Brindled men of Sothoryos..?

[Mrs.Grumpy]

What are they ? :dunno:

Here's some quotes about them,

''...mud-and-blood towns of the Basilisks Isles, teeming with escaped slaves, slavers, skinners, whores, hunters, brindled men, and worse..''

''Pale Qartheen, black Summer Islanders, copper-skinned Dothraki, Tyroshi with blue beards, Lamb Men, Jogos Nhai, sullen Braavosi, brindle-skinned half-men from the jungles of Sothoryos''

Any thoughts ? :idea: :dunce:

[Datepalm]

I assume people with sort of striated skin color. We've already got the ghiscari with the multicolored hair, why not an ethnicity with naturally patterened skin? I think it's just a fantasy touch rather than having any significance. (or maybe Valyria fallout?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brindle

[Lost Umber]

perhaps some kind of tribal tattooing.

[Ser Duncan of Flea Bottom]

It's probably tribal tatoos

and the most curious is there are people from Sothoryos

and we have a quote from Groleo who talk about constructing a ship, and he said something about a kind of wood from Sothoryos (I don't remember the name of the wood he talked about), it means people go there to retrieve it or people from there sell it to people from other parts of the world.

If there are people from Sothoryos it means the continent is not empty, there are two ruined cities in the North, but it doesn't mean every side of the continent is devastated or something

[The Mountain That Posts]

Personally, i'd like to learn way more about the south continent as well as Ibben. Enough of the boring Slaver's Bay shit.

[Mrs.Grumpy]

I assume people with sort of striated skin color. We've already got the ghiscari with the multicolored hair, why not an ethnicity with naturally patterened skin? I think it's just a fantasy touch rather than having any significance. (or maybe Valyria fallout?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brindle

It could be. I like it.

I suppose there's some tribes in the northern part of Sothoryos and I hope that GRRM will introduce some of them...

I'm more interest in new locations and cultures :leer:

[AelinorTarg]

I think there are tattoos,but not ritualistic/tribal. We know Sothoryos is well forested,the brindled men are most certainly pigmees,and they use tattoo as a form of camouflage in the dense woods. Being this small,they would be an easy prey.

[Black Wolf Smith]

I would really love to know, but since we are not going to Sothoryos, I don't think we will ever get much about them.

[gonb94]

I would really love to know, but since we are not going to Sothoryos, I don't think we will ever get much about them.

how do you know 'we are not going to sothoryos'?. i would like it if people from the sothoryos, ibben, etc take a larger role on the series

[OGtargaryen]

I always picture Sothoryos as being very similar to the Amazon rainforest. Thousands of square miles of forest very sparsely populated

[The Red Pope]

how do you know 'we are not going to sothoryos'?. i would like it if people from the sothoryos, ibben, etc take a larger role on the series

Sothoryos, Ibben, Yi Ti, Asshai, the Jade Sea, the Summer Islands, the Basilisk Iles, the Shadow Lands and many more. There are simply too many exotic places for stuffing in any detailed information about them all.

They are really just the background scenery of the story along with the non important (lowborn) Westerosi.

[Mrs.Grumpy]

By the way, are they suffering from dwarfism ?

Brindled half-men. Tyrion is called as half-man, so...

I'm so curious right now :dunce:

[thecryptile]

I figured it referred to ape-men with brindled fur when I read the passage.

[Gnivil]

In the African rainforests there are pygmy men, this is most likely a similar thing.

[HeWhoMustNotBeUsernamed]

My guess is that it's just Martin's way of making the world different. We've already seen other phenotypes that don't exist/ are really rare in the real world- like the Targaryens, and Sweets.

But (thinking out loud here) could "brindled half-men" be related to the Children of the Forest? The latter seem to be a human subspecies (even if nobody in-universe knows enough taxonomy to call them that), they're smaller than human norm, and they have skin colors that are more animal than human. Children of the Rain-Forest?

[Stormland's Fury]

Is there a Nordos?

[Mrs.Grumpy]

Now, I think that they are dwarfs with brindled fur/hair.

[HeWhoMustNotBeUsernamed]

Now, I think that they are dwarfs with brindled fur/hair.

Dwarfs or pygmies? Those two things are not the same.

I'm hoping that we'll get to meet some of these guys. Victarion might be headed towards those waters, so we'll have to see.

[HeWhoMustNotBeUsernamed]

So as of the latest backstory book it looks like they're warthog people. Warthog people who are cannibals that eat their dead and practice black magic, and wouldn't be out of place in Lovecraft. 

[Alysanne Donnelly]

The Brindled Men, like the Ibbenese, aren't actually human. Close enough where Brindled Women can have stillbirths of malformed, half-human babies but not close enough to produce a living child. Sort of like... trying to breed lions with jaguars. But because skin and fur don't preserve like bones do, no currently known proto-human could be described as "brindled".

Perhaps it's to liken them to the CotF, who are dappled, or to make them seem more ~exotic~ and animal-like. Just to drive home the "not human" factor.