indeed a wheel of time thing going on; not in the sense of inversions per Feather's theory, but through time looping constantly over a much shorter period or rather that the belief in history stretching back 10,000 years and more is an illusion and that "real" history, bookended by extinction level events is much shorter.

[Melifeather]

8 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

I'm beginning to wonder whether there is indeed a wheel of time thing going on; not in the sense of inversions per Feather's theory, but through time looping constantly over a much shorter period or rather that the belief in history stretching back 10,000 years and more is an illusion and that "real" history, bookended by extinction level events is much shorter.

Well I will take this as one tiny, itty bitty success.  If the use of "time loops" is more comfortable for people to accept, then so be it. I liken the loops as if the Children reset a giant Cyvasse game and the Wall is the shield.  The players are repositioned on the board and play begins. Instead of opening with the First Men, the Andals came next, and so on, and so on. We've taken a bigger step on the current discussion with the recognition of the chess-like castling movements of Torrhen and Brandon, and Jon and Bran. The people of Kings Landing are said to be playing the Game of Thrones, but the Children have been playing a much bigger game.

[LynnS]

35 minutes ago, Armstark said:

What about the dragons?!  Both Maesters and CotF seem to have purged dragons from history, with only a few folk tales surviving (Selwyn of the Mirror Shield, Dragon slain on Battle Isle). To what end? 

I would add that the Horn of Jorumun looks suspiciously like a dragon binding horn to me more than anything else.

21 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

As to the timelines, I'm beginning to wonder whether they are actually far more screwed than we realise. I'd like to save serious discussion until we move on to the timeline topic, but I'm beginning to wonder whether there is indeed a wheel of time thing going on; not in the sense of inversions per Feather's theory, but through time looping constantly over a much shorter period or rather that the belief in history stretching back 10,000 years and more is an illusion and that "real" history, bookended by extinction level events is much shorter.

Cataclysmic events have a way of wiping out more advanced civilizations and the collected knowledge that goes with them returning peoples to an illiterate state or wiping the slate, so to speak. 

The idea that there is loop of some kind is demonstrated at the Bridge of Dreams when Tyrion and the mummer's troupe pass through what can only be a portal.  @ravenous readerhas a fascinating explanation.  

[Black Crow]

47 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Well I will take this as one tiny, itty bitty success.  If the use of "time loops" is more comfortable for people to accept, then so be it. I liken the loops as if the Children reset a giant Cyvasse game and the Wall is the shield.  The players are repositioned on the board and play begins. Instead of opening with the First Men, the Andals came next, and so on, and so on. We've taken a bigger step on the current discussion with the recognition of the chess-like castling movements of Torrhen and Brandon, and Jon and Bran. The people of Kings Landing are said to be playing the Game of Thrones, but the Children have been playing a much bigger game.

Ah not quite; I'm suggesting that history is as it is and isn't a matter of re-positioning or reshuffling the players and pieces. Rather I'm inclined to wonder [and no more than that] whether the time-span of history is much shorter than we're led to believe and that the likes of Moat Cailin date back to an earlier "history" long before the First Men ever came to Westeros - but that, as I say strays far from Winterfell and I'd prefer to defer discussion until the appropriate thread.

[Armstark]

Fair enough, I look forward to the timelines thread then. Let's get back to Winterfell.

14 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I would add that the Horn of Jorumun looks suspiciously like a dragon binding horn to me more than anything else.

Where have we seen the Horn of Joramun? Or do you mean the one Melisandre burnt?  It wasn't the real one as Ygritte admitted to Jon but Mance has likely continued his search for the Horn of Joramun south of the Wall. It certainly would explain his interest in the crypts and if you follow the superb analysis here, he might already have found it and blown it twice (only three blows trigger the whole magic effect).

A long low moan, it seemed to hang above the battlements, lingering in the black air, soaking deep into the bones of every man who heard it

The sound of this horn corresponds with the one in Jon's dreams:

His dreams were strange and formless, full of strange voices, shouts and cries, and the sound of a warhorn, blowing low and loud, a single deep booming note that lingered in the air

Mance might be the first in generations to visit the lower levels of the crypt because the graves of Joramun's contemporaries Brandon the Breaker and maybe even the NK's are down there.

[Black Crow]

An interesting link. I agree that the one burned by Melisandre wasn't the Horn of Joruman - whatever its qualities, magical or otherwise, I'd imagine the real one will eventually be identified by its runes, and at the moment I'm inclined to read it as the one dug up by Jon and presented to Sam rather than anything which may be found in the Winterfell crypts.

[Armstark]

Who do you think placed the horn there and how did they acquire it?

[Armstark]

Another feature of Winterfell that has not been discussed enough in my opinion is the broken tower.

The catalyst event of the series is when Jaime pushes Bran out of the window. The plot is driven by that single event for most of AGoT and beyond. It is where our story really begins and I think it might be where it ends as well.

So lets go back to AGoT Bran II: Bran is climbing to his favorite spot: atop the broken tower to give the crows his seed. A place no one ever goes but him because it is only accessible by climbing. Of course Jaime Lannister stops him before he can make it there and cripples him so that he might never climb (there) again.

The only way he can ever go back to his favorite spot is by flying. (Not)Coincidentally this is also the only thing Bloodraven promises him:
 

"You will never walk again, Bran," the pale lips promised, "but you will fly."

 

You can read Bran's story as a fairy tale: Our young hero sets out on an adventure to get to the top of the tower but is thwarted by the golden knight. He does not give up though and goes on a quest to learn how to fly, so he might get to the top of the tower another way. He must endure many hardships and loses some friends on the way but finally he finds someone who can teach him and now he has learned how to fly. (to be continued)

So what is so significant about that tower? How does it relate to our real story and not just the fairy tale version?  I think it is the tower of the Night's King, the other Brandon Stark. 

In the mummer's version of our story the Night's King has a brooch or sigil and the best explanation for it I have seen is this:
imgur.com/a/JgOwb#oj1MNj4

A tower over the skull of a crow. 

Think about it, if the Night's King really was a Stark might there not be some place in Winterfell that belonged to him, where he was at home? Of course it would have to be in the old section of the castle like the broken tower.

Why did no Stark ever repair the tower? Supposedly it was struck by lightning some 140 years ago:
 

His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a watchtower, the tallest in Winterfell. A long time ago, a hundred years before even his father had been born, a lightning strike had set it afire. The top third of the structure had collapsed inward, and the tower had never been rebuilt. Sometimes his father sent ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the nests they always found among the jumble of fallen stones and charred and rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the structure now except for Bran and the crows.

 

I find it rather odd that the Starks have a broken tower. Do you think there is such a thing at Highgarden? At Casterly Rock or even Horn Hill? I doubt it. 140 years and a dozen Lord Starks and nobody ever thought about rebuilding it? Or at least removing it? 
Why???
140 years ago is also close to the time Winterfell was visited by the Targaryen court and their dragons, when the first night was abolished and the Nightfort abandoned.

---

 

Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf was howling. Crows circled the broken tower, waiting for corn.

 

They are still waiting.
 

---

 

When Lord Stark returned from the battle and his mother saw Bael's head upon his spear, she threw herself from a tower in her grief. Her son did not long outlive her.

 

Might this be the same tower?

 

It is also the tower Mance/Abel chose to make his home in Winterfell.