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tinfoil-covered musings on the origins of weirwoods


40 Thousand Skeletons

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Just to be clear, I did not originally intend this post to be its own thread. It is definitely not as coherent as any of my planned out and revised theories. It began as a response to a post in a different thread and quickly grew to an absurd length. So... enjoy I guess :P 

The origin of weirwoods... 

[Please don your tinfoil hats now everyone]

So first off, we should ask: when were the first weirwoods "created"? Well, my response is: how long having the COTF been singing their songs?

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"The First Men named us children," the little woman said. "The giants called us woh dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years."

So this quote is super vague. But I am inferring that the COTF began "singing their songs" with the beginning of the weirnet, regardless of whether or not they are responsible for its creation. It seems to be a reference to the beginning of their known history, and they obviously don't write anything down, so the creation of the weirnet may inherently mark the end of their prehistoric era. I assume, based on patterns of human evolution and migration in real life as well as the claim from Leaf about living in the caves for a million years, that the COTF diverged from humans (in terms of evolution) at least several tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago. And I am guessing (but this could definitely be wrong) that "speaking the Old Tongue" roughly coincides with the First Men coming to Westeros and making contact with the COTF there, roughly 12,000 years ago. So 12,000 years + 10,000 years before that = 22,000. Of course, it may be that Leaf is actually referring to some point in time while the FM were still in Essos speaking the Old Tongue, in which case it could have been significantly further in the past. Either way, I think Leaf is referring to the beginning of the weirnet there, and that gives us at least a ball park estimate. We can infer at least that the COTF have been around in Westeros for over a million years (based on Leaf's claim of how long they have been in that cave), but they have only been "singing their songs" for tens of thousands of years, perhaps only 22,000. And I think 22,000 years seems like a reasonable age for the weirnet based on the number of weirwoods and the history of men coming into contact with the COTF both in Westeros and Essos. The creation of the weirnet may have been a direct reaction to the migration and expansion of humans.

OK, so how were the first weirwoods created? Well, those familiar with part 1 of my master plan thread know that I think every single weirwood actually has a greenseer hooked up to its root system Bloodraven-style. The greenseer cannot survive without the tree, and the tree conversely cannot survive without the greenseer. So basically, step 1: you take a person with "magic blood" and begin to bond their mind to the weirnet by feeding them weirwood paste aka greenseer blood (same thing as shade of the evening), and then... step 2??... and then step 3: profit! Presto! You have a weirwood!

OK... so what in the heck is involved in "step 2"? Time for some ultra speculative shots in the dark... One thought I have had is that - in a crazy process akin to the Alien movies - the greenseer swallows a weirwood acorn, and either that is fatal for some reason or the greenseer is simply sacrificed after swallowing it, and then later a weirwood grows out of the greenseer's stomach and they are reanimated. But there are a couple key problems with this explanation. First, it doesn't really match the physical description of Bloodraven. Second, and oddly, we have never actually seen a weirwood acorn. Now intuitively we would assume that there must be weirwood acorns because there are weirwood trees... except that according to my own theory weirwoods aren't really trees at all. They are really just tree-like extensions of a human body that act like giant above-ground sci-fi lungs, absorbing oxygen from the air via blood flowing through the leaves, in a process that is basically the opposite of what normal tree leaves do (photosynthesis). And let's pay close attention to this quote from BR:

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"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."

Notice that BR is talking about trees generally and then oak trees specifically when he speaks of trees taking root and growing from acorns. The part about weirwoods is notably a separate part of his explanation. He could have said for example: The weirwood is the acorn, the acorn is the weirwood. But he didn't. And then more importantly we have this quote about the Jojen weirwood paste:

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The boy looked at the bowl uncertainly. "What is it?"

"A paste of weirwood seeds."

Something about the look of it made Bran feel ill. The red veins were only weirwood sap, he supposed, but in the torchlight they looked remarkably like blood. He dipped the spoon into the paste, then hesitated. "Will this make me a greenseer?"

"Your blood makes you a greenseer," said Lord Brynden. "This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees."

Bran did want to be married to a tree … but who else would wed a broken boy like him? A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. A greenseer.

He ate.

It had a bitter taste, though not so bitter as acorn paste. The first spoonful was the hardest to get down. He almost retched it right back up. The second tasted better. The third was almost sweet. The rest he spooned up eagerly. Why had he thought that it was bitter? It tasted of honey, of new-fallen snow, of pepper and cinnamon and the last kiss his mother ever gave him. The empty bowl slipped from his fingers and clattered on the cavern floor. "I don't feel any different. What happens next?"

So Leaf straight up tells him it is a paste of weirwood seeds. Why not say weirwood acorns? There are like a dozen references to acorn paste throughout the story, including in that very quote. But Leaf says seeds. Very odd. Unless there is no such thing as weirwood acorns and Leaf is using the word "seeds" in a figurative sense... It could just be 100% pure ground up Jojen for all we know. And Bran even notes that the taste is "not so bitter as acorn paste" which kind of implies that it isn't really acorn paste at all.

Anyways, that was my little rant about the suspicious lack of weirwood acorns. So what else could potentially be involved in "step 2"? Well, if there really is no such thing as a weirwood acorn, then logically the implication would be that the physical origin of the weirwood is simply the body of the greenseer himself. What?! Yeah. Like as in... the greenseer (BR for example) literally uses their powers to magically grow a giant tree appendage out from their body, possibly in the process of dying. And this could be facilitated by the existing weirnet transferring the necessary knowledge/power to perform this act to the greenseer via their enhanced telepathic bond (enhanced from the earlier consumption of weirwood paste aka weirwood/greenseer blood).

Now I know what you are thinking: sure, that sounds great 40KS and I totally buy into everything you just said 100%... but how did the very first weirwood come into existence? How did that crucial first greenseer gain this power in the first place? Alright, time for another shot in the dark... I think it behooves us here to examine this quote from Nightflyers to gain some insight:

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“You still haven’t explained how a computer program could explode a man’s skull,” Melantha said.

“You wear the answer between your breasts, Melantha.”

“My whisperjewel?” she said, puzzled. She felt it then, beneath her vacuum suit and her clothing; a touch of cold, a vague hint of eroticism that made her shiver. It was as if his mention had been enough to make the gem come alive.

“I was not familiar with whisperjewels until you told me of yours,” Royd said, “but the principle is the same. Esper-etched, you said. Then you know that psionic power can be stored. The central core of my computer is resonant crystal, many times larger than your tiny jewel. I think Mother impressed it as she lay dying.”

“Only an esper can etch a whisperjewel,” Melantha said.

“You never asked the why of it, either of you,” Royd said. “You never asked why Mother hated people so. She was born gifted, you see. On Avalon she might have been a class one, tested and trained and honored, her talent nurtured and rewarded. I think she might have been very famous. She might have been stronger than a class one, but perhaps it is only after death that she acquired such power, linked as she is to the Nightflyer.

OK so real quick what the heck is "resonant crystal"? Oh man, I am about to drop some cool and possibly irrelevant (and over-simplified) knowledge on y'all... Well it is sort of a made up sci-fi thing from GRRM. But in real life - for those of you who are not nerdy robotics engineers like me - computers generally keep track of time by using a crystal, and this tracking of time is what ultimately governs the execution of lines of code. Computers operate on discreet time, as opposed to analog time. Computers can't, you know, watch the sun move across the sky or anything like that. Instead they have their crystal, typically a quartz crystal. We are talking a tiny little piece of quartz here, laser cut to resonate or oscillate at a specific frequency when electric current runs through it (that is the simplified explanation at least). And then the computer operates at a defined "clock cycle" derived directly from that frequency, either by dividing or multiplying it by some whole number. In the old days, computers could execute a single "instruction" every clock cycle. Modern computers are real fancy and can execute multiple instructions every clock cycle, but it is still the same principle. For example, many Intel i7 processors have a clock speed of about 4 GHz, or 4 billion clock cycles per second (ooooohhhh, you say, that's what that fucking number means! yes, now you know :D). So let's pretend (for simplicity sake) that the crystal inside a 4.0 GHz processor oscillates at a frequency of exactly 50 MHz, or 50 million times per second. This would mean that the processor is taking the highly accurate/consistent physical frequency of the crystal and multiplying it by exactly 80 to get the clock rate of 4.0 GHz. The computer knows (and is physically capable) to execute 80 sets of instructions every time the crystal oscillates.

OK, why did I bother explaining that bullshit? Well I think it is potentially important, for the sake of understanding that quote from Nightflyers, to understand the role that crystals play in computers. They sort of govern the entire processor, and the execution of code is based on their resonance frequency, hence (in my best educated guess) GRRM's use of the made up concept of a computer core made of "resonant crystal" and the further concept that an "esper" can "impress" their "psionic power" onto such a crystal and thereafter take control of the computer. ...Or maybe GRRM is ignorant of all of that and just thought the term "resonant crystal" sounded cool, I don't know. :P 

ANYWAYS... how does this apply to asoiaf? Well obviously Royd's telepathic mother is like a greenseer, and the computer of the Nightflyer is sort of like the weirnet. The important detail is that GRRM has introduced us to the concept that something other than a human brain can contain the consciousness of a telepath after their body dies. So what is the asoiaf equivalent of a resonant crystal computer core? Well... bear with me for a minute here...

Limestone. Limestone?? Yes. Limestone.

First off, in case you don't know, most caves are formed from limestone. Rainwater is already slightly acidic (~pH 5) from its journey through the atmosphere. Rain percolates through the ground, picking up some carbon along the way from decaying plant matter, turns into carbonic acid, and then dissolves away big portions of limestone bedrock over time. And what exactly is limestone? From wikipedia: "Limestone is a sedimentary rock, composed mainly of skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, forams and molluscs."

So limestone is made from the remains of organisms. Which means that limestone caves are basically giant piles of tiny little skeletons. Where the heck am I going with this nonsense? If you haven't read the TWOW - Arianne I chapter yet (in which case, what have you been doing with your life? It's on GRRM's website and I just linked it for you so go read it right now you silly person), here is the relevant quote for this discussion, from when Arianne and company are exploring a cave:

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The cave proved much deeper than any of them had suspected. Beyond the stony mouth where her company had made their camp and hobbled their horses, a series of twisty passageways led down and down, with black holes snaking off to either side. Further in, the walls opened up again, and the searchers found themselves in a vast limestone cavern, larger than the great hall of a castle. Their shouts disturbed a nest of bats, who flapped about them noisily, but only distant echoes shouted back. A slow circuit of the hall revealed three further passages, one so small that it would have required them to proceed on hands and knees. “We will try the others first,” the princess said. “Daemon, come with me. Garibald, Joss, you try the other one.”

The passageway Arianne had chosen for herself turned steep and wet within a hundred feet. The footing grew uncertain. Once she slipped, and had to catch herself to keep from sliding. More than once she considered turning back, but she could see Ser Daemon’s torch ahead and hear him calling for Elia, so she pressed on. And all at once she found herself in another cavern, five times as big as the last one, surrounded by a forest of stone columns. Daemon Sand moved to her side and raised his torch. “Look how the stone’s been shaped,” he said. “Those columns, and the wall there. See them?”

“Faces,” said Arianne. So many sad eyes, staring.

“This place belonged to the children of the forest.”

[explosion sound] Mind-blowing right? Arianne stumbles into an ancient limestone COTF cavern more than 5 times as big as the great hall of a castle! In case you are having trouble picturing that, here is a somewhat typical great hall. Its dimensions are around 100 ft x 50 ft x 50 ft.

great hall picture

So more than 5 of those. Really big.

More importantly, there are faces on the stone columns and the walls. Now if you wanted to go super tinfoil you could say that maybe the "forest of stone columns" is actually a bunch of petrified weirwoods (weirwoods being able to grow underground because they obviously don't need sunlight for photosynthesis and survive off of oxygen as I mentioned earlier), but the faces on the walls are almost certainly not carved onto weirwoods. They seem to simply be carved onto the walls of the limestone cave. And why do the COTF carve faces? According to BR:

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The singers carved eyes into their heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use… but in time you will see well beyond the trees themselves."

So let's assume that they carved faces in the cave walls for the same reason they carve faces in the trees. They are awakening greenseers. And the huge implication of this is that long ago, possibly before there were any weirwoods, the consciousnesses of greenseers survived within the limestone rock itself. And just to go ultra tinfoil for a second, I am going to speculate here that 1) this is essentially possible because the limestone is made of organisms, and organic material has some sort of inherent property (DNA?) that allows it to retain consciousness, and 2) some dead greenseer (or the combined hive-minded consciousness of multiple greenseers) at some point basically felt tortured by being trapped in the limestone and managed to telepathically reach out to the living COTF in the cave (probably in their dreams, you know like a haunted cave would do) and get them to carve faces in the rock to "awaken" it, this effectively being the first step in a very long process that eventually resulted in the weirnet in its current form.

Now again I know what you are surely thinking: 40KS, that's all fantastic, my mind has been blown several times, but you still haven't explained where the first weirwood came from. OK, let's finally get to that, and what created the weirwoods in the first place.

So at some point in time (maybe around 22,000 years ago but possibly much longer as I mentioned earlier) this limestone-net made a big jump. Some greenseer died (probably a powerful one), and upon joining the limestone net and becoming super-powerful (like Royd's mother integrating with the Nightflyer), he/she managed to use telekinesis to make a tree-like appendage grow out of his own corpse (as I mentioned earlier), and then he reanimated his own corpse and sent his own consciousness back into his corpse. And thus the first weirwood in the weirnet was born! Specifically, I think the greenseers (like BR) may be using telekinesis (or "teke" as GRRM calls it in other stories) to make their hearts beat again. After all, the weirwoods at castles like WF are referred to as heart trees, and there is that famous giant circle of weirwoods called High Heart. This would obviously contrast with reanimated people whose hearts are not beating like Coldhands, Beric, and Cat. And this idea is supported by the fact that BR's hands are not described as being black, though it is a bit obfuscated by his albinism, the rest of his skin already being pale white and Bran refraining from explicitly describing his hands.

This idea of using teke to grow a giant tree-lung may seem absurd, but just hold your tinfoil-covered horses for a sec. I fully subscribe to the PJ theory that Faceless Men, at least the really skilled ones like Jaqen (and eventually Arya), use teke to physically alter their faces. The whole wearing-a-dead-face-as-a-mask thing is just a combination of a placebo effect, and a way to transfer the consciousness of the dead person into Arya to help her mimic the face of the dead person. So if we accept the idea that some powerful telepaths can use teke to physically alter their face (and possibly other aspects of their appearance as well), then it isn't too big of a leap to think that someone really powerful could use teke to basically make their lungs grow outside their own body and take the shape of a tree.

Now let's continue to get even more covered in tinfoil... What enabled this powerful jump from haunted limestone to zombie-trees? I am going to guess... the red comet. WHAT?! Yes! The mother fucking comet.

You've made it this far, now just stay with me for this last bit :D. I think the red comet is the asoiaf version of the volcryn from Nightflyers. And what exactly is the volcryn? Well basically, it is a giant mindless animal that propels itself through space with teke and uses some sort of natural nuclear-fission ability to convert hydrogen particles into energy. And as it travels past planets, everyone's telepathic abilities go nuts. For instance, GRRM implies that the volcryn was responsible for the miracles of Jesus. And what is Jesus famous for? Coming back from the dead!

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When Jesus of Nazareth hung dying on his cross, the volcryn passed within a year of his agony, headed outward.

When the Fire Wars raged on Earth, the volcryn sailed near Old Poseidon, where the seas were still unnamed and unfished. By the time the stardrive had transformed the Federated Nations of Earth into the Federal Empire, the volcryn had moved into the fringes of Hrangan space. The Hrangans never knew it. Like us they were children of the small bright worlds that circled their scattered suns, with little interest and less knowledge of the things that moved in the gulfs between.

War flamed for a thousand years and the volcryn passed through it, unknowing and untouched, safe in a place where no fires could ever burn. Afterwards, the Federal Empire was shattered and gone, and the Hrangans vanished in the dark of the Collapse, but it was no darker for the volcryn.

When Kleronomas took his survey ship out from Avalon, the volcryn came within ten light years of him. Kleronomas found many things, but he did not find the volcryn. Not then and not on his return to Avalon, a lifetime later.

When I was a child of three, Kleronomas was dust, as distant and dead as Jesus of Nazareth, and the volcryn passed close to Daronne. That season all the Crey sensitives grew strange and sat staring at the stars with luminous, flickering eyes.

Now, GRRM has said that asoiaf is not in the Thousand Worlds universe, so the red comet is not literally a volcryn. But I think it may be something very similar. Is it mindless? Or is it actively trying to cause crazy events and wars on Planetos? I don't know. Honestly I could see GRRM going either way on that one.

But the basic idea is that the limestone-net existed, the red comet came close to Planetos (amplifying the powers of all the greenseers), and the jump from limestone to the first weirwood was made. Then later the comet came around again, destroyed one of the 2 moons (credit to @LmL on that one), caused the Long Night, and led to the birth of dragons and Others. And now the comet has appeared for a third time, aiding the rebirth of dragons and maybe other stuff too.

I hope that was enough tinfoil for you everybody!

:cheers: 

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Ainulindalë[edit] There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad.

Not a fan of basing theories from external sources.

This is a wolf dream

"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?" Jon 7 clash.

Now was the tree real or not?

If real Bran has grown his own tree.

"When Sansa opened her eyes again, she was on her knees. She did not remember falling. It seemed to her that the sky was a lighter shade of grey. Dawn, she thought. Another day. Another new day. It was the old days she hungered for. Prayed for. But who could she pray to? The garden had been meant for a godswood once, she knew, but the soil was toothin and stony for a weirwood to take root. A godswood without gods, as empty as me." Sansa 7 swords

Which seems to imply that they grew weirwood in each godswood and not simply build a castle round one (not 100% conclusive)

I am willing to believe that every tree is grown from a greenseers consciousness but doubt each one is hooked up to a living corpse.  If nothing else BR needs Bran to take over from him after what a few decades? + would need a lot of caverns (which admittedly there seems to be) under every tree to start the process.

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3 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Notice that BR is talking about trees generally and then oak trees specifically when he speaks of trees taking root and growing from acorns. The part about weirwoods is notably a separate part of his explanation. He could have said for example: The weirwood is the acorn, the acorn is the weirwood. 

Shiny!  Are we talking about  grafting the oak to the weirwood?  Does this go back to Garth Greenhands and Oakenseat?

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10 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

So at some point in time (maybe around 22,000 years ago but possibly much longer as I mentioned earlier) this limestone-net made a big jump. Some greenseer died (probably a powerful one), and upon joining the limestone net and becoming super-powerful (like Royd's mother integrating with the Nightflyer), he/she managed to use telekinesis to make a tree-like appendage grow out of his own corpse (as I mentioned earlier), and then he reanimated his own corpse and sent his own consciousness back into his corpse. And thus the first weirwood in the weirnet was born!

But... but... how? How does a greenseer, regardless of how powerful s/he is, create a tree-like appendage out of thin air? Or out of limestone? Did this greenseer have the Darkhold? :eek:

ETA: interesting read as always, 40KS! Have to think about it a bit more but wanted to address the bit above now. :)

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An interesting read, some curious things to consider... Honestly, I always thought weirwoods were natural plants and they were transplanting shoots into their godswoods. I noticed the mention of seeds, as well, but thought of it in terms of "gave his seed and his soul" rather than literal seeds. Never considered the idea that the red comet affected the weirwoods as much as humans, sometime in the ancient past, allowing human/CotF/other races to transplant their souls/consciousness into the weirnet after death, and that's something to chew on. I always thought that "magical" aspect to them, as they (weirwoods, undying ebony/black yronwood trees) are the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life (respectively) in the garden of edenos, was a natural part of their development. This is something to think about. Maybe the weirwood/undying tree "jump" (reaching for the heavens) is what initially turned the comet "red" and set the trees "afire" (with the fire of the gods). 

As to their being called "heart trees," I think of them as simultaneously "the bones of the earth" (the bones remember because they contain the soul or consciousness of creatures, which is why the trees turn to stone, like fossilizing bones) and as the "heart" of the moon goddess (icy heart--undying ebony--and fiery heart--weirwood) representing the "change of heart" the moon goddess undergoes, which takes her from Goddess of Summer/Life to Goddess of Winter/Death, revealing the two aspects of the female/lunar deity (like the swords, white swords and black swords, in the same theme). 

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12 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

So Leaf straight up tells him it is a paste of weirwood seeds. Why not say weirwood acorns? There are like a dozen references to acorn paste throughout the story, including in that very quote. But Leaf says seeds. Very odd. Unless there is no such thing as weirwood acorns and Leaf is using the word "seeds" in a figurative sense.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but not all trees have acorns. Acorn is just one type of tree seed.

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And to the greater topic: I'm not sure I see the point. If the greenseer can live on in limestone, and still have enough agency to use telekinesis to keep his heart beating and grow a tree from himself, why does he need the tree? Why does he need to keep his heart beating or use the tree-lung to breathe? Why not just reside in the limestone?

I think it's somewhat more plausible that weirwoods are not trees at all, but a form of coral. As such, there would be no meaningful distinction between a "petrified" weirwood and limestone. The "leaves" are the polyps.

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2 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

But... but... how? How does a greenseer, regardless of how powerful s/he is, create a tree-like appendage out of thin air? Or out of limestone? Did this greenseer have the Darkhold? :eek:

ETA: interesting read as always, 40KS! Have to think about it a bit more but wanted to address the bit above now. :)

LOL probably the best question to ask. My thinking is, it isn't out of thin air, because they aren't really trees at all, they are just another part of the human body that look really similar to trees, sort of like how you can have (for example) certain species of birds and insects that look almost identical even though they are not even closely related due to convergent evolution. For anyone who has no idea what I am referring to, here is a picture of a hummingbird:

hummingbird

And here is a hummingbird moth:

hummingbird moth

Let me put it another way. Let's assume hypothetically that PJ is correct that the really good Faceless Men (like Jaqen) use teke or some teke-like power to literally physically change their face. The basic idea would be, (and this is not exactly the original PJ theory but my own take on it) they use the many faces stored in their vault in the kind of same manner that we would use a 3D scanner to scan the exact shape of an object and store it digitally, except instead of storing the info on a computer they are effectively "uploading" the shape (and personality) of the dead person into their own brains, and then this allows them to "copy+paste" that face and personality onto themselves.

So let's really dive into the minutia here. At a minimum I assume this would imply being able to change things like skin tone, ear shape, nose shape, and the underlying bone structure. But going past that, I assume they would also have the ability to change hair, lose teeth (and then regrow their own teeth back later), and even change their height. After all it would be pretty inconvenient if they could only steal the identities of people who were basically the same exact height as they were. So if we want a psuedo-scientific explanation for this, our bodies are made up of cells (obviously), and this implies that they would have the power to remove various cells at will, and also grow any cells they want at will. And we saw Jaqen do this with his face in real time, in a matter of seconds. Let's examine the relevant Arya quote:

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"Mummers change their faces with artifice," the kindly man was saying, "and sorcerers use glamors, weaving light and shadow and desire to make illusions that trick the eye. These arts you shall learn, but what we do here goes deeper. Wise men can see through artifice, and glamors dissolve before sharp eyes, but the face you are about to don will be as true and solid as that face you were born with. Keep your eyes closed." She felt his fingers brushing back her hair. "Stay still. This will feel queer. You may be dizzy, but you must not move."

Then came a tug and a soft rustling as the new face was pulled down over the old. The leather scraped across her brow, dry and stiff, but as her blood soaked into it, it softened and turned supple. Her cheeks grew warm, flushed. She could feel her heart fluttering beneath her breast, and for one long moment she could not catch her breath. Hands closed around her throat, hard as stone, choking her. Her own hands shot up to claw at the arms of her attacker, but there was no one there. A terrible sense of fear filled her, and she heard a noise, a hideous crunching noise, accompanied by blinding pain. A face floated in front of her, fat, bearded, brutal, his mouth twisted with rage. She heard the priest say, "Breathe, child. Breathe out the fear. Shake off the shadows. He is dead. She is dead. Her pain is gone. Breathe."

The girl took a deep shuddering breath, and realized it was true. No one was choking her, no one was hitting her. Even so, her hand was shaking as she raised it to her face. Flakes of dried blood crumbled at the touch of her fingertips, black in the lantern light. She felt her cheeks, touched her eyes, traced the line of her jaw. "My face is still the same."

"Is it? Are you certain?"

Was she certain? She had not felt any change, but maybe it was not something you could feel. She swept a hand down across her face from top to bottom, as she had once seen Jaqen H'ghar do, back at Harrenhal. When he did it, his whole face had rippled and changed. When she did it, nothing happened. "It feels the same."

"To you," said the priest. "It does not look the same."

"To other eyes, your nose and jaw are broken," said the waif. "One side of your face is caved in where your cheekbone shattered, and half your teeth are missing."

She probed around inside her mouth with her tongue, but found no holes or broken teeth. Sorcery, she thought. I have a new face. An ugly, broken face.

So I will rehash the main argument of the PJ theory here for any who are unfamiliar, and it is really important because this theory is part of the basis for my own weirwood tinfoil. Some of the other Faceless Men we have seen use artifice or glamors. For instance, the Kindly Man used a glamor when he first met Arya and she tried to eat his worm. The worm was just an illusion, and when Arya tried to eat the worm, it "melted like a shadow in her hand". And sharp eyes can see through glamors, which is probably how Syrio got the job as first sword to the Sealord, because he was able to see through a glamored cat. By contrast, Jaqen does not appear to be using glamor or artifice. He is physically changing his face (and presumably other physical features), and according to the Kindly Man these changes are "true and solid". So why do any of the FM bother with the less effective, riskier means of disguise? Why does the Handsome Man wear fake noses when glamoring would be more effective? And why would anyone use a glamor when glamors cannot fool people with sharp eyes like Syrio? Well the obvious explanation is that they simply can't use the more effective methods, because they are not powerful enough. They lack teke abilities, which are probably quite rare. And this would also explain their keen interest in Arya. Jaqen probably identified her as a warg and knew that she had the potential to use teke. And as a bonus she has a death list that may play perfectly into their plans for helping the Aegon cause (a topic for another day, but the key piece of evidence is that Arya did not recognize the face on their gold coin, implying - like in Dunk & Egg - that the face was that of Daemon Blackfyre and the FM have been paid with Blackfyre gold).

But then we have an immediate contradiction in the above quote. The Kindly Man claims that the changes would be solid and true, but Arya feels her face and probes her mouth with her tongue for missing teeth but thinks her face feels the same. Yet the Kindly Man and the Waif tell her that she looks different, and by the end of that last paragraph there Arya is convinced that she has a "new face. An ugly, broken face." PJ's explanation is that the Kindly Man and Waif are attempting to cause a placebo effect. Arya theoretically has the power to change her own face, but she must believe that her face can change in order to use that power. There is some good evidence for this placebo concept. First, we have the famous Varys quote:

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Varys smiled. "Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less."

"So power is a mummer's trick?"

"A shadow on the wall," Varys murmured, "yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow."

That quote can mean a bunch of different things, but one meaning we could infer is that telepathic powers are based at least partially in belief in that power (and, you know, having magic blood to begin with like Arya).

The much better evidence, however, is in GRRM's other stories. First we have the Wildcards character The Great and Powerful Turtle. He is a powerful teker, but he can only use his powers when he is safe inside is VW Beetle. It is obviously just a subconscious crutch (the first time he realized his own powers as a child he was not inside the car), and the car has no real effect on his powers, but his belief and confidence in his own abilities affects whether or not he can actually use them. Another good example is Royd from Nightflyers. Royd doesn't think he has teke powers, but Melantha makes a convincing argument that he actually does, because Royd is a cross-gender clone of his "mother" who had potent teke powers. Royd always thought that the ability was tied to gender, but Melantha knows more about genetic engineering and informs him otherwise. The combination of this new knowledge together with a super high-pressure situation allows Royd to use teke for the first time.

And then we have the supporting evidence from that Arya chapter. Most significantly, Arya's face feels no different after the Kindly Man does the whole dead face mask transplant procedure thing. If we are to take the chapter at face value, this is very odd. Shouldn't Arya's face feel like, you know, she is wearing another face on top of her own? Shouldn't she be able to feel a very significant difference? I mean, imagine that you took a leather mask and wore it over your face. Even if it somehow "absorbed your blood" and became soft a supple and warm, you would still be wearing a leather mask, and that would definitely feel different than touching your regular unmasked face. It seem more likely that the Kindly Man simply pulled the mask away while Arya felt like she was being choked to death. He did tell her to keep her eyes closed and not move, which could facilitate such shenanigans.

And what was the result of this placebo effect? Basically, it seems like Arya was able to change her face a little bit (using her own teke powers), enough to be unrecognizable, but not enough to match the description of the dead woman. And this would make sense considering it is her first go at face-changing and she hasn't mastered her powers yet. Here is what the Kindly Man claims will happen after she dons her ugly face:

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The girl did not smile, but inside she was pleased. She had lost Cat once, and mourned her. She did not want to lose her again. "What will I look like?"

"Ugly. Women will look away when they see you. Children will stare and point. Strong men will pity you, and some may shed a tear. No one who sees you will soon forget you. Come."

So according to him, Arya will be so ugly that women will look away, children will stare and point, some may even cry at her appearance, and no one will soon forget her. But then that doesn't happen at all. We get no such descriptions when Arya actually walks around with her new face. In fact, this is literally the only described reaction to her new face:

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When she stopped to watch and listen for a moment, Tagganaro glanced at her without recognition, but Casso barked and clapped his flippers. He knows me, the girl thought, or else he smells the fish

And that in a nutshell is the PJ theory on face changing.

So, what are the limitations to this power of physically changing one's own body? Can FM change their height? I assume so. What about the 6-fingered man Count Rugen who killed Inigo Montoya's father? Could Jaqen grow an extra finger in order to impersonate him? Maybe. I don't know, but I am betting yes. If one could hypothetically lose and regrow teeth, or change height, an extra finger doesn't sound like too much of a stretch.

OK then, what if you had a really powerful telepath, potentially made even more powerful by 1) dying and entering the limestone-net and 2) the nearby presence of the volcryn red comet. Could that person do something even more extreme? Could they, mayhaps, be powerful enough to grow an entire tree-shaped appendage out of their body/corpse? I think it is possible.

So basically, think of it like like growing an extra finger, except this finger is huge and tree-shaped and not actually on their hand. And it is possible that the process could take seconds, or days, or months, or years.

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1 hour ago, Damon_Tor said:

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but not all trees have acorns. Acorn is just one type of tree seed.

A very good point. I am definitely an engineer, not a botanist :P. I kind of assumed weirwoods would have acorns (if anything) based on their appearance, but really I know next to nothing about trees.

56 minutes ago, Damon_Tor said:

And to the greater topic: I'm not sure I see the point. If the greenseer can live on in limestone, and still have enough agency to use telekinesis to keep his heart beating and grow a tree from himself, why does he need the tree? Why does he need to keep his heart beating or use the tree-lung to breathe? Why not just reside in the limestone?

I think it's somewhat more plausible that weirwoods are not trees at all, but a form of coral. As such, there would be no meaningful distinction between a "petrified" weirwood and limestone. The "leaves" are the polyps.

Also very good points. As for why he would want to keep his heart beating and reanimate his corpse, there could be a couple reasons. 1) It is a form of immortality, and personally I would rather have my consciousness remain in my own brain/body instead of being trapped in limestone. Also, the limestone is continuously dissolved by rain over time, which is how caves form in the first place, so it may not be as permanent as one would like. 2) It may be that retaining the physical brains of the greenseers enables the weirnet to be much more powerful than its limestone-net predecessor.

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9 hours ago, LynnS said:

Shiny!  Are we talking about  grafting the oak to the weirwood?  Does this go back to Garth Greenhands and Oakenseat?

Yes, quite shiny :D 

I think grafting is definitely something that should be considered, but no I don't think that any sort of grafting took place to create the weirwoods.

I think it does at least go back to Garth the Gardener, because I think Highgarden (like Winterfell) may have been built around the godswood, and the Highgarden godswood contains 3 weirwoods known as the Three Singers (you know, because they are literally 3 greenseers aka singers hooked up to their trees BR-style). This is something I mentioned in my original (less tinfoily) theory about the nature of weirwoods.

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10 hours ago, elder brother jonothor dar said:

Ainulindalë[edit] There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad.

Not a fan of basing theories from external sources.

This is a wolf dream

"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?" Jon 7 clash.

Now was the tree real or not?

If real Bran has grown his own tree.

"When Sansa opened her eyes again, she was on her knees. She did not remember falling. It seemed to her that the sky was a lighter shade of grey. Dawn, she thought. Another day. Another new day. It was the old days she hungered for. Prayed for. But who could she pray to? The garden had been meant for a godswood once, she knew, but the soil was toothin and stony for a weirwood to take root. A godswood without gods, as empty as me." Sansa 7 swords

Which seems to imply that they grew weirwood in each godswood and not simply build a castle round one (not 100% conclusive)

I am willing to believe that every tree is grown from a greenseers consciousness but doubt each one is hooked up to a living corpse.  If nothing else BR needs Bran to take over from him after what a few decades? + would need a lot of caverns (which admittedly there seems to be) under every tree to start the process.

Well, it's not about basing theories on external sources. GRRM reuses lots of different concepts all the time (like skinchanging, and corpse-handling for example), and I think it is super helpful to read other GRRM stories to gain insight into these concepts.

Was the tree in wolf dream real? That is an excellent question. I doubt it. Notably, it already had a face even though the faces presumably need to be physically carved by the COTF. But even if it was real, and not just a time-lapse vision of an already existing tree or something like that, it doesn't totally eliminate the possibility that it was grown from another greenseer (a COTF one I would assume).

Yes, the implication at face value (which I think is exactly GRRM's intent here to trick us) is that humans can just plant weirwoods in godswoods. But the fact that it failed the one time we actually know they attempted it really supports my theory, and this is something I brought up in my original theory on weirwoods way back. Like, really? They had the technological ability to build a castle on top of a mountain but they couldn't manage to move enough soil to plant a single tree? Suspicious... I think this quote from Cat provides us with a little more insight than Sansa:

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The builders had intended it as a godswood, but the Eyrie rested on the hard stone of the mountain, and no matter how much soil was hauled up from the Vale, they could not get a weirwood to take root here. 

The soil wasn't simply too thin and stony. They brought soil up the mountain specifically for the purpose of planting a tree and it failed.

There are indeed caverns pretty much everywhere, including underneath notable castles like Winterfell (the crypts, and the suspicious blocked off lower level), Casterly Rock (originally a mine), and Storm's End. I'm not sure what you meant exactly about BR needing Bran to take over after a few decades.

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3 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Hey now. This is interesting, but I have some ideas on this as well. As soon as I am finished making this hoard of mice, I will get to it. :thumbsup:

LOL I have no idea if you are referring to children as mice or you are talking about literal mice because you work in a lab or something. I going to guess literal mice...

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OP: I'm down with weirwoods being naturally occurring trees.  The seeds are how they reproduce.  Trees do after all have many different ways to reproduce: sycamore seeds have a winged shape to float in the breeze, fir trees produce pine cones, the wollemi pine (a prehistoric relic) produces spores that float in the breeze, oaks give us acorns, horse chestnuts give us conkers, beech trees produce nuts etc....

If you are delving into the collective consciousness (or not) of the weirwoods and the inspiration for the weirnet you might want to consider aspens:

https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/tree-profile-aspen-so-much-more-than-a-tree

"One aspen tree is actually only a small part of a larger organism. A stand or group of aspen trees is considered a singular organism with the main life force underground in the extensive root system. Before a single aspen trunk appears above the surface, the root system may lie dormant for many years until the conditions are just right, including sufficient sunlight. In a single stand, each tree is a genetic replicate of the other, hence the name a “clone” of aspens used to describe a stand.

Older than the massive Sequoias or the biblical Bristlecone Pines, the oldest known aspen clone has lived more than 80,000 years on Utah’s Fishlake National Forest. Not only is the clone the oldest living organism, weighing in at an estimated 6,600 tons, it is also the heaviest. Even if the trees of a stand are wiped out, it is very difficult to permanently extinguish an aspen’s root system due to the rapid rate in which it reproduces." [The article continues...]

They are remarkable and quite unique in this regard (to my knowledge) and aspects of an aspen grove seem to be reflected around the cave where Leaf and the other children live.  The similarity breaks down with inidividual weirwoods being dotted around Westeros but each tree could eventually grow it's own grove / clone system.  That kind of speculation's not really my thing but the aspen is fascinating in its own right.

The more interesting question is why the weirwoods are susceptible to being used in this way more than other trees.  I think their long lives and something about their nature allows it.  The children and human wargs can warg any kind of animal but only the weirwoods can be used in this quasi-religious quasi-symbiotic relationship that the children / greenseers have established with them.

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8 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

OP: I'm down with weirwoods being naturally occurring trees.  The seeds are how they reproduce.  Trees do after all have many different ways to reproduce: sycamore seeds have a winged shape to float in the breeze, fir trees produce pine cones, the wollemi pine (a prehistoric relic) produces spores that float in the breeze, oaks give us acorns, horse chestnuts give us conkers, beech trees produce nuts etc....

If you are delving into the collective consciousness (or not) of the weirwoods and the inspiration for the weirnet you might want to consider aspens:

https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/tree-profile-aspen-so-much-more-than-a-tree

"One aspen tree is actually only a small part of a larger organism. A stand or group of aspen trees is considered a singular organism with the main life force underground in the extensive root system. Before a single aspen trunk appears above the surface, the root system may lie dormant for many years until the conditions are just right, including sufficient sunlight. In a single stand, each tree is a genetic replicate of the other, hence the name a “clone” of aspens used to describe a stand.

Older than the massive Sequoias or the biblical Bristlecone Pines, the oldest known aspen clone has lived more than 80,000 years on Utah’s Fishlake National Forest. Not only is the clone the oldest living organism, weighing in at an estimated 6,600 tons, it is also the heaviest. Even if the trees of a stand are wiped out, it is very difficult to permanently extinguish an aspen’s root system due to the rapid rate in which it reproduces." [The article continues...]

They are remarkable and quite unique in this regard (to my knowledge) and aspects of an aspen grove seem to be reflected around the cave where Leaf and the other children live.  The similarity breaks down with inidividual weirwoods being dotted around Westeros but each tree could eventually grow it's own grove / clone system.  That kind of speculation's not really my thing but the aspen is fascinating in its own right.

The more interesting question is why the weirwoods are susceptible to being used in this way more than other trees.  I think their long lives and something about their nature allows it.  The children and human wargs can warg any kind of animal but only the weirwoods can be used in this quasi-religious quasi-symbiotic relationship that the children / greenseers have established with them.

IDK if you have read my much more coherent theory about weirwoods being tree-people with each one having their own greenseer, but there are 2 main clues that led me to that conclusion. First is the fact that weirwoods have red leaves, and the sap is described as looking like blood more than once. This is the most important quote relevant to my theory:

Quote

The crofter's village stood between two lakes, the larger dotted with small wooded islands that punched up through the ice like the frozen fists of some drowned giant. From one such island rose a weirwood gnarled and ancient, its bole and branches white as the surrounding snows. Eight days ago Asha had walked out with Aly Mormont to have a closer look at its slitted red eyes and bloody mouth. It is only sap, she'd told herself, the red sap that flows inside these weirwoods. But her eyes were unconvinced; seeing was believing, and what they saw was frozen blood.

So if blood is in fact what makes weirwoods red, then that blood must come from somewhere. And along that line of thinking, the second big clue is when Bran (as Hodor) finds a room of greenseers hooked up to the trees like BR:

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Bran ate with Summer and his pack, as a wolf. As a raven he flew with the murder, circling the hill at sunset, watching for foes, feeling the icy touch of the air. As Hodor he explored the caves. He found chambers full of bones, shafts that plunged deep into the earth, a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hung upside down from the ceiling. He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. "Hodor," Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.

I think what we are seeing there is the underground portion of a circle of weirwoods. And they are notably still "alive" in some form since their eyes open and follow the light of his torch. So Bloodraven's current situation is not some sort of ad-hoc procedure that they invented just for him (which was personally my impression on my first read through). Rather, it appears to be the standard practice of what the COTF do with their greenseers.

So if weirwoods are red because of blood, and all greenseers are hooked up to weirwoods, and every weirwood has its own face, then logically it would follow that every weirwood has its own greenseer. And this current tinfoil-covered thread is an attempt to explain how the practice began in the first place.

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