Confused about Viserion and the White Walkers

[Travelr]

I have never posted here and I'm kind of new to GoT so please have patience.  I also haven't read the books so I don't know if this question is answered there.

 

This is is my question. Jon says the White Walkers can't swim. But when Viserion was killed she went into the lake. If the White Walkers can't swim how did they get Viserion out? It shows them pulling her out with chains but how did they get the chains around her at the bottom of the Lake? I'm not trying to ruin it for anyone. Just don't know if it's explained somewhere and I missed it. 

Thanks!!

[LordImp]

NK probably sent some wights down there to put on the chains and then allowed them to drown. In short he sacrificed his soldiers. That's the best I can come up with.

[Kajjo]

It surely appears to be a logical hole at the current state in GoT. The wights just vanished into the sea when the ice broke, but later they seem to be able to apply the very heavy chains and drag the dragon out out the icy lake. However, we don't know how the chain was mounted. Maybe the Night King can do so or any other solution will be presented later. Or maybe it really is a logical fault.

 

[Travelr]

Both sound reasonable to me! Thanks for the answer. Since I'm pretty new to the series I don't know nearly as much as people who have been involved from the beginning. 

[Erkan12]

Yea, I think NK sacrificed a couple of wights to chain the Dragon under the water, they can't swim but they can still move under the water.

 

 

[BalerionTheCat]

They don't need to breath. They're not made of sugar. I don't see why they couldn't go under water, walk on a lake or sea bottom. They can in the books. Cotter Pyke's report from Hardhome: "... Dead things in the water..." Again Jon knows nothing. Or D&D plot hole.

[Travelr]

That makes sense that they can move underwater. I guess I thought that they died or something when Jon went Into the water and they were around him but didn't come back to the surface when he did. But since they can't swim they could have just been on the bottom of the lake with no way to get back to the surface.  I have a lot to learn about all this. I haven't read the books but i think I need to. It sounds like there is a lot more detail and information that helps to explain things.  I appreciate all your answers. I can drive myself crazy thinking about stuff like this! 

[Lost Time]

Ever watch the 1st Pirates of the Caribbean movie? They probably reenacted this scene from it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjJuZCECRu4

[Megorova]

16 hours ago, Travelr said:

But since they can't swim they could have just been on the bottom of the lake with no way to get back to the surface. 

Or they could walk. On the bottom. And out of the lake.

Also I think that it were giants who wrapped chains aroud dragon's neck. Those chains were also brought by giants. They didn't even go underwater, their hands are long enough to reach deep underwater. Then they dragged those chains, and walked in front of each column of wights.

Maybe originally Night's King was going to use those chains and giants to breake gates of The Wall. How it was already done, when Mance Raider ambushed Castle Black. One of giants that was with him, broke the gates with use of chain and mamonth.

[Tywinelle]

What confuses me is that unViserion breathes fire but fire kills wights and he's a wight.

[CrypticWeirwood]

15 minutes ago, Tywinelle said:

What confuses me is that unViserion breathes fire but fire kills wights and he's a wight.

I know this doesn't make much sense, but it's like he may be more like a living White Walker than an animated wight, who have completely blue eyes and can walk through fire unharmed.

[Tywinelle]

54 minutes ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

I know this doesn't make much sense, but it's like he may be more like a living White Walker than an animated wight, who have completely blue eyes and can walk through fire unharmed.

I considered that but it goes against the lore.  According to show precedent, WWs are living babies turned by the NK, while unViserion was a dead creature reanimated by the NK.  I would find it easier to accept if he breathed freezing cold air instead of blue fire.

[#teamNightking]

On 8/30/2017 at 4:28 AM, LordImp said:

NK probably sent some wights down there to put on the chains and then allowed them to drown. In short he sacrificed his soldiers. That's the best I can come up with.

Simplest solution I have been able to come up with is that although  the wights cannot swim the white walkers maybe can and also have extreme strength. The white walkers hooked em up and the wights pulled. 

[sweetsunray]

1 hour ago, Tywinelle said:

I considered that but it goes against the lore.  According to show precedent, WWs are living babies turned by the NK, while unViserion was a dead creature reanimated by the NK.  I would find it easier to accept if he breathed freezing cold air instead of blue fire.

According to the leaked preliminary scripts, the D&Ds went for Viserion being like a WW. That's why the NK touched his brow. NK doesn't touch dead humans to make them wights. Apparently it doesn't matter whether they're alive or dead. It's either touching or raising.

[Tywinelle]

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

According to the leaked preliminary scripts, the D&Ds went for Viserion being like a WW. That's why the NK touched his brow. NK doesn't touch dead humans to make them wights. Apparently it doesn't matter whether they're alive or dead. It's either touching or raising.

Interesting.  I guess then all the living need to do is load a dragonglass tipped bolt on a scorpion and shoot unViserion down.

[falcotron]

10 hours ago, Tywinelle said:

Interesting.  I guess then all the living need to do is load a dragonglass tipped bolt on a scorpion and shoot unViserion down.

It doesn't matter whether he's a White Walker or a wight for that. This isn't the books—dragonglass works on wights. We saw Jorah's dragonglass daggers clearly take out a wight, and then everyone else in the party (who didn't have Valyrian steel or fire) dropped their primary weapons and switched to their weaker but dragonglass backup weapons.

Meanwhile, the dragonglass may still have to pierce his scales to affect him, in which case… well, I guess they could aim for the ragged holes in his body, in which case it would be pretty much the same thing as Bard aiming for the missing scale in Smaug, but there's no way D&D would ever do that just because they invented an anti-dragon device that looks like a mobile version of the one from the Hobbit movies, right?

[Ser Petyr Parker]

21 hours ago, Tywinelle said:

What confuses me is that unViserion breathes fire but fire kills wights and he's a wight.

Maybe in this universe there's a sort of anti-fire which is basically the same as fire, but somehow makes things colder for magic reasons. If we somehow met a race of antimatter aliens they might be confused about how we have, well, anything, based on the fact that as soon as we touch any of their stuff we violently explode.

[falcotron]

3 hours ago, Ser Petyr Parker said:

Maybe in this universe there's a sort of anti-fire which is basically the same as fire, but somehow makes things colder for magic reasons. If we somehow met a race of antimatter aliens they might be confused about how we have, well, anything, based on the fact that as soon as we touch any of their stuff we violently explode.

Well, they wouldn't really have time to get confused, because before we even got close enough to meet them, either we'd annihilate in contact with their anti-air or they'd annihilate with our air.

Anyway, until we see something that proves otherwise, I'm assuming Viserion is actually breathing a spray of superfluid liquid helium. It could plausibly do the damage we've seen so far. It couldn't spread from target to target the way fire does, but Drogon's effectiveness, even against the super-flammable wights, hasn't relied on that very much so far. And meanwhile, it would coat living targets somewhat like napalm (although with a much, much, much thinner film, but let them cheat a bit), and could even do things like go around corners to find warmer targets without stretching the physics too far, and imagine how much fun that could be. I have no idea how a dragon could manufacture helium out of nowhere (fusion reactor?), much less cool it to a tiny fraction of absolute zero (a complicated laser array?), but magic has to come into it somewhere, right?

[Ser Petyr Parker]

19 minutes ago, falcotron said:

Well, they wouldn't really have time to get confused, because before we even got close enough to meet them, either we'd annihilate in contact with their anti-air or they'd annihilate with our air.

Well, it's in a vacuum of course. Don't you know anything about physics?

[ravenous reader]

On 9/2/2017 at 8:53 AM, Tywinelle said:

I considered that but it goes against the lore.  According to show precedent, WWs are living babies turned by the NK, while unViserion was a dead creature reanimated by the NK.  I would find it easier to accept if he breathed freezing cold air instead of blue fire.

Generally, it goes against book canon to have him breathing fire instead of an icy exhalation, so I've also been puzzled by this choice.  That said, there is the precedent in the books, e.g. in the Prologue, of the White Walkers and their icy swords of pale blue flame 'alive with light' (for which the wighted white dragon with blue eyes is a symbolic analogue) being associated with lightning.  Following contact with them, Ser Waymar Royce's sword is described as a lightning-struck tree.  @Voice also has this really interesting theory about how the Wall and not Melisandre, as is is commonly assumed, was responsible for 'zapping' Varamyr's skinchanged eagle while flying over the Wall, transgressing on the magical boundary, resulting in the eagle bursting into flames.  Thus, we have the paradoxical scenario of an ice-being (the Wall) generating an electrical charge which translates as 'fire'.

21 hours ago, Tywinelle said:

Interesting.  I guess then all the living need to do is load a dragonglass tipped bolt on a scorpion and shoot unViserion down.

Alternatively, I'd like to see Bran 'mind-wrestle' the Night's King for control over the dragon (via skinchanging), and then have Bran turn the dragon on the wights.  D&D's choice of blue fire instead of ice for Viserion means that he can potentially be turned against his creators, and used for good.