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Heresy 196 and a look at the Wall


Black Crow

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4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Not necessarily. The Wall certainly provided a last bastion but men were settled there of old - the Thenns and whoever fortified the Fist for a start, without getting into questions as to humans who weren't First Men. The Pact as it has come down to us didn't establish a geographical frontier but rather a series of reservations all over the south - in the deep woods and so on - until the Andals came along.

That the Isle of Faces was chosen as the site for making the Pact is just another indicator that the First Men didn't impose the peace but may have been compelled to accept it.

I'm convinced of a couple of things now after this recent exchange of ideas.  I think there are two prophecies at work; the Prince who is Promised born amidst salt tears and smoke and Azor Ahai born of salt and smoke.  Dany fits the prophecy for PWiP with the correct bloodline as Aemon points out and she is reborn during MMD's ritual.  Just nobody expected a girl.  LOL. 

There is also a reason that Melisandre is looking for AA among the Baratheon bloodline.  She isn't just looking for the firey heart;  she's looking for the firey hart (the red stag).  Jon also has to fit the sybolic requirements for the horned lord. Aemon gives the answer for this as well; when he says that 'the sword is wrong' although the Baratheons have some of the Targaryen blood through Rhaelle Targaryen, that Melisandre has to know that Stannis isn't AA.

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A Feast for Crows - Samwell IV

"I will," Sam promised. "I will add my voice to yours, maester. We will both tell them, the two of us together."

"No," the old man said. "It must be you. Tell them. The prophecy . . . my brother's dream . . . Lady Melisandre has misread the signs. Stannis . . . Stannis has some of the dragon blood in him, yes. His brothers did as well. Rhaelle, Egg's little girl, she was how they came by it . . . their father's mother . . . she used to call me Uncle Maester when she was a little girl. I remembered that, so I allowed myself to hope . . . perhaps I wanted to . . . we all deceive ourselves, when we want to believe. Melisandre most of all, I think. The sword is wrong, she has to know that . . . light without heat . . . an empty glamor . . . the sword is wrong, and the false light can only lead us deeper into darkness, Sam. Daenerys is our hope. Tell them that, at the Citadel. Make them listen. They must send her a maester. Daenerys must be counseled, taught, protected. For all these years I've lingered, waiting, watching, and now that the day has dawned I am too old. I am dying, Sam." Tears ran from his blind white eyes at that admission. "Death should hold no fear for a man as old as me, but it does. Isn't that silly? It is always dark where I am, so why should I fear the darkness? Yet I cannot help but wonder what will follow, when the last warmth leaves my body. Will I feast forever in the Father's golden hall as the septons say? Will I talk with Egg again, find Dareon whole and happy, hear my sisters singing to their children? What if the horselords have the truth of it? Will I ride through the night sky forever on a stallion made of flame? Or must I return again to this vale of sorrow? Who can say, truly? Who has been beyond the wall of death to see? Only the wights, and we know what they are like. We know."

 

The true steel is Robert's bloodline:
 

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A Clash of Kings - Jon I

"And his brothers?" Jon asked.

The armorer considered that a moment. "Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he's copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day

 

The Whitetree weirwood points to a firey greenseer that seems to be connected to the Black Gate with it's queer weirwood branch coming up through the well or murder hole to use Bran's turn of phrase.  The question is whether it is bypassing the Black Gate or is the source of the Black Gate.  As Flagons points out the tree branch seems to be a more recent growth; perhaps something new since the Watch abandoned the Nightfort.

Perhaps we are not talking about a greenseer transformed by fire so much as a very old living greenseer and possibly the three eyed crow.  The difference between BR and Whitetree is that BR's tree slowly consumes him while the Whitetree is continuously fed and keep that greenseer alive.  Telling Bran that BR is the last greenseer is therefore a lie.   

Could it be that the First Men encountered trees like Whitetree when they arrived; with gaping maws fed by the CotF to keep the greenseers living?  They do have carnivorous teeth after all. 

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14 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

If the faces carved into the tree trunks represent 'sentences' or 'words', then cutting off the faces implies 'breaking ones word' in the sense of breaking an oath or pact.  As has already been mentioned, breaking this pact by felling the trees would additionally involve a prison break with the fell presence --or 'felon(s)' -- going free!  Instead of using the word 'felling,' however, GRRM employs the construction 'put to the axe', so cutting down a tree with an axe is related to an unlawful prison-break.  Since an axe resembles the shape of a key, cutting down a tree is like unlocking a door or gate, symbolically.

I like this ! 

14 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Given that the wagon is analogous to a weirwood prison, we may say that one may be symbolically freed from the tree either by cutting or burning it down.  The fell trio summoned up from Hell by Arya -- Jaqen (the maester), Biter (the wyvern) and Rorge (the hellhound) -- who hack their way out with the axe from the inside are unlocking the door of Hell, using the 'key' = 'axe' Arya tossed them through the bars.

In the same time, they are not really free, because they will be lost in Riverlands as "limbo". I used to see Biter as an avatar of Ned Stark - the "mute wolf" - and Rorge as an avatar of king Robert, who were set on the Riverlands, hunting living people and "lost spirits" (the location between living world and underworld, where souls can find no peace)

 

14 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

As to the 'white-haired' woman performing the sacrifice at Winterfell, perhaps she has white hair because she's an albino or dragon-blooded, not because she's old.  So what was a dragon-blooded individual doing at Winterfell during the 'bronze' age (bronze sickle)?

How funny ! I will spoil myself in advence, but I had very recently some intuition that this woman was a Blackwood (the Blackwood before they went to south and choose "Raventree" as their home ? and before they were ennemy with the Bracken ? why their weirwood is dying ?), and the mother of the Starks of Winterfell. Her blood were the blood of the crow but not the blood of the wolf. But that's a trail that I want to explore at the end of my new thread, because this is the last idea that came to my mind (with the true name of the Stark of Winterfell, throw their real father, but I don't want reveal too much too soon :ph34r:)

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18 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

What is Melisandre's goal if she doesn't believe Stannis is AA?  She obviously uses tricks and deception, like the fake Lightbringer, but I assumed she still believed Stannis was AA and felt the tricks were helping him.

As Aemon says she must realize that the sword is wrong and he recognizes that she is employing a glamor.  Her expectation is that Stannis is AA but she isn't getting the same message from R'hllor.  When she asks her god to see AA; Jon shows up in the flames.  I think she does eventually acknowledge her mistake when she turns her attention to Jon; tries to make him trust her.  She tells him that there is power in him, the Wall and Ghost but he resists using it ... and her.    She also keeps seeing Jon's death and her expectation is that AA will be reborn. She offers the information but he doesn't believe her or trust her enough to ask for details.

I'm wondering if Borroq will stop her from giving Jon the firey kiss and put him in one of the tombs guarded by his monstrous boar until Jon returns to his body.   Borroq would certainly recognize another skinchanger inhabiting Ghost.  Might he also know something about the uses of salt water?  In the meantime, Melisandre is sent off to the Nightfort by Thorne or the Wildlings if the take over Castle Black.  She can't really be too open about Jon, if Stannis is still alive.   

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1 hour ago, Brad Stark said:

What is Melisandre's goal if she doesn't believe Stannis is AA?  She obviously uses tricks and deception, like the fake Lightbringer, but I assumed she still believed Stannis was AA and felt the tricks were helping him.

Perhaps its a Manx cat job: she doesn't have the AA so she's making one. After all AA is only an instrument.

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14 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

The problem I have with the pact ending The Long Night is how far South the Isle of Faces is.  If the Wall and Winterfell were a significant part of The Long Night the pact would have been signed in the North.  The First Men moved South to North,  so I assume the pact was signed when the Isle of Faces was the farthest North men settled,  and The Long Night was fought later when the Wall was the farthest North men settled. 

This is why I keep going back to The Long Night being retribution for men breaking the pact.

The text doesn't support the pact ending the Long Night. The pact supposedly held all the way through the Long Night, but I'm with you that the Long Night occurred because of the breaking of the pact.

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2 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

I assumed she still believed Stannis was AA and felt the tricks were helping him

I think you were right:

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Yet now she could not even seem to find her king. I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R'hllor shows me only Snow.

This is from her POV chapter and I interpret it to mean that she sincerely perceives Stannis as both her king and Azor Ahai, and she is trying via flame visions to find out what's happening to him south of her (since quite unlike the show, Stannis went off without her). 

And furthermore, she does not perceive Jon as either her king or Azor Ahai.

 

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon XIII

"I have made mistakes, I have admitted as much, but—"

"A grey girl on a dying horse. Daggers in the dark. A promised prince, born in smoke and salt. It seems to me that you make nothing but mistakes, my lady. Where is Stannis? What of Rattleshirt and his spearwives? Where is my sister?"

 

What is dead can never die!
 

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon IV

Wick Whittlestick wore the keys on a ring about his neck. They all looked alike to Jon, yet somehow Wick found the right one for every door. Once inside, he would take a fist-sized chunk of chalk from his pouch and mark each cask and sack and barrel as he counted them while Marsh compared the new count to the old.

In the granaries were oats and wheat and barley, and barrels of coarse ground flour. In the root cellars strings of onions and garlic dangled from the rafters, and bags of carrots, parsnips, radishes, and white and yellow turnips filled the shelves. One storeroom held wheels of cheese so large it took two men to move them. In the next, casks of salt beef, salt pork, salt mutton, and salt cod were stacked ten feet high. Three hundred hams and three thousand long black sausages hung from ceiling beams below the smokehouse. In the spice locker they found peppercorns, cloves, and cinnamon, mustard seeds, coriander, sage and clary sage and parsley, blocks of salt. Elsewhere were casks of apples and pears, dried peas, dried figs, bags of walnuts, bags of chestnuts, bags of almonds, planks of dry smoked salmon, clay jars packed with olives in oil and sealed with wax. One storeroom offered potted hare, haunch of deer in honey, pickled cabbage, pickled beets, pickled onions, pickled eggs, and pickled herring.

As they moved from one vault to another, the wormways seemed to grow colder. Before long Jon could see their breath frosting in the lantern light. "We're beneath the Wall."

 

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A Feast for Crows - Samwell V

He was not a man to be refused. Sam hesitated a moment, then told his tale again as Marywn, Alleras, and the other novice listened. "Maester Aemon believed that Daenerys Targaryen was the fulfillment of a prophecy . . . her, not Stannis, nor Prince Rhaegar, nor the princeling whose head was dashed against the wall."

"Born amidst salt and smoke, beneath a bleeding star. I know the prophecy." Marwyn turned his head and spat a gob of red phlegm onto the floor. "Not that I would trust it. Gorghan of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with the pleasure of it and think, how sweet, how fine, how good this is . . . and then her teeth snap shut and your moans turn to screams. That is the nature of prophecy, said Gorghan. Prophecy will bite your prick off every time." He chewed a bit. "Still . . .

 

"

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1 hour ago, JNR said:

I think you were right:

This is from her POV chapter and I interpret it to mean that she sincerely perceives Stannis as both her king and Azor Ahai, and she is trying via flame visions to find out what's happening to him south of her (since quite unlike the show, Stannis went off without her). 

And furthermore, she does not perceive Jon as either her king or Azor Ahai.

 

I agree, and as I said above, "helping" him isn't inconsistent with that since ultimately AA is only R'hllor's instrument and for her the path to glory comes from finding and shaping that instrument

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To go back to the question of how BR and Euron are alike;  I'd rephrase that to ask how Bran and Euron are alike.

Euron attempts to co-opt Victarion with shade of the evening; to lift the veil, Victarion declines:

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A Feast for Crows - The Reaver

The captain took the cup Euron had not offered, sniffed at its contents suspiciously. Seen up close, it looked more blue than black. It was thick and oily, with a smell like rotted flesh. He tried a small swallow, and spit it out at once. "Foul stuff. Do you mean to poison me?"

"I mean to open your eyes." Euron drank deep from his own cup, and smiled. "Shade-of-the-evening, the wine of the warlocks. I came upon a cask of it when I captured a certain galleas out of Qarth, along with some cloves and nutmeg, forty bolts of green silk, and four warlocks who told a curious tale. One presumed to threaten me, so I killed him and fed him to the other three. They refused to eat of their friend's flesh at first, but when they grew hungry enough they had a change of heart. Men are meat."

A Feast for Crows - The Reaver

Victarion could smell the sea through the open window, though the room stank of wine and blood and sex. The cold salt air helped to clear his head. "What do you mean?"

Euron turned to face him, his bruised blue lips curled in a half smile. "Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower?" The wind came gusting through the window and stirred his sable cloak. There was something obscene and disturbing about his nakedness. "No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap."

 

Euron is in no way helping Victarion like a goodbrother and doesn't have the same ability to open the eye as the 3EC or WeirBran and that's where the similarity ends.  Except for the question of flying and daring to leap; Euron says that only perhaps we can fly.   It may be that whatever the temptation employed, Euron's heart's desire; it had very little to do with flying and more to do with power.  With dragons, flying is possible and balance of power is tipped in your favor.  Euron's gifts are poison and he doesn't share power.

Contrast that with Bran's unspoiled innocence:
 

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"All," Lord Brynden said. "It was the singers who taught the First Men to send messages by raven … but in those days, the birds would speak the words. The trees remember, but men forget, and so now they write the messages on parchment and tie them round the feet of birds who have never shared their skin."

Old Nan had told him the same story once, Bran remembered, but when he asked Robb if it was true, his brother laughed and asked him if he believed in grumkins too. He wished Robb were with them now. I'd tell him I could fly, but he wouldn't believe, so I'd have to show him. I bet that he could learn to fly too, him and Arya and Sansa, even baby Rickon and Jon Snow. We could all be ravens and live in Maester Luwin's rookery.

 

We have speculated before that the difference between Euron and Bran is that Bran is given a greenseer to guide him; that he must not exceed the bounds of his power, to exercise god-like powers without judgement; while Euron had no such teacher and now means to make himself into a god exercising power with no limitations. 

It doesn't seem to me that BR ever tested Euron or that he represents the 'malevolent presence' within Euron.   The blood-eye or crow's eye would seem to represent something else separate from the obvious parallel to Bloodraven.  The singular red eye seems to be Martin's version of the eye of Sauron; while Euron is the mouth of Sauron.  
 

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A Feast for Crows - The Iron Captain

"We shall have no king but from the kingsmoot." The Damphair stood. "No godless man—"

"—may sit the Seastone Chair, aye." Euron glanced about the tent. "As it happens I have oft sat upon the Seastone Chair of late. It raises no objections." His smiling eye was glittering. "Who knows more of gods than I? Horse gods and fire gods, gods made of gold with gemstone eyes, gods carved of cedar wood, gods chiseled into mountains, gods of empty air . . . I know them all. I have seen their peoples garland them with flowers, and shed the blood of goats and bulls and children in their names. And I have heard the prayers, in half a hundred tongues. Cure my withered leg, make the maiden love me, grant me a healthy son. Save me, succor me, make me wealthy . . . protect me! Protect me from mine enemies, protect me from the darkness, protect me from the crabs inside my belly, from the horselords, from the slavers, from the sellswords at my door. Protect me from the Silence." He laughed. "Godless? Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to raise sail! You serve one god, Damphair, but I have served ten thousand. From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sails, they pray."

The priest raised a bony finger. "They pray to trees and golden idols and goat-headed abominations. False gods . . ."

"Just so," said Euron, "and for that sin I kill them all. I spill their blood upon the sea and sow their screaming women with my seed. Their little gods cannot stop me, so plainly they are false gods. I am more devout than even you, Aeron. Perhaps it should be you who kneels to me for blessing."

 

This is the heart of darkness; the thing trapped in the ice beyond the curtain of light.  Something the 3EC has shown to Bran.  The little gods are Bran and Jon, the Crow with 3 eyes. They have seen the heart of darkness and it has seen them.  The little gods cannot stop him from taking form and breaking free.

Bloodraven may have been watching Bran all his life; but so has Jon and Jon means to protect and help Bran if he can.  Especially with Bloodraven past his best before date and ready to expire.  The crows may have enticed Bran to the top of the old keep; but it's Jon who has to kill the boy and let the man be born.

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Getting back to the subject of the Wall, Martin is not only adding a dash of Tolkien but a large dollop of Norse mythology.  Something that hasn't gone unnoticed by many.  

The aurora (goddess of the dawn in Roman mythology), the curtain of light that Bran sees is the bifrost bridge in Norse mythology.   It is also called the God's Wall marking the place where the spirit dwells.  Something Melisandre calls the soul of ice.  It's Heimdal that watches the God's Wall and blows the horn to signal that the wall has been breached and Ragnarok has come.  The Rainbow bridge is the bridge between heaven and earth.

http://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-aesir-gods-and-goddesses/heimdall/

The second wall is a bridge to Hel, the frozen place reserved for Starks, between the living and the dead.

Gjallarbrú (literally "Gjöll Bridge") is a bridge in Norse mythology which spans the river Gjöll in the underworld. It must be crossed in order to reach Hel.[1]

According to Gylfaginning it is described as a covered bridge, "thatched with glittering gold". It figures most prominently in the story of Baldr, specifically when Hermód is sent to retrieve the fallen god from the land of the dead. When Hermód arrived at the bridge he was challenged by the giant maiden Módgud who demanded that he state his name and business before allowing him to pass.[2]

 

There is also an obsession with numbers Norse Mythology, particularly the numbers 3 and 9.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_in_Norse_mythology

  Something that is also employed by Tolkein in the famous ring inscription:

"Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."

In Westeros a ring of power is a crown. 

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A Clash of Kings - Catelyn I

Her son's crown was fresh from the forge, and it seemed to Catelyn Stark that the weight of it pressed heavy on Robb's head.

The ancient crown of the Kings of Winter had been lost three centuries ago, yielded up to Aegon the Conqueror when Torrhen Stark knelt in submission. What Aegon had done with it no man could say. Lord Hoster's smith had done his work well, and Robb's crown looked much as the other was said to have looked in the tales told of the Stark kings of old; an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. Of gold and silver and gemstones, it had none; bronze and iron were the metals of winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold.

 

In the lands beyond the Wall, a ring of power is a grove of weirwood trees:
 
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A Game of Thrones - Jon VI

Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end of the world; somehow that changed everything. Every shadow seemed darker, every sound more ominous. The trees pressed close and shut out the light of the setting sun. A thin crust of snow cracked beneath the hooves of their horses, with a sound like breaking bones. When the wind set the leaves to rustling, it was like a chilly finger tracing a path up Jon's spine. The Wall was at their backs, and only the gods knew what lay ahead.

The sun was sinking below the trees when they reached their destination, a small clearing in the deep of the wood where nine weirwoods grew in a rough circle. Jon drew in a breath, and he saw Sam Tarly staring. Even in the wolfswood, you never found more than two or three of the white trees growing together; a grove of nine was unheard of. The forest floor was carpeted with fallen leaves, bloodred on top, black rot beneath. The wide smooth trunks were bone pale, and nine faces stared inward. The dried sap that crusted in the eyes was red and hard as ruby. Bowen Marsh commanded them to leave their horses outside the circle. "This is a sacred place, we will not defile it."

 

Which begs the question:  Is Jon really the 998th Lord Command or the 999th since the Night's King has been expunged from all records? 

 

 

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2 hours ago, LynnS said:


 

Which begs the question:  Is Jon really the 998th Lord Command or the 999th since the Night's King has been expunged from all records? 

 

 

The point of Sam's intervention about the dodgy list is that 998 are too many, but how far back would we go with 98?

A thousand years.

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On 3/10/2017 at 11:16 AM, Frey family reunion said:

I guess the best model of what I'm thinking of is the Baltic Waterway in Russia.  It's a series of canals which connect to rivers forming a navigable channel from the White Sea to the Gulf of Finland. 

The Wall being a Sword on eastern half, and a snake on the western, would be consistent with a man made canal being dug from the Shivering Sea to a river, which then snakes it's way to the Bay of Ice gradually forming a gorge through the mountains. 

We know that the Wall goes some distance underground, because the underground wormways go into the Wall itself. 

This would have allowed easy access to the amount of water needed to form the Ice Wall.  And it would also mean that the Wall not only provided a land barrier from north to south, but it also provided a barrier from traveling by waterway from west to east.

 

I also thought of a river for the Wall, but never came to a conclusion. Your idea of the First Men building a canal did not occur to me. It  makes good sense. I'll pile on top of this idea with a lot of conjecture.

It seems to me that before the Long Night the seasons would have been more normal and perhaps the North wasn't so north or quite so cold. Either the LN was the beginning of the extreme seasons or the LN was an effect of a ridiculously long Summer. (The Singers should know this!) The latter is more probable, in my opinion.

I'm thinking of a river surrounded by trees, especially weirwoods. The first men encroach upon the landscape and build a canal for shipping. Stuff goes sour and the Long Night comes about. When Men finally make way back North they find a frozen river to build a Wall upon to keep out the cold ones. A solid, frozen river is a great foundation and would be easy to drag large blocks of ice upon for the continuation of the Wall. Not to mention the water would swell when frozen and climb above its original height. Not hundreds of feet, of course, just some expansion would occur. So the Wall is built and 'magicked' to include weirwoods and some saltwater and all that.

On to the Black Gate...  Well, it is a drowned 'god' . Below the Wall and in a well. The Gate is part sentient and part tree, imo. It's arm, the skinny, weird part which Bran sees breaking through the kitchen floor has broken through since magic is on the rise. Apperently for some years before Bran and tCo. reach the Wall. The Gate should have been dormant for some time, yet the trees have eyes again and hands and arms to boot. (I've always wondered if the Gate has gone blind from age or if it was blinded purposely. It can no longer tell the "who" on site so it has to ask.)

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Has anyone discussed the Nightfort well containing the Black Gate as a wishing well? Some ancient wells were marked with wooden figures to represent the gods who blessed or inhabited the wells. The wells blessed people with their wants or needs.

 Nowadays people toss coins into a well. Coldhands threw a a Watchman down the well and recieved a gift in return. :P

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4 hours ago, aDanceWithFlagons said:

Has anyone discussed the Nightfort well containing the Black Gate as a wishing well? Some ancient wells were marked with wooden figures to represent the gods who blessed or inhabited the wells. The wells blessed people with their wants or needs.

 Nowadays people toss coins into a well. Coldhands threw a a Watchman down the well and recieved a gift in return. :P

I think that we can take it as being exactly that. Wells are very important in Celtic religious practice and while we nowadays associate wishing wells with twee little circular walls and a little roof over the winding gear, Celtic ones took two forms. There were pools, usually fed by springs, which could be large or small where votive offerings were made - most surviving Celtic swords and a lot of other stuff comes from such pools. These often survive as Saints' wells. The other kind was a well or shaft going into the ground and the darkness...

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13 hours ago, aDanceWithFlagons said:

 

I also thought of a river for the Wall, but never came to a conclusion. Your idea of the First Men building a canal did not occur to me. It  makes good sense. I'll pile on top of this idea with a lot of conjecture.

It seems to me that before the Long Night the seasons would have been more normal and perhaps the North wasn't so north or quite so cold. Either the LN was the beginning of the extreme seasons or the LN was an effect of a ridiculously long Summer. (The Singers should know this!) The latter is more probable, in my opinion.

I'm thinking of a river surrounded by trees, especially weirwoods. The first men encroach upon the landscape and build a canal for shipping. Stuff goes sour and the Long Night comes about. When Men finally make way back North they find a frozen river to build a Wall upon to keep out the cold ones. A solid, frozen river is a great foundation and would be easy to drag large blocks of ice upon for the continuation of the Wall. Not to mention the water would swell when frozen and climb above its original height. Not hundreds of feet, of course, just some expansion would occur. So the Wall is built and 'magicked' to include weirwoods and some saltwater and all that.

On to the Black Gate...  Well, it is a drowned 'god' . Below the Wall and in a well. The Gate is part sentient and part tree, imo. It's arm, the skinny, weird part which Bran sees breaking through the kitchen floor has broken through since magic is on the rise. Apperently for some years before Bran and tCo. reach the Wall. The Gate should have been dormant for some time, yet the trees have eyes again and hands and arms to boot. (I've always wondered if the Gate has gone blind from age or if it was blinded purposely. It can no longer tell the "who" on site so it has to ask.)

I like this alot as well as Frey Family Reunion's explantion! Especially liked the Black Gate as a drowned god.

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19 hours ago, Black Crow said:

The point of Sam's intervention about the dodgy list is that 998 are too many, but how far back would we go with 98?

A thousand years.

How did you arrive at these boldfaced numbers?

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57 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

A random reduction by a factor of 10

Well, of course one can make up any numbers one likes. 

What I mean is, are you really proposing that the Wall has only existed a thousand years and has only had 98 LCs?

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