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Heresy 201 and onward we go...


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12 minutes ago, LynnS said:

the powers of ice and fire can't be allowed to raise the dead.  Bran has to make sure that the dead can't rise again

I agree.  Instead of 'holding the door' open, he has to 'close the door'!  (maybe it's a red door..?  ;))

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3 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

I agree.  Instead of 'holding the door' open, he has to 'close the door'!  (maybe it's a red door..?  ;))

More Christian symbolism of John, the one who comes before:

 

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In the Gospel of John

The fourth gospel describes the John the Baptist as "a man sent from God" who "was not the light", but "came as a witness, to bear witness to the light, so that through him everyone might believe".[50] John clearly denies being the Christ or Elijah or 'the prophet', instead describing himself as the "voice of one crying in the wilderness".[51]

Upon literary analysis, it is clear that John is the "testifier and confessor par excellence", particularly when compared to figures like Nicodemus.[52]

Jesus's baptism is implied but not depicted. Unlike the other gospels, it is John himself who testifies to seeing "the Spirit come down from heaven like a dove and rest on him". John explicitly announces that Jesus is the one "who baptizes with the Holy Spirit" and John even professes a "belief that he is the Son of God" and "the Lamb of God".

The Gospel of John reports that Jesus' disciples were baptizing and that a debate broke out between some of the disciples of John and another Jew about purification.[53]In this debate John argued that Jesus "must become greater," while he (John) "must become less"[54] (Latin Vulgate: illum oportet crescere me autem minui).

The Gospel of John then points out that Jesus' disciples were baptizing more people than John.[55]Later, the Gospel relates that Jesus regarded John as "a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light".[56]

 

...I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn....  

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On 7/19/2017 at 0:28 PM, Brad Stark said:

 

Does anyone know where Beric was revived?  Thoros gets credit, but hollow hill is a place of weirwoods, and Thoros was surprised Beric came back.  Perhaps Beric came back by some other power, and Thoros just happened to be there.

 

I don't see any mention of the location of the resurrection. Although Thoros claims that it is R'hllor who is responsible for bringing back Beric, Thoros does seem to be giving up a little of his own life force each time he performs the rite of the last kiss. He has become loose skinned and gray haired during this time. Not as gaunt as Stannis yet still physically fading somewhat. Thoros must know this ritual is taking its toll on his well being since he has this to say...

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“Then do not court it so. Lord Tywin leads from the rear. Lord Stannis as well. You would be wise to do the same. A seventh death might mean the end of both of us.”

 

Interesting phrase, 'seventh death,' considering the Faith of the Seven. Beric does die the Seventh time yet a Lady Sranger, I mean Stoneheart has appeared in his place.

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4 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

Now does he think this because after he brought Beric back, he was unable to replicate this feat with anyone else?  Which may explain why he isn't taking credit for Beric's resurrection. 

But of course we see Cat brought back as well, but apparently using the same flame that Thoros put into Beric.  Perhaps Cat may share whatever makes Beric special (some king bloodline perhaps?).  Or perhaps the kiss is a one time gift that can be transferred but cannot be replicated.

I wanted to backtrack a little to your previous thoughts on the theme of water between Beric and Catelyn and the Ironborn rituals. Although Beric was still alive when he was pulled from the water, I'd say he still drowned. 

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That first time, his lordship had a hole right through him and blood in his mouth.

Sounds like he got it through the lung so I'd say he drowned on his own blood and possibly river water too. Could the same be said for Catelyn? Dunno, but it seems possible.

 

As a side note. I'm curious as to what Thoros means by "filled my mouth with fire and breathed the flames inside him" What kind of fire? Is he alluding to a similar trick of flaming swords or something more? Anyone?

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Sorry this is a little off topic, but I just noticed something curious. The following is from Bran I in ACOK, all within about 3 pages:

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Bran preferred the hard stone of the window seat to the comforts of his featherbed and blankets. Abed, the walls pressed close and the ceiling hung heavy above him; abed, the room was his cell, and Winterfell his prison. Yet outside his window, the wide world still called.
He could not walk, nor climb nor hunt nor fight with a wooden sword as once he had, but he could still look. He liked to watch the windows begin to glow all over Winterfell as candles and hearth fires were lit behind the diamond-shaped panes of tower and hall, and he loved to listen to the direwolves sing to the stars.


Of late, he often dreamed of wolves. They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them... not quite, not truly, but almost... as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten. The Walders might be scared of them, but the Starks had wolf blood. Old Nan told him so. “Though it is stronger in some than in others,” she warned.

No surprise here - after waking, and around the time the comet appears, Bran starts having wolf dreams.

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Though Old Nan did not think so, and she’d lived longer than any of them. “Dragons,” she said, lifting her head and sniffing. She was near blind and could not see the comet, yet she claimed she
could smell it. “It be dragons, boy,” she insisted. Bran got no princes from Nan, no more than he ever had.
Hodor said only, “Hodor.” That was all he ever said.
And still the direwolves howled. The guards on the walls muttered curses, hounds in the kennels barked furiously, horses kicked at their stalls, the Walders shivered by their fire, and even Maester Luwin complained of sleepless nights. Only Bran did not mind. Ser Rodrik had confined the wolves to the godswood after Shaggydog bit Little Walder, but the stones of Winterfell played queer tricks with sound, and sometimes it sounded as if they were in the yard right below Bran’s window. Other times he would have sworn they were up on the curtain walls, loping round like sentries. He wished that he could see them.

Summer and Shaggydog are locked up in the godswood.

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If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song, he thought wistfully. In his wolf dreams, he could race up the sides of mountains, jagged icy mountains taller than any tower, and stand at the summit beneath the full moon with all the world below him, the way it used to be.

What's going on here? How is Bran climbing icy mountains in his wolf dreams when Summer is confined to the godswood? 

His description to Luwin moments later makes it sound like these are legitimate "wolf dreams" in which the sleeping warg shares the skin of a wolf: 

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When I sleep I turn into a wolf.” Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. “Do wolves dream?”
“All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do.”
“Do dead men dream?” Bran asked, thinking of his father. In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father’s likeness in granite.
“Some say yes, some no,” the maester answered. “The dead themselves are silent on the matter.”
“Do trees dream?”
“Trees? No...”
“They do,” Bran said with sudden certainty. “They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood.”

Just for comparison, in later wolf dreams, Bran finds himself appropriately enclosed within Winterfell's godswood. Here is the one from later that same day, within the same chapter:

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“This will give you dreamless sleep,” Maester Luwin said as he pulled the stopper from the jar. “Sweet, dreamless sleep.”
“It will?” Bran said, wanting to believe.
“Yes. Drink.”
Bran drank. The potion was thick and chalky, but there was honey in it so it went down easy.
“Come the morn, you’ll feel better.” Luwin gave Bran a smile and a pat as he took his leave.
Osha lingered behind. “Is it the wolf dreams again?”
Bran nodded.
“You should not fight so hard, boy. I see you talking to the heart tree. Might be the gods are trying to talk back.”
“The gods?” he murmured, drowsy already. Osha’s face grew blurry and grey. Sweet, dreamless sleep, Bran thought.
Yet when the darkness closed over him, he found himself in the godswood, moving silently beneath green-grey sentinels and gnarled oaks as old as time. I am walking, he thought, exulting. Part of him knew that it was only a dream, but even the dream of walking was better than the truth of his bedchamber, walls and ceiling and door.
It was dark amongst the trees, but the comet lit his way, and his feet were sure. He was moving on four good legs, strong and swift, and he could feel the ground underfoot, the soft crackling of fallen leaves, thick roots and hard stones, the deep layers of humus. It was a good feeling.
The smells filled his head, alive and intoxicating; the green muddy stink of the hot pools, the perfume of rich rotting earth beneath his paws, the squirrels in the oaks. The scent of squirrel made him remember the taste of hot blood and the way the bones would crack between his teeth. Slaver filled his mouth. He had eaten no more than half a day past, but there was no joy in dead meat, even deer. He could hear the squirrels chittering and rustling above him, safe among their leaves, but they knew better than to come down to where his brother and he were prowling.
He could smell his brother too, a familiar scent, strong and earthy, his scent as black as his coat. His brother was loping around the walls, full of fury. Round and round he went, night after day after night, tireless, searching... for prey, for a way out, for his mother, his littermates, his pack... searching, searching, and never finding.
Behind the trees the walls rose, piles of dead man-rock that loomed all about this speck of living wood. Speckled grey they rose, and moss-spotted, yet thick and strong and higher than any wolf could hope to leap. Cold iron and splintery wood closed off the only holes through the piled stones that hemmed them in. His brother would stop at every hole and bare his fangs in rage, but the ways stayed closed.
He had done the same the first night, and learned that it was no good. Snarls would open no paths here. Circling the walls would not push them back. Lifting a leg and marking the trees would keep no men away. The world had tightened around them, but beyond the walled wood still stood the great grey caves of man-rock. Winterfell, he remembered, the sound coming to him suddenly. 

 

Doesn't this sound completely different from the earlier wolf dreams? In fact, even if Summer were not locked up in the godswood, he never would have had the opportunity to climb tall icy mountains in the area around Winterfell. So were Bran's earlier dreams somehow of Summer in the future (he hasn't even met the Reeds at this point in the story), or is he warging another wolf? 

 

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57 minutes ago, aDanceWithFlagons said:

As a side note. I'm curious as to what Thoros means by "filled my mouth with fire and breathed the flames inside him" What kind of fire? Is he alluding to a similar trick of flaming swords or something more? Anyone?

Oh my!  That's a good question since Beric says he wakes with the taste of ash in his mouth.  For some reason I'm reminded of the weirwood at Whitetree with it's mouth filled with burnt offerings.  And dragons.

It's also odd that Beric cuts his hand and sets his sword on fire with his blood and yet when Sandor makes the killing thrust; we don't see any flames shooting out of the cut.  So just the firey hand then.

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On 7/19/2017 at 4:28 PM, Matthew. said:

There's a heavy element of suspending disbelief and head canon here, but that's not the way I've imagined it--it's my take that the snow bear is "chained" to Varamyr's will, and that all of his animals collectively sense his intent ("attack the Night's Watch!") and behave accordingly, while Varamyr might occasionally choose a particular animal to share minds with (eg, the eagle if he needs information); this is essentially how I imagine the wight horde is managed

I like this and  :agree:

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29 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Oh my!  That's a good question since Beric says he wakes with the taste of ash in his mouth.  For some reason I'm reminded of the weirwood at Whitetree with it's mouth filled with burnt offerings.  And dragons.

It's also odd that Beric cuts his hand and sets his sword on fire with his blood and yet when Sandor makes the killing thrust; we don't see any flames shooting out of the cut.  So just the firey hand then.

Nice catch with the weirwood mouth parallel. You made me see I may have answered my own question earlier: that Thoros sacrifices a little of his own life by breathing fire into Beric's lungs.

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It was not me who raised him, my lady. It was the Lord. R’hllor is not done with him yet. Life is warmth, and warmth is fire, and fire is God’s and God’s alone.”

 

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2 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

Sorry this is a little off topic, but I just noticed something curious. The following is from Bran I in ACOK, all within about 3 pages:

No surprise here - after waking, and around the time the comet appears, Bran starts having wolf dreams.

Summer and Shaggydog are locked up in the godswood.

What's going on here? How is Bran climbing icy mountains in his wolf dreams when Summer is confined to the godswood? 

His description to Luwin moments later makes it sound like these are legitimate "wolf dreams" in which the sleeping warg shares the skin of a wolf: 

Just for comparison, in later wolf dreams, Bran finds himself appropriately enclosed within Winterfell's godswood. Here is the one from later that same day, within the same chapter:

Doesn't this sound completely different from the earlier wolf dreams? In fact, even if Summer were not locked up in the godswood, he never would have had the opportunity to climb tall icy mountains in the area around Winterfell. So were Bran's earlier dreams somehow of Summer in the future (he hasn't even met the Reeds at this point in the story), or is he warging another wolf? 

 

That is a strange wolf dream. It could be a true dream from Summer bleeding through or it might be a dream from Ghost bleeding through from the Frostfangs. Conversely while in the icy mountains, Jon/Ghost experiences a dream about a forest.

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There were five of them when there should have been six, and they were scattered, each apart from the others. He felt a deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. The forest was vast and cold, and they were so small, so lost. His brothers were out there somewhere, and his sister, but he had lost their scent. He sat on his haunches and lifted his head to the darkening sky, and his cry echoed through the forest, a long lonely mournful sound

Strange indeed. Could be a crossed signal or a time warp or something greater.

 

If you want to put on a foil hat ( :P ) and ponder the connection between direwolves and the 'Others' from the prologue, it might be that the jagged icy mountains Bran is racing up are in Other territory. Those others share similarities to a pack of wolves, imo.  There is the leader of the pack (Ser Cackles) and only when the leader gives consent do the rest move in for their share of the kill (Waymar).

To re-quote from your post above about Bran

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They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them... not quite, not truly, but almost... as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten

Then a similar yet different experience of Will while watching the sword fight in the forest... 

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Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal screaming in pain. [...]  

The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking. [...]  Will closed his eyes. Far beneath him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles.

Will doesn't quite understand yet he knows the words are mocking and understands the laughter.

:dunno:

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3 hours ago, LynnS said:

Oh my!  That's a good question since Beric says he wakes with the taste of ash in his mouth.  For some reason I'm reminded of the weirwood at Whitetree with it's mouth filled with burnt offerings.  And dragons.

Interesting! He's not the only one:

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The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the door.
“... the dragon... “
And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.
After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars.
She woke to the taste of ashes.

“No,” she moaned, “no, please.”
“Khaleesi?” Jhiqui hovered over her, a frightened doe.
The tent was drenched in shadow, still and close. Flakes of ash drifted upward from a brazier, and Dany followed them with her eyes through the smoke hole above. Flying, she thought. I had wings, I was flying. But it was only a dream. “Help me,” she whispered, struggling to rise. “Bring me...” Her voice was raw as a wound, and she could not think what she wanted. Why did she hurt so much? It was as if her body had been torn to pieces and remade from the scraps. “I want...”

Coincidence? Or did Dany have more than just a near miss with death? The memory loss fits as well...

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1 hour ago, MaesterSam said:

Interesting! He's not the only one:

Coincidence? Or did Dany have more than just a near miss with death? The memory loss fits as well...

Taste of ashes in the mouth fits the firey resurrection theme in my books  :commie:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys IX

"… don't want to wake the dragon …"

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo's copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as they touched her skin.

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A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys IX

Dany hit him. "No," she screamed, swinging the lash with all the strength that she had in her. The dragon jerked his head back. "No," she screamed again. "NO!" The barbs raked along his snout. Drogon rose, his wings covering her in shadow. Dany swung the lash at his scaled belly, back and forth until her arm began to ache. His long serpentine neck bent like an archer's bow. With a hisssssss, he spat black fire down at her. Dany darted underneath the flames, swinging the whip and shouting, "No, no, no. Get DOWN!" His answering roar was full of fear and fury, full of pain. His wings beat once, twice …

… and folded. The dragon gave one last hiss and stretched out flat upon his belly. Black blood was flowing from the wound where the spear had pierced him, smoking where it dripped onto the scorched sands. He is fire made flesh, she thought, and so am I.

Dany's 'wake the dragon' dream is very similar to Bran's coma dream although Bran is flirting with the line; he doesn't quite cross over. He is given the choice to fly or die.    Dany's dream takes place during MMD's ritual when she wakes old powers, one of whom is the man limned in flame.  In her dream she sees him as the black dragon who sings to her.  This isn't Drogon but another dragon.  More specifically, a dragon-god... R'hllor, who chooses her to be the mother of dragons and gives her immunity to the flames for that purpose.  

Dragons become gods when they contain the consciousness of a man or woman.  R'hllor was once a man who became a dragon:  R'hllor, R'haegar, R'haella, R'haenys etc. (Hat tip to Frey Family Reunion for that bit of nomenclature).  The error creeps in with the translation.  LOL.  The madness of Targaryens drinking fire and transforming into a dragon; probably has something to do with dreams of their dragon-gods.  Becoming a dragon is a skin-changer trick  and so is a second life as a dragon.  That is the riddle of the valyrian sphinx - a dragon with the head of a man or woman. 

R'hllor might be another version of Azor Ahai and the be reborn AA, you have to give up your body and become the dragon. 

 

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14 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I'm glad you quoted that passage.  It does raise a question of whether or not Thoros tried to bring anyone back other than Beric.  Unless he is claiming false modesty, the one or two times that he had previously given the "last kiss" would imply that Beric may have been the only one he tried to bring back.  But the passage also seems to indicate that Thoros thinks that there is something special about Beric which allowed for his resurrection. 

Now does he think this because after he brought Beric back, he was unable to replicate this feat with anyone else?  Which may explain why he isn't taking credit for Beric's resurrection. 

But of course we see Cat brought back as well, but apparently using the same flame that Thoros put into Beric.  Perhaps Cat may share whatever makes Beric special (some king bloodline perhaps?).  Or perhaps the kiss is a one time gift that can be transferred but cannot be replicated.

The underlined portion refers.

 

My reading of the purpose of the "Last Kiss" is a blessing to send the soul/dead dude to the afterlife.

 

I don't see anything other than Thoros being surprised at the result. So for what its worth, I am with Wolfmaid on this aspect.

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16 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I assume the sacrifice is the spouse, Nissa Nissa.  As we discussed earlier, Nyssa means "beginning" in Greek, and "end" in Latin.  So if Nissa is inspired by Nyssa, the spouse is the beginning and the end.

Now compare that to Revelations 1:8
 

So perhaps the savior/sacrifice, our "Corn King" is not Azor but the spouse Nissa Nissa. 

Nissa is also a girl's name of Hebrew origin and means "to test". There is a variation, or maybe it is the origin, of Nissa. "Nissan" which in the Hebrew is the name of the first month of their calendar. The Hebrew Passover, and the day the Israelites left their Egyptian bondage, and the day Jesus was crucified are all said to have happened on the 14th day of Nissan. All three were tests of faith. Since Nissan is a month and each month has a moon, Nissa could be referring to a "moon", therefore Nissa Nissa means "moon moon". IMO Planetos and the moon in their sky are sister celestial bodies.

13 hours ago, aDanceWithFlagons said:

I don't see any mention of the location of the resurrection. Although Thoros claims that it is R'hllor who is responsible for bringing back Beric, Thoros does seem to be giving up a little of his own life force each time he performs the rite of the last kiss. He has become loose skinned and gray haired during this time. Not as gaunt as Stannis yet still physically fading somewhat. Thoros must know this ritual is taking its toll on his well being since he has this to say...

 

Interesting phrase, 'seventh death,' considering the Faith of the Seven. Beric does die the Seventh time yet a Lady Sranger, I mean Stoneheart has appeared in his place.

Very interesting observation!

12 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

Sorry this is a little off topic, but I just noticed something curious. The following is from Bran I in ACOK, all within about 3 pages:

No surprise here - after waking, and around the time the comet appears, Bran starts having wolf dreams.

Summer and Shaggydog are locked up in the godswood.

What's going on here? How is Bran climbing icy mountains in his wolf dreams when Summer is confined to the godswood? 

His description to Luwin moments later makes it sound like these are legitimate "wolf dreams" in which the sleeping warg shares the skin of a wolf: 

Just for comparison, in later wolf dreams, Bran finds himself appropriately enclosed within Winterfell's godswood. Here is the one from later that same day, within the same chapter:

Doesn't this sound completely different from the earlier wolf dreams? In fact, even if Summer were not locked up in the godswood, he never would have had the opportunity to climb tall icy mountains in the area around Winterfell. So were Bran's earlier dreams somehow of Summer in the future (he hasn't even met the Reeds at this point in the story), or is he warging another wolf? 

 

Jon dreamed himself a wolf howling for his siblings when he saw Bran sprout in front of himself as a weirwood sapling. That wasn't when he was in Ghost, because after Bran touched Jon's forehead he found himself in Ghost looking over a cliff at the wildlings. So I think this is just a dream Bran is having where Bran is the wolf.

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12 hours ago, aDanceWithFlagons said:

There were five of them when there should have been six, and they were scattered, each apart from the others. He felt a deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. The forest was vast and cold, and they were so small, so lost. His brothers were out there somewhere, and his sister, but he had lost their scent. He sat on his haunches and lifted his head to the darkening sky, and his cry echoed through the forest, a long lonely mournful sound

This passage reminds me of Tyrion, who seems oddly tuned into the old powers:

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A Game of Thrones - Tyrion I

Somewhere in the great stone maze of Winterfell, a wolf howled. The sound hung over the castle like a flag of mourning.

Tyrion Lannister looked up from his books and shivered, though the library was snug and warm. Something about the howling of a wolf took a man right out of his here and now and left him in a dark forest of the mind, running naked before the pack.

 

 

A Clash of Kings - Tyrion XII

"I will," he promised, and Alayaya bent over and kissed him on the brow. Her broken lips left a smear of blood on his forehead. A bloody kiss is more than I deserve, Tyrion thought. She would never have been hurt but for me.

Her blood still marked him as he looked down at the queen. "I have never liked you, Cersei, but you were my own sister, so I never did you harm. You've ended that. I will hurt you for this. I don't know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid."

 

GRRM's use of the term, flag of mourning is interesting since there are no references to flags flying at half mast in the story.  When flags are lowered to half mast, it's to make room for the 'invisible flag of death' flying above. So perhaps a reference to the three-eyed crow and the black banner of the Night's Watch.  The wolf and the crow.... Jon Snow.

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On 2017-07-19 at 10:07 AM, LynnS said:

 A Dance with Dragons - Jon XII

Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze. "Snow," an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again. He slew a greybeard and a beardless boy, a giant, a gaunt man with filed teeth, a girl with thick red hair. Too late he recognized Ygritte. She was gone as quick as she'd appeared.

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But our guy, the Yin-Yang Bomb user, doesn't care about all those things. He uses both. Not just that, but often, he will combine them into something higher and invariably ridiculously more powerful. Dark and light are not evil and good; they appear together a lot for good reasons. To resolve the storyline or beat the boss, the hero must grab the reins of both and wield them in a harmony of fusion.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YinYangBomb

And quite by accident, I came across Euron Crow's Eye:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedRightHand

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17 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

Sorry this is a little off topic, but I just noticed something curious. The following is from Bran I in ACOK, all within about 3 pages:

No surprise here - after waking, and around the time the comet appears, Bran starts having wolf dreams.

Summer and Shaggydog are locked up in the godswood.

What's going on here? How is Bran climbing icy mountains in his wolf dreams when Summer is confined to the godswood? 

His description to Luwin moments later makes it sound like these are legitimate "wolf dreams" in which the sleeping warg shares the skin of a wolf: 

Just for comparison, in later wolf dreams, Bran finds himself appropriately enclosed within Winterfell's godswood. Here is the one from later that same day, within the same chapter:

Doesn't this sound completely different from the earlier wolf dreams? In fact, even if Summer were not locked up in the godswood, he never would have had the opportunity to climb tall icy mountains in the area around Winterfell. So were Bran's earlier dreams somehow of Summer in the future (he hasn't even met the Reeds at this point in the story), or is he warging another wolf? 

 

I think the dreams that obviously don't happen in the Godswoods are the dreams or subconscious of the Direwolves that they share with Bran.

Note that it is after Bran receives the sleeping draught from Maester Luwin (probably a diluted form of Sweetsleep) that Bran doesn't share in their dreams/subconscious but instead shares in their consciousness.

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17 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

 

...Doesn't this sound completely different from the earlier wolf dreams? In fact, even if Summer were not locked up in the godswood, he never would have had the opportunity to climb tall icy mountains in the area around Winterfell. So were Bran's earlier dreams somehow of Summer in the future (he hasn't even met the Reeds at this point in the story), or is he warging another wolf? 

 

I think he's probably tapping into Ghost - remember the other direwolves are aware of each other and what they are doing.

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On 7/19/2017 at 0:31 PM, Feather Crystal said:

What is the deal with Coldhand's black eyes?! The white walkers have blue eyes as well as the wights, so are we to conclude that ice magic is not to be credited for his resurrection? Melisandre has red eyes, but does Beric or Lady Stoneheart have red eyes? Shouldn't fire magic burn red in their eyes? None of the resurrected are truly alive. Their blood doesn't circulate even if it does run out of their bodies when pierced. Coldhand's blood is black. Melisandre's is black and smoking. Doesn't it seem like Coldhands condition is more like those resurrected by fire rather than by ice?

Just to return to Coldhands for a moment, I remain convinced that no matter the anomaly he was raised/preserved by the Ice. The crucial indicator to my mind is his inability to pass the Wall. I'm reminded here again of the Wild Hunt and those who inadvertently or otherwise join them. If they dismount from their horses they crumble to dust because the magic which has preserved them has broken. Similarly I suspect that the wards within the Wall don't stop the blue-eyed lot, leaving them pawing impotently against the glass, rather if they do pass through the magic holding them together won't work

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3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Just to return to Coldhands for a moment, I remain convinced that no matter the anomaly he was raised/preserved by the Ice. The crucial indicator to my mind is his inability to pass the Wall. I'm reminded here again of the Wild Hunt and those who inadvertently or otherwise join them. If they dismount from their horses they crumble to dust because the magic which has preserved them has broken. Similarly I suspect that the wards within the Wall don't stop the blue-eyed lot, leaving them pawing impotently against the glass, rather if they do pass through the magic holding them together won't work

Another interesting tidbit...Let's say we believe CH's.He tried to pass the Wall before and realized he couldn't.Or he never tried because ......One things for certain."He knows" which is the interesting part,that the Wall isn't just a wall of ice and snow.Spells and such are woven into it.

 

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3 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Another interesting tidbit...Let's say we believe CH's.He tried to pass the Wall before and realized he couldn't.Or he never tried because ......One things for certain."He knows" which is the interesting part,that the Wall isn't just a wall of ice and snow.Spells and such are woven into it.

 

Well, as he was playing the Russian to Bloodraven's Kurz, I'd imagine that he learned a great many things. Indeed a possible explanation for his condition is that just like Kurz, Bloodraven needed an intelligent servant or agent to operate outside the cave rather than a blue-eyed slave. If so then that raises the question as to whether Coldhands, like the Russian, will eventually exercise his free will and go his own way

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