Heresy 135 The Hammer of the Waters

[Black Crow]

I posted something earlier about a water hammer or a fluid hammer. Where a volume of water moving a particular direction is suddenly stopped causing a shock wave to continue moving in the direction the water had been heading. Apparently it can be quite destructive.

This phenomena can technically happen in real life to a piece of land struck by a storm surge but for a variety of factors it would be exremely unlike to occur.

While I assumed a storm surge would be the most likely cause of a water hammer effect on the Arm, your theory about an earthquake would work as well perhaps it would work better. A tsunami caused by an underwater earthquake could cause the "water hammer" effect that might be responsible for the breaking of the arm.

Both an underwater earthquake and a calving of the ice cap would provide perfectly natural explanations and I still have a certain leaning towards the latter, but if we really are dealing with magic, created by an alliance between the singers of the earth and those of water with a connection to the Storm God...

[Mithras]

Water Hammer is a destructive phenomenon for fluids flowing in closed conduits. As we gave links upthread, massive flood events are far more destructive. Their mass and momentum are enough to wear down chunks of lands. No shock waves are required.

[Black Crow]

Water Hammer is a destructive phenomenon for fluids flowing in closed conduits. As we gave links upthread, massive flood events are far more destructive. Their mass and momentum are enough to wear down chunks of lands. No shock waves are required.

This is why I still favour the English Channel model, since it was to an extent a two phase affair with the first calving/tsunami leaving a series of stepstones across what's now the Straits of Dover, which only disappeared after a second event long afterwards. However, if we are to look at a magick explanation then the storm surge from a magically induced super-storm might work equally well.

[Frey family reunion]

Water Hammer is a destructive phenomenon for fluids flowing in closed conduits. As we gave links upthread, massive flood events are far more destructive. Their mass and momentum are enough to wear down chunks of lands. No shock waves are required.

However flooding isn't going to allow for a one time cataclysmic event that would account for the shattering of the arm. Now granted the story of the Hammer of Waters could be hyperbolic, and instead we could be looking at an event that took place over a fairly lengthy period of time. If that is the case, sure flooding over time could wear down the land.

But let us assume for the sake of argument that this was a one time cataclysmic occurence. Let's assume it was a water based event since it since after all it is called the Hammer of Waters. So this would rule out a meteor strike or a volcanic eruption.

Now it is my understanding that water hammer can occur outside of closed conduits (pipes) and does in fact account for some coastline damage, but a number of factors are required.

here is a link addressing the factors that have to be in place for a water hammer effect to damage cliffs or shore platforms: http://books.google.com/books?id=VWnxpAxp6TMC&pg=PA873&lpg=PA873&dq=water+hammer+coastline&source=bl&ots=9EqNJW7Vbo&sig=EKKPTAF98NeLEYA_j8-IO6s49R8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lywjVKj3MZHzgwSRrIKYAQ&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=water%20hammer%20coastline&f=false

Now granted there can't be any air trapped between the wave and the impacted object for water hammer to cause damage. So it would seem unlikely (perhaps impossible) for a massive area the length of the arm of dorne to be effected by water hammer at least as a single event. Unless perhaps there was a change of air pressure great enough to cause a vacuum effect along the coastline coupled with a massive wave. Thus a massive storm would have to suddenly form over the coastline immediately followed by a massive tidal wave.

[Forlorn Horpe]

^^Paper Weaver had mentioned the Missoula Floods earlier and I'm pretty sympathetic to that line of thinking. I believe quite some threads earlier, someone else had mentioned Doggerland, which I think is a very appropriate comparison to the Neck. Doggerland was likely either flooded by the outburst of a glacial flood, like Like Agassiz, a huge prehistoric lake of North America, or an immense landslide underwater off the coast of Norway or some combination thereof.

These are of course naturalistic phenomena, but there no reason why similar phenomena in Westeros couldn't have magical catalysts.

[Frey family reunion]

^^Paper Weaver had mentioned the Missoula Floods earlier and I'm pretty sympathetic to that line of thinking. I believe quite some threads earlier, someone else had mentioned Doggerland, which I think is a very appropriate comparison to the Neck. Doggerland was likely either flooded by the outburst of a glacial flood, like Like Agassiz, a huge prehistoric lake of North America, or an immense landslide underwater off the coast of Norway or some combination thereof.

These are of course naturalistic phenomena, but there no reason why similar phenomena in Westeros couldn't have magical catalysts.

^^Paper Weaver had mentioned the Missoula Floods earlier and I'm pretty sympathetic to that line of thinking. I believe quite some threads earlier, someone else had mentioned Doggerland, which I think is a very appropriate comparison to the Neck. Doggerland was likely either flooded by the outburst of a glacial flood, like Like Agassiz, a huge prehistoric lake of North America, or an immense landslide underwater off the coast of Norway or some combination thereof.

These are of course naturalistic phenomena, but there no reason why similar phenomena in Westeros couldn't have magical catalysts.

It might explain the Neck but I don't see how it explains shattering the Arm of Dorne. The legend distinctly distinguishes what happend with the Neck (flooding) and the Arm (shattering).

[Black Crow]

^^Paper Weaver had mentioned the Missoula Floods earlier and I'm pretty sympathetic to that line of thinking. I believe quite some threads earlier, someone else had mentioned Doggerland, which I think is a very appropriate comparison to the Neck. Doggerland was likely either flooded by the outburst of a glacial flood, like Like Agassiz, a huge prehistoric lake of North America, or an immense landslide underwater off the coast of Norway or some combination thereof.

These are of course naturalistic phenomena, but there no reason why similar phenomena in Westeros couldn't have magical catalysts.

There are some certainly similarities between Doggerland and the Neck, but as discussed above there really doesn't seem to be any textual evidence that the breaking of the Arm and the hammer of the waters were two separate events, and moreover as Free Northman noted the fact that the Crannogmen were associated with the children when the hammer was called down suggests that the Neck was already soggy.

Indeed in this context it does have a very recognisable historical parallel in Scotland, where the only way for armies to pass from the north to the south or the other way around was by way of a single long causeway over the marshy carselands at the head of the Forth estuary below the basalt rock of Stirling Castle.

[Black Crow]

That was a quiet night, so a thought to leave you with before I tool off to work. Given the effort and dark magic which went into the hammer, can we credibly believe that afterwards the children became as one with the First Men and that the Long Night and the building of a massive Wall of Ice which requires magic to keep it going, and which the children are currently hiding behind has nothing to do with them. Or do we think that the tree-huggers done it - and stood aside as their cold servants stravaighed about the land hunting maidens and so on?

[Arya Havinfun]

That was a quiet night, so a thought to leave you with before I tool off to work. Given the effort and dark magic which went into the hammer, can we credibly believe that afterwards the children became as one with the First Men and that the Long Night and the building of a massive Wall of Ice which requires magic to keep it going, and which the children are currently hiding behind has nothing to do with them. Or do we think that the tree-huggers done it - and stood aside as their cold servants stravaighed about the land hunting maidens and so on?

I dunno, but it appears that the CotF are rather unconcerned with the White Walkers, as the Bran chapters we've received so far don't record any on-page mention about them by either Leaf or BloodRaven. The closest to an indication of who/what they view as "the enemy" is the elliptical reference in Bran's fly or die dream:

Quote:

North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.

“Why?” Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.

Because winter is coming.

Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.

“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?” he heard his own voice saying, small and far away.

And his father’s voice replied to him. “That is the only time a man can be brave.”

Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die.

Death reached for him, screaming.

Bran spread his arms and flew.

Wings unseen drank the wind and filled and pulled him upward. The terrible needles of ice receded below him. The sky opened up above. Bran soared. It was better than climbing. It was better than anything. The world grew small beneath him.

“I’m flying!” he cried out in delight.

I’ve noticed, said the three-eyed crow. It took to the air, flapping its wings in his face, slowing him, blinding him. He faltered in the air as its pinions beat against his cheeks. Its beak stabbed at him fiercely, and Bran felt a sudden blinding pain in the middle of his forehead, between his eyes.

“What are you doing?” he shrieked.

The crow opened its beak and cawed at him, a shrill scream of fear, and the grey mists shuddered and swirled around him and ripped away like a veil, and he saw that the crow was really a woman, a serving woman with long black hair, and he knew her from somewhere, from Winterfell, yes, that was it, he remembered her now, and then he realized that he was in Winterfell, in a bed- high in some chilly tower room, and the black-haired woman dropped a basin of water to shatter on the floor and ran down the steps, shouting, “He’s awake, he’s awake, he’s awake.”

Martin, George R.R. (2003-01-01). A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book One (p. 157-158). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

~5,000 pages later, we don't have any better/clearer indicator as to who/what the big bad is supposed to be. I suspect that the CotF may have "done it", but that it ended up hurting them as much as anyone else, without solving their problems. Magic is a SWOAH^TM. I'm not sure "their cold servants" (i.e., the White Walkers) actually are their servants at all.

I think the WW belong to the 13LC, the formerly human magic users who seem to have usurped the Dark Narnia magic for their own Undying-ish purposes. They are feeding on the whole North to suit themselves, and they've unbalanced all of Terros.

It is unclear if they were in cahoots with, or in competition with, the Undying of Qarth, who seem to have been connected somehow to the Ifequevron, if we go by the black & blue trees.

The Faceless Men pose their own mysterious influence in this teeter-totter of unnatural life extension. But I'm sure they are somehow at the fulcrum point, even if they aren't the cause, because they are so much about the Black&White, a kind of Terrosi version of the Tao.

P.S. What does "stravaighed" mean? Google is no help with that word.

[addicted to snow]

Indeed in this context it does have a very recognisable historical parallel in Scotland, where the only way for armies to pass from the north to the south or the other way around was by way of a single long causeway over the marshy carselands at the head of the Forth estuary below the basalt rock of Stirling Castle.

& this is no doubt why Moat Callin was built of Basalt... I don't think there is a geological or magical explanation for this occurrence, GRRM just didn't think that deep into it.

[mulmac]

Could the Marsh King have been king of the Crannogs ? With the marriage unifying them with the Starks.

Sorry if this didn't come out correct it's my 1st post.

[alienarea]

We could as well discuss the true age of the Sphinx.

Or who shot at the outrigger.

Some things remain unresolved.

And, wouldn't it be a bit poor if everything in a fantasy series could be explained with real life comparisons and examples? Imagine we were discussing the Iliad, someone would claim there wasn't enough wood to build that horse.

[King Tyrion XX]

We could as well discuss the true age of the Sphinx.

Or who shot at the outrigger.

Some things remain unresolved.

And, wouldn't it be a bit poor if everything in a fantasy series could be explained with real life comparisons and examples? Imagine we were discussing the Iliad, someone would claim there wasn't enough wood to build that horse.

The Sphinx? However old it needs to be to account for the water erosion. I agree it would be lame if a fantasy didn't have actual fantasy elements.

[Queen‍‍‍‍‍‍ Alysanne‍‍™]

This thought just came to my mind, I'm not sure if it has already been discussed, I apologize if so.

From Tyrion chapter and the recent excerpt from AWOIAF we know that the water magic of the people of Rhoyne on the Valyrians and Volantenes caused Garin's curse. Is it then possible that the Hammer of the waters by the CotF produced something similar, possibly the first white walkers?

[Black Crow]

Could the Marsh King have been king of the Crannogs ? With the marriage unifying them with the Starks.

Sorry if this didn't come out correct it's my 1st post.

Welcome to the forum and to heresy.

It is something we talked about a few pages back and while its possible, there's a suspicion that the Marsh King was of a First Man family rather than a crannogman, though I dare say this will be clarified along with a lot of other things in the forthoming World book.

[Black Crow]

This thought just came to my mind, I'm not sure if it has already been discussed, I apologize if so.

From Tyrion chapter and the recent excerpt from AWOIAF we know that the water magic of the people of Rhoyne on the Valyrians and Volantenes caused Garin's curse. Is it then possible that the Hammer of the waters by the CotF produced something similar, possibly the first white walkers?

Probably not I'd say; the connection lies further north.

[Black Crow]

P.S. What does "stravaighed" mean? Google is no help with that word.

Its a Scottish word, it basically means roaming about causing trouble, all the way from kicking over trash cans to sacking Rome.

[alienarea]

Its a Scottish word, it basically means roaming about causing trouble, all the way from kicking over trash cans to sacking Rome.

So an equivalent to vandalism?

[Black Crow]

Often associated with being drunk and disorderly and generally making a nuisance of ones' self, but generally involving gangs rather than individuals.

[Black Crow]

OK, just to give you fair warning; although we've done a lot of very good work on this topic and Eira Seren's opening issue very properly focussed out attention on Moat Cailin rather than the wet stuff, I suspect that we may have taken this one as far as we reasonably can on the basis of the text available to us at the present time. I'm equally sure though that the forthcoming World Book will provide additional information to work on - just a month to go - and hopefully confirm our surmise that it was the hammer of the waters which broke the arm and that we're not looking at two different events. Hopefully too we'll get more information on the identity of the Marsh King and on the Crannogmen.

I'm therefore proposing to open Heresy 136 tomorrow morning [about 10 hours time], but leave Heresy 135 open so that we can return to it later when we have that information from the World Book.