Heresy 205 bats and little green men

[Melifeather]

3 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

 

The watch has declined because most people see it the way Tyrion does - a useless job to get rid of criminals and misfits.  We see this all the time in our own world - Hurricane defense in New Orleans, buildings that won't withstand Earthquakes built where we know there will be one, houses built where we know mudslides or forest fires will destroy them.  People don't take threats seriously unless they are an immediate threat.  But everything in the story suggests people believe the Watch is not guarding against something that might happen in a generation, but something that either might never happen again, or maybe never happened at all.  There is no way Harren's brother could have had 10,000 fighting men to defend the Wall if we believe people took the threat with as little seriousness in his lifetime.

There also seems to be a deliberate campaign to undermine the threat by using the words "grumpkins and snarks". Added to that is the fact that every great house has a maester that teaches the lord's children - and likely teaching propaganda, misinformation, ridiculing historical stories by reducing them to myths, and conflating timelines.

[Black Crow]

Gods this one moved fast overnight with barely time to read the posts before tumbling out to work. There are, however, a few points I'd like to address in due course, starting with the Watch. 

If we take the calendar out of it to avoid confusion, we have three "ages" to consider.

In the beginning there's no evidence that the Wall was manned. Notwithstanding the legends of ice being dug from frozen lakes this was raised by magic and blood; and in the beginning the Watch may have comprised no more than the 13 guardians of the Black Gate. Then we have the overthrow of the Nights King and a whole rash of castles, though not necessarily all being built and manned at the same time, while the Watch itself is fed by huge numbers of captives taken in the wars of the Seven Kingdoms. Then comes Aegon the Conqueror and the Pax Targaryena; all of a sudden the war prisoners dry up along with the wars; and then quite abruptly, without those war prisoners the present dire situation.

There'll be more wrinkles in there I've no doubt but the changing circumstances are abrupt, not a long slow decline

 

[Matthew.]

14 hours ago, Lady Dyanna said:

After hearing this, I think this is exactly what happened as far as the God’s Eye. Large amounts of sacrifice bound the humans to the tree creating the faces. And I think that the pact was most definitely broken. But I also suspect that the negative consequences might not have been immediately present. 

I agree on the latter point, and I think there's several potential variations of consequence that could fall under the overall umbrella of "the Pact was a magical ritual, its participant's oaths magically binding." 

One premise, which would be more consolidated and succinct, is that the Pact was broken, and all that has followed - uneven seasons, sorcery, supernatural disasters - is an ongoing consequence of breaking an oath that was sworn to the forces of nature--and the ultimate end point for all of this is not specifically to slay the Others (they're a symptom, not the disease), but to correct the Pact; perhaps with a corn king style sacrifice, perhaps by forging a new Pact, perhaps by destroying the Isle of Faces (the death of magic). 

Alternately, it may be that the Pact isn't broken per se, it's just that the CotF did not foresee what would be the next natural step after men ceased warring with the CotF: they would, instead, begin warring with their fellow men. Except, instead of slaying one another with bronze, they're now drawing on the sorcery and Songs of the CotF for their wars, and making themselves kings of nature--Winter Kings, Gardener Kings, Marsh Kings, etc.
 

14 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

That is a good question! What happened during the last 300 years for 10,000 men to decline to 1,000?

If you'll forgive a relatively mundane proposal, I think that the immediate aftermath of Aegon's Conquest probably did a lot to hurt the Night's Watch.

Many noble Houses were either outright destroyed or had their resources greatly expended during the Conquest, so I imagine there was an entire generation where the Watch saw a drop in recruitment, which resulted in a downward spiral: in the aftermath of the Conquest, the Watch has fewer qualified knights and commanders, which creates the public perception of an organization in decline, which leads to recruitment problems, which leads to a further decline in leadership and reputation, which leads to further recruitment problems...and so on and so on, until we find the Watch in its current state.

Edit: Ah, BC's point makes even more sense; it was an unforeseen consequence of the continent-wide peace (relatively speaking) brought about by having a High King.

[JNR]

4 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

The watch has declined because most people see it the way Tyrion does - a useless job to get rid of criminals and misfits. 

Of course.  But I would expect that to have been true long before Aegon I, too.  Yet we're told there were still 10,000 men at the time he came to power.   

Divide 10,000 men by 17 castles (max in use simultaneously in history) and you arrive at 588 men per castle, which is a more than adequate average garrison since some of those castles aren't very big at all.  

In other words, it is conceivable the Watch was at its peak only 300 years ago.

But moving from 10,000 men to 1,000 men is obviously a 90% decline and necessitated many radical changes, such as abandoning the Nightfort for the first time in many thousands of years.  That's an amazing shift in a tiny span of time and seems likely due to political changes emerging from the new Targ rule.

[SirArthur]

7 minutes ago, JNR said:

In other words, it is conceivable the Watch was at its peak only 300 years ago.

We still don't know how so many men (the size of the dornish army) were supplied not over the duration of a campaign but on a permanent base. In the west there is the deep Gorge and the highlands , the Kingsroad was build 100 years after the peak. The only known supply route is using Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.

And we do not talk about food here, food can be croped in the Gift. we talk about iron, coal, horses and so on.

From a logical point all the men (with their horses and armors) had to get north either way. So the way they moved north will most likely be the supply route. But who is supplying the Watch and why ?

[Black Crow]

32 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

We still don't know how so many men (the size of the dornish army) were supplied not over the duration of a campaign but on a permanent base. In the west there is the deep Gorge and the highlands , the Kingsroad was build 100 years after the peak. The only known supply route is using Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.

And we do not talk about food here, food can be croped in the Gift. we talk about iron, coal, horses and so on.

From a logical point all the men (with their horses and armors) had to get north either way. So the way they moved north will most likely be the supply route. But who is supplying the Watch and why ?

Don't forget that although the road is obviously a great help in supplying the Wall it also has another and more important function in linking the kingdoms. Think of it as a transcontinental freeway; yes it might be possible to drive on it from San Francisco to New York, but how many people do? Most of the traffic is going from place to place along the road. Or in British terms the A1 links London and Edinburgh but how many travel the length of it, rather than say from Newcastle to York or Peterborough.

[Black Crow]

15 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Agreed, and the Reed's oath has played a big role in a premise I'm contemplating, especially in relation to this:
 

This is just gut intuition, but the idea of every tree on the island being given a face is the sort of thing that doesn't seem especially notable when it's raised in aGoT, but as the narrative goes on, certain things - most Godswoods only having one face, contrasted against the grove north of the Wall being noteworthy to Jon for having several faces, and the stuff in ADWD with blood sacrifice to the weirwood - move me increasingly toward the point of view that the addition of a new 'face' was once an extraordinarily important act, and came coupled with blood sacrifice and magical consequence. 

I don't think this is merely describing a verbal agreement that the CotF hoped men would honor, capped off with a bit of wood carving, nor do I think men's only incentive to stick to the Pact was the threat of war with the CotF--the latter facing a serious (IMO) long-term attrition problem, especially with their greenseers.

In other words, I don't think men broke the Pact, and the CotF worked some dire magical ritual (eg, the Long Night) in response--I think the Pact is the dire magical ritual, its participants magically binding themselves to its terms by speaking the words of the Reeds' oath in the eyes of the gods; if men abide by the Pact they acquire the sorcery of the CotF (which has its own unintended consequences), and if they violate it, they do not face the wrath of the CotF, they face the wrath of the gods/nature.

Edit: For clarity, I specifically believe that the "heroes and chiefs of men" - who probably went on to establish the first human godswoods and kingdoms - that were present on the Isle are the ones bound to the Pact, with it extending to their bloodlines and sworn vassals; humans who have sworn nothing to the weirwood are not bound.

That's fairly explicit in Maester Luwin's history; the Pact held until the Andals tooled up.

Its not quite as simple as that of course, the Andal "invasion" and the pogroms against the tree-huggers were only possible through the active assistance of the local population, but conversely some families held true to the Pact. Whether the tree-huggers recognised the distinction is also uncertain. Have they done so or do all white-eyes look the same?

As to allegiances, again they may not be so straightforward as they at first appear. Were the Andals assisted by the Riverlands families because they offered liberation from sacrifices to the trees? The Starks appear at first sight to be "right" with the Old Gods, but their deadly rivals, the Boltons, appear to be truer to the old ways.

 

[SirArthur]

40 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Don't forget that although the road is obviously a great help in supplying the Wall it also has another and more important function in linking the kingdoms. Think of it as a transcontinental freeway; yes it might be possible to drive on it from San Francisco to New York, but how many people do? Most of the traffic is going from place to place along the road. Or in British terms the A1 links London and Edinburgh but how many travel the length of it, rather than say from Newcastle to York or Peterborough.

Let's compare the voyage to the wall with medieval pilgrimages. If you start in Winterfell it is just some traveling. But if you have to get to the wall from Fairmarket, Casterly Rock or even the Reach it is quite a route. And if you ask me the "pilgrimage" roads predate the Kingsroad. And they are no wild path. Obviously they ignore King's Landing because there is no King's Landing. 

And it is not only people. Iron and coal is heavy. How do you get all the goods to the Wall ? Land in Eastwatch and then move them along the Wall all the way to Castle Black and even further to the shadow tower ? There is quite some logistics involved in manning this huge wall with 10k men. 

Even penal colonys need logistics and transportation. 

 

[Lady Dyanna]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

Alternately, it may be that the Pact isn't broken per se, it's just that the CotF did not foresee what would be the next natural step after men ceased warring with the CotF: they would, instead, begin warring with their fellow men. Except, instead of slaying one another with bronze, they're now drawing on the sorcery and Songs of the CotF for their wars, and making themselves kings of nature--Winter Kings, Gardener Kings, Marsh Kings, etc.

Personally this alternative makes the most sense to me. Or maybe a combination of both. Because, yes, the seasons have been out of whack for probably at least this long, but the consequences haven’t necessarily been consistent.  We had the original long night, but it ended, and we haven’t seen a winter that bad since, at least as far as the reader is told. But now it appears that we are heading towards another. It would seem to me that this would have to be the consequence of something. Not to say that the original problem has necessarily been solved... I guess it’s always possible that it’s more a function of time than continuing magic use. It may very well be that solving the original problem is necessary in order to solve the current one, as I suspect that the solution the first time around was the equivalent of slapping a bandaid on a severed limb. 

 

It seems as if maybe enough time has passed that people have been able to forget. Both how to use the knowledge imparted by the CotF, as well as what the natural consequences were of that use. We see that forgetting evident in the dwindling numbers of the watch. (Although I do agree with you that you would see some natural attrition just due to the conquest itself.) It just seems like something has happened to make the use of those magics prominent again, just like they were back then, and we’re seeing the effects of this. Could this actually be the reason that we see the wildlings beyond the Wall? Not that they refused to kneel, but that they refused to give up magic? Is this what happened at Hardhome? 

[Brad Stark]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

while the Watch itself is fed by huge numbers of captives taken in the wars of the Seven Kingdoms. Then comes Aegon the Conqueror and the Pax Targaryena; all of a sudden the war prisoners dry up along with the wars; and then quite abruptly, without those war prisoners the present dire situation.

I couldn't disagree more.  There were wars before and after the conquest, and no indication they slowed after, but no longstanding central power before.

 Would you send men robbing, raping and pillaging your lands to join a force of the same men, larger than your own army, next door to you, only taking their word and honor (coerced under threat of death) to defend you and not attack or dissert?  If soldiers were captured in large number before, they would have been killed.

In contrast, after the conquest,  you had a much more powerful force, with dragons, that could send large numbers to the Wall without fear of regretting it later.

[SirArthur]

55 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

 Would you send men robbing, raping and pillaging your lands to join a force of the same men, larger than your own army, next door to you, only taking their word and honor (coerced under threat of death) to defend you and not attack or dissert?  

Also I think there are different people in the watch. People like Tarly, second and third sons like Royce, Targaryen loyalists, at some point Blackfyre loyalists and almost Ned Stark. There is Benjen Stark and Maester Aemon. 

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, Brad Stark said:

I couldn't disagree more.  There were wars before and after the conquest, and no indication they slowed after, but no longstanding central power before.

 Would you send men robbing, raping and pillaging your lands to join a force of the same men, larger than your own army, next door to you, only taking their word and honor (coerced under threat of death) to defend you and not attack or dissert?  If soldiers were captured in large number before, they would have been killed.

In contrast, after the conquest,  you had a much more powerful force, with dragons, that could send large numbers to the Wall without fear of regretting it later.

Yet that's exactly what we're repeatedly told in text happened, with kings and princes sent to the Wall with their followers, and those dungeons capable of holding 500 men. By contrast the centralised Targaryen regime is all about retrenchment and consolidation.

[Melifeather]

2 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

I couldn't disagree more.  There were wars before and after the conquest, and no indication they slowed after, but no longstanding central power before.

 Would you send men robbing, raping and pillaging your lands to join a force of the same men, larger than your own army, next door to you, only taking their word and honor (coerced under threat of death) to defend you and not attack or dissert?  If soldiers were captured in large number before, they would have been killed.

In contrast, after the conquest,  you had a much more powerful force, with dragons, that could send large numbers to the Wall without fear of regretting it later.

Any man that leaves the Nights Watch as a fugitive is to be executed upon capture. That was likely the only recourse there was to discourage deserters, but I think the Wall also offered opportunities that some of the commoners didn't have available to them, like regular food and a chance at advancement.

[Matthew.]

3 hours ago, Lady Dyanna said:

Because, yes, the seasons have been out of whack for probably at least this long, but the consequences haven’t necessarily been consistent.  We had the original long night, but it ended, and we haven’t seen a winter that bad since, at least as far as the reader is told. But now it appears that we are heading towards another. It would seem to me that this would have to be the consequence of something.

This is the wall I always run into in attempting to put together a cohesive picture of the magical events of the story, as magic has not returned 'evenly,' but appears to have factors of geography and timing involved.

The picture of magic's waxing and waning, as I understand it:

-The Long Night ends, and there's mostly radio silence from the Others for thousands of years

-Somewhere during that same time period, magic like skinchanging and greenseeing largely becomes the stuff of legend south of the Wall, while concurrently, some culture of skinchanging was maintained continuously north of the Wall (perhaps not, but it's what I'm inferring from Varamyr's prologue), and all of this is also happening while Valyria is ascendant.

-Later, the dragons die, and various associated Valyrian magics also appear to weaken

-Within very recent history, the Others return. Years(?) later, the Stark gift reawakens. Months after that, Dany hatches dragons, and the glass candles begin to burn again, and pyromancers regain their efficacy. 

At least with the issue of geography, it seems reasonable enough to blame the Wall for magic's uneven awakening, but timing is a more difficult question.

As I said to Feather, Dany and the dragons are bigger outliers than the Others and Bran's greenseeing. I had once believed that Dany would eventually go to Asshai and the Shadow, and that these locations were important to "fire magic" re-awakening in the same way that Westeros is important to earth and ice reawakening, yet GRRM says that the characters are unlikely to visit either Asshai or Valyria in the present story, and Asshai in particular is not treated with narrative prominence.

For the above reason, I'm inclined to look for an answer that will also tie fire magic to Westerosi antiquity.
 

3 hours ago, Lady Dyanna said:

It seems as if maybe enough time has passed that people have been able to forget. Both how to use the knowledge imparted by the CotF, as well as what the natural consequences were of that use. 

This is the nearest answer that I can come to as well, and Marwyn's gray sheep speech at least gives us the possibility that magic can be made dormant, and perhaps was done so on purpose; explicitly, with the maesters and the dragons (which, if Marwyn is right, turned out to only be a temporary solution). It may also be that some temporary solution was found for the Others, and for whatever reason, the solution did not hold.

I'm repeating a sentiment I've expressed previously, but I think the Big Mystery with the Others is not what they are, but why they're back: why now? 

[Matthew.]

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Whether the tree-huggers recognised the distinction is also uncertain. Have they done so or do all white-eyes look the same?

Leaf, at the least, seems to view things in a nuanced light, though she also spent some time traveling, so she may not reflect what is typical of the CotF. I'm going to get self-referential here, and repeat that it may no longer be an issue of how Leaf, or Snowylocks, or whomever feel about humanity--they're not facing the wrath of the CotF, they're facing the wrath of the old gods, and it may be that even the CotF can no longer reign it in, even if they were so inclined.
 

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

As to allegiances, again they may not be so straightforward as they at first appear. Were the Andals assisted by the Riverlands families because they offered liberation from sacrifices to the trees? The Starks appear at first sight to be "right" with the Old Gods, but their deadly rivals, the Boltons, appear to be truer to the old ways.

I suspect you're probably right about the Starks. To use the Storm Kings as an example, they are not associated with wielding storms, they are associated with defying them: Storm's End stands against the assaults of nature, and is also warded against beings of magic; shadows, white walkers, and (IMO) Green Men.

At the least, the Starks appear to have actively feared and warded their own crypts. It's a shame that the WB is the only source for the title "Brandon the Breaker, " as I think there's a lot of potential there. Rather than the Night's King breaking his oaths and the Stark in Winterfell dealing with him, perhaps the situation was just the opposite: the Stark in Winterfell is the Oathbreaker, the NK the Oathkeeper, and the NK only started amassing an army in the first place because Brandon the Breaker broke the Pact. 

[JNR]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

I think the Big Mystery with the Others is not what they are, but why they're back: why now?

That's certainly a major question, and you can logically pair it with: "Why didn't they return earlier in history, such as when the Andals invaded?"

Because this of course has always been a major problem with the theory that the CotF created and controlled the Popsicles.  Events such as the obliteration of High Heart, tied to the Andals, probably would have resulted in a Long Night at that point -- a second one to match the second major invasion wave of humans.

[Lady Dyanna]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

I'm repeating a sentiment I've expressed previously, but I think the Big Mystery with the Others is not what they are, but why they're back: why now? 

Gut instinct? In one word, Lyanna. 

What did Ned promise her? Why does Ned seemingly block out the period of time directly surrounding her death? Why were her and Ned both so insistent that she be returned to Winterfell to be laid to rest? Just what exactly might Rhaegar and Lyanna have been involved in?

We know that Rhaegar had his nose buried in old prophecies and was friends with a woods witch. And it likely wasn’t just any witch, but the Ghost of High Heart, a woods witch that had quite a strong reaction to encountering Arya, who is coincidentally said to resemble Lyanna. Did Rhaegar stumble upon some knowledge that was thought to be lost and share it with Lyanna? And if he did, what did they do with what they found out? Did it restart an old cycle that was best left undisturbed? 

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

For the above reason, I'm inclined to look for an answer that will also tie fire magic to Westerosi antiquity.
 

At the very least you have the Targaryens and their dragons in Westeros, but even GRRM has said that at one point there were dragons everywhere. Then we have architecture that seems to match up to what might be found in Valyria. It might not be as prominently placed, but it seems to be riddled into everything. If nothing else there’s a tie in through obsidian. As “frozen fire,” it seems to belong to both ice and fire. 

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

This is the nearest answer that I can come to as well, and Marwyn's gray sheep speech at least gives us the possibility that magic can be made dormant, and perhaps was done so on purpose; explicitly, with the maesters and the dragons (which, if Marwyn is right, turned out to only be a temporary solution). It may also be that some temporary solution was found for the Others, and for whatever reason, the solution did not hold.

This is the best explanation that I have myself. That there was some sort of active suppression of either the magic itself or the knowledge of how to perform it. I suspect that an effort has been made to contain, at the very least the lingering  ill effects, if not the magic itself. I think we see that in the oily black stone in Ashai and the toxity of the Shadowlands. Seems like it might be a parallel to the Curtain of Light and the Wall. Whatever was done worked to contain everything, but it didn’t eliminate it. And it seems like all it really took was to almost stumble upon the correct recipe to get things going again. After that it was like a snowball that picks up speed heading downhill. 

[Matthew.]

1 hour ago, JNR said:

That's certainly a major question, and you can logically pair it with: "Why didn't they return earlier in history, such as when the Andals invaded?"

Because this of course has always been a major problem with the theory that the CotF created and controlled the Popsicles.  Events such as the obliteration of High Heart, tied to the Andals, probably would have resulted in a Long Night at that point -- a second one to match the second major invasion wave of humans.

A fair criticism, though as a point of clarification, my personal perspective is that the Others are created by the magic of the old gods, which comes with some notes:

- At some point, the magic of the CotF also became the magic of the First Men, which makes the FM potential suspects for unleashing the Others

- Even if the CotF created the Others, it does not necessarily follow that they control them; sorcery is a sword without a hilt. To use the example of the Hammer of the Waters, the CotF must have surely felt some of the consequences of unleashing such catastrophic magic.

Personally, I don't believe that the CotF were controlling the Others during the LN, and I don't think they're controlling them now.

Nonetheless, your criticism remains, and under any theoretical scenario where the Others are meant to defend the weirwood, there are only a couple acceptable answers for why the Others were missing in action during the Andal invasion:

- because the FM and CotF bound them at the end of the LN and dared not unleash them again 
- because there were too few lucid greenseers left to work the magic*
- because the timelines and history are wildly, massively off base (I don't favor this point of view)
- because their awakening is contingent upon some bizarre rule of magic, one to which the Andals were not bound.

*In relation to this...Bran places the numbers of the living CotF at a little more than three score. We're told that, even among the CotF, a greenseer is only born "once in a great while," this in the context of a dying race with a low fertility rate. How long do you reckon it has been since a new CotF greenseer was born? Unanswerable, in practice, but I suspect it has been a long, long, long time.
 

1 hour ago, Lady Dyanna said:

Gut instinct? In one word, Lyanna. 

What did Ned promise her? Why does Ned seemingly block out the period of time directly surrounding her death? Why were her and Ned both so insistent that she be returned to Winterfell to be laid to rest? Just what exactly might Rhaegar and Lyanna have been involved in?

I agree with all of the above, and I also question whether or not it was noteworthy that Ned had a statue prepared for her in the crypts.

(I apologize in advance, as I realize a lot of this post has been in the "list of random ideas" format)

Some other triggers I've considered:

- Bloodraven is enthroned
- Craster's bloodline, possibly through his NW father
- Something Mance was doing in his early pursuit to become King Beyond the Wall, assuming that began before the Other's reawakening
- The manner of Rickard and Brandon's death
- The birth of Jon, the birth of Dany, the birth of Bran
- Howland Reed spends a winter at the Isle of Faces
- An oath is sworn/promise is made in the eyes of the gods at the Isle of Faces, a place of great magic; that promise is broken.

[Brad Stark]

6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Yet that's exactly what we're repeatedly told in text happened, with kings and princes sent to the Wall with their followers, and those dungeons capable of holding 500 men. By contrast the centralised Targaryen regime is all about retrenchment and consolidation.

Other than the text saying Harren's brother had 10,000 men do we have anything to suggest more men were sent to the Wall before the conquest?

[Lady Dyanna]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

I also question whether or not it was noteworthy that Ned had a statue prepared for her in the crypts.

  Completely tinfoil, but I’ve found myself wondering if Lyanna didn’t inherit some specific trait (maybe allowing her to become a greener?) that is more common in male Starks, hence her being the only female with a statue. 

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

Some other triggers I've considered:

- Bloodraven is enthroned
- Craster's bloodline, possibly through his NW father
- Something Mance was doing in his early pursuit to become King Beyond the Wall, assuming that began before the Other's reawakening
- The manner of Rickard and Brandon's death
- The birth of Jon, the birth of Dany, the birth of Bran
- Howland Reed spends a winter at the Isle of Faces
- An oath is sworn/promise is made in the eyes of the gods at the Isle of Faces, a place of great magic; that promise is broken.

I’m not certain that some of these are necessarily mutually exclusive. I could see several of these things maybe needing to come together in order to get to the point that we are now. Honestly, out of that list, the main thing that I might be skeptical about is any involvement on Mance’s part. I just don’t remember reading anything that would make me think that. (Having said that, I’m also woefully aware that it’s been over two years since I’ve done a complete reread of the series.) 

I’m also thinking, that although the fact that Jon, Dany, and Bran were born is very important to our story, I see that more as a function of the future roles that they will play. I’m not sure that I have any idea how a birth in and of itself might trigger any of this. It is entirely possible that I’m just being woefully unimaginative though  

Bloodraven being where he is would definitely be an advantage for gaining and passing along knowledge. He’s quite clear that he’s been unable to interfere in the past, but has made no such statements regarding what is happening concurrently or in the future. He might very well have done things or passed along information that could be impacting the current situation. 

As for Craster, I’d imagine that certain bloodlines may well be needed in order for things to continue down whatever path was opened. It seems as if his family might have hit the jackpot it that department. 

Seems to me that the burning of Rickard might be important as well. It’s interesting to note that the Starks use iron to ward their dead. If they are worried about them becoming wights, then why not burn the bodies? That’s what the wildlings do. It makes me wonder what exactly does happen when you burn a Stark? 

And Howland... He’s more conspicuous for his absence than for anything else. I can’t imag that you spend a year on a magical island and walk away without being changed somehow, at the very least learning a few new tricks. He was the guy that was there with Ned and Lyanna in the space of Ned’s missing memories. 

As we’ve already discussed, it seems as if the pact and carving all of those faces might indeed be the thing that set the ball in motion to begin with. And if it was, it’s an issue that has yet to be fully corrected. 

 

I have to wonder... There’s one big difference between the First Men and the Andals and it might be the thing that made all the difference in the world. The Andals do not use magic. They chopped down trees. They burned trees. They used manmade methods, and it didn’t completely kill the trees. There’s even some magic left in the stumps at High Heart. Is it different when you use magic and actually kill the tree? 

Spoiler for show reference 

Spoiler

I find it interesting that after the ritual in which the man was stabbed with obsidian on the show, when the tree is shown later, it has died. Did that death release the spirits of the tree? Is that what actually changes this man? It would be awfully complicated to show spirits being released from a tree and forming their own body out of air on a TV show. They’d need even less direwolf time to make up for the costs of that one!