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The Citadel and the CotF


Mithras

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“Never fear the darkness, Bran.” The lord’s words were accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head. “The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother’s milk. Darkness will make you strong.”



Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.



This “staying in the darkness” has something to do with this:



“The night before an acolyte says his vows, he must stand a vigil in the vault. No lantern is permitted him, no torch, no lamp, no taper . . . only a candle of obsidian. He must spend the night in darkness, unless he can light that candle. Some will try. The foolish and the stubborn, those who have made a study of these so-called higher mysteries. Often they cut their fingers, for the ridges on the candles are said to be as sharp as razors. Then, with bloody hands, they must wait upon the dawn, brooding on their failure. Wiser men simply go to sleep, or spend their night in prayer, but every year there are always a few who must try.”



The purpose of this tradition should be long lost. Now we know that the maesters lived among the CotF with certainty.



We can state with certainty, however, that men have lived at the mouth of the Honeywine since the Dawn Age. The oldest runic records confirm this, as do certain fragmentary accounts that have come down to us from maesters who lived amongst the children of the forest. One such, Maester Jellicoe, suggests that the settlement at the top of Whispering Sound began as a trading post, where ships from Valyria, Old Ghis, and the Summer Isles put in to replenish their provisions, make repairs, and barter with the elder races, and that seems as likely a supposition as any.



We also have direct evidence of Yandel being wrong.



Though considered disreputable in this, our present day, a fragment of Septon Barth’s Unnatural History has proved a source of controversy in the halls of the Citadel. Claiming to have consulted with texts said to be preserved at Castle Black, Septon Barth put forth that the children of the forest could speak with ravens and could make them repeat their words. According to Barth, this higher mystery was taught to the First Men by the children so that ravens could spread messages at a great distance. It was passed, in degraded form , down to the maesters today, who no longer know how to speak to the birds. It is true that our order understands the speech of ravens … but this means the basic purposes of their cawing and rasping, their signs of fear and anger, and the means by which they display their readiness to mate or their lack of health. Ravens are amongst the cleverest of birds, but they are no wiser than infant children, and considerably less capable of true speech, whatever Septon Barth might have believed. A few maesters, devoted to the link of Valyrian steel, have argued that Barth was correct, but not a one has been able to prove his claims regarding speech between men and ravens.



“Do all the birds have singers in them?”


“All,” Lord Brynden said. “It was the singers who taught the First Men to send messages by raven … but in those days, the birds would speak the words. The trees remember, but men forget, and so now they write the messages on parchment and tie them round the feet of birds who have never shared their skin.”



Here we see a truly ancient weirwood tree near the Ravenry which was the oldest building at the Citadel.



The Ravenry is the oldest building at the Citadel,” Alleras told him, as they crossed over the slow-flowing waters of the Honeywine. “In the Age of Heroes it was supposedly the stronghold of a pirate lord who sat here robbing ships as they came down the river.”


Moss and creeping vines covered the walls, Sam saw, and ravens walked its battlements in place of archers. The drawbridge had not been raised in living memory.


It was cool and dim inside the castle walls. An ancient weirwood filled the yard, as it had since these stones had first been raised. The carved face on its trunk was grown over by the same purple moss that hung heavy from the tree’s pale limbs. Half of the branches seemed dead, but elsewhere a few red leaves still rustled, and it was there the ravens liked to perch. The tree was full of them, and there were more in the arched windows overhead, all around the yard. The ground was speckled by their droppings. As they crossed the yard, one flapped overhead and he heard the others quorking to each other. “Archmaester Walgrave has his chambers in the west tower, below the white rookery,” Alleras told him. “The white ravens and the black ones quarrel like Dornishmen and Marchers, so they keep them apart.”



It seems to me that ravencraft is more gift and less science. I think by standing vigil in the dark, the maesters of old were granted the gift of skinchanging and raven speech. Just like Bran opened Jon's third eye, the CotF opened the third eyes of the ancient maesters in the darkness.



The Citadel comes from a tradition that learned magic from the CotF but now they all dismiss/hate magic.



The origins of the Citadel are almost as mysterious as those of the Hightower itself. Most credit its founding to the second son of Uthor of the High Tower, Prince Peremore the Twisted. A sickly boy, born with a withered arm and twisted back, Peremore was bedridden for much of his short life but had an insatiable curiosity about the world beyond his window, so he turned to wise men, teachers, priests, healers, and singers, along with a certain number of wizards, alchemists, and sorcerers. It is said the prince had no greater pleasure in life than listening to these scholars argue with one another. When Peremore died, his brother King Urrigon bequeathed a large tract of land beside the Honeywine to “Peremore’s pets,” that they might establish themselves and continue teaching, learning, and questing after truth. And so they did.



Those you call the children of the forest have eyes as golden as the sun, but once in a great while one is born amongst them with eyes as red as blood, or green as the moss on a tree in the heart of the forest. By these signs do the gods mark those they have chosen to receive the gift. The chosen ones are not robust, and their quick years upon the earth are few, for every song must have its balance. But once inside the wood they linger long indeed. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. Greenseers.



Peremore the Twisted was a greenseer and he founded the Citadel.


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Your thoughts are well laid out. The children were enemies of the first men who reached a truce at some point, I would assume your Maester/Children relationship came after that truce?



Were there men at the mouth of the Honeywine before the first men? Or did the first of the first men live along side the children before aggressions broke out thus before the truce at the God's eye?


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I think you could be onto something and that we should also include the priests from Lorath in here. They cover their faces so that in the darkness their 3rd eye will open. That sounds an awful lot like greenseeing.

Exactly.

The mazes of Lorath were made from hewn stone. That maze is the continuation of George's homages to Roger Zelazny. He created House Rogers of Amberly for him. He also mentioned Patternmaker's Maze in Braavos. Through the Pattern, one can walk among alternate worlds.

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Your thoughts are well laid out. The children were enemies of the first men who reached a truce at some point, I would assume your Maester/Children relationship came after that truce?

Possibly.

I am not sure whether it was show only but for Gilly, there was no distinction between maesters and wizards.

Were there men at the mouth of the Honeywine before the first men? Or did the first of the first men live along side the children before aggressions broke out thus before the truce at the God's eye?

They might be proto-Valyrians.

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I should also mention the Blind Girl.



When Arya was blinded, her other senses improved along with her skinchanging. She started wearing the skins of cats.



So, the maesters currently seem to have the exact opposite idea about standing vigil in the darkness.



“Yes.” Pate had heard the same stories. “But what’s the use of a candle that casts no light?”

“It is a lesson,” Armen said, “the last lesson we must learn before we don our maester’s chains. The glass candle is meant to represent truth and learning, rare and beautiful and fragile things. It is made in the shape of a candle to remind us that a maester must cast light wherever he serves, and it is sharp to remind us that knowledge can be dangerous. Wise men may grow arrogant in their wisdom, but a maester must always remain humble. The glass candle reminds us of that as well. Even after he has said his vow and donned his chain and gone forth to serve, a maester will think back on the darkness of his vigil and remember how nothing that he did could make the candle burn . . . for even with knowledge, some things are not possible.”

Lazy Leo burst out laughing. “Not possible for you, you mean. I saw the candle burning with my own eyes.”


The maester who burned the glass candle is an unorthodox one who studied magic. That is the point here.

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It would certainly make sense that what is now the Citadel started out as a training center for ravenry. The oldest part of the Citadel is the ravenry, and that's where the weirwood is. Before the Andal invasion, the CotF might have served as all or part of the "faculty". Is it necessary to be a skinchanger to learn raven speech? I'm not sure. Perhaps speaking to ravens was a lesser skill/gift than skinchanging, which of course is a lesser skill/gift than greenseeing. Does a run-of-the-mill skinchanger, who is not a greenseer, have a third eye? I'm not sure, but I don't think so.



The similarity between the different third-eye training on one hand and the Citadel graduation ceremony on the other is striking, and is a great catch. Perhaps greenseers were similar to "grad students", and the other students eventually came to ape their training in a ceremony.



Yandel states that the Citadel existed for thousands of years prior to the Andal Invasion. The Citadel, however, is associated with learning, which is heavily linked to literacy. It is said Westeros was not literate until after the Andals came. The Andals hunted and killed the CotF. This makes the idea of maesters, as we now understand them, living amongst the CotF rather difficult to accept. By time literate maesters had established the modern-style Citadel, the CotF south of the neck were probably dead or fled. If Maester Jellicoe wrote about the history of the Oldtown site, he probably lived in post-Andal Invasion times, and was collecting legends from older times of students who lived amongst the CotF.



I suspect that Yandel is taking his current concept of what the Citadel is, and what a maester is, and projecting that back in time on the early proto-maesters of the proto-Citadel. The idea of an evolving Citadel, with its attitude toward magic reversing over time has a massive amount of merit to it. The Andal Invasion would seem to be the turning point, right?


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Yandel states that the Citadel existed for thousands of years prior to the Andal Invasion. The Citadel, however, is associated with learning, which is heavily linked to literacy. It is said Westeros was not literate until after the Andals came. The Andals hunted and killed the CotF. This makes the idea of maesters, as we now understand them, living amongst the CotF rather difficult to accept.

I know just the quote for you :)

“Do you like to read books, Bran?” Jojen asked him.

“Some books. I like the fighting stories. My sister Sansa likes the kissing stories, but those are stupid.”

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,” said Jojen. “The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood.”

And apparently, all the ravens once had deceased CotF in them and perhaps maesters were taught to communicate with them.

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I know just the quote for you :)

“Do you like to read books, Bran?” Jojen asked him.

“Some books. I like the fighting stories. My sister Sansa likes the kissing stories, but those are stupid.”

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,” said Jojen. “The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood.”

And apparently, all the ravens once had deceased CotF in them and perhaps maesters were taught to communicate with them.

I'm not quite sure of your point. A raven doesn't live for all that long (though they may be long-lived for a bird), and they are not part of the weirwood network. They only have the memories of the individual singer (or possibly singers) who "rode" them and lived their second life (lives) in them. You would need to be a greenseer with the ability to access the trees in order to write a good history. After the Andal Invasion, there were probably no greenseers south of the neck - human or CotF. If Maester Jellicoe wrote down his history, he was post-Invasion. Or am I misunderstanding you?

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  • 2 weeks later...

The maesters who lived by the CotF might hear the history from the CotF indirectly or see it through visions by themselves. To live such an experience, perhaps they need to slip off their skin and get into a raven, which are able to speak the True Tongue.



The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves, in the True Tongue that no human man could speak. The ravens could speak it, though.



We know for certain that there are runic records dating from pre-Andal times. That means the First Men must have an alphabet and so they must be literate. The maesters, knowing the Old Tongue well enough, should be able to decipher it. Perhaps the pre-Andal, First Men maesters, who were trained by the CotF, created this runic alphabet for the language they spoke.



Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years.”

Meera said, “You speak the Common Tongue now.”

“For him. The Bran boy."


We see that the CotF are not willing to speak/learn other tongues unless there is a great need for it. Perhaps, slipping into the skins of ravens were the only way for the maesters to communicate with the CotF since the ravens know the True Tongue that they cannot speak in human form.


When Bran tried to speak through weirwood or raven, all he did was the rustling of the leaves in wind and the cawing of the bird. Perhaps those natural sounds are the True Tongue. After all, the True Tongue reminds Bran of the sounds the CotF hear everyday.

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I'm not quite sure of your point. A raven doesn't live for all that long (though they may be long-lived for a bird), and they are not part of the weirwood network. They only have the memories of the individual singer (or possibly singers) who "rode" them and lived their second life (lives) in them.

Well, this doesn't fit with all the ravens in Bloodraven's cave having remnants of CoTF skinchangers in them. Particularly, since seemingly not every CoTF is a skinchanger in the first place, and there is no reason to think that there was a massive die-off of the CoTF a 30 or so years peviously, which is how long the ravens live at most.

Either the animals bonded to a children's skinchanger and/or bearing their soul live very much longer than normal, or CoTF souls don't degrade as much in the animals and, unlike humans, they can move from animal to animal even in their second lives. Maybe with the assistance of the still active/conscious greenseers?

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Never fear the darkness, Bran. The lords words were accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head. The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mothers milk. Darkness will make you strong.

Dont be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.

This staying in the darkness has something to do with this:

The night before an acolyte says his vows, he must stand a vigil in the vault. No lantern is permitted him, no torch, no lamp, no taper . . . only a candle of obsidian. He must spend the night in darkness, unless he can light that candle. Some will try. The foolish and the stubborn, those who have made a study of these so-called higher mysteries. Often they cut their fingers, for the ridges on the candles are said to be as sharp as razors. Then, with bloody hands, they must wait upon the dawn, brooding on their failure. Wiser men simply go to sleep, or spend their night in prayer, but every year there are always a few who must try.

The purpose of this tradition should be long lost. Now we know that the maesters lived among the CotF with certainty.

We can state with certainty, however, that men have lived at the mouth of the Honeywine since the Dawn Age. The oldest runic records confirm this, as do certain fragmentary accounts that have come down to us from maesters who lived amongst the children of the forest. One such, Maester Jellicoe, suggests that the settlement at the top of Whispering Sound began as a trading post, where ships from Valyria, Old Ghis, and the Summer Isles put in to replenish their provisions, make repairs, and barter with the elder races, and that seems as likely a supposition as any.

We also have direct evidence of Yandel being wrong.

Though considered disreputable in this, our present day, a fragment of Septon Barths Unnatural History has proved a source of controversy in the halls of the Citadel. Claiming to have consulted with texts said to be preserved at Castle Black, Septon Barth put forth that the children of the forest could speak with ravens and could make them repeat their words. According to Barth, this higher mystery was taught to the First Men by the children so that ravens could spread messages at a great distance. It was passed, in degraded form , down to the maesters today, who no longer know how to speak to the birds. It is true that our order understands the speech of ravens but this means the basic purposes of their cawing and rasping, their signs of fear and anger, and the means by which they display their readiness to mate or their lack of health. Ravens are amongst the cleverest of birds, but they are no wiser than infant children, and considerably less capable of true speech, whatever Septon Barth might have believed. A few maesters, devoted to the link of Valyrian steel, have argued that Barth was correct, but not a one has been able to prove his claims regarding speech between men and ravens.

Do all the birds have singers in them?

All, Lord Brynden said. It was the singers who taught the First Men to send messages by raven but in those days, the birds would speak the words. The trees remember, but men forget, and so now they write the messages on parchment and tie them round the feet of birds who have never shared their skin.

Here we see a truly ancient weirwood tree near the Ravenry which was the oldest building at the Citadel.

The Ravenry is the oldest building at the Citadel, Alleras told him, as they crossed over the slow-flowing waters of the Honeywine. In the Age of Heroes it was supposedly the stronghold of a pirate lord who sat here robbing ships as they came down the river.

Moss and creeping vines covered the walls, Sam saw, and ravens walked its battlements in place of archers. The drawbridge had not been raised in living memory.

It was cool and dim inside the castle walls. An ancient weirwood filled the yard, as it had since these stones had first been raised. The carved face on its trunk was grown over by the same purple moss that hung heavy from the trees pale limbs. Half of the branches seemed dead, but elsewhere a few red leaves still rustled, and it was there the ravens liked to perch. The tree was full of them, and there were more in the arched windows overhead, all around the yard. The ground was speckled by their droppings. As they crossed the yard, one flapped overhead and he heard the others quorking to each other. Archmaester Walgrave has his chambers in the west tower, below the white rookery, Alleras told him. The white ravens and the black ones quarrel like Dornishmen and Marchers, so they keep them apart.

It seems to me that ravencraft is more gift and less science. I think by standing vigil in the dark, the maesters of old were granted the gift of skinchanging and raven speech. Just like Bran opened Jon's third eye, the CotF opened the third eyes of the ancient maesters in the darkness.

The Citadel comes from a tradition that learned magic from the CotF but now they all dismiss/hate magic.

Any thoughts?

Good OP. Dovetails nicely with a little theory I've had that Archmaester Walgrave is a skinchanger who spends most of his time in his ravens. Lots of subtle hints to support the idea... enough that I've wondered if he might be kind of a southern counterpart to Bloodraven. And even if that pushes it a bit far -- he's not hardwired to a tree like Bloodraven, after all -- there are certainly indications that Walgrave himself was a powerful influence behind Lord Rickard's "southern ambitions." (Just ask Barbrey Dustin.)

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Good OP. Dovetails nicely with a little theory I've had that Archmaester Walgrave is a skinchanger who spends most of his time in his ravens. Lots of subtle hints to support the idea... enough that I've wondered if he might be kind of a southern counterpart to Bloodraven. And even if that pushes it a bit far -- he's not hardwired to a tree like Bloodraven, after all -- there are certainly indications that Walgrave himself was a powerful influence behind Lord Rickard's "southern ambitions." (Just ask Barbrey Dustin.)

I can buy that. Walgrave wants to have his white ravens eat his corpse when he dies. That is similar to how Varamyr thought of eating his own flesh in his second life as a wolf.

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I can buy that. Walgrave wants to have his white ravens eat his corpse when he dies. That is similar to how Varamyr thought of eating his own flesh in his second life as a wolf.

Yes. That's definitely one of the indicators, I think. Another interesting piece to ponder is that Walgrave calls Pate "Cressen" by mistake. You know, as if Cressen - the maester of Dragonstone who was 80 yrs old in ACOK prologue - had been Walgrave's young novice assistant back in the day. Which would make the Archmaester himself rather older than expected.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The origins of the Citadel are almost as mysterious as those of the Hightower itself. Most credit its founding to the second son of Uthor of the High Tower, Prince Peremore the Twisted. A sickly boy, born with a withered arm and twisted back, Peremore was bedridden for much of his short life but had an insatiable curiosity about the world beyond his window, so he turned to wise men, teachers, priests, healers, and singers, along with a certain number of wizards, alchemists, and sorcerers. It is said the prince had no greater pleasure in life than listening to these scholars argue with one another. When Peremore died, his brother King Urrigon bequeathed a large tract of land beside the Honeywine to “Peremore’s pets,” that they might establish themselves and continue teaching, learning, and questing after truth. And so they did.



Those you call the children of the forest have eyes as golden as the sun, but once in a great while one is born amongst them with eyes as red as blood, or green as the moss on a tree in the heart of the forest. By these signs do the gods mark those they have chosen to receive the gift. The chosen ones are not robust, and their quick years upon the earth are few, for every song must have its balance. But once inside the wood they linger long indeed. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. Greenseers.



Peremore the Twisted was a greenseer and he founded the Citadel.


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  • 2 weeks later...

re: Citadel <--> CotF connection----yeah, sure. Ninjas stare at candle flame to grow their awareness too, according to the ninja special on TV last night. I think the Citadel's secret past almost has to be the traditional story of.... humans are shifty and didn't hold up their end of the bargain with the Children. That's what the Citadel's gotta be hiding. They probably had a pact with the Children, and by holding up our side of the pact we'd help prevent the Children from diminishing. We were the magical reinforcements, the extra push that'd help to stabilize the world now that they were too weak to do it themselves. But then, once we had access to the knowledge for a few centuries it stopped being wondrous and we took it for granted and the Maesters just thought of it as The Sciences now, and they realized they didn't really need the Children anymore. The Children had shared their secrets with us, so they'd sort of given up their leverage. So.... we kind of sent our own maesters everywhere to replace the Children's brand of wonders with our generic knockoff brand, the all-purpose Maesters who make magic redundant and irrelevant. So we backed out of our deal with the children and they faltered under the weight of the world, as we sort of knew they would, and their doom was decided, and all we had to do was wait and we'd inherit the world. ......And that's the Others' cue to proove us wrong. The Citadel won't reach out to the Children now because they don't want to have to swallow their pride and admit they were wrong. They don't want to admit the Children are still necessary to keep the world from unraveling. I think Sam's purpose is to shake up the Citadel like Jesus ran the merchants out of the Temple. He or Marwyn could give the Citadel the attitude adjustment it needs so the Children's last act toward mankind won't be to smite us, but rather to join with us in one last great winter-canceling spellsong.






Well, this doesn't fit with all the ravens in Bloodraven's cave having remnants of CoTF skinchangers in them. Particularly, since seemingly not every CoTF is a skinchanger in the first place, and there is no reason to think that there was a massive die-off of the CoTF a 30 or so years peviously, which is how long the ravens live at most.





There's other options than saying each smart raven houses the spirit of a greenseer. It could be that ravens had their own minds expanded by spending so much time mind-joined with human skinchangers. They may have benefited as a species from being the skinchangers' favorite animal form to wear. In other words, when the skinwalker left the bird that bird retained some of the higher learning and vocabulary words, and could then teach their raven offspring the knowledge of speech without any further human involvement. Over time, these smarts would fade as the birds lost a little bit in translation each new generation, until their smarts ebbed away again to "almost normal bird levels" when there weren't enough greenseers to keep the raven community fluent in speech anymore. The fire in their minds died down and the birds are currently living in their own version of the dark ages compared to the height of bird culture they experienced when the CotF were at full strength. That'd be why the birds hang around close to Coldhands, they're fans of being mind-ridden because of the benefits they derive from it, it's like an onramp to greater consciousness for them and they want another fix of that drug, so they gladly do the chores that Coldhands wants done because they enjoy the feeling of being part of something greater. This greenseer connection is nature taking it to the next level of evolution, and life has always chosen to take that ride before, it's what got us here. So the augmented raven species would be the wargs' legacy, perhaps without a greenseer soul needing to be inside each bird currently.



Sorry, got distracted and that went too long, but it was too interesting to cut short.


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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm convinced! I never gave Peremore another thought after my first read of TWoIaF. But after reading through this, I started going back over it all and it fits...especially since the Hightowers have been very prominent throughout Westerosi history but have been very quiet during recent events.


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Interesting that we have these seeming connections between the maesters, the CotF and the Faceless Men, all of whom had a grudge against Valyria and were undoubtedly alarmed by the power of the dragons. Sounds like the makings of a major conspiracy to instigate some sort of cataclysmic event to wipe out the entire civilization.


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