Jump to content

Dragonglass arrowheads


Illyrio Mo'Parties

Recommended Posts

Quote

A length of frayed rope bound the bundle together. Jon unsheathed his dagger and cut it, groped for the edges of the cloth, and pulled. The bundle turned, and its contents spilled out onto the ground, glittering dark and bright. He saw a dozen knives, leaf-shaped spearheads, numerous arrowheads. Jon picked up a dagger blade, featherlight and shiny black, hiltless. Torchlight ran along its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness. Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place, only . . .
 Beneath the dragonglass was an old warhorn, made from an auroch's horn and banded in bronze. Jon shook the dirt from inside it, and a stream of arrowheads fell out. He let them fall, and pulled up a corner of the cloth the weapons had been wrapped in, rubbing it between his fingers. Good wool, thick, a double weave, damp but not rotted. It could not have been long in the ground. And it was dark. He seized a handful and pulled it close to the torch. Not dark. Black.
Even before Jon stood and shook it out, he knew what he had: the black cloak of a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch.

-- Jon IV, A Clash of Kings

Dragonglass arrowheads, a Night's Watch cloak, a length of frayed rope. I couldn't find much more direct description of the cache. These are the only other times I saw it mentioned:

Quote

The cloak he had found beneath the Fist could well have belonged to his uncle or one of his men, even the Old Bear admitted as much, though why they would have buried it there, wrapped around the cache of dragonglass, no one could say.

-- Jon V, A Clash of Kings

Quote

Jon slid his new dagger from its sheath and studied the flames as they played against the shiny black glass. He had fashioned the wooden hilt himself, and wound hempen twine around it to make a grip. Ugly, but it served. Dolorous Edd opined that glass knives were about as useful as nipples on a knight's breastplate, but Jon was not so certain. The dragonglass blade was sharper than steel, albeit far more brittle.
It must have been buried for a reason.
He had made a dagger for Grenn as well, and another for the Lord Commander. The warhorn he had given to Sam. On closer examination the horn had proved cracked, and even after he had cleaned all the dirt out, Jon had been unable to get any sound from it. The rim was chipped as well, but Sam liked old things, even worthless old things. "Make a drinking horn out of it," Jon told him, "and every time you take a drink you'll remember how you ranged beyond the Wall, all the way to the Fist of the First Men." He gave Sam a spearhead and a dozen arrowheads as well, and passed the rest out among his other friends for luck.
The Old Bear had seemed pleased by the dagger, but he preferred a steel knife at his belt, Jon had noticed. Mormont could offer no answers as to who might have buried the cloak or what it might mean. Perhaps Qhorin will know. The Halfhand had ventured deeper into the wild than any other living man.

-- Jon V, A Clash of Kings

He never does ask the Halfhand, though. But he is right: it must have been buried for a reason.

But why? And by whom? Well, the obvious answers are "Benjen, to help fight the Others," and while I don't think everything in the story needs to have some complicated mystery behind it, I do think it'd be a little bit lame if it turned out that it really was just Benjen. But can we puzzle it out? (TLDR: no.)

Dragonglass weapons, black cloak, frayed rope, and mysterious warhorn. Those seem to be the salient points, and of the four, the warhorn has gathered far and away the most speculation. Most people seem to think that, if it's anything, it's the mythical Horn of Joramun, destined to bring down the Wall.

I have no idea what it is, but I would like to keep in mind that it might be a red herring. Because if we're wondering about the horn, then we aren't wondering about the other things. But perhaps we should be. Be honest: how many of you remembered that this wasn't the first time we've seen dragonglass arrowheads in the story?

(It's okay, I didn't either. Thanks, reddit!)

Quote

"Take a lesson, Bran. The man who trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword. As the children did. Here, let me show you something." He stood abruptly, crossed the room, and returned with a green jar in his good hand. "Have a look at these," he said as he pulled the stopper and shook out a handful of shiny black arrowheads.
Bran picked one up. "It's made of glass." Curious, Rickon drifted closer to peer over the table.
"Dragonglass," Osha named it as she sat down beside Luwin, bandagings in hand.
"Obsidian," Maester Luwin insisted, holding out his wounded arm. "Forged in the fires of the gods, far below the earth. The children of the forest hunted with that, thousands of years ago. The children worked no metal. In place of mail, they wore long shirts of woven leaves and bound their legs in bark, so they seemed to melt into the wood. In place of swords, they carried blades of obsidian."
"And still do." Osha placed soft pads over the bites on the maester's forearm and bound them tight with long strips of linen.
Bran held the arrowhead up close. The black glass was slick and shiny. He thought it beautiful. "Can I keep one?"
"As you wish," the maester said.
"I want one too," Rickon said. "I want four. I'm four."
Luwin made him count them out. "Careful, they're still sharp. Don't cut yourself."

-- Bran VII, A Game of Thrones

Quote

"The Pact began four thousand years of friendship between men and children. In time, the First Men even put aside the gods they had brought with them, and took up the worship of the secret gods of the wood. The signing of the Pact ended the Dawn Age, and began the Age of Heroes."
Bran's fist curled around the shiny black arrowhead. "But the children of the forest are all gone now, you said."
"Here, they are," said Osha, as she bit off the end of the last bandage with her teeth. "North of the Wall, things are different. That's where the children went, and the giants, and the other old races."

-- Bran VII, A Game of Thrones

Quote

A raven landed on the grey stone sill, opened its beak, and gave a harsh, raucous rattle of distress.
Rickon began to cry. His arrowheads fell from his hand one by one and clattered on the floor. Bran pulled him close and hugged him.
Maester Luwin stared at the black bird as if it were a scorpion with feathers. He rose, slow as a sleepwalker, and moved to the window. When he whistled, the raven hopped onto his bandaged forearm. There was dried blood on its wings. "A hawk," Luwin murmured, "perhaps an owl. Poor thing, a wonder it got through." He took the letter from its leg.

-- Bran VII, A Game of Thrones

That's the last we see of Maester Luwin's obsidian arrowheads. We don't know if Bran and Rickon keep theirs, or if anything happens to the rest of them. Could they be the ones buried north of the Wall? Surely not. Jon finds those ones wrapped in a Night's Watch cloak, tied with a length of frayed rope. How is there a black brother's cloak at Winterfell?

Quote

Robb glanced over at where Stiv lay sprawled in the stream, his ragged black cloak moving fitfully as the rushing waters tugged at it. "Deserters from the Night's Watch," he said grimly. "They must have been fools, to come so close to Winterfell."
"Folly and desperation are ofttimes hard to tell apart," said Maester Luwin.
"Shall we bury them, m'lord?" asked Quent.
"They would not have buried us," Robb said. "Hack off their heads, we'll send them back to the Wall. Leave the rest for the carrion crows."

-- Bran V, A Game of Thrones

Quote

"You've got a lot of scars."
"Every one hard earned." She picked up her brown shift, shook some leaves off of it, and pulled it down over her head.
"Fighting giants?" Osha claimed there were still giants beyond the Wall. One day maybe I'll even see one . . .
"Fighting men." She belted herself with a length of rope. "Black crows, oft as not. Killed me one too," she said, shaking out her hair.

-- Bran II, A Clash of Kings

Could Osha have buried the dragonglass cache? Could someone else from Winterfell? And why?

Quote

"I'll hear no more of that, it's done." Maester Luwin looked worn-out and frayed. "You were right to defend Hodor, but you should never have been there. Ser Rodrik and Lord Wyman have broken their fast already while they waited for you. Must I come myself to fetch you, as if you were a little child?"

-- Bran II, A Clash of Kings

Perhaps Maester Luwin asked her to, as he lay dying in the godswood. But why would he do that? Did future-Bran talk to him?

Or maybe I'm pushing things too far with Maester Luwin. Still, Osha's a possibility, or some other Winterfell connection. (Hell, maybe Benjen snuck south and nicked them himself. Maybe he's the one that found them for Luwin in the first place!)

Let me close with this:

Quote

It must have been buried for a reason.

-- Jon V, A Clash of Kings

That's right, Jon, it must've - and perhaps it was written that Maester Luwin has a collection of obsidian weaponry for a reason as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just re-read this chapter twice for the direwolf re-read, and have been trying to sort out some of the same questions, although I hadn't thought to go back to the scene with Maester Luwin.

This may sound tenuous, but one of the clues is that Jon "jammed" his fingers around the bundle to pull it out of the hole he and Ghost dig. The word "jammed" was previously used to describe the wight sticking its fingers down Jon's throat to try to pull his heart out of his chest. So I think the bundle is supposed to represent a black heart or - a STONEheart, filled with obsidian stones. Has Jon pulled out Catelyn's heart with his bear/bare hands (long claws?). (We will also see Joffrey jam his fingers into Tyrion's pigeon pie.)

Besides his thought that the freshly-buried bundle is a grave, Jon also has a passing thought that it is treasure. If you search on the word treasure, you get a lot of hits on Tyrion: the song that Symon Silver Tongue wrote to blackmail Tyrion said that Shae "was his secret treasure" and then Tyrion and Penny and the other unique slaves are described as Yezzan's "treasures."

The Tyrion stuff seems like a tangent except it ties back to details in the chapter where Jon finds the dragonglass cache:

1) Singer stew and stinky stew - Tyrion has Bronn kill Symon and he suggests that the body be given to a Flea Bottom pot shop where the stew known as brown is made and sold. Just before he follows Ghost to the spot where the dragonglass is buried, Jon almost eats stew with his Night's Watch buddies. Dolorous Edd says the stew has a similar aroma to horseshit but Dywen says the woods smells like cold. Dywen's sense of the smell of cold reminds Jon of the wight attack back at Castle Black: "It smells like death." This causes Jon to lose his appetite and the gives his bowl of stew to Gren. (It may not be central to deciphering the who, what, where, when and how of the dragonglass cache, but I gotta say, Dolorous Edd's stinky stew made my wordplay-loving heart very happy because it may be the missing link that confirms that the perfumed seneschal and stinky steward and stinky stew are all linked. And luckily, Dywen is playing the role of Quaithe, so Jon doesn't eat the stinky stew. Or is Dolorous Edd playing the role of Quaithe?)

2) Can't hold his water - Yezzan has a disease that prevents him from holding his water. When Tyrion decides to make his escape from Yezzan and Nurse, he pretends that he is going to fetch some buckets of water with Penny and Jorah. When Jon is leaving the camp inside the ringfort with Ghost, he tells the guard that he has to get some water for the Lord Commander. The guard doesn't notice that Jon is not carrying a bucket. (But Ghost is described as "pale" in the chapter, so the direwolf might represent his pail. Ghost does drink water from a stream before running to the dragonglass site. Jon and Sam also use "well" wordplay that I think refers to a larger motif in the books referring to wells - see below.)

3) Uncle Ben - When Tyrion completes his escape with Penny and Jorah, he ends up in front of Brown Ben Plumm. The dragonglass chapter includes a discussion between Jeor Mormont and Jon about the difficulty of looking for Benjen Stark, but Mormont's plan is that the camp at the top of the fist and the trail left by the 200 Night's Watch men will be so visible that Benjen would be able to find the ranging party if he is alive and free.

I'm still trying to put the puzzle pieces together, but Jon's movements in the dragonglass cache chapter seem to be similar to some Arya details when she is a page for Roose Bolton at Harrenhal, just after the Weasel Soup incident - both of them are getting hot spiced wine for their bosses, for instance. And the stew and soup seem connected. (I haven't figure out yet why GRRM sometimes calls it spice wine and other times spiced wine and other times mulled wine. I'm sure he has a secret and devious reason for the distinction.) There may also be a connection to the Davos chapter where he eats sister's stew with Lord Godric Borrell.

Of course, I can keep making connections until dawn: the old stones of the ringfort at the top of the Fist could be similar to Oldstones, where Robb and Catelyn have a heart-to-stoneheart before the Red Wedding. If the bundle Jon digs up is supposed to represent a heart or the removal of some other organ, maybe that also connects to the Ghost of High Heart - Hey! Ghost. How 'bout that? And doesn't she like that song about Jenny of Oldstones? And isn't the Ghost of High Heart a CotF person who has come to live below the Wall for some reason? So she would have a natural connection to the obsidian arrow heads. And furthermore, isn't Jenny of Oldstones the tragic love story of a Targ heir who got involved with the CotF . . . Where does this thread end?

Furthermore, there are a couple comments about the Fist that tie to a Bran detail: Thoren Smallwood says the Fist ringfort is, "An old place, and strong." Mormont's raven says, "Old, old, old." When Bran and his traveling companions reach the Night Fort, Jojen says, "This seems an old place." Bran will meet Sam at the Night Fort and descend with him into a well in order to pass beyond the Wall. This is the somewhat oddly formal "well" dialogue between Jon and Sam in the dragonglass chapter:

"Jon?" Samwell Tarly called up. "I thought it looked like you. Are you well?"

"Well enough." Jon hopped down. "How did you fare today?"

"Well. I fared well. Truly."

When the raven says, "Old, old, old," Lord Commander Mormont gets a little irritated with the bird - he growls at it. Also in this chapter, the Lord Commander takes an interest in the details of Ghost's activities and whereabouts. This piqued my interest because I've wondered about that last Jon POV in AGoT, where Mormont tells Jon that he needs Jon's blood and his wolf to go beyond the Wall. Here Mormont tells Jon to let the wolf hunt and later asks whether the wolf found "game" today, saying they could use some fresh meat. Immediately after asking about game and meat, Mormont "dug into a sack and offered his raven a handful of corn." Digging a sack is very similar to what Jon will be doing with Ghost when they dig for the bundle. Are we supposed to compare the raven's corn to the dragonglass weapons?

I think Mormont is covering up the fact that he knows the ancient secret and the cache that Jon is supposed to find. This re-read caused me to suspect that Mormont is warging Ghost, in fact. I get a really strong suspicion that he may have buried that cache in a previous life, but he needs Jon to find it on his own. Sort of like feeding Jon a handful of corn?

I have gone back today and read some of @Feather Crystal and other people's theories about reincarnation and the wheel of time on a thread about Brandon the Builder to see whether her ideas fit what I'm seeing in Mormont's actions in this chapter. There is a separate thread that raised a question about the timeline of Jeor becoming Lord Commander. Perhaps that was a clue to some kind of reincarnation / rebirth story for Jeor.

As for your frayed rope, I suspect that was a way of putting a Frey reference into the story at this point. So that may be another link to Robb and Catelyn and the Oldstones conversation before the Red Wedding. But I may be wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If it wasn't Benjen or another member of the Night's Watch whose smell is familiar to Ghost, then Ghost's having found it becomes most likely a a function of Bloodraven's somehow leading the wolf to it.

I think Coldhands is a good possibility, but you do make a good case for Osha if she knew about dragonglass and had been in the right location prior to heading south of the Wall. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Seams said:

I just re-read this chapter twice for the direwolf re-read, and have been trying to sort out some of the same questions, although I hadn't thought to go back to the scene with Maester Luwin.

This may sound tenuous, but one of the clues is that Jon "jammed" his fingers around the bundle to pull it out of the hole he and Ghost dig. The word "jammed" was previously used to describe the wight sticking its fingers down Jon's throat to try to pull his heart out of his chest. So I think the bundle is supposed to represent a black heart or - a STONEheart, filled with obsidian stones. Has Jon pulled out Catelyn's heart with his bear/bare hands (long claws?). (We will also see Joffrey jam his fingers into Tyrion's pigeon pie.)

Besides his thought that the freshly-buried bundle is a grave, Jon also has a passing thought that it is treasure. If you search on the word treasure, you get a lot of hits on Tyrion: the song that Symon Silver Tongue wrote to blackmail Tyrion said that Shae "was his secret treasure" and then Tyrion and Penny and the other unique slaves are described as Yezzan's "treasures."

The Tyrion stuff seems like a tangent except it ties back to details in the chapter where Jon finds the dragonglass cache:

1) Singer stew and stinky stew - Tyrion has Bronn kill Symon and he suggests that the body be given to a Flea Bottom pot shop where the stew known as brown is made and sold. Just before he follows Ghost to the spot where the dragonglass is buried, Jon almost eats stew with his Night's Watch buddies. Dolorous Edd says the stew has a similar aroma to horseshit but Dywen says the woods smells like cold. Dywen's sense of the smell of cold reminds Jon of the wight attack back at Castle Black: "It smells like death." This causes Jon to lose his appetite and the gives his bowl of stew to Gren. (It may not be central to deciphering the who, what, where, when and how of the dragonglass cache, but I gotta say, Dolorous Edd's stinky stew made my wordplay-loving heart very happy because it may be the missing link that confirms that the perfumed seneschal and stinky steward and stinky stew are all linked. And luckily, Dywen is playing the role of Quaithe, so Jon doesn't eat the stinky stew. Or is Dolorous Edd playing the role of Quaithe?)

2) Can't hold his water - Yezzan has a disease that prevents him from holding his water. When Tyrion decides to make his escape from Yezzan and Nurse, he pretends that he is going to fetch some buckets of water with Penny and Jorah. When Jon is leaving the camp inside the ringfort with Ghost, he tells the guard that he has to get some water for the Lord Commander. The guard doesn't notice that Jon is not carrying a bucket. (But Ghost is described as "pale" in the chapter, so the direwolf might represent his pail. Ghost does drink water from a stream before running to the dragonglass site. Jon and Sam also use "well" wordplay that I think refers to a larger motif in the books referring to wells - see below.)

3) Uncle Ben - When Tyrion completes his escape with Penny and Jorah, he ends up in front of Brown Ben Plumm. The dragonglass chapter includes a discussion between Jeor Mormont and Jon about the difficulty of looking for Benjen Stark, but Mormont's plan is that the camp at the top of the fist and the trail left by the 200 Night's Watch men will be so visible that Benjen would be able to find the ranging party if he is alive and free.

I'm still trying to put the puzzle pieces together, but Jon's movements in the dragonglass cache chapter seem to be similar to some Arya details when she is a page for Roose Bolton at Harrenhal, just after the Weasel Soup incident - both of them are getting hot spiced wine for their bosses, for instance. And the stew and soup seem connected. (I haven't figure out yet why GRRM sometimes calls it spice wine and other times spiced wine and other times mulled wine. I'm sure he has a secret and devious reason for the distinction.) There may also be a connection to the Davos chapter where he eats sister's stew with Lord Godric Borrell.

Of course, I can keep making connections until dawn: the old stones of the ringfort at the top of the Fist could be similar to Oldstones, where Robb and Catelyn have a heart-to-stoneheart before the Red Wedding. If the bundle Jon digs up is supposed to represent a heart or the removal of some other organ, maybe that also connects to the Ghost of High Heart - Hey! Ghost. How 'bout that? And doesn't she like that song about Jenny of Oldstones? And isn't the Ghost of High Heart a CotF person who has come to live below the Wall for some reason? So she would have a natural connection to the obsidian arrow heads. And furthermore, isn't Jenny of Oldstones the tragic love story of a Targ heir who got involved with the CotF . . . Where does this thread end?

Furthermore, there are a couple comments about the Fist that tie to a Bran detail: Thoren Smallwood says the Fist ringfort is, "An old place, and strong." Mormont's raven says, "Old, old, old." When Bran and his traveling companions reach the Night Fort, Jojen says, "This seems an old place." Bran will meet Sam at the Night Fort and descend with him into a well in order to pass beyond the Wall. This is the somewhat oddly formal "well" dialogue between Jon and Sam in the dragonglass chapter:

"Jon?" Samwell Tarly called up. "I thought it looked like you. Are you well?"

"Well enough." Jon hopped down. "How did you fare today?"

"Well. I fared well. Truly."

When the raven says, "Old, old, old," Lord Commander Mormont gets a little irritated with the bird - he growls at it. Also in this chapter, the Lord Commander takes an interest in the details of Ghost's activities and whereabouts. This piqued my interest because I've wondered about that last Jon POV in AGoT, where Mormont tells Jon that he needs Jon's blood and his wolf to go beyond the Wall. Here Mormont tells Jon to let the wolf hunt and later asks whether the wolf found "game" today, saying they could use some fresh meat. Immediately after asking about game and meat, Mormont "dug into a sack and offered his raven a handful of corn." Digging a sack is very similar to what Jon will be doing with Ghost when they dig for the bundle. Are we supposed to compare the raven's corn to the dragonglass weapons?

I think Mormont is covering up the fact that he knows the ancient secret and the cache that Jon is supposed to find. This re-read caused me to suspect that Mormont is warging Ghost, in fact. I get a really strong suspicion that he may have buried that cache in a previous life, but he needs Jon to find it on his own. Sort of like feeding Jon a handful of corn?

I have gone back today and read some of @Feather Crystal and other people's theories about reincarnation and the wheel of time on a thread about Brandon the Builder to see whether her ideas fit what I'm seeing in Mormont's actions in this chapter. There is a separate thread that raised a question about the timeline of Jeor becoming Lord Commander. Perhaps that was a clue to some kind of reincarnation / rebirth story for Jeor.

As for your frayed rope, I suspect that was a way of putting a Frey reference into the story at this point. So that may be another link to Robb and Catelyn and the Oldstones conversation before the Red Wedding. But I may be wrong.

Well, duh.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

If it wasn't Benjen or another member of the Night's Watch whose smell is familiar to Ghost...

Excellent point: it could have been someone from Winterfell whom Ghost was familiar with. It might explain why he followed the scent: him/her? What's he/she doing here?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Illyrio Mo'Parties said:

Srsly Seams, the dirt at the cache is loose and the cloak isn't rotted so it can't have been there long enough for past-life Jeor to have done it

That's why I'm looking at the time loop stuff. I know this is not up your alley, but I'm trying to work this out and I take your follow-up comment as a chance to keep writing here. (Give an inch, I take a mile.)

When you carefully read the route Ghost takes Jon into the woods and then back to the hill, and "a quarter way around the Fist," it sounds as if there could be a "turn back time" element in the journey. Jon is finding the cache just after it has been buried, even though it was buried long ago. I have seen other hints that the Night's Watch is a pun - like a mechanical watch that tells time and can be set, wound, turned back, turned forward, etc.

I'm thinking that the fact Jon was not carrying a bucket - even though he claimed to be going to get water - might be another hint about time standing still. The Internet tells me that the "Jack and Jill went up the hill" nursery rhyme is connected to moon mythology - because the moon regulates tides, the pail of water is a moon symbol. This chapter specifically says that there was no moon visible that night. Mormont also expresses concern about the time as the group reaches the hill, saying he wants to set up camp before dusk. Maybe the dragonglass cache has to be found on a moonless night when the important marker of passage of time is not visible.

I'm not into the time travel theories that have been thrown out on the tinfoil threads, and I usually believe that the characters who resemble each other do so for symbolic, literary reasons - not because they are glamoured or reincarnated. The exception is that I have found some of the analysis of Bran as Bran the Builder to be persuasive, and I have had this nagging set of questions in my mind about what L.C. Mormont is up to. That @M_Tootles thread ("Jeor Mormont, Mance, GRRM: Who's Lying or Mistaken Here and Why?") pointed out that L.C. Mormont made a very basic timeline mistake about when he became Lord Commander. One explanation might be that he skinchanges his raven - airborne would be one way to survey the status of the Wall - and other Lord Commanders have also skinchanged the same raven, so there is collective memory stored in the bird and Jeor got confused about which memories were his and which came from the previous L.C.

Or maybe Jeor is reborn in some way, as Bran Stark may be. That "old place" line connecting the Night Fort and the Fist might be a hint that some characters are able to use these entrances to go somewhere, well, magical.

The Fist of the First Men resembles the Glastonbury Tor in the geological sense - a high hill that rises out of a landscape that contains no similar features. The Celts thought it was the entrance to the Underworld. (Or A entrance to A underworld.) If you entered the underworld, time stood still. Generally, only heroes could enter the underworld. If Jeor believes that Benjen might have lost his way in a journey to the underworld, the Fist would be a logical place to set up camp if you hoped Benjen would find his way to you.

There is another chapter where I suspect GRRM is showing us the direwolf Ghost as Aslan, the lion from the Narnia stories. I'm not sure, but I think this dragonglass cache is like the Pevensie children obtaining the magic gifts from Father Christmas in Narnia. Luckily, GRRM didn't have Father Christmas drive up in a sleigh, but he did put Lord Commander Mormont in a mentor role for Jon and he is setting up Sam Tarly as the slayer (not the sleigher) . . .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, Roose on the Loose said:

Ghost = Lassie.

 

2 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

What's that boy? The Lord Commander is stuck in the well? 

But then, who is Flipper, where is Skippy, and let's not forget Scooby and Shaggy doo (no, no no! Not Shaggydog, we know who he is, and Shaggy Doo is surely a different pup B):D)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Ser Walter of AShwood said:

 

But then, who is Flipper, where is Skippy, and let's not forget Scooby and Shaggy doo (no, no no! Not Shaggydog, we know who he is, and Shaggy Doo is surely a different pup B):D)

Flipper is obviously Varys. He's a merman and that's close enough to a dolphin, right?

Skippy sailed off with Gerion Lannister. No one knows where Skippy is now.

Cersei is Shaggy. She's currently searching for a new Scooby because Lancel quit after she switched his treats' flavor from bacon to liver. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

52 minutes ago, Roose on the Loose said:

Ghost = Lassie.

4 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

What's that boy? The Lord Commander is stuck in the well? 

I realized after re-reading that dialogue excerpt that "well" is also a pun on Samwell Tarly. Duh, as the OP would say. In the exchange with Jon, his name changes from "Samwell Tarly" to "Farewell, truly." Is he just wishing Jon well on his mission to the underworld, or is this foreshadowing about Sam's final goodbye? Will Sam die some day on the Fist of the First Men? (And/or there may be wordplay on "fare" and Sam's tendency toward "fear.")

It does seem significant that Jon may be going off to the underworld as he and Sam talk about being "well," and Sam is also the person who leads Bran and his companions into the well-that-is-a-passage at the Night Fort.

But I don't want to disrupt the fun. Carry on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Seams mentions the time loop, which I recognize as well and take a step further and suggest that the current characters will experience an opposite result. If you're trying to figure out the mystery of the dragonglass cache you need to gather all the parallel time loop experiences and see what they have in common or what the end result was and then know that Jon and the Watch will have or should have had the opposite end result. 

Edited to add: the reference to "wells" has much symbolism in the story. Arianne had Arys bring Myrcella to a well. The plot was foiled of course, Myrcella injured by Darkstar, but she did survive. Both Tywin and Cersei are connected to wells and killing people in them as well as drowning their enemies. The Black Gate is located within a well, so to descend the stairs of a well, which is an inverted tower by the way, is symbolic of entering the underworld yet remaining alive. So I'm not sure this is indicative of Sam dying, but rather being able to navigate this underworld while remaining alive, and it points out Jon's hidden ability to navigate this underworld also. Recall Jon is stabbed and dying at the end of Dance. There will be some way that he survives that. Either the cold preserves his body alive while he is healed, or like many readers suspect, he becomes an undead character on par with Coldhands and Beric Dundarrion....not my favorite ending, by the way, but I'm sure whatever the author comes up with we'll instinctively know that the clues were there. We just didn't recognize them at the time.  I don't know if this helps or not, but I see the Stark family as reliving the fate of the Daynes since North is South...the Daynes are their mirrored reflection.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since everybody is having so much fun and there's time loop chatter going on I'll weigh in. 

I played with the idea a while back that Ben learned of the Wildlings massing their strength in the west of the milkwater, and also looking for the horn. He split his men up (Other and Jafer were killed and Wighted later) while he went west to see what the scoop was and hopefully beat the Wildlings to finding the horn.

He found it and also found the Dragonglass too, but fell into danger and was being pursued and feared for his life. 

He knelt to pray at a Weirwood in the forest one last time. 

Right, fast forward to Bran being in the cave and wed to the trees as he is now. 

He has learned the importance of the horn, Dragonglass and all that jazz. 

While flitting through the past he comes across Bens final Weirwood Old gods farewell and manages to direct Ben to the fist. Although I don't mean that he went to that specific "time" with the intention of doing that.

How this all goes together was a struggle and that stopped me from posting it in a full thread but I thought I'd share it. 

Maybe Bran later learned that Ghost and Jon found the cache at the fist, and how important the stuff is, so when he's flitting through the past and sees Ben, he already knows that the cache needs to get to the fist so Ghost and Jon find it, so he whispers "the fist" (perhaps, or something like that) to Ben, who then knows what to do. 

This way we have Bran following what Bloodraven has said, "the past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it."

Ahh, but can we inadvertently cause it?.

Its the same old Stable time loop thing ive been pushing in other threads. Bran learns things that have already happened, so like BR says, he learns from the past, but Bran then later "sees the past" and ends up actually being the cause of why it happened that way. 

I don't mean intentionally though like he's controlling the story. Picture it like Bran has the knowledge in his head that the cache needed to be at the fist for Ghost/Jon to find it, then he's doing he's  greenseer shit just floating through the "past" via the trees and stumbles across Ben, then acts on impulse to direct Ben to the fist. 

So Bran would always have been the cause of that action. 

By the way I'm simply theorising and having fun with this , not stating it as fact. 

Would be cool to read about Ben again though!.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Macgregor of the North said:

This way we have Bran following what Bloodraven has said, "the past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it."

Ahh, but can we inadvertently cause it?.

He may not be able to change the past, but he can change the future by affecting the present. If he's been taught about the time loops, he can pretty much guess how a certain situation will go down. You change one thing in the present and the end result changes and IMO the results end up being the opposite or inversions of all the other time loops. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

@Seams mentions the time loop, which I recognize as well and take a step further and suggest that the current characters will experience an opposite result. If you're trying to figure out the mystery of the dragonglass cache you need to gather all the parallel time loop experiences and see what they have in common or what the end result was and then know that Jon and the Watch will have or should have had the opposite end result.

That's what I was thinking with the parallels in the Tyrion story:

1) Tyrion and Penny ARE the treasures.

2) The treasures get away from Nurse by telling a story (about fetching water).

3) They talk their way past some guards, and manage to get Jorah included in their escape plan.

4) They end up with "Ben" (Brown Ben Plum), who has a couple drops of dragon blood in him.

Of course, it could go back even further - Brown Ben Plum tried but failed to buy Tyrion; Tyrion played cyvasse with Ben and beat him, winning a lot of money for his master. If Jon and Tyrion's stories are supposed to be opposites somehow, maybe we are even supposed to start at the moment they are together on top of the Wall, at the edge of the world. If so, Tyrion stops at Winterfell to present the saddle design he made for Bran. Then he is taken prisoner by Catelyn at the inn at the crossroads. So something similar to those events would be at the end of Jon's time loop.

By contrast, Jon's little adventure might begin with teaching sword skills to his Night's Watch brothers, being counseled by "The Smith," Donal Noye, fighting the wight and burning his hand, and obtaining the sword Long Claw. Will there be similar events toward the end of Tyrion's story?

On a more micro scale, in this scene ending at the dragonglass, the "inversion" steps comparable to Tyrion's story might be:

1) Jon realizes that Ben (uncle Benjen) is overdue, lost, possibly dead. He hopes Benjen will find him.

2) He talks his way past a guard, does not bring Jeor on his little walkabout.

3) He does bring his pale wolf (Possibly warged by Jeor?) and the wolf really does drink water when they get out of the ringfort area.

4) Jon finds the hidden "treasure" which contains dragonglass.

Keeping in mind Tyrion's "hidden treasure" from the song by Symon Silver Tongue, does the bundle with the obsidian and the horn represent a woman in Jon's future? Will his hidden treasure be a lover or, finally, the story of his mother?

Regarding the parallels with the other stew eaters, we know that Davos will be sent on a mission to find Rickon. Is Rickon = Benjen in the Davos arc? Or do Rickon and Shaggy Dog represent (the opposite of) Jon and Ghost, and someone else in the Davos story will represent his "Ben"?

Aside from the Weasel Soup, Arya is the only (or one of few?) major character besides Davos (who grew up in Flea Bottom) known to have eaten bowls of brown. She caught a pigeon with the intention of selling it to a pot shop but the bird's body fell out of her belt before she could seal the deal. We actually see Arya burying a "treasure," the sword Needle, which she hides under a loose stone on a stairway leading to a canal. To her, the sword represents Jon.

If Bran's weirwood paste is part of the stew motif, Bran may have already found his "Ben" in the form of Bloodraven.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

37 minutes ago, Seams said:

That's what I was thinking with the parallels in the Tyrion story:

1) Tyrion and Penny ARE the treasures.

2) The treasures get away from Nurse by telling a story (about fetching water).

3) They talk their way past some guards, and manage to get Jorah included in their escape plan.

4) They end up with "Ben" (Brown Ben Plum), who has a couple drops of dragon blood in him.

Of course, it could go back even further - Brown Ben Plum tried but failed to buy Tyrion; Tyrion played cyvasse with Ben and beat him, winning a lot of money for his master. If Jon and Tyrion's stories are supposed to be opposites somehow, maybe we are even supposed to start at the moment they are together on top of the Wall, at the edge of the world. If so, Tyrion stops at Winterfell to present the saddle design he made for Bran. Then he is taken prisoner by Catelyn at the inn at the crossroads. So something similar to those events would be at the end of Jon's time loop.

By contrast, Jon's little adventure might begin with teaching sword skills to his Night's Watch brothers, being counseled by "The Smith," Donal Noye, fighting the wight and burning his hand, and obtaining the sword Long Claw. Will there be similar events toward the end of Tyrion's story?

On a more micro scale, in this scene ending at the dragonglass, the "inversion" steps comparable to Tyrion's story might be:

1) Jon realizes that Ben (uncle Benjen) is overdue, lost, possibly dead. He hopes Benjen will find him.

2) He talks his way past a guard, does not bring Jeor on his little walkabout.

3) He does bring his pale wolf (Possibly warged by Jeor?) and the wolf really does drink water when they get out of the ringfort area.

4) Jon finds the hidden "treasure" which contains dragonglass.

Keeping in mind Tyrion's "hidden treasure" from the song by Symon Silver Tongue, does the bundle with the obsidian and the horn represent a woman in Jon's future? Will his hidden treasure be a lover or, finally, the story of his mother?

Regarding the parallels with the other stew eaters, we know that Davos will be sent on a mission to find Rickon. Is Rickon = Benjen in the Davos arc? Or do Rickon and Shaggy Dog represent (the opposite of) Jon and Ghost, and someone else in the Davos story will represent his "Ben"?

Aside from the Weasel Soup, Arya is the only (or one of few?) major character besides Davos (who grew up in Flea Bottom) known to have eaten bowls of brown. She caught a pigeon with the intention of selling it to a pot shop but the bird's body fell out of her belt before she could seal the deal. We actually see Arya burying a "treasure," the sword Needle, which she hides under a loose stone on a stairway leading to a canal. To her, the sword represents Jon.

If Bran's weirwood paste is part of the stew motif, Bran may have already found his "Ben" in the form of Bloodraven.

Just a quick aside and then I need to reread your post more closely when I take lunch (I'm at work)...Tyrion and Penny's parallel should be the same as Jon's...at least according to my theory...at the moment. lol Anyways, my thoughts are that the wheel of time was moving forward until sometime after Robert's Rebellion it flipped and started moving in reverse. I've been trying to pinpoint where and when the change occurred, but it's been tricky, because I suspect the tower of joy was actually a blood magic ritual much like Mirri's was in the tent when she resurrected Drogo, but things didn't really get going until Dany hatched her dragons, then she became the origin of dragons...the mother. For sure events started occurring in reverse after Dany, but the change had to have occurred two years prior to the hatching, because Ser Waymar met six white walkers. So if time was already going in reverse and yet still repeating itself, Jon's events would be the same as Tyrion. If there's missing information in Jon's story then reexamine Tyrion's. You may be able to fill in the missing pieces.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wonder if Benjen, Othor, and Jafer experienced the same timeloop as Jon-Sam-Jeor, and Tyrion-Penny-Jorah? Did Benjen go off to find water when Othor and Jafer were attacked?

Each group had a slightly different experience with Benjen disappearing, and Othor and Jafer getting killed then wighted, Jon left for a ranging leaving Sam and Jeor to survive the attack only for Jeor to wind up dead later, and Tyrion, Penny, and Jorah all get away. It would seem its important to get the hell out of the ringfort.  :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Coldhands seems like the really obvious choice to me. He's got an in with BR, who we are all but certain is observing the Wall via Mormont's raven. I guess this means we have find a way for CH or BR to possess the Horn, but I don't see anything that would get in the way of that. Certainly it's more plausible for them to have it than Osha. As for how Ghost found the stash, I think the necessary magic is well established. 

Time loops are fun, but I'm wary of using them to explain too much. Seems like if Bran had the ability to get that stash planted he might have included a bit more non-horn weaponry. CH is in my opinion the most straightforward and airtight explanation. Time loop stuff is always possible with Bran and BR and Mormont's raven, but in this specific circumstance it's not required.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...