Pounding the Planet: Meteoric Thaumogenesis as Fertilization

[hiemal]

Is thaumogenesis a real word? It is now. Time for some spitballing. (Poor choice of words, perhaps?)

We've been given a few clues about meteors, moons, and dragons in the Qartheen legend and elsewhere that may describe the origins of magic and what strikes me most is how... sexual the imagery of a meteor strike can be when a comet, for example, is viewed as a symbolic sperm and the target world an unfertilized egg. Perhaps magic was literally "born" on Westeros from a kind of magical Panspermia?

I've got a lot of different over-arching "Grand Theories of Magic" cooking for Westeros and I think this idea of magic as the result of an interplanetary fertilization works for several of them.

1. The most obvious is the literal "second moon" theory and of course the sexual imagery is hard to ignore, particularly when considered together with many mothers dying in childbirth so central to the them of ASoIaF- my three picks for heads-of-the-dragons Tyrion, Dany, and Jon and, I believe, the original Lightbringer/Nissa Nissa myth.

2. A Nemesis-style exotic, now-captured exo-planet that lurks in the Oort cloud, periodically sending out comets after buzzing Planetos and playing the part of a second moon. In which case we have a father as well as his seed.

2.5 A. A rogue exo-planet destroys a literal second moon leaving a small amount of debris to fall to the planet before heading to the Oort cloud...

2.5 B. A rogue exo-planet steals the literal second moon and sends it into the Oort cloud where it peridically nudges comets plantetwards before leaving the system entirely. Both could be foreshadowed by Rhaegar/Lyanna and Bael and the Stark Daughter and the many mentions of wife-stealing?

3. The second moon as a colony ship or something that passes as a colony ship carrying the Deep Ones or CotF precursors. Either one could work as symbolic sperm. I'm not sure if humans are native to Planetos, but if they did come from elsewhere and if their  generation ship was the second "moon"  it would be the egg and not the sperm, obviously.

4. The Weirwoods literally seed the planet without bothering with ships, thick-hulled seeds burning away like stony meteors to deliver their payload and change the world forever. The CotF are a proxy species created from local stock.

4a. The weirwoods are the result of seeding by White Stone- which brings "magic" to the world and alters lifeforms to suit itself- creating weirwoods and their attendants as well as fossilizing into White Stone.

4b. The weirwoods and shade of the evening arrive as seeds. Shade of the evening either fossilizes into Oily Black Stone or creates it through some other process.

4c. The weirwoods and shade of the evening arrive as stones.

4d. One arrives a seed and one as a stone.

5. (For completeness) Time is Out of Joint. None of the species on Westeros are alien but are drawn different time periods- the Deep Ones from the primal past and the weirwoods/cotf from the far future.

5a. The weirwoods are trying to colonize the past.

5b. The Deep Ones are trying to subvert the future.

5c. The Geodawnians "broke" time by tinkering with things best left untinked.

6. The Others are an exotic, low-temperature alien life form that uses liquid oxygen in place of blood. Frozen sperm from outer space.

6a. The Others invaded and took human form by taking humans and absorbing them.

6b. Human form was imposed of them by magic intereference during the Lightbringer incident or the Breaking of Seasons. Before this were just hanging out in the cold parts of the world.

Several others are less promising (and even more tinfoily) like the Collision-of-Parallel-Worlds theory and The Grand Experiment theory. I'm only briefly mentioning them for completeness.

Regardless, I think magic is certainly a foreign element and the meteor fall (or whatever eveny brought it) can be usefully viewed as a fertilization.

Thoughts? Am I on the track or dry-humping the Mail Man's leg? I'd love to hear some other ideas on the origins of magic! Because there is so little to go on many seem unwilling to venture into such speculative territory but don your tinfoil hats with pride and give me some crazy!

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

Do you listen to the podcast Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire? 

Read the essays at lucifermeanslightbringer.com

Also LmL (Lucifermeanslightbringer), author and podcaster, posts here frequently. 

He's addressing all of this stuff. With textual references. In great detail.

[PrettyPig]

4 hours ago, hiemal said:

2. A Nemesis-style exotic, now-captured exo-planet that lurks in the Oort cloud, periodically sending out comets after buzzing Planetos and playing the part of a second moon. In which case we have a father as well as his seed.

2.5 A rogue exo-planet destroys a literal second moon before being thrown into the Oort cloud...

3. The second moon as a colony ship or something that passes as a colony ship carrying the Deep Ones or CotF precursors. Either one could work as symbolic sperm. I'm not sure if humans are native to Planetos, but if they did come from elsewhere and if their  generation ship was the second "moon"  it would be the egg and not the sperm, obviously.

I am loving this for so, so many reasons and think this is absolutely something GRRM would do.  I *just* mentioned in another thread that it is totally plausible that George will work extraterrestrial influence - literally, alien-based - into his Planetos origin theory.   Sounds insane, but there's historical precedent for this that goes back a long way.

Count me on board the space sperm train. 

 

[Unchained]

The nemesis idea is interesting.  There are a ton of hints about a hidden trickster involved in the celestial events.  Moon = NN, Sun = AA/King, Comet = King's Justice, King's weapon, King's soul, but where is the trickster who set everything up?  It has been speculated that he may be the void of space.  The theory of a Nemesis brown dwarf stars came out in 1984, and if GRRM is interested in poorly supported but exciting space theories he could be thinking of it.  We are definitely supposed to think of the space stuff as sperm, and it is likely there is one or more lines of symbolism involved with it. 

[hiemal]

Running with the idea of space sperm:

For some reason this is clicking an association between Dawn and some vaguely recalled Scottish (I think) bit of folklore about jellyfish scum that would wash ashore and which they called star stuff or something...

And this seems to tie in with idea of the Lapis Exillis and the Grail that seems to have no other tangible Westerosi equivalent but the womb counterbalance all this talk of swords.

10 minutes ago, Unchained said:

The nemesis idea is interesting.  There are a ton of hints about a hidden trickster involved in the celestial events.  Moon = NN, Sun = AA/King, Comet = King's Justice, King's weapon, King's soul, but where is the trickster who set everything up?  It has been speculated that he may be the void of space.  The theory of a Nemesis brown dwarf stars came out in 1984, and if GRRM is interested in poorly supported but exciting space theories he could be thinking of it.  We are definitely supposed to think of the space stuff as sperm, and it is likely there is one or more lines of symbolism involved with it. 

The description of the Stranger as a wanderer from far places is one of the things that led me down the nemesis rabbit hole.

I think the Stranger could be a trickster in the mold of Hermes, and thus very involved in magic since I think the whole cosmic show is probably a satanic inversion of the Hermetic Principle; i.e. instead of the heavens revealing through Natural Law (or some approximation thereof) the course of human affairs it is human players who are influencing the heavens.

[hiemal]

4 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

Do you listen to the podcast Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire? 

Read the essays at lucifermeanslightbringer.com

Also LmL (Lucifermeanslightbringer), author and podcaster, posts here frequently. 

He's addressing all of this stuff. With textual references. In great detail.

No, but I am familiar with his work

We agree on a great many things- at least for many of my tinfoils. I have a lot of cards in my deck.

[hiemal]

I g

6 minutes ago, hiemal said:

 

For some reason this is clicking an association between Dawn and some vaguely recalled Scottish (I think) bit of folklore about jellyfish scum that would wash ashore and which they called star stuff or something...

And this seems to tie in with idea of the Lapis Exillis and the Grail that seems to have no other tangible Westerosi equivalent but the womb counterbalance all this talk of swords.

 

So yeah here comes some high speed spitball- Dawn as the Philosopher's Stone/grail instead of excalibur, Florian the Fool in the Battle for the Dawn as the Fisher King becoming the Black Gate?

[Unchained]

49 minutes ago, hiemal said:

I g

So yeah here comes some high speed spitball- Dawn as the Philosopher's Stone/grail instead of excalibur, Florian the Fool in the Battle for the Dawn as the Fisher King becoming the Black Gate?

I am going to be honest I am pretty lost concerning half of what you just said.  Dawn is wrapped up in the semen = comet stuff for sure.  I think Tyrion's escape from King's landing in a box on the sea is a reference to Perseus.  When Cersei goes to Tywin's room and finds him and Shaw dead, it is applying the dead parents of AAR idea you mentioned and there is a mention of the first morning light "slashing" or "cutting" ( I am on my phone right now) in through the window.  That Dawn light is the Dawn sword being the golden shower Zeus impregnated Perseus' mother with.  I think GRRM may be combining this myth with Semele the mother of fertility god Dionysus who was killed after seeing Zeus in his true godly form.  The ramifications would simply be that AAR is some sort of fertility associated dragon or monster slayer as best I can gather right now.  Which is of course is nothing new.  And Dawn = semantic sword among other things.  According to LmL and backed up by some examples I can list later (2 really) the comet is white before it is red and appears white in some book metaphors.  I think the comet is the stranger.  It is white however usually.  The best example I have found of the trickster is what Varys says to Tyrion.  Who really killed Ned (moon)?  Was it Joffrey (sun)? Payne (comet/king's sword).  Or another (trickster/Littlefinger)? Mr. Payne is the stranger and here he appears to be the comet.  Not definitive of course.  Stranger/wonderer could be the trickster.  Plenty of myths about gods wondering who appear as various mortals to trick people.  Odin is all over ASoIaF and he was fond of this game.  

 

Edit:  I would like to hear what you think about Hermes in the story.  The tortoise that carries messages Xaro tells Dany about is a reference to him.  He is a trickster who helps mankind at times like Prometheus (a known thief of the fire of the gods).  George could be combining him with the trickster messenger Ratastokr who carries messages between the eagle and dragon at Yggdrasil.  Littlefinger is a trickster and a messenger.  

[hiemal]

13 minutes ago, Unchained said:

I am going to be honest I am pretty lost concerning half of what you just said.  Dawn is wrapped up in the semen = comet stuff for sure.

Not surprised, I kind of hared off on a tangent. Basically I'm seeing Florian the Fool as a Parsival analog, and a companion to the Last Hero. I am speculating that leading up to the Battle for the Dawn (excalibur/grail) he became a Fisher King, sacrificing himself and becoming the Black Gate at the Night Fort.

15 minutes ago, Unchained said:

 I think Tyrion's escape from King's landing in a box on the sea is a reference to Perseus.  When Cersei goes to Tywin's room and finds him and Shaw dead, it is applying the dead parents of AAR idea you mentioned and there is a mention of the first morning light "slashing" or "cutting" ( I am on my phone right now) in through the window.  That Dawn light is the Dawn sword being the golden shower Zeus impregnated Perseus' mother with.  I think GRRM may be combining this myth with Semele the mother of fertility god Dionysus who was killed after seeing Zeus in his true godly form.  The ramifications would simply be that AAR is some sort of fertility associated dragon or monster slayer as best I can gather right now. 

That's where the line between AAR and the LH starts getting blurred in my eyes, and the line between monster and monster slayer. I agree, though and would like to throw in a more primal example of Marduk slaying Tiamat as well as the Norse giant Ymir, whose blue eye Nan may be referring to in one her tales, I think.

 

[ravenous reader]

Hey, the irrepressible @hiemal:  I previously said the following on one of @LmL's threads, though he cautioned me I'd gone too far, LOL:
 

Quote

On 12/12/2016 at 2:02 PM, LmL said:

The sea dragon stuff is really crucial - specifically my discovery that the sea dragon represents both weirwoods and moon meteors. In terms of the world tree, the meteors coming from the celestial branches is represented by the ravens descending in black clouds from the weirwood. So really, the way to access the stars should be through use of the weirwood - that's why starry wisdom and weirwood wisdom might actually be related. 

@ravenous reader:  That's really lovely.  I'm glad I could help with your discovery (even though, you must admit, you did a lot of moaning about my voluminous outpourings forcing you 'under the sea/see' at the time ...).

I go even further.  I think the weirwoods were seeded by the stars (or moon meteor in this case) for which they now reach -- just like us.  A dragon grown from a dragon, in the reflected image of the inverted world tree which reaches down from space (it's like the image of God reaching out for Adam painted by Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel The Creation of Adam).

'We are star stuff'-- Carl Sagan.

 

[Unchained]

3 minutes ago, hiemal said:

Not surprised, I kind of hared off on a tangent. Basically I'm seeing Florian the Fool as a Parsival analog, and a companion to the Last Hero. I am speculating that leading up to the Battle for the Dawn (excalibur/grail) he became a Fisher King, sacrificing himself and becoming the Black Gate at the Night Fort.

That's where the line between AAR and the LH starts getting blurred in my eyes, and the line between monster and monster slayer. I agree, though and would like to throw in a more primal example of Marduk slaying Tiamat as well as the Norse giant Ymir, whose blue eye Nan may be referring to in one her tales, I think.

 

I edited my last post perhaps too late for you to see.  You seem to have some Hermes related ideas, and I see references to him specifically.  In addition to what I mentioned last post he helps Odysseus against Circe.  I mean come on.  I have just never seen Hermes mentioned in relation to the books even though he is being used and I wondered if you had an idea of what he was up to.  

 

Ymir is tied up in he idea of the "First Man" (obvious ASoIaF reference) or any of the many giants who are killed so their body can make the world.  The blue eye that makes the sky is a reference to such a myth I agree.  I think the George is using a theme where you kill the monster then become it.  I remember Tiamat but I will have to read about him again before I can comment on him.  I confess I really only learned some mythology to aid my unhealthy obsession with these damn books and I need reminders on most of it.  

[hiemal]

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Hey, the irrepressible @hiemal:  I previously said the following on one of @LmL's threads, though he cautioned me I'd gone too far, LOL:
 

 

Not by a long shot:) I just logged on because I realized that I'd forgotten #4- the weirwood/CotF as the invaders and their hypothetical "seed"ships! A tidy solution since they would double as meteors.

I think the weirwoods were seeded by the stars (or moon meteor in this case) for which they now reach -- just like us.  A dragon grown from a dragon, in the reflected image of the inverted world tree which reaches down from space (it's like the image of God reaching out for Adam painted by Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel The Creation of Adam).

Very nice! Inverted world tree, Nidhogg as creator, Mother Tiamat!? Exciting!

[hiemal]

 

1 hour ago, Unchained said:

 

 The tortoise that carries messages Xaro tells Dany about is a reference to him.  He is a trickster who helps mankind at times like Prometheus (a known thief of the fire of the gods).  George could be combining him with the trickster messenger Ratastokr who carries messages between the eagle and dragon at Yggdrasil.  Littlefinger is a trickster and a messenger.  

Good catch, and iirc there is also something about a tortoise and a lute and young Dionysus on Mt. Nysa (shades of Nissa Nissa?)?

Littlefinger is a good candidate, or Varys who is already an androgyne.

[hiemal]

Edit to add to OP:

2.5 B. A rogue exo-planet steals the literal second moon and either destroys it leaving a small amount of debris to fall to the planet before heading to the Oort cloud OR sends it into the Oort cloud before leaving the system entirely. Both could be foreshadowed by Rhaegar/Lyanna and Bael and the Stark Daughter and the many mentions of wife-stealing?

And some thoughts on the Sword of the Morning:

In ASoS I think it is Jon who mentions the bright star in the hilt of the constellation the Sword of the Morning- Dawn- which seems a strange name for a constellation to me and thus worthy of scrutiny. Could this star be the magic-daddy? How does this star stand in relation to the only other star I can think of being singled out, the more sinister Ice Dragon's Rider's eye?

And perhaps most important Is the whole concept of the "Sword of the Morning" partly a running gag about early, inconvenient, and unprompted erections? 

 

[LmL]

Mushrooms. Mushrooms spring up after a good rain, mushroom clouds spring up after a meteor rain. Mushrooms connect underground via their root systems, like weirwoods. Weirwoods produce a psychedilc substance. Bloodraven has a mushroom on his cheek.

Obviously this relates to my notion of the rising ash cloud doubling as an implication of an ash tree growing from the impact spot. Smoke and plant growth, a magical smoking burning tree growing from star seed. I still am hesitant to say the weirs grew only after the meteors hit - I think they were only given faces and used as prisons for greenseers after the meteors, or more broadly speaking it may be that the entire land of Westeros was stricken by the toxic meteor presence, and this caused a reaction in the wwnet. The myth has the thunderbolt striking an already existent tree and setting it ablaze, so the closest interpretation along these lines would be the meteors altering the wwnet. The star sees implication still works, just a bit more symbolically (the emphasis might be on AA being the meteor to strike the tree when he entered the net. 

 

[hiemal]

6 hours ago, LmL said:

Mushrooms. Mushrooms spring up after a good rain, mushroom clouds spring up after a meteor rain. Mushrooms connect underground via their root systems, like weirwoods. Weirwoods produce a psychedilc substance. Bloodraven has a mushroom on his cheek.

=

And mushrooms are not directly dependent on sunlight and many are saprobic and feed on death. Their visible fruiting bodies are often phallic, sometimes graphically so. And spores, being haploid and producing a hapolid organism (I think?), could be an even more economical means of cosmic distribution than seeds. Do you happen to recall if the rites of Mithras and Cybele involved psychedelic mushrooms?

What a "fruit"ful line of thought! Glad you stopped by

6 hours ago, LmL said:

 

Obviously this relates to my notion of the rising ash cloud doubling as an implication of an ash tree growing from the impact spot. Smoke and plant growth, a magical smoking burning tree growing from star seed. I still am hesitant to say the weirs grew only after the meteors hit - I think they were only given faces and used as prisons for greenseers after the meteors, or more broadly speaking it may be that the entire land of Westeros was stricken by the toxic meteor presence, and this caused a reaction in the wwnet. The myth has the thunderbolt striking an already existent tree and setting it ablaze, so the closest interpretation along these lines would be the meteors altering the wwnet. The star sees implication still works, just a bit more symbolically (the emphasis might be on AA being the meteor to strike the tree when he entered the net. 

 

Interesting and a chronology and point of fertilization I hadn't considered.

I'm trying to work through all of the various permutations of native/alien from all of them being native to Planetos toall of them being invaders and everything I can think of in between like some kind of tinfoil difference engine.

. Any further thoughts on these spores?

[LmL]

25 minutes ago, hiemal said:

And mushrooms are not directly dependent on sunlight and many are saprobic and feed on death. Their visible fruiting bodies are often phallic, sometimes graphically so. And spores, being diploid iirc, could be an even more means of cosmic distribution than seeds. Do you happen to recall if the rites of Mithras and Cybele involved psychedelic mushrooms?

What a "fruit"ful line of thought! Glad you stopped by

Interesting and a chronology and point of fertilization I hadn't considered.

I'm trying to work through all of the various permutations of native/alien from all of them being native to Planetos toall of them being invaders and everything I can think of in between like some kind of tinfoil difference engine.

. Any further thoughts on these spores?

Well, the most important thing is how these ideas relate to the plot. By using a combination of ideas to create the weirwood symbolism, such as fishing weirs, gates, Yggdrasil / gallows tree, cosmic world tree, ash tree w/dryad Meliae, burning bush of Moses, lightning tree, tree-people hybrid creatures, and now mushrooms and fungus, he's painting a collective portrait of how we should see the weirwoods. Each line of symbolism tells us something about what role they play in the story. The mushroom idea and the related star-seed idea that I totally got all on my own without any help from @ravenous reader at all (heh heh heh) both seem to imply the meteors having an effect on the weirwoods, and this too is the message of the thunderbolt / Grey King myth I believe. To me it's really just a matter of pinpointing exactly how this went down, which is what I have been trying to do lately. 

As for aliens, the closest thing you will find is the meteors and the comet. That's why George has associated the Stranger with comets, seemingly, the wanderer from far places. The conflation with spores and rain sort reinforces this idea, if you like, because as you say spores can travel through space. The meteors and comets in the sort of stories Martin likes tend to have dark magic associated with them or even an alien spirit or presence, so it's possible Martin is thinking about something like this... but what I think he's doing is just doing his version of that idea. He's not going to have deities in the book, so we can't have an alien mind riding on the meteor like in a Lovecraft story, not literally. The key is that AA is the meteor analog.

Azor Ahai coming to Westeros - his people coming to westeros, really - is the wanderer from far places. He is the alien mind inside the wwnet (or maybe NN or both or something like that). That is what all this is about - by using symbolism of spores and stranger meteors and Lovecraft alien minds, he's draping those ideas on to AA and his dragon people. By associating the weirwoods with mushrooms, he's enhancing the idea of the weirwoods as a network of roots running through the whole continent. It also allows him to again suggest as correlation between the smoke cloud of ash and the magic tree. It also plays off the meteor rain / storm of swords symbolism. 

What I feel confident in is that AA coming to westeros and the meteor impacts on Westeros - parallel events, basically - were the impetus for face-carving weirwoods. Not sure if AA carved them, or children carved them so AA could go in or be trapped for some reason... but he symbolism I am following says "being set on fire" as per the Grey King thunderbolt myth means "having a face carved and a greenseer go inside the tree." I think the trees were already there, probably, but I am as sure of that. Mainly, I do not think anyone went into the trees before AA and possibly NN did, and I think something about the meteors enabled the face carving. Maybe it really is a lovecraft thing - the weirwoods can be used by greenseers perhaps only because an alien mind took up residence inside, one which rode the meteor down to earth. Or AA could simply be that alien mind that allows others to enter - basically, the wwnet is the mind of AA. 

[hiemal]

1 minute ago, LmL said:

Well, the most important thing is how these ideas relate to the plot. By using a combination of ideas to create the weirwood symbolism, such as fishing weirs, gates, Yggdrasil / gallows tree, cosmic world tree, ash tree w/dryad Meliae, burning bush of Moses, lightning tree, tree-people hybrid creatures, and now mushrooms and fungus, he's painting a collective portrait of how we should see the weirwoods. Each line of symbolism tells us something about what role they play in the story. The mushroom idea and the related star-seed idea that I totally got all on my own without any help from @ravenous reader at all (heh heh heh) both seem to imply the meteors having an effect on the weirwoods, and this too is the message of the thunderbolt / Grey King myth I believe. To me it's really just a matter of pinpointing exactly how this went down, which is what I have been trying to do lately. 

 

I have too- both your thread and Crowfood's Daughters have set those wheels turning with more urgency lately. I've been playing with the idea of the GK as a proto-AA, an agent of the Deep Ones, corrupted greenseer (an idea I totally... hehe), and to hare off in another random direction (and of course this bit of tinfoil is... unique to me) possibly causing the imbalance in seasons and creating the first dragons during the Nagga crisis.

11 minutes ago, LmL said:

 

As for aliens, the closest thing you will find is the meteors and the comet. That's why George has associated the Stranger with comets, seemingly, the wanderer from far places. The conflation with spores and rain sort reinforces this idea, if you like, because as you say spores can travel through space. The meteors and comets in the sort of stories Martin likes tend to have dark magic associated with them or even an alien spirit or presence, so it's possible Martin is thinking about something like this... but what I think he's doing is just doing his version of that idea. He's not going to have deities in the book, so we can't have an alien mind riding on the meteor like in a Lovecraft story, not literally. The key is that AA is the meteor analog.

 

I wouldn't be surprised, but truthfully I think that the Deep Ones are some kind of alien influence, but I don't think we are ever meant to see any more of them than we already have. I think they are meant to remain Lovecraftian boogeymen that retain their sinister menace primarily because they are never really clearly seen. They do make great tinfoil fodder so I run with them anyways as though they were gleeful scissors.

16 minutes ago, LmL said:

 

Azor Ahai coming to Westeros - his people coming to westeros, really - is the wanderer from far places. He is the alien mind inside the wwnet (or maybe NN or both or something like that). That is what all this is about - by using symbolism of spores and stranger meteors and Lovecraft alien minds, he's draping those ideas on to AA and his dragon people. By associating the weirwoods with mushrooms, he's enhancing the idea of the weirwoods as a network of roots running through the whole continent. It also allows him to again suggest as correlation between the smoke cloud of ash and the magic tree. It also plays off the meteor rain / storm of swords symbolism. 

What I feel confident in is that AA coming to westeros and the meteor impacts on Westeros - parallel events, basically - were the impetus for face-carving weirwoods. Not sure if AA carved them, or children carved them so AA could go in or be trapped for some reason... but he symbolism I am following says "being set on fire" as per the Grey King thunderbolt myth means "having a face carved and a greenseer go inside the tree." I think the trees were already there, probably, but I am as sure of that. Mainly, I do not think anyone went into the trees before AA and possibly NN did, and I think something about the meteors enabled the face carving. Maybe it really is a lovecraft thing - the weirwoods can be used by greenseers perhaps only because an alien mind took up residence inside, one which rode the meteor down to earth. Or AA could simply be that alien mind that allows others to enter - basically, the wwnet is the mind of AA. 

Hmmmm, I'm going to chew on this one for a while. The faces are a key feature  I suddenly feel I haven't given enough thought to.

[Durran Durrandon]

@hiemal for the sake of being complete we should provably the God-Emperor on earth,son of the Lion of Night and the Maiden Made of Light, descended from three heavens to found the Golden Empire of the Dawn, because it kind of has an alien vibe.

I'm increasingly becoming a fan of the trees being seeded as well.

[LmL]

1 minute ago, Durran Durrandon said:

@hiemal for the sake of being complete we should provably the God-Emperor on earth,son of the Lion of Night and the Maiden Made of Light, descended from three heavens to found the Golden Empire of the Dawn, because it kind of has an alien vibe.

I'm increasingly becoming a fan of the trees being seeded as well.

I like the idea too... but how does that work? There wasn't a meteorite under every tree. In this scenario, it has to be one nasty poison meteor sitting somewhere like in the heart of winter or on the Gods Eye, and it's infecting the whole continent and causing weirs to grow. Do you have any ideas about how this happens? Trees from meteors, in any sensible sense?