Heresy 206: of Starks and Walls

[Melony Bloodstar]

3 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Well its the ole Neo and Oracle conversation again.

"Would you have broken the vase had I not said anything about it."

Though I do believe she has lost some of her marbles.

I am still in the dark about how a foreign prophecy ended up in the mouth of a Westrosi witch.Cus the manipulation may not or may have been hers she could have been a pawn.

1.Did she have a true dream or was this dream sent?

2.Could she have needed a pretense to get Jenny to take her to court for another reason and that prophecy was just a cover.Basically,what happened at court other than Jahearys making that match?

3.Was it a way to destabilize the Targs.That match inevitably led to their downfall.

 

It's important to note that according to the Ghost herself, all her prophetic dreams are sent by the old gods (bear in mind she has albinism, too), so we do have the connection to weirwoods and possibly thus Bran or Bloodraven working behind the scenes. It's interesting that the prophecy she's said to have told about the Prince That Was Promised coming from Aerys and Rhaella's line involves a level of interpretation on her part that doesn't occur in her prophecies to the Brotherhood - if indeed she is Jenny of Oldstones' woods witch and the prophecy came organically, then that doesn't really add up.

Jenny herself is a mysterious character, and if there was some kind of manipulation at Summerhall from the Ghost, I'm not sure if her influence can be discarded. The World of Ice and Fire states:

Quote

 Though betrothed to a daughter of House Baratheon of Storm's End, Duncan became enamored of a strange, lovely, and mysterious girl who called herself Jenny of Oldstones in 239 AC, whilst traveling in the riverlands. Though she dwelt half-wild amidst ruins and claimed descent from the long-vanished kings of the First Men, the smallfolk of surrounding villages mocked such tales, insisting that she was only some half-mad peasant girl, and perhaps even a witch.

She seems like she'd fit in more with the free folk beyond the Wall than the other riverlands smallfolk. 

[JNR]

8 hours ago, Black Crow said:

As for Jon, staring at the Wall so closely is not the way to see the form of blocks when the supposed gaps have formed chimneys and the like which can be climbed.

Jon refers to the blocks as block both while climbing the Wall, and from some distance away as he approaches the base of the Wall on foot.  

It seems very hard to imagine naturally-forming cracks so consistent in their vertical and horizontal nature, and so consistently deep, that they could fool Jon for multiple hours as he climbed the Wall. 

8 hours ago, Black Crow said:

That was a very early SSM before he started revealing a different story in text.

It was dated September 2000.  ASOS was published in your country the month before.

So we know that when he wrote it, GRRM had already completed AGOT and ACOK and ASOS, including the various passages I've just mentioned in which Jon observes the Wall's blocks.

[Matthew.]

12 hours ago, JNR said:

However, we do know that the very base of the Wall is made of blocks too -- not just the middle or top -- because:

Well, this is why I reference Brandon the Builder's "foundation blocks" in quotes; Jon is conveying history as he understands it, which is not necessarily history as it happened. When Jon speaks of BtB laying foundation blocks, is this history as it has been contextualized by the maesters? Oral tradition? Something that is known because one can personally see the seams of BtB's blocks in the tunnels?

It may very well be the latter, but the fact that it is unconfirmed leaves wiggle room for certain alternatives.

I am making a mental distinction between Brandon's Anti-Magic Wall, and the Watch's anti-Wildling Wall, with an assumption that the former exists beneath and within the other; in short, it may not just be that the modern Wall has been built atop Brandon's Wall, but that blocks were also placed around it to extend its width before it built upward.

For that reason, I am not disinclined toward theories that Brandon's Wall was a thing that grew forth via sorcery, though I think that process would have been extraordinary slow--again, using the example of BR's cave, the earliest magical ward need only be a thing that the wights and Others cannot cross.

Ultimately, I'm not sure whether the actual engineering mechanics matter - whether Brandon 'grew' his Wall, or placed spell-forged foundation blocks - because the core premise I'm interested in has more to do with the Black Gate (which I believe to be the oldest part of the Wall), the Nightfort, and the weirwoods that are intruding into the Nightfort's structure; for me, the appeal of Brandon 'growing' the Wall lay in the idea of the Wall being "fed" sacrifices.

[Matthew.]

4 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

I am still in the dark about how a foreign prophecy ended up in the mouth of a Westrosi witch.

A fair question, and I can't shake a gut feeling that all of this PtwP business ties more closely to Westeros than it may first appear.

I've probably thrown these things out into the ether too much recently, but I suspect they're parts of an incomplete puzzle:

-Moat Cailin, a structure of volcanic rock with blocks the size of cottages, and quite possibly older than the Hammer of the Waters. Did the same culture that was still building ringforts after the Pact build something like Moat Cailin before the Pact?

-House Dayne, a House that is older than Valyria with Valyrian features: purple eyes, and even silver hair, in the case of Ser Gerold. This may be nothing more than the result of House Dayne intermarrying with Valyrians at some point - after all, all of those Westerosi Valyrian steel swords imply a certain amount of cultural interaction - but it may be that the Dayne's physical features are as ancient as their House.

-Dragonsteel, possibly pre-dating Valyria

I'm not sure what it all adds up to, but I do think there's something there.

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, Melony Bloodstar said:

It's important to note that according to the Ghost herself, all her prophetic dreams are sent by the old gods (bear in mind she has albinism, too), so we do have the connection to weirwoods and possibly thus Bran or Bloodraven working behind the scenes. It's interesting that the prophecy she's said to have told about the Prince That Was Promised coming from Aerys and Rhaella's line involves a level of interpretation on her part that doesn't occur in her prophecies to the Brotherhood - if indeed she is Jenny of Oldstones' woods witch and the prophecy came organically, then that doesn't really add up.

Jenny herself is a mysterious character, and if there was some kind of manipulation at Summerhall from the Ghost, I'm not sure if her influence can be discarded. The World of Ice and Fire states:

She seems like she'd fit in more with the free folk beyond the Wall than the other riverlands smallfolk. 

The following is just my theory...

The first time the Others came was the Long Night. I theorize they were the wildlings and of Ironborn descent. The Children, along with any surviving Houses, allied with the Starks, warred against the Ironborn, imprisoned them, and began construction of the Wall using the defeated Ironborn as their slave labor. The Wall was a physical barrier that worked until the Nights King began sacrificing and creating white walkers again. The Lord of Winterfell and the King Beyond the Wall banded together to take him down. I suspect the Nights King and the Grey King were the same person. They sealed him up into a cell down in the well of the NIghtfort, and placed wards upon him and his ice magic.

The "Others" attacked again in the form of Harren the Black, another Ironborn that built Harrenhal by clear cutting forests of weirwoods, destroying the homes and greenseers of the Children, and sent the survivors fleeing for safety beyond the Wall. The Children of the Forest turned to fire magic and summoned Aegon the Conqueror to save them. This is how the Ghost of High Heart is connected to and knowledgeable of the Targaryens. She either has greendreams like JoJen, or she received information from Bloodraven.

Speaking of Bloodraven, I think he's responsible for the repeating cycles. I think it's a delaying tactic until the right people are in the right place. He needed Bran, and probably Jon, to be where they are now in the current story in order to defeat the Others for the final time and set things back into their natural course. If you've seen the movie Dr Strange you would understand what I'm talking about with regards to the time loops. Dormammu couldn't defeat Dr Strange, because using the Eye of Aggamotto he was able to put time in a continuous loop, so every time Dormammu thought he had killed Dr Strange, he came back again and the time loop repeated over and over until Dormammu gave up. Bloodraven is our Dr Strange until he can put Bran in as his replacement.

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

Well, this is why I reference Brandon the Builder's "foundation blocks" in quotes; Jon is conveying history as he understands it, which is not necessarily history as it happened. When Jon speaks of BtB laying foundation blocks, is this history as it has been contextualized by the maesters? Oral tradition? Something that is known because one can personally see the seams of BtB's blocks in the tunnels?

It may very well be the latter, but the fact that it is unconfirmed leaves wiggle room for certain alternatives.

I am making a mental distinction between Brandon's Anti-Magic Wall, and the Watch's anti-Wildling Wall, with an assumption that the former exists beneath and within the other; in short, it may not just be that the modern Wall has been built atop Brandon's Wall, but that blocks were also placed around it to extend its width before it built upward.

For that reason, I am not disinclined toward theories that Brandon's Wall was a thing that grew forth via sorcery, though I think that process would have been extraordinary slow--again, using the example of BR's cave, the earliest magical ward need only be a thing that the wights and Others cannot cross.

Ultimately, I'm not sure whether the actual engineering mechanics matter - whether Brandon 'grew' his Wall, or placed spell-forged foundation blocks - because the core premise I'm interested in has more to do with the Black Gate (which I believe to be the oldest part of the Wall), the Nightfort, and the weirwoods that are intruding into the Nightfort's structure; for me, the appeal of Brandon 'growing' the Wall lay in the idea of the Wall being "fed" sacrifices.

This is actually fairly close to what I have been proposing. The Wall started out as a physical barrier, which was enough, because in order to create white walkers you have to sacrifice Children of the Forest. If the wildlings/Ironborn were contained in prison cells and them used as slave labor, there was no need to contain magic if they didn't have access to Children to sacrifice. I don't think magic was contained and warded until the Nights King was overthrown and locked in a cell down in the well of the Nightfort. Magic would have been confined to the Wall when this happened and could have contributed to the building after that.

[Frey family reunion]

3 hours ago, Melony Bloodstar said:

It's important to note that according to the Ghost herself, all her prophetic dreams are sent by the old gods (bear in mind she has albinism, too), so we do have the connection to weirwoods and possibly thus Bran or Bloodraven working behind the scenes. It's interesting that the prophecy she's said to have told about the Prince That Was Promised coming from Aerys and Rhaella's line involves a level of interpretation on her part that doesn't occur in her prophecies to the Brotherhood - if indeed she is Jenny of Oldstones' woods witch and the prophecy came organically, then that doesn't really add up.

Jenny herself is a mysterious character, and if there was some kind of manipulation at Summerhall from the Ghost, I'm not sure if her influence can be discarded. The World of Ice and Fire states:

She seems like she'd fit in more with the free folk beyond the Wall than the other riverlands smallfolk. 

I don't think we have any reason to believe that Jenny wasn't from the riverlands.  It appears that the nearest village to Oldstones may be Sevenstreams, where Tom O' Sevenstreams is from.  And speaking of Oldstones:

Quote

Fallen leaves lay thick upon the ground, like soldiers after some great slaughter.  A man in patched, faded greens was sitting crosslegged atop a weathered stone sepulcher, fingering the strings of a woodharp.  The music was soft and sad.  Mettett knew the song.  High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts ...

"Get off there," Merrett said.  "You're sitting on a king."

"Old Tristifer don't mind my bony arse.  The Hammer of Justice , they called him.  Been a long while since he heard any new songs."  The outlaw hopped down.  Trim and slim, he had a narrow face and foxy features, but his mouth was so wide that his smile seemed to touch his ears.  A few strands of thin brown hair were blowing across his brow.  He pushed them back with his free hand.  "Do you remember me, my lord?"

"No." Merrett frowned.  "Why would I?"

"I sang at your daughter's wedding.  And passing well, I thought.  That Pate she married was a cousin.  We're all cousins in Sevenstreams...

My guess is Jenny was also from Sevenstreams, where they all appear to be interrelated.  In other words a very insular community that is keeping a bloodline fairly close together.  And if Jenny is from Sevenstreams, and if she claims to be descended from First Men kings, then the my guess is we have a group of people who at least lay claim to having "kingsblood". 

And interestingly enough old Tom seems to have some similar physical characteristics to our mysterious Mad Mouse:

Quote

They were men afoot, travel-stained and mud-specked.  She knew the signer by the wood-harp he cradled against his jerkin, as a mother might cradle a babe.  A small man, fifty from the look of him, he had a big mouth, a sharp nose, and thinning brown hair.  His faded greens were mended here and there with old leather patches, and he wore a brace of throwing knives on his hip and a woodman's axe slung across his back.

Quote

Trim and slim, he had a narrow face and foxy features, but his mouth was so wide that his smile seemed to touch his ears.  A few strands of thin brown hair were blowing across his brow

And then Ser Shadrich:

Quote

Ser Shadrich was a wiry, fox-faced man with a sharp nose and a shock of orange hair, mounted on a rangy chestnut courser.  Though he could not have been more than five foot two, he had a cocksure manner.

 

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, Matthew. said:

I've probably thrown these things out into the ether too much recently, but I suspect they're parts of an incomplete puzzle:

-Moat Cailin, a structure of volcanic rock with blocks the size of cottages, and quite possibly older than the Hammer of the Waters. Did the same culture that was still building ringforts after the Pact build something like Moat Cailin before the Pact?

 

And the Wall?

[Melifeather]

58 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

I don't think we have any reason to believe that Jenny wasn't from the riverlands.  It appears that the nearest village to Oldstones may be Sevenstreams, where Tom O' Sevenstreams is from.  And speaking of Oldstones:

My guess is Jenny was also from Sevenstreams, where they all appear to be interrelated.  In other words a very insular community that is keeping a bloodline fairly close together.  And if Jenny is from Sevenstreams, and if she claims to be descended from First Men kings, then the my guess is we have a group of people who at least lay claim to having "kingsblood". 

And interestingly enough old Tom seems to have some similar physical characteristics to our mysterious Mad Mouse:

And then Ser Shadrich:

 

I'm much more interested in the passage you've shared about Tristifer, because there are a lot of echoes that call to mind Lyanna - who went missing in the Riverlands. Interestingly Jenny of Oldstones married a knight (Ser Duncan) rather than a prince, even though she may have been a descendant of royal Mudd blood. I have posited that Lyanna was rescued from her kidnappers by a knight - an event which was repeated by Arya and Sandor even if it wasn't so much as a rescue than another kidnapping. Then there's Myrcella who was a willing conspirator with Ser Arys only to be attacked by another knight, Ser Gerold Dayne aka Darkstar. Long story short, Jenny of Oldstones seems to be a previous playing out of the "maiden abduction" time loop.

I also like that Tristifer Mudd had the nickname: Hammer of Justice, which seems to be an echo of the hammer of waters - which also came down upon the Neck.

All this leads me back to Ser Shadrich - who I believe is just another repeat of the Knight of the Laughing Tree in the time loop. He's already told Brienne he's searching for Sansa, and the last time we read about him he's employed by Littlefinger at the Vale. I think we can expect him to either attempt to abduct Sansa or help her get away.

[Black Crow]

16 hours ago, JNR said:

I think the Wall grew specifically to cope with the free folk,

Nah. 

In the first place Hadrian's Wall was built to cope with wildlings and managed perfectly well at 10 feet high. Raiding parties could and did try to get over and if they succeeded were dealt with, as Sir Arthur says by the real garrison sitting behind it as a mobile reaction force and if necessary by larger forces.

Now sure you can build the wall higher, but the effort and resources far outweigh the benefit. Why put thousands of men to working on the Wall when a couple of hundred roaming about behind it will do a far better job of stopping unwanted visitors?

Look for a moment at the size and scale of the job. Hadrian's wall or at least the wall face is constructed from blocks of stone approximately a foot and a half a  square. They are manageable. The blocks of Ice which Jon thinks he's seeing have got to be at least 2 metres square judging by the chimneys. That's not only big and unmanageable and likely to weld itself to anything that it touches, but incredibly heavy. Without magic to hold it up the Wall is literally going to crush itself. How is it going to be sourced and transported and then finally how is it going to be raised up? Where are the ramps and how many tens of thousands are going to die - with no evidence or traditions of their passing or sacrifice? We're not just talking about one block or even a layer of blocks. Each one has to be duplicated for 300 miles.

Great lore on the other hand...

[Melifeather]

24 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Nah. 

In the first place Hadrian's Wall was built to cope with wildlings and managed perfectly well at 10 feet high. Raiding parties could and did try to get over and if they succeeded were dealt with, as Sir Arthur says by the real garrison sitting behind it as a mobile reaction force and if necessary by larger forces.

Now sure you can build the wall higher, but the effort and resources far outweigh the benefit. Why put thousands of men to working on the Wall when a couple of hundred roaming about behind it will do a far better job of stopping unwanted visitors?

Look for a moment at the size and scale of the job. Hadrian's wall or at least the wall face is constructed from blocks of stone approximately a foot and a half a  square. They are manageable. The blocks of Ice which Jon thinks he's seeing have got to be at least 2 metres square judging by the chimneys. That's not only big and unmanageable and likely to weld itself to anything that it touches, but incredibly heavy. Without magic to hold it up the Wall is literally going to crush itself. How is it going to be sourced and transported and then finally how is it going to be raised up? Where are the ramps and how many tens of thousands are going to die - with no evidence or traditions of their passing or sacrifice? We're not just talking about one block or even a layer of blocks. Each one has to be duplicated for 300 miles.

Great lore on the other hand...

Didn't GRRM say something to the effect that he made the Wall too big?

The Nights Watch could have set the foundation and built it up to the 10 feet high, but after the Nights King was overthrown and magic contained and warded within the Wall, then it likely began to miraculously grow. The Nights Watch may have noticed irregularities as the ice was growing, so they made patches and repairs and added layers of gravel, and the darn thing just kept going and going, and growing and growing...wash, rinse, and repeat.

[Brad Stark]

If the Wall defended against wildlings,  they are the least of threats.  A Wall between any of the 7 kingdoms makes more sense to stop armies, not a few poorly organized and equipped raiders. 

Which brings up the question of why there isn't more North of the Wall.  As much as Hardhome as a Valaryian invasion open interesting possibilities,  I think the Children makes more sense.  They see civilization as a threat and prevent it from getting too developed.  This creates the perfect place for people who don't want to live under rulers.

[Black Crow]

7 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Didn't GRRM say something to the effect that he made the Wall too big?

The Mummers version was filmed in a whitewashed quarry, which as I recall was 300 foot deep and on looking up GRRM was then said to have remarked he had made the Wall too high. I can't say this was true as I wasn't there, but it sounds plausible.

[Black Crow]

1 minute ago, Brad Stark said:

If the Wall defended against wildlings,  they are the least of threats.  A Wall between any of the 7 kingdoms makes more sense to stop armies, not a few poorly organized and equipped raiders. 

Which brings up the question of why there isn't more North of the Wall.  As much as Hardhome as a Valaryian invasion open interesting possibilities,  I think the Children makes more sense.  They see civilization as a threat and prevent it from getting too developed.  This creates the perfect place for people who don't want to live under rulers.

An old Heresy, but a good one.

[SirArthur]

57 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Didn't GRRM say something to the effect that he made the Wall too big?

You can say what you want about the purpose of the Wall. But it certainly won't stop any Wildlings from crossing the west coast. 

[Black Crow]

Just to return to this one:

Oh, and he did mention that he put lots of legends into the books such as Bran the Builder. Bran the builder is supposed to have built the Wall, Winterfell, and Storms End. GRRM mentioned that he has become a legend so that people will look at a structure and say "wow, it must have been built by Bran the Builder" when it actually was not. This is GRRM's attempt on creating a world with myths and legends so if at some point you see, "They say it was built by Bran the Builder or Lann the Clever" realize that its part of the mythos.

 If time is permiting would you mind giving a brief description on how the wall was constructed?

Much of those details are lost in the mists of time and legend. No one can even say for certain if Brandon the Builder ever lived. He is as remote from the time of the novels as Noah and Gilgamesh are from our own time. But one thing I will say, for what it's worth -- more than ice went into the raising of the Wall. Remember, these are "fantasy" novels

That doesn't sound man-made at all and we also have this unconsidered trifle from Bran:

Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had raised Winterfell, and some said the Wall.

Bob the Builder is Bran's most famous ancestor, yet he is clearly sceptical or at least unconvinced he was responsible for the Wall.

Why?

Is it because he has been told that however implausibly ordinary men built it by conventional means?

or

Is it because the truth is "lost in the mists of time and legend" and far from having been built by the stout lads of the Nights Watch over millenia, or cast up by Bob the Builder and his tree-hugging mates in five minutes flat, it is actually much, much older and up there with Moat Cailin and some of the other mysterious ruins, and that all we get are the myths and legends commonly attached to said mysterious structures by men trying to explain something they know nothing about - such as the giants who supposedly built Stonehenge.

Come to that, in considering the timelines we've noted how GRRM has pulled the arrival of the Andals back from 4-6,000 years to a much more manageable 1,500-2,000 years tops. Accepting this to be so the natural next step is to shuffle up the older dates to correspond, ie; if the Wall, according to legend was built 2,000 years before the Andals tooled up then logically it might have been built less than 4,000 years ago rather than 8,000 years ago. But what if it was as old as they say and that the Wall and Moat Cailin were built by an earlier pre-Dawn civilisation, now vanished

[wolfmaid7]

9 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

I agree that the Watch built the Wall specifically to keep the wildlings contained. The ice magic was sealed and warded in the Nightfort’s well. That’s why there weren’t any white walkers.

Wait huh? To keep Wildings out? I thought per GRRM the Wall took 100s of yrs to build and 1000s to reach its current height. This tells me that it wasn't meant to be a physical barrier against humans.

They could could scale that easy and still continued to do so at its current height.

Also, and i don't think Mel is BSing when she said a great lore built it and spells are interwoven in it.That doesn't sound like the spell is emanating from a source to cover the Wall.

 

6 hours ago, Melony Bloodstar said:

It's important to note that according to the Ghost herself, all her prophetic dreams are sent by the old gods (bear in mind she has albinism, too), so we do have the connection to weirwoods and possibly thus Bran or Bloodraven working behind the scenes. It's interesting that the prophecy she's said to have told about the Prince That Was Promised coming from Aerys and Rhaella's line involves a level of interpretation on her part that doesn't occur in her prophecies to the Brotherhood - if indeed she is Jenny of Oldstones' woods witch and the prophecy came organically, then that doesn't really add up.

Jenny herself is a mysterious character, and if there was some kind of manipulation at Summerhall from the Ghost, I'm not sure if her influence can be discarded. The World of Ice and Fire states:

She seems like she'd fit in more with the free folk beyond the Wall than the other riverlands smallfolk. 

I like to angle of looking into Jenny more you are right seeing as she brought the woods witch to court we can't dismiss her having a hand other than just bringing the witch on an outing.

Her involvement with her could very well be more than just "being a friend"

 

5 hours ago, Matthew. said:

A fair question, and I can't shake a gut feeling that all of this PtwP business ties more closely to Westeros than it may first appear.

I've probably thrown these things out into the ether too much recently, but I suspect they're parts of an incomplete puzzle:

-Moat Cailin, a structure of volcanic rock with blocks the size of cottages, and quite possibly older than the Hammer of the Waters. Did the same culture that was still building ringforts after the Pact build something like Moat Cailin before the Pact?

-House Dayne, a House that is older than Valyria with Valyrian features: purple eyes, and even silver hair, in the case of Ser Gerold. This may be nothing more than the result of House Dayne intermarrying with Valyrians at some point - after all, all of those Westerosi Valyrian steel swords imply a certain amount of cultural interaction - but it may be that the Dayne's physical features are as ancient as their House.

-Dragonsteel, possibly pre-dating Valyria

I'm not sure what it all adds up to, but I do think there's something there.

Yeah you and me both.It could be a prophecy as you say that started in Westeros.There is enough there to speculate for sure.We know that the main migration to Westeros wasn't the first. The WB tells us that the FM weren't really the first.So it could be that these said people had a more amicable relationship with the COTF.

[Black Crow]

4 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Wait huh? To keep Wildings out? I thought per GRRM the Wall took 100s of yrs to build and 1000s to reach its current height. This tells me that it wasn't meant to be a physical barrier against humans.

They could could scale that easy and still continued to do so at its current height.

Also, and i don't think Mel is BSing when she said a great lore built it and spells are interwoven in it.That doesn't sound like the spell is emanating from a source to cover the Wall.

We've told from the beginning that the Wall was built to keep out the Others, the wildlings came later and Mormont rails at the fact the Watch has forgotten that

[JNR]

7 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Well, this is why I reference Brandon the Builder's "foundation blocks" in quotes; Jon is conveying history as he understands it, which is not necessarily history as it happened.

Jon is conveying that he sees the Wall's base is made of blocks, which he interprets as having been laid by Brandon the Builder because of the myths (which may or may not be true).  

But the blocks (whatever their origin) are objectively there, just as they are while Jon is climbing.

7 hours ago, Matthew. said:

for me, the appeal of Brandon 'growing' the Wall lay in the idea of the Wall being "fed" sacrifices.

I don't think the evidence the Wall was fed sacrifices is nearly as good as the evidence the Wall is made of blocks.  

We've directly seen the blocks, beyond any conceivable doubt, through Jon's eyes as he climbed the Wall.  The concept of sacrifices having been used to build the Wall emerges purely from Ygritte's vague remark about the Wall being made of blood.  Even the tale of the Night's King says the sacrifies were to the Others, not for the Wall, and as for the Black Gate, it is never associated in any sense with any sacrifices.

[JNR]

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

How is it going to be sourced and transported and then finally how is it going to be raised up?

This reminds me of similar arguments to the effect that aliens must have built the pyramids. The answer is that humans can accomplish quite a lot, and have. 

To reiterate, though, it's plain to me that the Wall has a magical aspect; we've seen it -- the Black Gate.  It almost certainly also has a ward that works in a similar way to the ward in the cave of the CotF.  But neither of these aspects have to do with the way the physical Wall was built over thousands of years.

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Great lore on the other hand...

...is the explanation given by Melisandre, who is, I'm afraid, not a very reliable or skilled analyst of the world.

GRRM, on the other hand, literally created the world, and is our world's leading authority on it.  

So when he tells us point blank, with no ambiguity, that the Wall required hundreds of years to complete, and thousands to reach its present height, I think we should accept that authority as conclusive.

If we choose to say "Nah," to GRRM, and put Melisandre in his place as our primary authority, we are perhaps kidding ourselves a tad.