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[WoIaF Spoilers] Oily Stone: Yeen, Asshai, The Wall, 5 Forts, Hinges of the World


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Great catch. Thanks.

Remember where this oily black stone shows up, folks. The entire city of Yeen is built from it. So is Asshai. We've got a 40' toad statue carved from it. It's tough to imagine enough meteoric material being collected to build a city. A 40' lump would either be deeply buried, or would have been destroyed on impact.

Labradorite is basically a form of basalt. Hunks of seafloor basalt at a subduction boundary sometimes get snagged and forced upwards, instead of being subducted. (Ophiolites) You could find enough to quarry and build with in one deposit.

That would make the oily stone different than the fused dragonstone that the Valyians used to build roads and walls without seams.

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Ghost grass is milky white and pinkish.

I had a ghost grass question, actually. Is the ghost grass the way it is due to a lack of light? As in, no chlorophyll? Do the Dothraki have the causation slightly backwards? As in, it's not the ghost grass that brings the end of the world, but the ghost grass is a symptom of a world without light?

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As far as I remember Asshai stone is not oily, it is greasy (like Seastone Chair) and it drinks light. I don't think Labradorite drinks light :laugh:

Maybe seastone is what we call oily black stone :stunned:

I think the part about "drinking light" is supernatural, so the kind of stone is irrelevant to that. I was speaking of how an "oily" black stone would look.

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I had a ghost grass question, actually. Is the ghost grass the way it is due to a lack of light? As in, no chlorophyll? Do the Dothraki have the causation slightly backwards? As in, it's not the ghost grass that brings the end of the world, but the ghost grass is a symptom of a world without light?

Nope. It's magical. Ghost grass can apparently grow outside of the Shadow where the sun shows his face. We have two proofs for that;

1-In Qarth, XXD said ghost grass is growing in the Garden of Gehane.

2-TLOIAF shows ghost grass on Yi Ti. (a very small portion, around Jinqi)

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Nope. It's magical. Ghost grass can apparently grow outside of the Shadow where the sun shows his face. We have two proofs for that;

1-In Qarth, XXD said ghost grass is growing in the Garden of Gehane.

2-TLOIAF shows ghost grass on Yi Ti. (a very small portion, around Jinqi)

I'm not seeing the gg past the Mountains of the Morn to the north, or that unnamed river separating Assahi from Yiti to the West. It all seems rather contained around Asshai. Am I not seeing this correctly?

But I don't disagree with ghost grass being magical, I'm just wondering about the causation-- like if it's a product of darkness. I guess, I'm wondering if it's a product of darkness that then goes on to proliferate "darkness" in a more figurative sense of causing death and inhospitality. Like, it's not the root cause, but a further exacerbating product of it.

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Here.

You see that river? No, not Ash. The one towards the north. Yep. There it is.

PS: The photo is from offical previews.

Thanks for showing me that. I'm more confused now, though. I have the published map in front of me, and I swear it's not across that river (that's the river I was talking about-- not the Ash). In fact, it doesn't appear to get as close to that river in my copy as in that preview.

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Thanks for showing me that. I'm more confused now, though. I have the published map in front of me, and I swear it's not across that river (that's the river I was talking about-- not the Ash). In fact, it doesn't appear to get as close to that river in my copy as in that preview.

,

That is weird :stunned:

Either way, it can grow in Qarth. So, I guess it works for you? :worried:

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,

That is weird :stunned:

Either way, it can grow in Qarth. So, I guess it works for you? :worried:

It's only growing in that one garden though, right? And it's not supposed to be, iirc-- isn't Xaro pointing out all these really bizarre occurrences when he says that? I can't find any other info about that garden offhand. Do we know anything further about it? Because that wouldn't be proliferation (it hasn't spread and ended up there), but sounds like it popped up in this isolated case all of a sudden.

But what do you mean about working for me? I don't have much of a horse in the gg race-- just genuine curiosity about causation. The Asshai flora and fauna strike me as magical mutations/ pseudo-natural adaptations to an environment without light.

As a purely unrelated matter, it's kind of hilarious when we're speaking back and forth in light of our AV/ member title combo. I hadn't noticed it before.

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It's only growing in that one garden though, right? And it's not supposed to be, iirc-- isn't Xaro pointing out all these really bizarre occurrences when he says that? I can't find any other info about that garden offhand. Do we know anything further about it? Because that wouldn't be proliferation (it hasn't spread and ended up there), but sounds like it popped up in this isolated case all of a sudden.

But what do you mean about working for me? I don't have much of a horse in the gg race-- just genuine curiosity about causation. The Asshai flora and fauna strike me as magical mutations/ pseudo-natural adaptations to an environment without light.

As a purely unrelated matter, it's kind of hilarious when we're speaking back and forth in light of our AV/ member title combo. I hadn't noticed it before.

Xaro mentioned about the Garden of Gehane when he was talking about the magic coming back to Qarth after Dany destroyed the hotu.

I meant if you got the answer of your question :leaving:

And yeah, we are kinda the different faces of the same coin :devil:

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Xaro mentioned about the Garden of Gehane when he was talking about the magic coming back to Qarth after Dany destroyed the hotu.

I meant if you got the answer of your question :leaving:

And yeah, we are kinda the different faces of the same coin :devil:

oh, lol, no. this is going into my file of "unexplained mysteries."

like good cop/ bad cop? lol, this one poster used to use a jigglypuff AV (mine's kirby with the jester power-up) to good-naturedly sow confusion as to which one of us was posting.

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I hope we learn more about the Cult of Starry Wisdom. They seem like the opposite of the church of R'hllor. They are mentioned in passing in Dance:




As she made her way past the temples, she could hear the acolytes of the Cult of Starry Wisdom atop their scrying tower, singing to the evening stars.




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Interresting, though could you have a construction material that is mainly labradorite? As it being a mineral, isn't it supposed to be found in patches toghether with say basalt?

Another idea, although it might sound silly, might be Shale oil . As wiki explains it:

"Oil shale, also known as kerogen shale, is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil (not to be confused with tight oilcrude oil occurring naturally in shales) can be produced."

Now that might seems a bit strange towards construction. I'm not sure how strong or fitting the material even is for it. I guess though that shale oil is but any type of stone that could suck up any given amount of hydrocarbons, even if it might not be all that much oil in there. That said, it does sound neat if youre going to build a giant lighthouse, though i'm not sure if youre outer walls would be fireproof.

Would be neat for Asshai too with them shadow lands, atleast you could easily make a fire to get some light. Would be a bit difficult to live in a flaming city, unless maybe for a fire based race.

hmm a race of fire people. kinda like that. There is a race of ice people afterall too. Maybe i should explore the idea of a lost civilization of creatures made of pure fire.

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