Heresy 150 and more fallout from that letter

[wolfmaid7]

I'd say the latter synopsis rules out greenseers as puppet masters due to the mention of maesters and greenseers working together, against the threat of Others. It may have changed, and alternatives are always possible, but it doesn't look likely . . .

You would rule it out, I wouldn't rule it out, we know courtesy the World book that G reenseers have been known to work with various people so they aren't partial to one cause.

You can't rule out that Bran and BR aren'the last of those type of creatures. I can tell its changed because by the text we know who or what is able to ride the wind like that. It aint ice spiders.

I'd say a faction of them being involved is more likely to the story. They would be something introduced but unseen. We also know they might be human in origin.

[aDanceWithFlagons]

Well if this aspect of the story remains the same we are back to square on who are The Others.

We know and i'm super smiling about this because to pull a Feather Crystal i've been saying the wws aren't raising the dead.

And that whatever is doing it is using the wind as a vehicle.That but about the Others riding the wind another thing ive been saying with respect to Greenseer/Skinchanging abilities I still say a Greenseer is involved and maybe as there is a collection of them when it comes to the Winter Greenseer as well.

That depends. Are the never born the white walkers? We're the others and neverborn combined into one being i.e. Others?

This goes back to the old ideas, from various posters, of human greenseers or skinchangers -either from the trees or the Heart of Winter or the frozen hell reserved for Starks making bodies from the ice and snow.

Of course I still think it possible the white walkers ride the cold winds during the light of day and once darkness falls or the sun is obscured by heavy snows they take on their physical form.

-

I noticed in the 1993 letter the Others is written as 'others'. As in those other guys.

[wolfmaid7]

That depends. Are the never born the white walkers? We're the others and neverborn combined into one being i.e. Others?

This goes back to the old ideas, from various posters, of human greenseers or skinchangers -either from the trees or the Heart of Winter or the frozen hell reserved for Starks making bodies from the ice and snow.

Of course I still think it possible the white walkers ride the cold winds during the light of day and once darkness falls or the sun is obscured by heavy snows they take on their physical form.

-

I noticed in the 1993 letter the Others is written as 'others'. As in those other guys.

Yes according to the pages the Neverborn are the WWS. The Others are stated to be raising "both"

The Others are said to also be the ones that ride the Winds.

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

"Half-forgotten" sounds eerily similar to "half-buried" ... i.e., that dead mother direwolf found "half-buried in bloodstained snow." And of course, that entire description sounds eerily like something might be "half-buried in bloodstained now."

Therefore, I think we can eerily conclude that Jon becomes an Other. After all, his blood/lineage is half-forgotten, and half-buried by Snow. Right? :devil:

[Voice]

You would rule it out, I wouldn't rule it out, we know courtesy the World book that G reenseers have been known to work with various people so they aren't partial to one cause.

You can't rule out that Bran and BR aren'the last of those type of creatures. I can tell its changed because by the text we know who or what is able to ride the wind like that. It aint ice spiders.

I'd say a faction of them being involved is more likely to the story. They would be something introduced but unseen. We also know they might be human in origin.

Totally possible. I'm just saying if we look at the information available, there seems to be a lot more written on the side of greenseers helping Men to combat the Others, than there are suggestions that some sort of greenseer faction is lurking behind them. I can't think of any evidence for it really. I know BR is a suspicious character, and ravens/crows fly in air, but those seem flimsy reasons.

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

I think King Tyrion asked (last thread) for clarification on the "ghostgrass method" of literary analysis. It's something that came up in one of the RLJ threads recently, when another user remarked that the RLJ clues were so numerous and ever present that it might as well be "literary ghostgrass." The phrase seemed particularly appropriate, as far as I could tell, so I attempted a fuller definition of the term. Here's my version:

["Literary Ghostgrass"] is an apt analogy for the way RLJ over-interpretation occurs. It is the product of an invasive theory that overwhelms native, and more natural, readings of the text. Some attribute its anomalous glow to the irrepressible spirit of the damned. Unless Martin eventually finishes these books, such over-interpretation will grow to cover the entire world of ASOIAF fandom, and all true reading will come to an end.

(Yep. I still like it.)

[aDanceWithFlagons]

Yes according to the pages the Neverborn are the WWS. The Others are stated to be raising "both"

The Others are said to also be the ones that ride the Winds.

I meant how much of thsee ideas have survived through the changes GRRM has made to the Song. Like the other plot points, some have changed completely, some are basically the same and some have the basic elements but have been combined or tweaked to make something new and different from the original.

[wolfmaid7]

I meant how much of thsee ideas have survived through the changes GRRM has made to the Song. Like the other plot points, some have changed completely, some are basically the same and some have the basic elements but have been combined or tweaked to make something new and different from the original.

I have no idea how many of these ideas have changed?

Has this one changed though? I think not else i wouldn't have found it.

Or VOTFM wouldn't have gleaned the idea that there is an Ancient Other class

If it was found years after the fact given the current series......Its still there.

[MaesterSam]

The unification of said groups are a bit hard to take. Yet it could still happen in different ways. I mean, I doubt we see one giant army of Westeros against the cold ones, but battles on different fronts with different leaders and maybe an overall plan. (That plan being to survive)... Tyrion and Sansa could work together. Tyrion has shown his usefulness, the chain and wildfire, designing special saddles. Jaime in the north and Maybe at the Wall even.

Maesters would have to go back to their roots and Sam may be the one to combine the knowledge of the learned and the talented.

Funny thing is all that wildfire stashed in King's Landing could be of use against those pesky wights. If only some dragon queen doesn't burn the city down.

I could see it now,

Jaime - "let's get this cache of wildfire outta here."

Dany on Drogon- "Dany burn? Dany Burn!"

Jaime - "Screw this, I'm going North. Let her be 'queen of ashes'."

:lmao: Oh how ironic if it all came full circle that way.

For real though, I bet it will be Cersei who burns down the Red Keep. She is following in the footsteps of the mad Targaryen kings so nicely- surrounding herself with advisers that tell her what she wants to hear, employing pyromancers and whatever Qyburn is, and lately developing an unusual love for fire. Now that Kevan is dead, presumably she will have an opportunity to regain power, especially once Ser Gregor wins her trial by combat. Or not. It could be that she does it in frustration, but more likely Tommen will die and she will just lose it. With both Maegor and Aerys, traumatic events triggered full-blown madness, and Cersei certainly has experienced her share of traumatic events. I'll be really interested to read her POVs post walk of shame.

As for everyone working together... I guess it depends who is meant by everybody. Maesters and GS will be a challenge, as the last and only GS is stuck up in the North with the maesters being down in Oldtown. Unless those candles can be used to tap into the weirnet somehow?

Stark and Lannister... also logistically difficult. I could see Jaime heading North, but I'm not sure there is a Stark available to team up with him. Unless Manderly whips out Rickon and declares him King in the North.

I'm sure it can be done, but it will take some creativity. I suppose the later in the books that it happens, the fewer characters are left that have to join the Team to Save the World. Freys and Boltons will meet their end in WoW, I would guess, and Cersei as well. That leaves only Jaime and Tyrion, both of whom are pretty reasonable guys and may join the team. NW, wildlings and Stannis are already on board. Sansa could reasonably be expected to help with the Vale army. So that leaves the Tyrells and Ironborn. The Tyrells seem reasonable, but the Ironborn? Maybe if Asha somehow ends up in charge... BUT all this assumes that the crazies are killed off and reasonable people prevail. I have a hard time seeing Euron or Vic doing anything for the greater good, and Melisandre is a total wildcard (though she seems firmly opposed to ice and darkness, so maybe she's a safe bet after all?).

Speaking of wildcards... do we have any reason to think Arya will be fighting on the side of warmth and light and life?

I'd say the latter synopsis rules out greenseers as puppet masters due to the mention of maesters and greenseers working together, against the threat of Others. It may have changed, and alternatives are always possible, but it doesn't look likely . . .

Yes, yes it does. It also makes it a little more likely, IMO, that the CotF really did help the Last Hero/First Men against the Others. Like the text has been saying all along...

[Voice]

That depends. Are the never born the white walkers? We're the others and neverborn combined into one being i.e. Others?

This goes back to the old ideas, from various posters, of human greenseers or skinchangers -either from the trees or the Heart of Winter or the frozen hell reserved for Starks making bodies from the ice and snow.

Of course I still think it possible the white walkers ride the cold winds during the light of day and once darkness falls or the sun is obscured by heavy snows they take on their physical form.

-

I noticed in the 1993 letter the Others is written as 'others'. As in those other guys.

I think Martin equates Neverborn with white walkers, which is too bad imo, because I really liked that monicker for the Original Others, but so be it :)

I think he drew even clearer distinctions between them as time went on, rather than combining them all into one being. His characters make mistakes in the nomenclature, due to them being half-forgotten. But we've seen and heard of three distinct 'other' beings, as the letter suggests.

In terms of them riding the wind by day, I think what we have in wights and white walkers are types of other-ish creatures that are able to withstand warmer temperatures. I think that is in fact the reason the Others-proper create them. As they themselves depend on the deep dark cold places, they require sentinels able to venture further than their own physical/magical limitations. Creating wights and ww's solves that problem.

Othor and Jafer didn't disappear into the ether by day, and their eyes remained blue. But, they were dormant. The question is, were they dormant by choice or by necessity? We know they can play dead, as demonstrated in the Waymar/Will trap as well as the skirmish outside BR's cave. So, O and J may have been doing just that by light of day. In any case, the warmer temperatures of summer south of the Wall did not kill them, nor permanently incapacitate them. They rose at night, burning with cold. In Will's prologue, we saw ww's only 9 days-ride from the Wall, during summer.

I know we've been over the prologue a thousand times, but hey, we love these books right?

Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.

Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with your commander.

All day. Not all night? Interesting. I would say this weakens my suggestion that a greenseer as puppet master is unlikely wolfmaid, if greenseers were the only ones able to watch from afar ;)

I think the emphasis above suggests that while the Others are conscious and cognizant during the day, they are not physically active. Also, Othor and Jafer's eyes were blue, but not burning blue stars when they were examined by day. I think darkness is a requirement for Other activity, which would explain why Bran glimpsed them north and north and north beyond light sources, as well as their motivation for bringing a Long Night.

[Voice]

Yes, yes it does. It also makes it a little more likely, IMO, that the CotF really did help the Last Hero/First Men against the Others. Like the text has been saying all along...

I'm an advocate of heresy, but not of denying truth beneath the nose :)

[Black Crow]

I've been out and about again so forgive me if I don't respond to individual posts but I've been giving a bit of thought to possible interpretations of this Wolf and Lion, Maester and Greenseer bit. The implication is that both are antagonists of old uniting against a common foe but it may go a little deeper than that and given this business of the desperate journeys I be inclined to speculate whether what's going on is not a union in the face of an anonymous external threat but a righting of something that went wrong long long ago; that say the walkers were first created as an instrument of vengeance but then cut adrift when no longer needed, and likewise the dragons created as an ultimately uncontrollable weapon. And now the descendants of those who created them must put aside old differences to deal with them.

[Black Crow]

And then again as to the desperate journeys,as I've said before I'd say that its Jon Snow/Stark going up into the heart of Winter:

"My uncle is out there," Jon Snow said softly, leaning on his spear as he stared off into the darkness. "The first night they sent me up here, I thought, Uncle Benjen will ride back tonight, and I'll see him first and blow the horn. He never came, though. Not that night and not any night."

"Give him time," Tyrion said.

Far off in the north, a wolf began to howl. Another voice picked up the call, then another. Ghost cocked his head and listened. "If he doesn't come back," Jon Snow promised, "Ghost and I will go find him." He put his hand on the direwolf's head.

"I believe you," Tyrion said, but what he thought was, And who will go find you? He shivered.

AGoT 21 [Tyrion]

...and that the other half of the conversation, Tyrion Lannister, is destined to ho looking for his uncle - in the heart of Fire:

[aDanceWithFlagons]

I think Martin equates Neverborn with white walkers, which is too bad imo, because I really liked that monicker for the Original Others, but so be it :)

I think he drew even clearer distinctions between them as time went on, rather than combining them all into one being. His characters make mistakes in the nomenclature, due to them being half-forgotten. But we've seen and heard of three distinct 'other' beings, as the letter suggests.

In terms of them riding the wind by day, I think what we have in wights and white walkers are types of other-ish creatures that are able to withstand warmer temperatures. I think that is in fact the reason the Others-proper create them. As they themselves depend on the deep dark cold places, they require sentinels able to venture further than their own physical/magical limitations. Creating wights and ww's solves that problem.

Othor and Jafer didn't disappear into the ether by day, and their eyes remained blue. But, they were dormant. The question is, were they dormant by choice or by necessity? We know they can play dead, as demonstrated in the Waymar/Will trap as well as the skirmish outside BR's cave. So, O and J may have been doing just that by light of day. In any case, the warmer temperatures of summer south of the Wall did not kill them, nor permanently incapacitate them. They rose at night, burning with cold. In Will's prologue, we saw ww's only 9 days-ride from the Wall, during summer.

I know we've been over the prologue a thousand times, but hey, we love these books right?

Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.

Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with your commander.

All day. Not all night? Interesting. I would say this weakens my suggestion that a greenseer as puppet master is unlikely wolfmaid, if greenseers were the only ones able to watch from afar ;)

I think the emphasis above suggests that while the Others are conscious and cognizant during the day, they are not physically active. Also, Othor and Jafer's eyes were blue, but not burning blue stars when they were examined by day. I think darkness is a requirement for Other activity, which would explain why Bran glimpsed them north and north and north beyond light sources, as well as their motivation for bringing a Long Night.

No doubt the wights don't fade away during the day. Though the hand that was sent to King's Landing did eventually wither after many weeks of warmth.

In the prologue the Rangers are feeling a menacing vibe as they travel, like they are being watched. But just after the sun sets the white walkers appear.

Twilight deepened. The cloudless sky turned a deep purple, the color of an old bruise, then faded to black.

The rangers make their way through the trees, see the wildling bodies gone and Will moves to climb the tree.

The wind was moving. It cut right through him.

Then, while in the tree

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood [...] The wind had stopped. It was very cold.

The Other slid forward on silent feet.

So, it seems the white walkers were following the Rangers during the day, wind blowing, unseen but letting their presence be known. Then they come out of the darkness as the winds stop.

I think it is a possibility, but I still keep an open mind on the subject.

I do believe the cold army is made up of more than the ones we see in the prologue, Ser Puddles and the wights. Even normal armies are made of different types of soldiers; calvary, infantry, archers etc., and their leaders. In magic we see this too; greenseers and greendreamers are different sides of the same old gods coin. They have the same roots but Jojen can not slip the skins of animals, and Bran isn't that proficient in dreams. Wargs and skinchangers are in the same boat yet not exactly the same and use different animals.

So why not the white walkers? If we look at them, or at least one or three, that have become what they are on their own accord and can make more wws with the right ingredients.

The old Varamyr prologue shows us a warg who can leap from his own body into another. And he can affect other skinchangers too by stealing their wolves and negating a second life for them. What says a warg couldn't figure out the secret to allow his spirit to float on the cold winds?

[Matthew.]

You can't rule out that Bran and BR aren'the last of those type of creatures.

Kind of related to this, I'd completely forgotten that Bran encounters some more (possible) Greenseers while he's exploring in Hodor's body:

___

He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. "Hodor," Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.

___

Assuming these fellows are Greenseers, it seems that they can be stirred out of their trees and back into their bodies. If we think about their 'corpse' bodies merging with and being nourished by the weirwoods, and Brynden's comment that greenseers linger long in the wood, this makes sense.

Bran counts only a little over 60 living Singers in BR's cave, and we know the Singers are not an especially fertile people, and also that greenseers are rare, even among them; that means an entire room full of greenseers would have taken a while to build up, and that some of those fellows Bran saw could have been there hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

If very old Greenseers linger, and can still be stirred to wakefulness in their bodies, this opens a couple interesting possibilities:

1. The idea has been tossed around that the Winterfell Crypts were built atop a Singer hill. If that is indeed the case, that means that whatever secret is in those Crypts isn't just old, it's alive; this could be anything from ancient Stark kings turned greenseer, to perhaps the very greenseers that the LH sought out.

2. It would give a whole different meaning to that part of the NW oath about being "the horn that wakes the sleepers"

3. ...and, possibly, an alternative meaning to the Horn of Winter's ability to "wake sleeping giants beneath the earth." It is interesting that, when we first hear about Joramun, it's actually from Mormont, and his (brief) description implies that Joramun did sound the Horn, yet the Wall is still standing.

[wolfmaid7]

I think Martin equates Neverborn with white walkers, which is too bad imo, because I really liked that monicker for the Original Others, but so be it :)

I think he drew even clearer distinctions between them as time went on, rather than combining them all into one being. His characters make mistakes in the nomenclature, due to them being half-forgotten. But we've seen and heard of three distinct 'other' beings, as the letter suggests.

In terms of them riding the wind by day, I think what we have in wights and white walkers are types of other-ish creatures that are able to withstand warmer temperatures. I think that is in fact the reason the Others-proper create them. As they themselves depend on the deep dark cold places, they require sentinels able to venture further than their own physical/magical limitations. Creating wights and ww's solves that problem.

Othor and Jafer didn't disappear into the ether by day, and their eyes remained blue. But, they were dormant. The question is, were they dormant by choice or by necessity? We know they can play dead, as demonstrated in the Waymar/Will trap as well as the skirmish outside BR's cave. So, O and J may have been doing just that by light of day. In any case, the warmer temperatures of summer south of the Wall did not kill them, nor permanently incapacitate them. They rose at night, burning with cold. In Will's prologue, we saw ww's only 9 days-ride from the Wall, during summer.

I know we've been over the prologue a thousand times, but hey, we love these books right?

Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.

Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with your commander.

All day. Not all night? Interesting. I would say this weakens my suggestion that a greenseer as puppet master is unlikely wolfmaid, if greenseers were the only ones able to watch from afar ;)

I think the emphasis above suggests that while the Others are conscious and cognizant during the day, they are not physically active. Also, Othor and Jafer's eyes were blue, but not burning blue stars when they were examined by day. I think darkness is a requirement for Other activity, which would explain why Bran glimpsed them north and north and north beyond light sources, as well as their motivation for bringing a Long Night.

We have many things that watches from afar though i don't think the holder of a glass candle can create a weather system.

:lmao: Oh how ironic if it all came full circle that way.

For real though, I bet it will be Cersei who burns down the Red Keep. She is following in the footsteps of the mad Targaryen kings so nicely- surrounding herself with advisers that tell her what she wants to hear, employing pyromancers and whatever Qyburn is, and lately developing an unusual love for fire. Now that Kevan is dead, presumably she will have an opportunity to regain power, especially once Ser Gregor wins her trial by combat. Or not. It could be that she does it in frustration, but more likely Tommen will die and she will just lose it. With both Maegor and Aerys, traumatic events triggered full-blown madness, and Cersei certainly has experienced her share of traumatic events. I'll be really interested to read her POVs post walk of shame.

As for everyone working together... I guess it depends who is meant by everybody. Maesters and GS will be a challenge, as the last and only GS is stuck up in the North with the maesters being down in Oldtown. Unless those candles can be used to tap into the weirnet somehow?

Stark and Lannister... also logistically difficult. I could see Jaime heading North, but I'm not sure there is a Stark available to team up with him. Unless Manderly whips out Rickon and declares him King in the North.

I'm sure it can be done, but it will take some creativity. I suppose the later in the books that it happens, the fewer characters are left that have to join the Team to Save the World. Freys and Boltons will meet their end in WoW, I would guess, and Cersei as well. That leaves only Jaime and Tyrion, both of whom are pretty reasonable guys and may join the team. NW, wildlings and Stannis are already on board. Sansa could reasonably be expected to help with the Vale army. So that leaves the Tyrells and Ironborn. The Tyrells seem reasonable, but the Ironborn? Maybe if Asha somehow ends up in charge... BUT all this assumes that the crazies are killed off and reasonable people prevail. I have a hard time seeing Euron or Vic doing anything for the greater good, and Melisandre is a total wildcard (though she seems firmly opposed to ice and darkness, so maybe she's a safe bet after all?).

Speaking of wildcards... do we have any reason to think Arya will be fighting on the side of warmth and light and life?

Yes, yes it does. It also makes it a little more likely, IMO, that the CotF really did help the Last Hero/First Men against the Others. Like the text has been saying all along...

This is where we will have to look at the story and how its developed. I aslo suggest remembering that looking at as total unification might be a problem. Stark and Lannister working together may mean Tyrion and Sansa. Do we really expect Cersci to be in on this. Some of these people have to big and ego and are to paranoid to play well together. Hence the reason it's easier to see some members of houses or even the citadel taking sides.Plus i still have a problem with cold being viewd as evil and warm being viewed as good.

Wanting a Summer that never end is JUST as bad.

I found this interesting bit a cnversation between Pycelle and Ned:

"The smallfolk say the last year of the Summer is always hottest........"To be sure,King Maekar's summer was hotter than this,and near as long. There were fools even in the Citadel who took this to mean that the Great Summer had come at last,the summer that never ends......GOT,Eddard Pg 251.

The disparency between Summer and Winter is the problem so they both have to be balanced.But it also shows that even the Citadel is aware of this supposed endless Summer.

"

I'm an advocate of heresy, but not of denying truth beneath the nose :)

Truth is a matter of prospective though.

I've been out and about again so forgive me if I don't respond to individual posts but I've been giving a bit of thought to possible interpretations of this Wolf and Lion, Maester and Greenseer bit. The implication is that both are antagonists of old uniting against a common foe but it may go a little deeper than that and given this business of the desperate journeys I be inclined to speculate whether what's going on is not a union in the face of an anonymous external threat but a righting of something that went wrong long long ago; that say the walkers were first created as an instrument of vengeance but then cut adrift when no longer needed, and likewise the dragons created as an ultimately uncontrollable weapon. And now the descendants of those who created them must put aside old differences to deal with them.

I'm inclined to see it differently,its an alternative.But what has stuch alot in this story is that nothing,no one is unified.Every character is free to forge alliances with whomeve they chose. Hence we were able to see various COTF and Greenseers working with different humans.Let say Jon is the next " cold greenseer" who stands in the office of the NK we know he sent Sam to the Citadel to forge his chain.We don't know how far Sam will go or how much suppot he would gather. But what's certain is he is a friend to Jon and he trust him and it maybe through a link such as that which may see 'some Maesters" working with a Greenseer. It would still work.

I do agree there is a wrong to be written but i don't think that wrong can be written with the current GSs BR and the NK who i believe is still in play. They need to be kicked to the curb because within the confines of what they can do.We honestly don't know what they are doing and why. I get the feelng that there is a motive unseen. But the Wolves have a bond a love that is really touching and i think that makes a difference with Jon and Bran being related by blood.It may start a bit rocky but we will still get that bitter sweet ending.

[Voice]

I've been out and about again so forgive me if I don't respond to individual posts but I've been giving a bit of thought to possible interpretations of this Wolf and Lion, Maester and Greenseer bit. The implication is that both are antagonists of old uniting against a common foe but it may go a little deeper than that and given this business of the desperate journeys I be inclined to speculate whether what's going on is not a union in the face of an anonymous external threat but a righting of something that went wrong long long ago; that say the walkers were first created as an instrument of vengeance but then cut adrift when no longer needed, and likewise the dragons created as an ultimately uncontrollable weapon. And now the descendants of those who created them must put aside old differences to deal with them.

That makes a lot of sense: putting aside their old differences. Each has a strong prejudice of opinion to be sure. Only dire tribulations would remind each moiety of their commonality. Personal biases are selfish and petty when faced with such odds, and sacrifices need to be made for the greater good . . . that sorta thing :)

[Eira Seren]

:agree:

It could be. It may be that Dany comes to Westeros at the end of the story to find it destroyed. But I think she will make it just in time to experience the battles in the south and the cold winds from the north. Maybe she will help, maybe she will hinder.

GRRM has cut out Dany's trip to Asshai, which I think was the original Mordors of the story. Beyond the Wall and Asshai.

Will vote for this!

"Half-forgotten" sounds eerily similar to "half-buried" ... i.e., that dead mother direwolf found "half-buried in bloodstained snow." And of course, that entire description sounds eerily like something might be "half-buried in bloodstained now."

Therefore, I think we can eerily conclude that Jon becomes an Other. After all, his blood/lineage is half-forgotten, and half-buried by Snow. Right? :devil:

Or, perhaps, like the half-buried Winterfell crypts? :P

I think King Tyrion asked (last thread) for clarification on the "ghostgrass method" of literary analysis. It's something that came up in one of the RLJ threads recently, when another user remarked that the RLJ clues were so numerous and ever present that it might as well be "literary ghostgrass." The phrase seemed particularly appropriate, as far as I could tell, so I attempted a fuller definition of the term. Here's my version:

["Literary Ghostgrass"] is an apt analogy for the way RLJ over-interpretation occurs. It is the product of an invasive theory that overwhelms native, and more natural, readings of the text. Some attribute its anomalous glow to the irrepressible spirit of the damned. Unless Martin eventually finishes these books, such over-interpretation will grow to cover the entire world of ASOIAF fandom, and all true reading will come to an end.

(Yep. I still like it.)

:D Thanks, professor Snowfyre. . . :leaving:

And then again as to the desperate journeys,as I've said before I'd say that its Jon Snow/Stark going up into the heart of Winter:

"My uncle is out there," Jon Snow said softly, leaning on his spear as he stared off into the darkness. "The first night they sent me up here, I thought, Uncle Benjen will ride back tonight, and I'll see him first and blow the horn. He never came, though. Not that night and not any night."

"Give him time," Tyrion said.

Far off in the north, a wolf began to howl. Another voice picked up the call, then another. Ghost cocked his head and listened. "If he doesn't come back," Jon Snow promised, "Ghost and I will go find him." He put his hand on the direwolf's head.

"I believe you," Tyrion said, but what he thought was, And who will go find you? He shivered.

AGoT 21 [Tyrion]

...and that the other half of the conversation, Tyrion Lannister, is destined to ho looking for his uncle - in the heart of Fire:

There was some conversation last spring about Tyrion, fire, and the sun. It could certainly work. . .

[wolfmaid7]

No doubt the wights don't fade away during the day. Though the hand that was sent to King's Landing did eventually wither after many weeks of warmth.

In the prologue the Rangers are feeling a menacing vibe as they travel, like they are being watched. But just after the sun sets the white walkers appear.

The rangers make their way through the trees, see the wildling bodies gone and Will moves to climb the tree.

Then, while in the tree

So, it seems the white walkers were following the Rangers during the day, wind blowing, unseen but letting their presence be known. Then they come out of the darkness as the winds stop.

I think it is a possibility, but I still keep an open mind on the subject.

I do believe the cold army is made up of more than the ones we see in the prologue, Ser Puddles and the wights. Even normal armies are made of different types of soldiers; calvary, infantry, archers etc., and their leaders. In magic we see this too; greenseers and greendreamers are different sides of the same old gods coin. They have the same roots but Jojen can not slip the skins of animals, and Bran isn't that proficient in dreams. Wargs and skinchangers are in the same boat yet not exactly the same and use different animals.

So why not the white walkers? If we look at them, or at least one or three, that have become what they are on their own accord and can make more wws with the right ingredients.

The old Varamyr prologue shows us a warg who can leap from his own body into another. And he can affect other skinchangers too by stealing their wolves and negating a second life for them. What says a warg couldn't figure out the secret to allow his spirit to float on the cold winds?

This is what i've been saying and this has been my point about the Greenseers they are the unseen hand in this hiding behind what they've created. Its the perfect cover. Skinchangers and the most powerful of them all Greenseers are the only ones that can do what has been done. Varamyr in his flight "before he died" proved that this can be done and he was dying and not a Greenseer.Every bit of infor we got for the WB and the main text points to them.

I'm sorry but I think there is such an eager push to make the WWs something they are not it's making them look just wrong in context.Its hard not to see them as the bad,but they are the face that was put forth but not "the face". Nothing in text says they can make more wws as well at all .Its not even hinted everything points to them NOT being behind any of this.Looking at the way they behave the two times we have seen them they are puppets.Dangerous puppets but puppets nevertheless.So bad that one of them didn't even know when your figthing multiple opponents watch your back and take a stance so your weak side don't present as a target.

Kind of related to this, I'd completely forgotten that Bran encounters some more (possible) Greenseers while he's exploring in Hodor's body:

___

He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. "Hodor," Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.

___

Assuming these fellows are Greenseers, it seems that they can be stirred out of their trees and back into their bodies. If we think about their 'corpse' bodies merging with and being nourished by the weirwoods, and Brynden's comment that greenseers linger long in the wood, this makes sense.

Bran counts only a little over 60 living Singers in BR's cave, and we know the Singers are not an especially fertile people, and also that greenseers are rare, even among them; that means an entire room full of greenseers would have taken a while to build up, and that some of those fellows Bran saw could have been there hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

If very old Greenseers linger, and can still be stirred to wakefulness in their bodies, this opens a couple interesting possibilities:

1. The idea has been tossed around that the Winterfell Crypts were built atop a Singer hill. If that is indeed the case, that means that whatever secret is in those Crypts isn't just old, it's alive; this could be anything from ancient Stark kings turned greenseer, to perhaps the very greenseers that the LH sought out.

2. It would give a whole different meaning to that part of the NW oath about being "the horn that wakes the sleepers"

3. ...and, possibly, an alternative meaning to the Horn of Winter's ability to "wake sleeping giants beneath the earth." It is interesting that, when we first hear about Joramun, it's actually from Mormont, and his (brief) description implies that Joramun did sound the Horn, yet the Wall is still standing.

I think they can,in one of BR's lessons to Bran he broke off and told him "the trees are calling" . And to go back to the WB when the COTF made blood sacrifices to the Greenseers to me the most haunting line in that book.

"And the gods stirred and woke giants from the earth"

hmmmmmmm.

[Black Crow]

That makes a lot of sense: putting aside their old differences. Each has a strong prejudice of opinion to be sure. Only dire tribulations would remind each moiety of their commonality. Personal biases are selfish and petty when faced with such odds, and sacrifices need to be made for the greater good . . . that sorta thing :)

It would also make sense in the light of the hints we get as to a possible Stark connection to Winter, if say the white walkers were originally created by the Starks and their greenseers to further their conquests as Kings of Winter and that's why its going to take another son of Winterfell to end the business