Questions of Weriwood's and purple moss

[The Mountain that Cries]

OK So i know i post drunkin nonsense ALL THE TIME, but i am finishing my reread of FEAST and i noticed something that i totally messed the first 2 times. What is the purple moss killing the Weriwood on the isle of ravens in Oldtown. Now time for pure speculation can you drink the moss and trip balls like the Shade of the evening. Which also makes me think can make tea with Weriwood leafs and see the past or future, and why has no one tried this yet. It just seems like somethin Marywn would do. 

 

[Roose on the Loose]

In George's earlier writing, biological warfare is a common theme, especially in the Tuf Voyaging stories.  If the Gray Sheep see wierwood magic as a threat, it makes sense that they would look for a botanical counter-measure.  

What chapter are we talking about?

[The Fattest Leech]

43 minutes ago, Roose on the Loose said:

In George's earlier writing, biological warfare is a common theme, especially in the Tuf Voyaging stories.  If the Gray Sheep see wierwood magic as a threat, it makes sense that they would look for a botanical counter-measure.  

What chapter are we talking about?

Darn right George uses bio warfare. He also does this in Men of Greywater Station, and to a degree A Song for Lya. 

[Damon_Tor]

4 hours ago, The Mountain that Cries said:

OK So i know i post drunkin nonsense ALL THE TIME, but i am finishing my reread of FEAST and i noticed something that i totally messed the first 2 times. What is the purple moss killing the Weriwood on the isle of ravens in Oldtown. Now time for pure speculation can you drink the moss and trip balls like the Shade of the evening. Which also makes me think can make tea with Weriwood leafs and see the past or future, and why has no one tried this yet. It just seems like somethin Marywn would do. 

 

A chapter # would be excellent. I don't remember this either.

1 hour ago, Roose on the Loose said:

In George's earlier writing, biological warfare is a common theme, especially in the Tuf Voyaging stories.  If the Gray Sheep see wierwood magic as a threat, it makes sense that they would look for a botanical counter-measure.  

What chapter are we talking about?

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Citadel is working on breeding a parasite to kill Weirwoods (I believe the entire history of Westeros can be largely explained by biological and psychic warfare between the Citadel and the Children) but they probably wouldn't use it on their own tree. Their White Ravens appear to be a part of an attempt to replicate the Children's gestalt, which would mean they probably need the tree: the ravens alone wouldn't be enough. The moss could be something they are using to subvert the weirwood, perhaps?

Though the Citadel does have factions. The "Destroy all Magic" faction might have decided the "Use Magic for Ourselves" faction has gone to far with the White Raven project and employed their parasite to kill it.

[The Mountain that Cries]

5 hours ago, Roose on the Loose said:

In George's earlier writing, biological warfare is a common theme, especially in the Tuf Voyaging stories.  If the Gray Sheep see wierwood magic as a threat, it makes sense that they would look for a botanical counter-measure.  

What chapter are we talking about?

Sorry the liqueur is me but i think it Sams last chapter in feast he is walking across the bridge and notice's the moss growing over the face. Then he mentions the tree is dying. Heres a thinker for ya what is this moss is the start of weriwoods' converting to Ironwood. This is just wild speculation but we have no clue on ether of these's trees life cycles and extra sensory properties.

[kissdbyfire]

It's here:

AFfC, Samwell V

“It was cool and dim inside the castle walls. An ancient weirwood filled the yard, as it had since these stones had first been raised. The carved face on its trunk was grown over by the same purple moss that hung heavy from the tree’s pale limbs. Half of the branches seemed dead, but elsewhere a few red leaves still rustled, and it was there the ravens liked to perch. The tree was full of them, and there were more in the arched windows overhead, all around the yard.”

[The Mountain that Cries]

So does anyone wanna speculate what drink the moss would do or drinkin Weriwood tea. I know we have Weriwood paste that bran eats/drinks whatever but i think that is not the same as just drink teas from leave. What if drinking a tea made of that moss was like drinking Ayahuasca. This may be the same effect off shade of the evening but with time vision. I assumed there was one Marywn among us.

[hiemal]

On 5/27/2017 at 0:07 PM, The Mountain that Cries said:

OK So i know i post drunkin nonsense ALL THE TIME, but i am finishing my reread of FEAST and i noticed something that i totally messed the first 2 times. What is the purple moss killing the Weriwood on the isle of ravens in Oldtown. Now time for pure speculation can you drink the moss and trip balls like the Shade of the evening. Which also makes me think can make tea with Weriwood leafs and see the past or future, and why has no one tried this yet. It just seems like somethin Marywn would do. 

 

 Tyrion encounters this purple moss wild in Ny Sar:

"The island fell away behind them. Tyrion saw ruins rising along the eastern bank: crooked walls and fallen towers, broken domes and rows of rotted wooden pillars, streets choked by mud and overgrown with purple moss. Another dead city, ten times as large as Ghoyan Drohe.

...ADwD

Further down the river, in Choryane:

The grey moss grew thickly here, covering the fallen stones in great mounds and bearding all the towers. Black vines crept in and out of windows, through doors and over archways, up the sides of high stone walls. . .

The Bridge of Dream, Griff called it, but this dream was smashed and broken. Pale stone arches marched off into the fog, reaching from the Palace of Sorrow to the river's western bank. Half of them had collapsed, pulled down by the weight of the grey moss that draped them and the thick black vines that snaked upward from the water. . .

They drifted inexorably toward the bridge. Yandry stabbed out with his pole to keep them from smashing into a pier. The thrust shoved them sideways, through a curtain of pale grey moss. Tyrion felt tendrils brush against his face, soft as a whore's fingers. "

. . .ADwD

 

If the moss is native to the Rhoyne, it could be a key ingredient to either whatever the maesters may have used used to poison dragons and/or Targaryens -or- a cure for grayscale.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

Interesting observation. I think the purple moss may just be moss with nothing special about it, but maybe not. We definitely shouldn't ignore it since it comes up more than once. Mayhaps the maesters were trying to experiment with creating an organism to kill weirwoods? Though it obviously didn't work 100% if so. Maybe the moss just sucks COTF souls out of the tree somehow . The grey moss, however, definitely seems to be connected to greyscale.

And like @The Fattest Leech said, GRRM loves bio-warfare. The entire setting of the Thousand Worlds Universe is based around the fact that Earth's "Ecological Engineering Core" was capable of creating people, creatures, and diseases so well that they were able to fend off 2 separate powerful alien races at the same time in The Double War. And the entire Tuf Voyaging series is based around this guy Tuf finding an old EEC ship. Because technology has regressed at that point, the technology on Tuf's ship basically makes him a god, because it is so far beyond the capabilities of other people.

Greyscale definitely sounds like a genetically engineered disease. One thought I have had in the past is that mayhaps greyscale was created by forces allied to the Others in an attempt to create fire-proof wights. I bet the calcified flesh of the stone men isn't nearly as flammable as the dry, regular flesh of the wights north of the Wall. Mayhaps the grey moss is a mutated form of the purple moss and somehow gives people greyscale.

And just to go full sci-fi for a moment, I am going to bet that, if the grey moss does in fact give people greyscale, there must be some kind of virus or bacteria in the moss making it grey and causing the disease, because moss is otherwise just a plant, and magic isn't real, so there should be some sort of scientific-ish explanation . Really it should be a bacteria because I don't think a virus could possibly survive in a plant, though obviously GRRM could do this if he wants to. And this whole idea is obviously corroborated by the purported fact that children who have survived greyscale are immune to all its forms in the future. This could only happen if the immune system has successfully fought off some attacker and created appropriate antibodies.