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What is Ghost?


Quellon

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2 hours ago, zandru said:

Thanks for this great discussion of albinism! I had little idea. I think you may be onto something with the Targaryon lineage, but I've got to draw the line at any biologic linkage between trees, wolves, dragon riders etc. It would seem to be pushing "magic" too far.

LOL

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4 hours ago, Unchained said:

I thought she just had some bacon in her pocket, but I guess that kinda makes since too.

 

You really think she glamored Jon?  We have only seen her glamor other people and objects when they have rubies on them or am I forgetting something.  

Ghost has eyes which are compared to rubies (at other times they are compared to garnets, stars, fires):

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon VI

Jon let out a white breath. "He is not always so …"

"… warm? Warmth calls to warmth, Jon Snow." Her eyes were two red stars, shining in the dark. At her throat, her ruby gleamed, a third eye glowing brighter than the others. Jon had seen Ghost's eyes blazing red the same way, when they caught the light just right. "Ghost," he called. "To me."

 

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5 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Which reminded me of this quote in which Dany gets a dragon vision of her ancestors:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys IX

"… want to wake the dragon …"

Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. "Faster," they cried, "faster, faster." She raced, her feet melting the stone wherever they touched. "Faster!" the ghosts cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.

"… wake the dragon …"

And who might these albino ghosts be? 

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Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the Pearl Emperor and ruled for a thousand years. The Jade Emperor, the Tourmaline Emperor, the Onyx Emperor, the Topaz Emperor, and the Opal Emperor followed in turn, each reigning for centuries...yet every reign was shorter and more troubled than the one preceding it, for wild men and baleful beasts pressed at the borders of the Great Empire, lesser kings grew prideful and rebellious, and the common people gave themselves over to avarice, envy, lust, murder, incest, gluttony, and sloth.

When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror...

(TWOIAF, The Bones and Beyond)

 

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3 hours ago, Quellon said:

I can relate to that. This sure beats "no, he's just an albino direwolf" explanations. :rolleyes: But I still think there is something special about him, even for a direwolf. The fact that he opened his eyes first and almost wandered away says a lot. Other pups stayed in the same place.

The fact that he opened his eyes first indicates that he's the oldest wolf -- in fact, despite all appearances to the contrary, the alpha wolf of the pack.

It also implies something mysterious, considering the 'opening of the eyes' refers to the symbolism of Ghost -- i.e. Jon -- having opened his 'third eye' first -- even before Summer/Bran!

This inevitably raises the question of how Bran should have opened Ghost's third eye (referring to the events in the so-called 'weirwood sapling dream').  Surely the one who opens his 'third eye' first would be the one to help the others open their eyes?  Following this apparent conundrum, two possibilities emerge as plausible:

1.  Either Jon is the three-eyed crow who opened Bran's third eye (this fascinating speculation was first raised by my friend @LynnS);

2.  or Ghost's/Jon's third eye was opened by Bran operating from the future (and he was the one issuing the telepathic communication causing Jon to turn around on the bridge and go back to find Ghost).

The latter in turn raises the possibility that Bran himself is the three-eyed crow!

(P.S.  Dorian -- have a field day; but be polite with me and keep your sense of humor; and remember if you have any queries of me to ask me nicely:

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A Game of Thrones - Tyrion II

And suddenly the wolf was between them. He did not growl. The damned thing never made a sound. He only looked at him with those bright red eyes, and showed him his teeth, and that was more than enough. Tyrion sagged back to the ground with a grunt. "Don't help me, then. I'll sit right here until you leave."

Jon Snow stroked Ghost's thick white fur, smiling now. "Ask me nicely."

Tyrion Lannister felt the anger coiling inside him, and crushed it out with a will. It was not the first time in his life he had been humiliated, and it would not be the last. Perhaps he even deserved this. "I should be very grateful for your kind assistance, Jon," he said mildly.

'I should be very grateful for your kind assistance, RR,' he said mildly.  ;))

 

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5 minutes ago, OtherFromAnotherMother said:

And who might these albino ghosts be? 

Quote

Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the Pearl Emperor and ruled for a thousand years. The Jade Emperor, the Tourmaline Emperor, the Onyx Emperor, the Topaz Emperor, and the Opal Emperor followed in turn, each reigning for centuries...yet every reign was shorter and more troubled than the one preceding it, for wild men and baleful beasts pressed at the borders of the Great Empire, lesser kings grew prideful and rebellious, and the common people gave themselves over to avarice, envy, lust, murder, incest, gluttony, and sloth.

When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror...

(TWOIAF, The Bones and Beyond)

They are not all albinos (remember it's a recessive trait)!

jade -- deep green eyes

tourmaline -- can be a number of colours, usually pink, mauve or purple eyes

onyx -- black eyes (Ser Alliser Thorne has onyx eyes!)

topaz -- a variety of colors  (from wikipedia: 'typical topaz is wine red,yellow, pale gray, reddish-orange, or blue brown. It can also be white, pale green, blue, gold, pink (rare), reddish-yellow or opaque to transparent/translucent.')

opal -- iridescent bluish-pink

amethyst -- usually pale violet

bloodstone -- deep green flecked with red like blood

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Just now, ravenous reader said:

They are not all albinos (remember it's a recessive trait)!

jade -- deep green eyes

tourmaline -- can be a number of colours, usually pink, mauve or purple eyes

onyx -- black eyes (Ser Alliser Thorne has onyx eyes!)

topaz -- a variety of colors  (from wikipedia: 'typical topaz is wine red,yellow, pale gray, reddish-orange, or blue brown. It can also be white, pale green, blue, gold, pink (rare), reddish-yellow or opaque to transparent/translucent.')

opal -- iridescent bluish-pink

amethyst -- usually pale violet

bloodstone -- deep green flecked with red like blood

Oh RR... I only called the ghosts albinos because ghosts are often associated as being white and wanted to sort of remain on topic by calling them albino... I know they are not actually albino. They are kingly ghosts from the Great Empire with eyes of many colors. Thanks for keeping me on my toes. ;) 

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4 hours ago, Quellon said:

Arya is a very odd girl who obviously has something broken in her and likely had a coldness to her in the beggining as well.

No, there was nothing "cold" about Arya until that series of unfortunate events at the crossroads. Then, as the coup d'etat took place after Robert Baratheon's death, she went through more hell than most adults could bear - and it kept on going, for at least a few years. It's helpful to review the Arya of the first few chapters of GoT. The coldness and brokenness was beaten into her, not her natural self.

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8 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

1.  Either Jon is the three-eyed crow who opened Bran's third eye (this fascinating speculation was first raised by my friend @LynnS);

2.  or Ghost's/Jon's third eye was opened by Bran operating from the future (and he was the one issuing the telepathic communication causing Jon to turn around on the bridge and go back to find Ghost).

The latter in turn raises the possibility that Bran himself is the three-eyed crow!

It also suggests that Jon is older than Rob.  Although the question of Jon and Bran opening each other's 3rd eye is an acorn/oak time conundrum where past/present/future are the same.  At some point both Jon and Bran operate on the same time continuum regardless of Bran opening Jon's eye at the Skirling Pass first chronologically in real time.  Once that happens Jon is equally capable of opening Bran's 3rd eye at any time chronologically as well. 

Jon is also the lonewolf and hindsight being 20/20,  a little foreshadowing:
 

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A Game of Thrones - Arya II

"The direwolf," she said, thinking of Nymeria. She hugged her knees against her chest, suddenly afraid."Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa … Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you … and I need both of you, gods help me."

 

   

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Ghost did not count. Ghost was closer than a friend. Ghost was part of him.

Ghost is Jon. He is just as special as the 3headed dragon he shares a bond with. We are forgetting who Ghost shares a bond with, he isn’t bonded with a *normal* human. He is with Jon, the 3headed dragon.

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9 hours ago, zandru said:

No, there was nothing "cold" about Arya until that series of unfortunate events at the crossroads. Then, as the coup d'etat took place after Robert Baratheon's death, she went through more hell than most adults could bear - and it kept on going, for at least a few years. It's helpful to review the Arya of the first few chapters of GoT. The coldness and brokenness was beaten into her, not her natural self.

Lol...I didn't write that. Dunno where you got my name from, perhaps because Iam the threadstarter.:P

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1 hour ago, Jon's Queen Consort said:

Ghost is Jon. He is just as special as the 3headed dragon he shares a bond with. We are forgetting who Ghost shares a bond with, he isn’t bonded with a *normal* human. He is with Jon, the 3headed dragon.

Or the dragon with three heads is Bloodraven; White (Jon) , Black (Arya) Green (Bran).  Speaking metaphorically, the ice dragon has three heads.

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14 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Or the dragon with three heads is Bloodraven; White (Jon) , Black (Arya) Green (Bran).  Speaking metaphorically, the ice dragon has three heads.

No. I don't see it. I believe that  Jon Snow is the 3headed dragon and mythology and there is no 3 heads, it's one dragon and has most definitely nothing to do with Dany's trio.

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13 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I'll open it up for discussion on the Heresy thread later today and give my argument there if you care to join.

I am not joking but I really don't know how to discuss at Heresy. Maybe a simple thread here is better and more people will be able to read it since not everyone read the Heresy threads. 

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2 minutes ago, Jon's Queen Consort said:

I am not kidding but I really don't know how to discuss at Heresy. Maybe a simple thread here is better and more people will be able to read it since not everyone reads the Heresy threads. 

Oh OK. I have a commitment to discuss it in part II of my essay on the Wall as part of the Hinges of the World discussion.   So I have to stick with it.  But I take note on your comment about Heresy in general.

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4 hours ago, LynnS said:

It also suggests that Jon is older than Rob.  Although the question of Jon and Bran opening each other's 3rd eye is an acorn/oak time conundrum where past/present/future are the same.  At some point both Jon and Bran operate on the same time continuum regardless of Bran opening Jon's eye at the Skirling Pass first chronologically in real time.  Once that happens Jon is equally capable of opening Bran's 3rd eye at any time chronologically as well. 

Jon is also the lonewolf and hindsight being 20/20...foreshadowing

That makes sense, although I don't pretend to have a grip on the 'weirwood sapling dream' yet!  The interesting thing about a causal or closed time loop with predestination paradox is that, when one traces an event or action, one finds it has no source!

The sense of past, present and future running together is conveyed by the weirwood sapling bizarrely growing in fast-forward:

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

Just as these weirwoods 'die in reverse':

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

After that the glimpses came faster and faster, till Bran was feeling lost and dizzy. He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her. Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor. A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shrinking, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn. And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them.

I don't buy the explanation that is usually given that the former is simply a metaphor for Bran's growing maturity in terms of his advancement as a greenseer.  GRRM intends saying something about a time paradox -- that's why it's so maddening to attempt to wrap ones head around.  It occurs to me that Ghost -- like a weirwood -- facilitates a conduit into this 'timeless' dimension for Jon.

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19 hours ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

Weir = because he's white with red eyes like a weirwood tree

wolf = because he's a direwolf

 

Wirewolf

W : albinism-> weirwood tree

ire : big af-> dire wolf 

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This has less to do with Ghost and more about Direwolves themselves, but I've always wondered if they were some type of magical animal or are prone to have a connection with those (human or CoTF) that have magical abilities, meaning wargs, greenseers, etc., and that maybe something in their genetics was "put" there, so to speak, by the CoTF.

Another possibility in that realm of thought, would be that maybe those abilities are inherent in some, but not others, not to dissimilar how some First Men can be wargs or greenseers, while others cannot or how some Valyrians were able to be dragonlords, while others were not.

I know we haven't seen a lot of encounters, but in the few that we read of, Ghost seemed to be aware of wights well before any other humans were, like how crazy he was going when Jon's dead brothers were raised inside Caste Black in AGoT.

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39 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

That makes sense, although I don't pretend to have a grip on the 'weirwood sapling dream' yet!  The interesting thing about a causal or closed time loop with predestination paradox is that, when one traces an event or action, one finds it has no source!

It's the dragon swallowing it's own tail or this is the beginning/this is the ending stuff.

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Remember when Jon sent Ghost off to CB before he climbed the Wall? I used to wonder how Ghost got around the Wall. He didn’t. Ghost stayed north of the Wall and Jon found him when he went through CB’s gate.

A while back a poster asked the question how Ghost got around the Wall and another poster pointed out Jon walled through CB tunnel, then out the gate and Ghost was there.

From what the below quote says, once Jon & Ghost were separated by the Wall Jon could not sense Ghost. Strangely, the Wall didn’t keep Jon/Ghost and Bran/Summer from communicating with each other in CoK Jon VII and Bran VII even though they were separated by the Wall.

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A Storm of Swords - Jon XII    It was a long moment before he understood what was happening. When he did, he bolted to his feet. "Ghost?" He turned toward the wood, and there he came, padding silently out of the green dusk, the breath coming warm and white from his open jaws. "Ghost!" he shouted, and the direwolf broke into a run. He was leaner than he had been, but bigger as well, and the only sound he made was the soft crunch of dead leaves beneath his paws. When he reached Jon he leapt, and they wrestled amidst brown grass and long shadows as the stars came out above them. "Gods, wolf, where have you been?" Jon said when Ghost stopped worrying at his forearm. "I thought you'd died on me, like Robb and Ygritte and all the rest. I've had no sense of you, not since I climbed the Wall, not even in dreams." The direwolf had no answer, but he licked Jon's face with a tongue like a wet rasp, and his eyes caught the last light and shone like two great red suns.

Red eyes, Jon realized, but not like Melisandre's. He had a weirwood's eyes. Red eyes, red mouth, white fur. Blood and bone, like a heart tree. He belongs to the old gods, this one. And he alone of all the direwolves was white. Six pups they'd found in the late summer snows, him and Robb; five that were grey and black and brown, for the five Starks, and one white, as white as Snow.

 

It’s probably best to read the quote in context of the chapter. When Jon came out on the north side of the Wall, he sensed Ghost before he saw Ghost.

I think Ghost is the Apha of the pack and I'm going to agree with Jon that Ghost belongs to the old gods. Through Ghost during a Jon wolf dream, Ghost reveals the location of his siblings.


 
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A Dance with Dragons - Jon I   "Snow," the moon murmured. The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees.  Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat's long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sister's pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.

"Snow," the moon called down again, cackling. The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained … and one the white wolf could no longer sense.

 

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon I  "Snow," the moon insisted. The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf's pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer.

The Wall, back in SoS kept Jon from sensing Ghost, the Wall in DwD did not stop Ghost from sensing Summer. Curious it is. Especially since Jon & Ghost had left WF before Bran woke and named Summer. Ghost knows Grey Wind is dead, but doesn’t seem to know Lady is buried at WF. :unsure:

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