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The Unnatural Origins of Dragons


Mithras

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Summary at the end of the post



The properties of Valyrian steel are well-known, and are the result of both folding iron many times to balance and remove impurities, and the use of spells —or at least arts we do not know— to give unnatural strength to the resulting steel. Those arts are now lost, though the smiths of Qohor claim to still know magics for reworking Valyrian steel without losing its strength or unsurpassed ability to hold an edge.



According to Pol, the true reason for his final exile was his discovery of blood sacrifices —including the killing of slaves as young as infants— which the Qohorik smiths used in their efforts to produce a steel to equal that of the Freehold.



In Septon Barth’s Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns, he speculated that the bloodmages of Valyria used wyvern stock to create dragons. Though the bloodmages were alleged to have experimented mightily with their unnatural arts, this claim is considered far-fetched by most maesters, among them Maester Vanyon’s Against the Unnatural contains certain proofs of dragons having existed in Westeros even in the earliest of days, before Valyria rose to be a power.



The “unnatural” strength of the VS is due to the blood sacrifices in the forging. This word is generally used to designate the supernatural. It is highly possible that Valyrians created dragons by bloodmagic as Barth argued. The possible existence of dragons before Valyria rose to be a power does not necessarily disprove Barth’s claim because bloodmagic certainly existed well before the Valyrians. Yandel speaks of the possibility that the dragons were tamed in Asshai well before the Valyrians and that place reeks with bloodmagic. And perhaps the Valyrian dragons were not the only kind of dragons.



Even among the wildlings, these skinchangers were feared as unnatural men who could call on animals as allies.



“Lord Commander, wights are monstrous, unnatural creatures. Abominations before the eyes of the gods. You … you cannot mean to try to talk with them?”



To eat of human meat was abomination, to mate as wolf with wolf was abomination, and to seize the body of another man was the worst abomination of all.



Unnatural creatures and abominations are the different sides of the same coin. Varamyr, a man who lost himself in search for power, was an abomination who mated with wolves as a wolf. He turned into the abomination Haggon described. We are told that a wolf can never be truly tamed—broken. This leaves the possibility for other beasts to be broken and even forced to mate with creatures of different species, especially if someone wants to create a hybrid that is supposed to get the best parts of the parents.



Firewyrms. Some say they are akin to dragons, for wyrms breathe fire too. Instead of soaring through the sky, they bore through stone and soil. If the old tales can be believed, there were wyrms amongst the Fourteen Flames even before the dragons came. The young ones are no larger than that skinny arm of yours, but they can grow to monstrous size and have no love for men.”



Most terrible of all are the wyverns, those tyrants of the southern skies, with their great leathery wings, cruel beaks, and insatiable hunger. Close kin to dragons, wyverns cannot breathe fire, but they exceed their cousins in ferocity and are a match for them in all other respects save size. Brindled wyverns, with their distinctive jade-and-white scales, grow up to thirty feet long. Swamp wyverns have been known to attain even greater size, though they are sluggish by nature and seldom fly far from their lairs. Brownbellies, no larger than monkeys, are even more dangerous than their larger kin, for they hunt in packs of a hundred or more. But most dreaded of all is the shadow-wing, a nocturnal monster whose black scales and wings make him all but invisible … until he descends out of the darkness to tear apart his prey.



I think the equation is clear. Take the “best” parts of firewyrms and wyverns: you obtain the ultimate weapon. The Valyrians must have somehow forced the firewyrms and wyverns to mate with each other and they kept doing that until they obtained the healthy offspring with desired properties. Might be they used skinchanging, or might be they used bloodmagic to control these beasts.



Bran ate with Summer and his pack, as a wolf. As a raven he flew with the murder, circling the hill at sunset, watching for foes, feeling the icy touch of the air. As Hodor he explored the caves. He found chambers full of bones, shafts that plunged deep into the earth, a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hung upside down from the ceiling.



Viserion had shattered one chain and melted the others. He clung to the roof of the pit like some huge white bat, his claws dug deep into the burnt and crumbling bricks. Rhaegal, still chained, was gnawing on the carcass of a bull. The bones on the floor of the pit were deeper than the last time she had been down here, and the walls and floors were black and grey, more ash than brick. They would not hold much longer … but behind them was only earth and stone. Can dragons tunnel through rock, like the firewyrms of old Valyria? She hoped not.



In ADwD, George described Viserion like a huge bat hanging upside down. He also mentioned the bones of gigantic bats in one of the chambers under the hill where the CotF live. Doubtless, the CotF used to wear the skins of those bats. This is a connection between dragons and skinchanging. There is another one.



The first Ser Artys Arryn supposedly rode upon a huge falcon (possibly a distorted memory of dragonriders seen from afar, Archmaester Perestan suggests). Armies of eagles fought at his command. To win the Vale, he flew to the top of the Giant’s Lance and slew the Griffin King. He counted giants and merlings amongst his friends, and wed a woman of the children of the forest, though she died giving birth to his son.



Something was moving atop one of them, he saw.

A dragon, but which one? At this distance, it could as easily have been an eagle. A very big eagle.



There is the legend of the Winged Knight, which is clearly based upon the legends coming from the Age of Heroes. He rode a huge falcon but that was in fact a distorted memory of the dragonriders seen from afar. Indeed, the dragons from afar are seen as big birds. The Winged Knight married a female CotF which brings the interbreeding between different races into the picture as well.



And still others saw the Targaryens as abominations: brothers wed to sisters, with their incestuous couplings producing misbegotten heirs.



Incest was denounced as vile sin, whether between father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister, and the fruits of such unions were considered abominations in the sight of gods and men.



He made brides of women whom he had widowed —women of proved fertility— but the only children born of his seed proved monstrosities: misshapen, eyeless, limbless, or having the parts of man and woman both. His descent into true madness, some say, began with the first of these abominations.



The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew; a boy, a cousin, aunt, or niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons. “The blood of the dragon must remain pure,” the wisdom went. Some of the sorcerer princes also took more than one wife when it pleased them, though this was less common than incestuous marriage.



The incest practice of the Targaryens was described by almost the same words (abominations, monstrosities, misshapen etc.) however; it is not exactly clear why the dragonlord families practiced incest. It is not unheard that the roots of such old wisdoms might be lost in history. For example, why must there always be a Stark in Winterfell?



Above scene is important because we see that even after so many years, these dragons show the characteristics of both the firewyrms and the wyverns.



For twenty-seven days, Maegor was dead to the world. On the twenty-eighth, Queen Alys arrived from Pentos (Maegor was still without issue), and with her came a Pentoshi beauty called Tyanna of the Tower. She had become Maegor’s lover during his exile, it was clear, and some whispered Queen Alys’s as well. The Dowager Queen, after meeting with Tyanna, gave the king over to her care alone — a fact that troubled Maegor’s supporters. On the thirtieth day since the trial of seven, the king awoke with the sunrise and walked out onto the walls.



Tyanna was the most feared of the brides of King Maegor. Rumored to have been the natural daughter of a Pentoshi magister, she had been a tavern dancer who rose up to become a courtesan. She was said to practice sorcery and alchemy. She was wed to the king in 42 AC, but their marriage bed was as barren as the rest. Called the king’s raven by some, she was feared for her ability to ferret out secrets and served as his mistress of whisperers. She eventually confessed her responsibility for the abominations that were born of Maegor’s seed, claiming she had poisoned his other brides.



She, too, became pregnant, and like Alys before her, she gave birth to a stillborn abomination said to have been born eyeless and with small wings. She survived that monstrous labor, however, and was one of the two wives who survived the king.



We see that alchemy and sorcery can affect reproduction. Tyanna of Pentos definitely used a lot of alchemist tricks similar to the ones described by Mel (A smoke for truth, a smoke for lust, a smoke for fear, and the thick black smoke that could kill a man outright), especially the bolded ones.



Even those who loved her best found Visenya stern, serious, unforgiving, and some said that she played with poisons and dabbled in dark sorceries.



There was a bit in TWOIAF claiming that Visenya used sorcery in the conception of Maegor but that was left out in the final version published. I am sure that it will come up in Fire & Blood.



A sphinx is a bit of this, a bit of that: a human face, the body of a lion, the wings of a hawk. Alleras was the same: his father was a Dornishman, his mother a black-skinned Summer Islander.



According to the context so far, sphinxes can be said to be hybrid creatures just like the dragons are the hybrids of firewyrms and wyverns. George further emphasizes this point by equating it to Sarella who carries the features of both her mother and father.



He spoke of dreams and never named the dreamer, of a glass candle that could not be lit and eggs that would not hatch. He said the sphinx was the riddle, not the riddler, whatever that meant. He asked Sam to read for him from a book by Septon Barth, whose writings had been burned during the reign of Baelor the Blessed. Once he woke up weeping. “The dragon must have three heads,” he wailed, “but I am too old and frail to be one of them. I should be with her, showing her the way, but my body has betrayed me.”



The Sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler. This famous line from Aemon created much controversy. According to what we have seen so far, perhaps Aemon was trying to point the unnatural origins of the sphinxes/dragons, considering he requested a quote from Septon Barth’s book just after he mentioned the sphinxes and riddles.



One might say that “Ok, the sphinx represents a hybrid creature born from crossbreeding. So what is the big fuzz about it?”



This is a good question. What is the importance of this interpretation of the sphinx?



After hearing Dany and the dragons, Aemon was obsessed with “the dragon has three heads”, “the sphinxes”, “the prince that was promised” and Septon Barth’s book. So, whatever the sphinx is meant to tell us, it must be related to these prophecies.



The gates of the Citadel were flanked by a pair of towering green sphinxes with the bodies of lions, the wings of eagles, and the tails of serpents. One had a man’s face, one a woman’s.



Lions, eagles and serpents are natural creatures. I highly suggest you to read the origins of the Citadel and how it is very much related to the CotF in this thread. So, with this in mind, the faces of the sphinxes (man and woman) remind me of this:



Male and female hunted together, with weirwood bows and flying snares.



Indeed, there seems to be a connection between these sphinxes with faces and the CotF. Note that the CotF carved faces to the weirwoods. A sphinx with a human face might mean that a human skinchanger is wearing the skin of the sphinx. That is what the head of the dragon means. Septon Barth, who was the source of all these stuff in this thread, also studied the CotF lore extensively and made many speculations which Yandel dismissed as nonsense but we know from Bran that they were absolutely true.



The next evening they came upon a huge Valyrian sphinx crouched beside the road. It had a dragon’s body and a woman’s face.



Indeed, the Valyrian sphinxes have a dragon’s body and human faces, which means someone (TPTWP) should skinchange into a dragon.



Conclusion/Summary



· Septon Barth is always right.


· Valyrians created dragons by crossbreeding firewyrms and wyverns.


· The process required serious bloodmagic.


· It is not known why exactly they practiced incest. Dragon creation, production and maintenance were complex business. Claiming that incest was practiced only to ride dragons is oversimplification. I think that producing dragons is a much more complex and important process than riding one.


· It is possible that there were dragons before Valyrians rose to power but it is unknown whether they were like the Valyrian dragons or not. There is no way to prove that a dragon existed before Valyrian Age just by examining its remains without modern methods like carbon dating in Westeros.


· Sphinxes are perfect examples of the unnatural origins of dragons.


· Considering the origins of the Citadel and their early association with the CotF, it is highly possible that the legends about the sphinx have some nugget of truth in them. It is possible to force different species of animals to mate with each other. By using magic, hybrid creatures can be produced and skinchangers can wear their skins.


· The head of the dragon as in “the dragon has three heads” is related to skinchanging and wearing the skin of that dragon.


· TPTWP must be a skinchanger and wear the skin of the dragon.


· It is possible that the magical boon the LH sought from the CotF is related to creating a supernatural beast and using it to defeat the Others. The Lightbringer looks like a dragon. Considering the origin of the tales like the Winged Knight, I think it is possible that the LH married a CotF and their son, who had the gift, skinchanged into a hybrid creature (dragon) by which he led the humanity to victory against the Others. That child was the Lightbringer.


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very interesting. I agree Septon Barth is always right.



though i think it was actually proto-Asshaií, that mysterious people that vanished from the earth and lived in huge cities of black stone...otherwise, how did the Valyrians capture a Wyvern from Sothoros? We know of Yeen,, so the proto-asshaí had some presence there.. but Valyrians were shepherding before dragons.



The asshaíi dragons spread throughout the world (we know that there were dragons before Valyria, not by Maesters doing carbon dating but because GRRM said so, in a SSM), and died during the long night, only for the Valyrians to tame the remaining ones they found in the fourteen fires..


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The gates of the Citadel were flanked by a pair of towering green sphinxes with the bodies of lions, the wings of eagles, and the tails of serpents. One had a man’s face, one a woman’s.

I highly suggest you to read the origins of the Citadel and how it is very much related to the CotF in this thread. So, with this in mind, the faces of the sphinxes (man and woman) remind me of this:

Male and female hunted together, with weirwood bows and flying snares.

Indeed, there seems to be a connection between these sphinxes with faces and the CotF. Note that the CotF carved faces to the weirwoods. A sphinx with a human face might mean that a human skinchanger is wearing the skin of the sphinx. That is what the head of the dragon means. Septon Barth, who was the source of all these stuff in this thread, also studied the CotF lore extensively and made many speculations which Yandel dismissed as nonsense but we know from Bran that they were absolutely true.

The next evening they came upon a huge Valyrian sphinx crouched beside the road. It had a dragon’s body and a woman’s face.

The Fisher Queens were wise and benevolent and favored of the gods, we are told, and kings and lords and wise men sought the floating palace for their counsel. Beyond their domains, however, other peoples rose and fell and fought, struggling for a place in the sun. Some maesters believe that the First Men originated here before beginning the long westward migration that took them across the Arm of Dorne to Westeros. The Andals, too, may have arisen in the fertile fields south of the Silver Sea. Tales are told of the Hairy Men, a race of shaggy savage warriors, who rode to battle on unicorns. Though larger than the Ibbenese of the present, they may well have been their forebears. We hear as well of the lost city Lyber, where acolytes of a spider goddess and a serpent god fought an endless, bloody war. East of them stood the kingdoms of the centaurs, half man and half horse.

In the southeast the proud city-states of the Qaathi arose; in the forests to the north, along the shores of the Shivering Sea, were the domains of the woods walkers, a diminutive folk whom many maesters believe to have been kin to the children of the forest; between them could be found the hill kingdoms of the Cymmeri, the long-legged Gipps with their wicker shields and lime-stiffened hair, and the brown-skinned pale-haired Zoqora, who rode to war in chariots.

Their riders wore steel and spider silk and rode coal-black mares, whilst the greatest of their warriors went to battle in scythed chariots pulled by teams of bloodred horses (oft driven by their wives or daughters, for it was the custom amongst the Sarnori for men and women to make war together).

Archmaester Hagedorn has put forth the theory that the centaurs were no more than mounted warriors, as perceived by neighboring tribes who had not yet learned to tame and ride horses. His views have become widely accepted at the Citadel, despite the purported “centaur skeletons” that turn up in grotesqueries from time to time.

CotF or their kin used to live in Essos. In the kingdom of Sarnor, which was founded by the conquerors that ended up merging with the local cultures that were defeated, we have this tradition of men and women making war together. Specifically, male and female used to ride chariots to war.

It is possible that this tradition of male and female fighting together (or the wicker shields of the Gipps) were inspired by humans observing the CotF. Man and woman on a chariot is a mechanical equivalent of a great elk ridden by two CotF. Considering the hairy men mounting the unicorns and other people mounting horses, perhaps the domestication of mounts (and in return the human civilization) started with the humans copying from the CotF. George also gave us another hint of a possible interbreeding between humans and horses with the tales of centaurs.

As a side note, that spider goddess and serpent god fighting an endless war might be a hint for the Great Other and Rhlorr. The only female Other we heard was the one who seduced the NK. Perhaps there is only one female other and that one is the Great Other. The Others are said to ride icy spiders whereas the serpent god sounds like favoring dragons.

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Ancient Ashaii crossbred Wyverns and Firewyrms to breed dragons. This was 10,000-12,000 years ago.



Their dragons spread across all the world over the next few thousand years.



This led to Westerosi legends about dragons and dragonslayers, dating from the Age of Heroes, long before the Andals arrived.



Some consequence, response or event related to this unnatural magic used by Ashai, led to the Long Night, 8000 years ago.



The Long Night killed off dragons all over the world, except those protected in a volcanic lair. So the only ones we know of that survived were those in the Fourteen Fires, but for all we know a small colony survived on Dragonstone, with the Cannibal being its last surviving offspring. Note that the smallfolk of Dragonstone state that Cannibal lived on Dragonstone long before the Targaryens arrived there.



In Valyria, dragons survived in their volcanic lair undisturbed for 3000 years after the Long Night, until the primitive Valyrians discovered them there, 5000 years ago.



At this point, a small group of surviving Ashaii blood sorcerors heard of these surviving dragons, and travelled to Valyria, to teach the primitive Valyrians how to master these dragons. Most likely the blood rite required to master a dragon, involved mixing the blood of a young dragon with that of a human sorcerer, maybe involving the sacrifice of some of the human's offspring or some other perverse blood offer. The outcome would be a mixing of the dragon's blood with that of the sorcerer.



The offspring of the dragon in question would then forever be linked to the offspring of the sorcerer in question. Thus explaining why the blood of the original sorcerer would have to be maintained as purely as possible in future generations, hence the need for incest within each Dragonlord family. This would bind a specific lineage of dragons to a specific lineage of humans. It would also explain the Valyrian beliefs that they are partly descended from dragons, because there was indeed some kind of symbolic or magical mixing of their blood in the distant past.



Thus Targaryen dragons are bound to Targaryen offspring, but other Valyrian dragons would not be. Neither would wild dragons be bound to them. And maybe a specific event or rite is required to reaffirm this bond, as the blood of the original sorcerer grows gradually more diluted in his descendants over time. Hence the need to find the appropriate dragon Seed before a dragon can be tamed.



And there you have the entire unnatural history of dragons and dragonmastery, summarized in a few lines.


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I still contend that dragons, children, others and everything else "magical" in the books is the result of advanced genetic/chemical engineering conducted by our own military industrial complex over, say, the next 5000 years. Then along comes the next Ice Age that wipes out all traces of our civilization, but these artificial creatures go native and start to live and breed just like any other living thing.



Mankind, of course, survives the Ice Age as well, just as it has done in the past, and then begins the slow process from hunter-gatherer/caveman to civilized farmer to the feudal period we have now, except that there are all these exceptional beings that appear to have magical properties.



So the story doesn't take place in some alternate, mythical path, but in our future.


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Well it can't be an invention of "old Valyria", because dragon skeletons have been found all across planetos.


Also, had the Valyrians "controlled" wyverns and wyrms, they would have also used them (especialy wyrms instead of slaves to mine gems).



Now can dragons be natural ? Yes, we have "cousins" animals, so wether it could be a firewyrm which developed flight, or wyverns developing fire, there's nothing against the argument.


Can they be the result of cross-bredding or blood-magic GMOs ? Well I don't know much about the sexuality of wyverns and wyrms, so it isn't really easy to even guess if it is relevant. for the blood magic foundation...Well anything is possible "through magic" (that's the principle), however, a "species" concern a certain number of individuals that could breed at their turn and preserve, etc...



Dragonmastery and "personal" blood sacrifices etc... Well just to give some perspective to this argument... Dragonlords didn't have 3 dragons, or ten for that matters : one could have several hundreds of them. So do you imagine the number of leeching, or sacrifyed family babies ?




So in my opinion the "blood link" theory is wrong. Dragonlords controlled dragons with whips, horns and sorcery. However the Targaryens, didn't seem to use whips and horns (but they only had 3 dragons at the time). If we think about the "dragon seeds" part in "the dance of the dragons", we see that the way to ride a dragon is to have the blood of old Valyria (necessary but not sufficiant).


I guess it is "not to dilute too much" the blood of old Valyria that the Targaryens (and ex-dragon lords) interbred.



And the horns and whips where used to control the dragons that weren't rode, and required blood sacrifice (both to reclaim the horn and to blow it). However, it didn't require "valyrian blood".



However, thanks for a very good OP and very reseached one.


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Ancient Ashaii crossbred Wyverns and Firewyrms to breed dragons. This was 10,000-12,000 years ago.

Their dragons spread across all the world over the next few thousand years.

This led to Westerosi legends about dragons and dragonslayers, dating from the Age of Heroes, long before the Andals arrived.

Some consequence, response or event related to this unnatural magic used by Ashai, led to the Long Night, 8000 years ago.

The Long Night killed off dragons all over the world, except those protected in a volcanic lair. So the only ones we know of that survived were those in the Fourteen Fires, but for all we know a small colony survived on Dragonstone, with the Cannibal being its last surviving offspring. Note that the smallfolk of Dragonstone state that Cannibal lived on Dragonstone long before the Targaryens arrived there.

In Valyria, dragons survived in their volcanic lair undisturbed for 3000 years after the Long Night, until the primitive Valyrians discovered them there, 5000 years ago.

At this point, a small group of surviving Ashaii blood sorcerors heard of these surviving dragons, and travelled to Valyria, to teach the primitive Valyrians how to master these dragons. Most likely the blood rite required to master a dragon, involved mixing the blood of a young dragon with that of a human sorcerer, maybe involving the sacrifice of some of the human's offspring or some other perverse blood offer. The outcome would be a mixing of the dragon's blood with that of the sorcerer.

The offspring of the dragon in question would then forever be linked to the offspring of the sorcerer in question. Thus explaining why the blood of the original sorcerer would have to be maintained as purely as possible in future generations, hence the need for incest within each Dragonlord family. This would bind a specific lineage of dragons to a specific lineage of humans. It would also explain the Valyrian beliefs that they are partly descended from dragons, because there was indeed some kind of symbolic or magical mixing of their blood in the distant past.

Thus Targaryen dragons are bound to Targaryen offspring, but other Valyrian dragons would not be. Neither would wild dragons be bound to them. And maybe a specific event or rite is required to reaffirm this bond, as the blood of the original sorcerer grows gradually more diluted in his descendants over time. Hence the need to find the appropriate dragon Seed before a dragon can be tamed.

And there you have the entire unnatural history of dragons and dragonmastery, summarized in a few lines.

we are in full agreement. thats pretty much what happened.

question remains why asshaí black dragon stone is oily, like leaking.. maybe the Asshai didnt learn that much control over their dragons, maybe the incest is a valyrian innovation.

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Wait you are saying that in the magical world there are thing that are unnatural, like Dragons and Skinchangers. I don't know how I can get my mind around this, it's like there is magic or something in the magical world. Next thing you know there will be Ice Zombies, some sort of Ice race, magical children and Giants.

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Wait you are saying that in the magical world there are thing that are unnatural, like Dragons and Skinchangers. I don't know how I can get my mind around this, it's like there is magic or something in the magical world. Next thing you know there will be Ice Zombies, some sort of Ice race, magical children and Giants.

Dragons are/were generally assumed to be creatures natural to a magical world, not creatures created artificially by human interference. Your attempt at sarcasm falls flat as you missed the point of the post entirely.

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The author probably tipped his hand with the TV baby having its eyes altered to unnatural blue. If the ice avatar monsters are really augmented beings taken from the natural world, then it should follow that the dragons are also the result of our interference in the world of magic. Not manifestations of "natural magic," but an unnatural twist that's been imposed by meddling sorcerer punks. Something that shouldn't be. But then, if the dragons were truly the cave pets of the ancient Children... we may be able to escape the blame for this, if the original transgression was the children's doing. The thing is, when they did it they probably did it in the right spirit, so it was something wondrous and not a huge liability or abomination.



However, we then got the secret of the sphinx from the Children (how to create dragons. and this led to us running our own dragon show in Valyria. And we of course turned it into a power/oppression thing, in total violation of our deal with the children. And then Valyria got the Smackdown, not coincidentally. We humans may have had to cheat or improvise parts of the magical process because we didn't have the children's abilities or we had to substitutte a more self-destructive ingredient like our own blood sacrifices so the dragon would respond to its lord's blood-scent like family. Whatever. It stinks of some abuses of the natural order of things.




The Winged Knight married a female CotF which brings the interbreeding between different races into the picture as well.



And still others saw the Targaryens as abominations: brothers wed to sisters, with their incestuous couplings producing misbegotten heirs.




Okay, considering the babies Melisandre has produced, plus all this sphinx stuff being called important as if it's the key to something big, and the merlings being real, etc........... I'm back to believing in the Targ's winged babies again. Sorry! It all adds up. This is a world of mixed blood and abomination babies. You've got bloodmagic right there as the way to mingle the DNA without any multi-species humping ever needing to happen. God, people get too distracted by how silly multi-species humping would be. Well, it's not required. So guess what, we've got to consider that 'blood of the dragon' means..... blood of the dragon. Maybe the prince was promised to have wings and be a physical sphinx in the flesh for all we know.



Latest BS Guess about the 3 Heads:


1 is the sacrificial blood you lay down to buy your way in to the dragon poker game. This soul is instilled within the dragon egg with your family's essence so the hatchling "feels" something when it looks at its living lord, telling the dragon this is where it belongs.


2 is the active controlling entity that stabilizes the dragon for you (can be a warg, can be done through actual affinity bonding as in the case of Daenerys & her dragon, but lacking that it can also be fulfilled by cheats like the dragon horn). The horn blower also dies. In other examples of attempted dragon waking, 2 lives are lost. I guess if you use a warg, you don't have to do the 2nd sacrifice. And if you're Daenerys, you are the second head, whereas usually...


3 is the dragon's actual head. Notice how this leaves no room for the dragon-rider in this equation? That's because the successful dragon-rider uses the secret of the sphinx to blend his/her will with that of the dragon so the rider counts as part of the 3rd head. Dragon & rider are one in mind and in form, like the blended sphinx. If you don't do this trick, and the dragon sees you as a 4th head butting in to its business, that's when it eats you. That's why the blood-of-the-dragon IS important. That's what gives you the sameness so you can blend in with the dragon without the dragon going "What the frick? Who is this poser?" Without the blood of the dragon, all you are is a gutsy bold rider who's getting away with it so far because your brashness amuses the dragon. But remember what happened to that Vegas lion tamer guy? Eventually that same fate is waiting for riders using bravery alone, because it's not an equal partnership unless they share the same blood.



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Wait you are saying that in the magical world there are thing that are unnatural, like Dragons and Skinchangers. I don't know how I can get my mind around this, it's like there is magic or something in the magical world. Next thing you know there will be Ice Zombies, some sort of Ice race, magical children and Giants.

You clearly miss the point of this thread. Greensight was used by the CotF to record their histories and songs. Until the First Men came and destroyed their trees, we do not have anything to suggest that the CotF used greensight and skinchanging for destructive purposes.

Dragons OTOH were used to enslave people for all we know. According to Yi Ti history, the LN came because men gave themselves to sin and corruption.

Horned Lord said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt and there is no safe way to grasp it. Many people said that sorcery requires years of practice and sacrifice. Haggon's code shows that there is a distinction between natural skinchanging and becoming an abomination by losing self control. Even Bran needed guidance to not surrender himself to Summer.

Magic is only a different form of power in ASOIAF. There is an obvious lesson to take from the series which is in line with “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

The NK was certainly one of the greatest men of his time. His only mistake was that he knew no fear which ended up causing his downfall. “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

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we are in full agreement. thats pretty much what happened.

question remains why asshaí black dragon stone is oily, like leaking.. maybe the Asshai didnt learn that much control over their dragons, maybe the incest is a valyrian innovation.

I think the important thing about the stones of Asshai is that they are said to drink the sunlight and as a result, even at noon, the weather appears dim and cold. This is not something we never heard before.

  1. In HotU chapter, one of the Dothraki observed that the building kind of drinks the sunlight.

The blocking of the sun during the LN might be the result of a great sorcery that consumed all the sunlight coming down to the Earth which messed the seasons up. “The brightest flames cast the darkest shadows”. There is nothing brighter than sun.

Melisandre of Asshai used the “life-fire” of Stannis to create the shadow assassin.

According to the Qartheen legend, dragons drank the fire of the sun so that they could breathe fire. Septon Barth claimed that the dragons are unnatural creations of magic. Quaithe said that the dragons are fire made flesh which means they are creatures of fire magic. The oldest residents of Asshai were said to be dragontamers or perhaps the creators of the dragons. Yandel asks, if they were the first nation to tame dragons, why they never conquered the world like Valyrians. Perhaps that is because the sorcery needed to create of the dragons destroyed their nation, created the shadowlands and caused the LN by blocking the sun. The emergence of the Others and their ice dragons might be a natural response to this.

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I think the important thing about the stones of Asshai is that they are said to drink the sunlight and as a result, even at noon, the weather appears dim and cold. This is not something we never heard before.

  1. In HotU chapter, one of the Dothraki observed that the building kind of drinks the sunlight.

The blocking of the sun during the LN might be the result of a great sorcery that consumed all the sunlight coming down to the Earth which messed the seasons up. “The brightest flames cast the darkest shadows”. There is nothing brighter than sun.

Melisandre of Asshai used the “life-fire” of Stannis to create the shadow assassin.

According to the Qartheen legend, dragons drank the fire of the sun so that they could breathe fire. Septon Barth claimed that the dragons are unnatural creations of magic. Quaithe said that the dragons are fire made flesh which means they are creatures of fire magic. The oldest residents of Asshai were said to be dragontamers or perhaps the creators of the dragons. Yandel asks, if they were the first nation to tame dragons, why they never conquered the world like Valyrians. Perhaps that is because the sorcery needed to create of the dragons destroyed their nation, created the shadowlands and caused the LN by blocking the sun. The emergence of the Others and their ice dragons might be a natural response to this.

1) nice catch. the HotU could be another example of black (oily) stone

2) agreed..sounds like an eclipse btw.

4) interesting notions.

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i´m still confused though... black oily stones are both related to ancient asshai dragonriders, and to Deep ones (as in the isle of toads, the seastone chair, and perhaps the stone idols that the "people" of the thousand islands fear when the tides recede)



how to reconcile both origins? is there a grand idea behind all this, or are they just nods to HP lovecraft?


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i´m still confused though... black oily stones are both related to ancient asshai dragonriders, and to Deep ones (as in the isle of toads, the seastone chair, and perhaps the stone idols that the "people" of the thousand islands fear when the tides recede)

how to reconcile both origins? is there a grand idea behind all this, or are they just nods to HP lovecraft?

I think the oily black stone is related to the Deep Ones, and not the Ancient Dragonriders. I just read the section on Asshai again, and I didn't see any mention of the stone being oily. The stone is black, and it seems to drink the light, and it's greasy to the touch, but it doesn't mention it being oily.

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I think the oily black stone is related to the Deep Ones, and not the Ancient Dragonriders. I just read the section on Asshai again, and I didn't see any mention of the stone being oily. The stone is black, and it seems to drink the light, and it's greasy to the touch, but it doesn't mention it being oily.

greasy and oily seems like the same to me.

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