HERESY 50

[Neumond]

Imaginations running wild, I guess. You replied to my unedited post. As you can see I´ve catched myself as going overboard. ;)

Thank you all for your effort. Sadly, I have to go now. Have a nice day!

[Bran Vras]

I was reading the discussion following my contribution and I came across this statement.

Nobody has yet come up with a convincing answer to the authorship of the infamous pink letter, but Mance has certainly figured as a candidate. after all we don't know what he's really up to and why.

I just want to say that I am prepared to bet money not on the fact that Mance wrote the letter, but on the fact that he put his words into it. The (non extravagant) mechanism by which he could do that is discussed in my project. Think about this: who could have sent the raven? Mance's reasons for doing so are also discussed – this is more speculative. This is the last part of the project and it relies on the understanding accumulated in the previous parts. Unfortunately the discussion can not be summarized shortly.

But neither the escape of "Arya", nor the manipulation of the letter is the real accomplishment of Mance, Rowan, Holly, Myrtle, Willow, Squirrel and Frenya in Winterfell. A fabulous trick has been done under everyone's nose. This took me a while to understand and answers Black Crow's query completely, in my opinion.

Anyone else think that Mance went to Winterfell via the Black Gate rather then scaling the Wall?

It's unlikely since Mance said specifically where he crossed the Wall: at Longbarrow, not far from Eastwatch. No need to mention that if he wanted to hide how he crossed. It's even an interesting detail, that I also discussed in my project.

[King Tyrion VIII]

As to the Horn itself, look no further than H49, where we started discussing it in length once more. As to the Midgard snake--well, time for me to reiterate one of my theories:

Bloodraven = Odin (wise, uses ravens, linked to a tree)

Bran = Fenrir (great wolf, son of Loki, kills Odin during Ragnarok)*

Arya = Hel (mistress of death, daughter of Loki)

Mance = Thor (god of thunder and lightning, protector of Midgard, son of Odin, kills and gets killed by the Jormungandr during Ragnarok)**

Jon = Jormungandr (the World Snake of Midgard; son of Loki; holds tail in its mouth; once he lets go of his tail, Ragnarok begins; kills and gets killed by Thor during Ragnarok; sometimes described as an Ice Serpent)***

Ned = Loki (father of Jormungandr, Hel, and Fenrir; god of mischief; dies during the Ragnarok)****

*While Bran won't be killing BR, he is replacing him, and BR will likely let himself pass into the trees once he knows that Bran is ready to assume his role--hence Bran "killing" him

**Which ties into my (and others) theories about Mance and Bloodraven being related--and regardless of blood relations, there is a reason why Mance wheres a raven-helm, which I say ties him with BR in some fashion

***Which is, for me at least, where the significance of Rhaegar being Jon's father comes from--it makes Jon the Ice Dragon, or, in other terms, the Ice Serpent

****While I am fully aware that Littlefinger is the actual Loki of the series, Ned fits the role of an unwilling Loki: he is the father (slash father-figure) of the Hel, Fenrir, and Jormungandr figures, and it is his involvement in things that causes the beginnings of Ice and Fire's Ragnarok--if he didn't meddle in the Lannister's affairs, a lot of the chaos that has happened wouldn't have

I like this alot. I can tell you guys have put alot of work into your theories.

[King Tyrion VIII]

1) Jon is the Ice Dragon (or Serpent, if you'd prefer)

2) Jon's "death" at the end of Dance is him finally losing his grip on reality and himself (Jormungandr literally loses his grip on himself)

3) Jon's loss of grip on himself is what will be the official start of Winter* (Jormungandr letting go of his tail signals the beginning of Ragnarok)

4) Jon and Mance are on an inevitable collision course with each other (Jormungandr and Thor fight to the death during Ragnarok)

*Winter (capitalized) should not be confused with winter (lowercase). Winter (lowercase) is the simple season, which would have come regardless of the above; Winter (capitalized) is Ice and Fire's version of Ragnarok.

That's why Winter arrived after Jon's "death". Winter is come= Ragnarok has started!

[alienarea]

Maybe he went through with Gared and the she-wolf? :dunno:

And Benjen ...

I have a suspicion that Mance and Benjen know each other better than either of them confesses. And Benjen is conveniently in Winterfell when the direwolf mother is found.

Maybe wishful thinking: if Benjen and Mance know each other and Benjen is the Hooded Man ...

[Black Crow]

Nah, Benjen turned up later, for the party to greet King Robert.

[alienarea]

Nah, Benjen turned up later, for the party to greet King Robert.

Yes, you're right. But he could have been bringing the direwolf mother, couldn't he?

[Black Crow]

Yes, you're right. But he could have been bringing the direwolf mother, couldn't he?

The sequence of events was that they went out to cut Gared's head off and found the direwolf pups on the way home. Once they were back Ned went off to clean his sword in the godswood, where Catelyn found him to tell him that the King was coming. Ned expresses himself and says they had better send to the Wall to fetch Benjen, using Maester Luwin's swiftest bird. We're not told how long after that Robert actually arrived in Winterfell but afterwards Benjen, Jon and Tyrion took at least three weeks to get up to the Wall after leaving Winterfell. I dare say that if he was riding hard and alone Benjen may have come down faster, but even so there must have been at least two weeks if not three separating the discovery of the pups and Benjen's arrival.

[Hrafntýr]

On the direwolf mother: really? Bring her? What are folks envisioning here, a great big crate hauled across the Wall down to the woods near Winterfell? [Or: A magical spell to shrink her down to pocket size?]

Unless I'm missing something obvious, it seems to me that the only way that a full-grown direwolf could be intentionally delivered to the Starks would be via warging. And I'm not a person who loves every so-and-so is going to warg so-and-so theory. But for real: unless we want to see this as Fate, the wildest sort of synchronicity, how else could a direwolf be so delivered, and also killed shortly before the arrival of the Starks? I see a skinchanger taking her form to bring her near the destination, then slipping into the elk or whatever left that antler in her throat to kill her. Now, it may be that Gared had some role in this, and was himself warged along the way (maybe something to do with crossing at the Night Fort, though the logistics of warging more than one being at a time escape me---still, this, i.e. being warged, and not his encounter with the WWs might explain Ned's comment: "The poor man was half mad. Something had put a fear in him so deep that my words could not reach him."

In any event, I'm suggesting that it's hard to imagine how the WWs might have delivered the direwolves to the Starks, as was suggested above. Though maybe I'm just being dense, and there's some more obvious mode of delivering a full-grown direwolf and leaving her dead with an antler in her throat for the Starks to find.

[Black Crow]

Essentially its down to the sequence of events and a some curious anomalies in the story. It opens with Ser Waymar and Will getting scragged by Craster's boys, but Gared escapes. How? On his horse is the obvious answer but how then does he get over the Wall all on his own, and why is he picked up near Winterfell at the same time as the direwolf?

I'm not convinced by the warging business; as with the inevitable suggestions that Bloodraven has his paws all over it, I think that this is an over-used excuse for anything that doesn't have an obvious explanation. "It wasn't me officer, something made me do it."

Linking the events simply makes so much sense. There were six of Craster's boys in the ambush, when all we've seen since was the one pinked by Sam. So what were they up to? Were they just hunting or did Ser Waymar accidentally cross their path? In theory its possible that the direwolf may have found its way around the gorge by the Bridge of Skulls, but that secret portal under the Nightfort is so much more in keeping with what's happening and it needs a man of the Nights Watch to say the words. Giving Gared his life in return for taking the direwolf carrying those pups (and in particular the one with a snow white coat and blood-red eyes) through the portal and down to Winterfell makes a lot of sense to us as readers, but wouldn't make any sense to Ned Stark.

Just a final thought. There's no mention of a dead stag anywhere near the direwolf, yet what killed it was "A foot of shattered antler, tines snapped off," Was there ever a stag or was it an antler dagger which Gared used to kill it?

[wolfmaid7]

Maybe she was led,i am always curious at how many occassions Jon found Ghost looking up at the Moon.Then in ADWD we see a scene where from Ghost's point of view the Moon was speaking to him,but from Jon's it was Mormont's crow. What if the same type of thing happened;what if she too was listning to the Moon.In which case she could have met someone who invited her past the wall.

[Hrafntýr]

Essentially its down to the sequence of events and a some curious anomalies in the story. It opens with Ser Waymar and Will getting scragged by Craster's boys, but Gared escapes. How? On his horse is the obvious answer but how then does he get over the Wall all on his own, and why is he picked up near Winterfell at the same time as the direwolf?

I'm not convinced by the warging business; as with the inevitable suggestions that Bloodraven has his paws all over it, I think that this is an over-used excuse for anything that doesn't have an obvious explanation. "It wasn't me officer, something made me do it."

Linking the events simply makes so much sense. There were six of Craster's boys in the ambush, when all we've seen since was the one pinked by Sam. So what were they up to? Were they just hunting or did Ser Waymar accidentally cross their path? In theory its possible that the direwolf may have found its way around the gorge by the Bridge of Skulls, but that secret portal under the Nightfort is so much more in keeping with what's happening and it needs a man of the Nights Watch to say the words. Giving Gared his life in return for taking the direwolf carrying those pups (and in particular the one with a snow white coat and blood-red eyes) through the portal and down to Winterfell makes a lot of sense to us as readers, but wouldn't make any sense to Ned Stark.

Just a final thought. There's no mention of a dead stag anywhere near the direwolf, yet what killed it was "A foot of shattered antler, tines snapped off," Was there ever a stag or was it an antler dagger which Gared used to kill it?

As I said, I don't like to use warging as an explanation for everything unexplained, either. But I still, really and truly, can't for the life of me figure out how a single man would manage to bring a direwolf all that distance. Unless the direwolf were willing. Even if she were already dead and he were transporting a carcass and 6 pups, how would he manage? And in the condition he was in (half-mad, beyond the reach of words)? I repeat: I'm not trying to propose another BR is responsible for everything theory. I'm just trying to sort out what is clearly a very, very important part of this story: how the direwolves came into the lives of the Starks. I'm open to it being the WW, but I just can't figure out how they'd actually manage to do that.

wolfmaid7: I like the idea of the direwolf being invited/led by something.

[Black Crow]

I'm assuming the direwolf was willing, or perhaps more likely had effectively been hypnotised, programmed, bewitched or whatever and having been convoyed to the wall by Craster's boys, it then fell to Gared to take it through the portal and kill it near Winterfell.

[Black Crow]

Just by the by, before I slope off to bed, when we were discussing the portal at one point it was realised that although there's that long winding stair going deep into the earth under the Nightfort, there's no mention anywhere of what the other side of the portal looks like, or indeed where it is, other than somewhere beyond the Wall.

[Maglor78]

"I'm about a quarter of the way done" at the 1:00 mark.

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Month/2013/04/

First off this pretty much confirms that very little has been written since leftover chapters from Dance were about 200 pages and 1/4 of a 1500 page book is 375 pages. This also points to the scene with Jon in the forest GRRM had mentioned in another recent interview as being near the beinging of TWOW. Anyways, this is a disapointing amount of progress. I would love to see someone do the math to figure out when the book will be out based on his current slow progress.

[Tyryan Lannister]

"I'm about a quarter of the way done" at the 1:00 mark.

http://www.westeros..../Month/2013/04/

First off this pretty much confirms that very little has been written since leftover chapters from Dance were about 200 pages and 1/4 of a 1500 page book is 375 pages. This also points to the scene with Jon in the forest GRRM had mentioned in another recent interview as being near the beinging of TWOW. Anyways, this is a disapointing amount of progress. I would love to see someone do the math to figure out when the book will be out based on his current slow progress.

Not necessarily--the way the Martin writes is 4-5 Jon chapters, then 4-5 Arya, then a few Brans, 3-4 Dany's, the three Davos, jump over to Tyrion for 4 chapters, back to Jon for a while, "hmm, really should get working on Jaime", etc. As such, if, after the Dance climax chapters, Martin went to work on Jon right away, the chapter he was referencing could be Jon V or VI, which could potentially put it at somewhere near the middle of the book (especially since we don't necessarily need Jon as our Wall POV anymore with Mel having been given one in Dance)

[Frey family reunion]

Essentially its down to the sequence of events and a some curious anomalies in the story. It opens with Ser Waymar and Will getting scragged by Craster's boys, but Gared escapes. How? On his horse is the obvious answer but how then does he get over the Wall all on his own, and why is he picked up near Winterfell at the same time as the direwolf?

I'm not convinced by the warging business; as with the inevitable suggestions that Bloodraven has his paws all over it, I think that this is an over-used excuse for anything that doesn't have an obvious explanation. "It wasn't me officer, something made me do it."

Linking the events simply makes so much sense. There were six of Craster's boys in the ambush, when all we've seen since was the one pinked by Sam. So what were they up to? Were they just hunting or did Ser Waymar accidentally cross their path? In theory its possible that the direwolf may have found its way around the gorge by the Bridge of Skulls, but that secret portal under the Nightfort is so much more in keeping with what's happening and it needs a man of the Nights Watch to say the words. Giving Gared his life in return for taking the direwolf carrying those pups (and in particular the one with a snow white coat and blood-red eyes) through the portal and down to Winterfell makes a lot of sense to us as readers, but wouldn't make any sense to Ned Stark.

Just a final thought. There's no mention of a dead stag anywhere near the direwolf, yet what killed it was "A foot of shattered antler, tines snapped off," Was there ever a stag or was it an antler dagger which Gared used to kill it?

Funny that you mention an antler dagger, from the Prose Edda:

But when he came to Freyr, straightway he asked why Freyr was so downcast, and spake not with men. Then Freyr answered and said that he had seen a fair woman; and for her sake he was so full of grief that he would not live long if he were not to obtain her. 'And now thou shalt go and woo her on my behalf and have her hither, whether her father will or no. I will reward thee well for it.' Then Skírnir answered thus: he would go on his errand, but Freyr should give him his own sword--which is so good that it fights of itself;--and Freyr did not refuse, but gave him the sword. Then Skírnir went forth and wooed the woman for him, and received her promise; and nine nights later she was to come to the place called Barrey, and then go to the bridal with Freyr. But when Skírnir told Freyr his answer, then he sang this lay:

Long is one night, | long is the second;

How can I wait through three?

Often a month | to me seemed less

Than this one night of waiting.

This was to blame for Freyr's being so weaponless, when he fought with Beli, and slew him with the horn of a hart." Then said Gangleri: "'T is much to be wondered at, that such a great chief as Freyr is would give away his sword, not having another equally good. It was a great privation to him, when he fought with him called Beli; by my faith, he must have rued that gift." Then answered Hárr: "There was small matter in that, when he and Beli met; Freyr could have killed him with his hand. It shall come to pass

[Maglor78]

It possible he's on Jon 4/5 but more likely he's on Jon 2/3. The larger point is how little has written since Dance.

[armidil0]

Is the ASOIAF world predetermined? Destiny, fate, ect? There are obviously prophecies, some of which seem to have come true, or are about to. Can they be changed? And if not, then doesn't that lead to (And I hate this) a god of some sorts?

I can't make up my mind on this. I figured opinions from smarter people than I would help.

[Tyryan Lannister]

Is the ASOIAF world predetermined? Destiny, fate, ect? There are obviously prophecies, some of which seem to have come true, or are about to. Can they be changed? And if not, then doesn't that lead to (And I hate this) a god of some sorts?

Joking answer: yep.. Pretty sure Martin has everything predetermined by himself

Serious answer: highly doubt it, seeing as fulfilling of prophecy is just not Martin's thing (and is one of the main fantasy tropes that he is trying to do away with). The only prophecy that I foresee as occurring is Cersei's, which will occur precisely because she is actively trying to forestall it